Although the share price of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has fallen significantly amid concerns over worldwide inflation, US billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway spent a massive US$4.1 billion on the chipmaker’s American depositary receipts.
Reporting on Buffett’s investment in TSMC, some Chinese-language media outlets have said that it would give the Taiwanese economy a shot in the arm.
Although TSMC has planted its flag in various countries around the world, Taiwan is still its most important base. The US invited TSMC to set up a plant in Arizona, because it was worried that its source of cutting-edge chips would dry up if China attacks Taiwan and TSMC’s domestic facilities are destroyed.
The US outshines Taiwan in terms of key equipment and materials for silicon wafer production, but even when TSMC’s US plants start mass production, they would still not be able to replace production in Taiwan.
TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) has said that Taiwan is the only place where TSMC can make such high-end chips.
There are many reasons for this, including Taiwan’s outstanding talent, technology and corporate culture. Moreover, a highly integrated supply chain formed by industrial clusters surrounding TSMC cannot be easily enticed to move away from Taiwan.
Another aspect that receives less attention is Taiwan’s circular economy. The semiconductor industry uses many chemicals, and because of the precision chipmaking requires, most of them, such as photoresists, etchants, phosphoric acid and hydrofluoric acid, cannot be reused. In contrast to the metal-processing industry, chipmakers can only use these chemicals for one round of processing.
There are many highly specialized businesses in Taiwan that process chipmakers’ waste chemicals and, after separation and purification, supply them for use in downstream industries.
Take the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) as an example: There are recycling plants that serve its chip plants in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Townshhip (湖口) and Taoyuan’s Dayuan (大園) and Guanyin (觀音) districts, all within a radius of 100km of the park. Although these companies use conventional chemical industrial processes, the specific nature of their business and their deep familiarity with chipmaking waste materials make them an indispensable “venous industry” for the sustainable development of the semiconductor industry.
The Industrial Development Bureau certifies recycled chemicals’ environmental friendliness.
Taiwan’s resource-recycling industries enable its chipmakers to fully comply with the UN’s sustainable development goals. The nation has established a comprehensive audit and management system for the recovery and reuse of chemicals in the semiconductor industry. In terms of a circular economy manufacturing system, these advantages would be hard for any company to re-establish in another country after leaving Taiwan.
Taiwan’s success in this respect is something that could be worth sharing with other countries.
Chen Wen-ching is executive director of the Formosa Association of Resource Recycling.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Criticisms of corruption, a poorly managed bureaucracy and uninformed, unprincipled or unaccomplished policy in China are often met with harsh punishments. Many protesters in the “blank paper movement,” for example, have been disappeared by the authorities. Meanwhile, the WHO has asked China to provide data on its COVID-19 situation, with the Chinese government choosing to disseminate propaganda instead. The first amendment of the US Constitution, written in 1791, prohibits the US government from abridging the freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, or religion. More than 200 years later, China, the world’s second-largest economy, still lacks the freedoms of speech and the press,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the pride of the nation, has recently become a villain to residents of Tainan’s Annan District (安南). In 2017, TSMC announced plans to build the world’s first 3-nanometer fab in Anding District (安定). While the project was once welcomed by residents of Tainan, it has since become a source of controversy. The new fab requires a huge amount of electricity to operate. To meet TSMC’s surging electricity demand, plans are under way to construct a 1.2 gigawatt gas power station near a residential area in Annan District. More than 10,000 Annan residents have signed a petition
As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) constantly strives to rewrite the Taiwan narrative, it is important to regularly update and correct the stereotypes that the PRC tries to foist on Taiwan and the world. A primary stereotype is that Taiwan has always been a part of China and its corollary that Taiwan has been a part of China since time immemorial. Both are false. Taiwan has always been a part of the vast Austronesian empire, which stretched from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east and from Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. That
I first visited Taiwan in 1985, when I was deputed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to start a dialogue with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). I spent three days talking to officials, the end result being the signing of an agreement where the Republic of China (ROC) recognized the right to self-determination of Tibetans. According to official KMT records in Nanking, Tibet never paid taxes to the ROC government. In 1997, the Dalai Lama made his first ever visit to Taiwan on the invitation of then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Lee took the bold step of opening Taiwan’s doors to