Reports that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry could be considering leaving the country amid rising geopolitical tensions, and in light of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) plans to build factories in the US and Japan, were dismissed last week by Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花). Wang said that Taiwan has an important chip manufacturing cluster, its capabilities are second to none and no other country could displace Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors.
Wang also downplayed concerns that a number of TSMC engineers relocating to the US for the company’s new plant in Phoenix, Arizona, would lead to talent shortages or a loss of technology in Taiwan. She said that most advanced chips would still be made in Taiwan despite TSMC’s US and Japanese investments.
Similarly, TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) last week at a monthly trade group meeting also denied that Taiwan would experience a brain drain, particularly as the company would still have more than 50,000 engineers in Taiwan after dispatching only about 500 engineers to the Arizona plant, adding that the chipmaker’s global expansion is essential to the nation’s dominance in the industry.
While Taiwan has a well-developed semiconductor cluster, the industry still has an opportunity to grow into an indispensable global technology partner, Liu said. The upstream and downstream firms in the supply chain — from integrated circuit design, chip manufacturing, and chip packaging and testing, to semiconductor components and materials production — could enhance a comprehensive industry supply chain, Liu said.
Over the past 30 years, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has focused on domestic research and development, which has created world-leading technologies. However, as the main force of this effort has gradually shifted from students, faculty and research staff returning from abroad in its early years, to those with domestic master’s degrees and doctorates, the nation is facing talent shortages, compounded by the younger generation’s lack of ambition and its insufficient skills in dealing with globalization.
People with master’s degrees and doctorates from Taiwan are not inferior to those who graduated from foreign universities, but the common perception is that they tend to pursue a comfortable life with stability rather than stepping out of their comfort zone to engage in new experiences. As Liu has said, the problem Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is facing is not a brain drain, but that younger generations avoid uncertainty by not venturing out to challenge their boundaries — such as by studying abroad.
Although the COVID-19 restrictions in China and intensified US-China tensions have resulted in more skilled Taiwanese semiconductor engineers returning from China, strengthening research exchanges with advanced countries such as the US, Europe and Japan through talent circulation is necessary to ensure that Taiwan’s advanced chipmaking technology can continue leading the world.
By encouraging the movement of skilled workers between Taiwan and other like-minded nations, Taiwanese talent can go overseas and move forward, while the nation can bring in expertise from abroad to continue industry innovation. This would make Taiwan indispensable to the global economy, and could help the nation break free from the handcuffs of geopolitical challenges.
When US budget carrier Southwest Airlines last week announced a new partnership with China Airlines, Southwest’s social media were filled with comments from travelers excited by the new opportunity to visit China. Of course, China Airlines is not based in China, but in Taiwan, and the new partnership connects Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport with 30 cities across the US. At a time when China is increasing efforts on all fronts to falsely label Taiwan as “China” in all arenas, Taiwan does itself no favors by having its flagship carrier named China Airlines. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is eager to jump at
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
In China, competition is fierce, and in many cases suppliers do not get paid on time. Rather than improving, the situation appears to be deteriorating. BYD Co, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer by production volume, has gained notoriety for its harsh treatment of suppliers, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability. The case also highlights the decline of China’s business environment, and the growing risk of a cascading wave of corporate failures. BYD generally does not follow China’s Negotiable Instruments Law when settling payments with suppliers. Instead the company has created its own proprietary supply chain finance system called the “D-chain,” through which
RSS