China 'Must Seize TSMC' If the US Were To Impose Sanctions, Says Top Economist (theregister.com) 328
China should seize Taiwan to gain control of TSMC if the US and its allies impose sanctions against the Middle Kingdom like those now in place against Russia, according to a prominent Chinese economist. The Register reports: This latest development comes in a speech by Chen Wenling, chief economist for the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, delivered at the China-US Forum hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China at the end of May. The text of the speech was posted to the Guancha (Observer) online news site. In the speech, Chen opened by saying that China and the US needs to ease the hostile relations between them, and that a confrontation between the two powers would be "a disaster for mankind."
However, she then claimed the US was seeking to isolate China, citing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreements as attempts by the US to create two large "anti-China" trade bodies, although the US pulled out of the former and the latter was cancelled because of disagreements. Echoing many concerns in the West, Chen said that China needs to take steps to secure its industrial chain and supply chain, and make strategic preparations to "deal with the United States' insistence on breaking the chain and containing it," according to a translation of the text. This means that if the US and allies imposed sanctions on China like those deployed against Russia, China "must recover Taiwan" and "seize TSMC, a company that originally belonged to China."
Chen claimed that "they are speeding up the transfer to the United States, and to build six factories in the United States. We must not let all the goals of the transfer be achieved," a possible reference to the US CHIPS Act, which seeks to encourage the building of semiconductor fabrication plants on US soil, which may include funding going to TSMC for chipmaking facilities it is building in Arizona. While alarming, Chen's speech appears to suggest that China should only take this action as retaliation to threats against its economic security, and there is no reason to believe that sanctions comparable to those on Russia are likely unless China becomes involved in a similar act of hostility against another country.
However, she then claimed the US was seeking to isolate China, citing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreements as attempts by the US to create two large "anti-China" trade bodies, although the US pulled out of the former and the latter was cancelled because of disagreements. Echoing many concerns in the West, Chen said that China needs to take steps to secure its industrial chain and supply chain, and make strategic preparations to "deal with the United States' insistence on breaking the chain and containing it," according to a translation of the text. This means that if the US and allies imposed sanctions on China like those deployed against Russia, China "must recover Taiwan" and "seize TSMC, a company that originally belonged to China."
Chen claimed that "they are speeding up the transfer to the United States, and to build six factories in the United States. We must not let all the goals of the transfer be achieved," a possible reference to the US CHIPS Act, which seeks to encourage the building of semiconductor fabrication plants on US soil, which may include funding going to TSMC for chipmaking facilities it is building in Arizona. While alarming, Chen's speech appears to suggest that China should only take this action as retaliation to threats against its economic security, and there is no reason to believe that sanctions comparable to those on Russia are likely unless China becomes involved in a similar act of hostility against another country.
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess she hasn't learned anything from the Ukraine experience. The only way China will be able to invade Taiwan successfully will be to use the Russian tactics of destroying everything. And that includes TSMC. Because if they leave infrastructure standing, the Taiwanese will resist the invasion just as the Ukrainians are resisting the Russian invasion.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
They couldn't do much with it BUT destroy it, that's been the essence of the trade agreement from the get-go. Western IP in exchange for asian labor. While TSMC definitely employs some top notch semi-conductor physicists, they likely would flee, assuming they're located there to begin with. All that's left is a factory with no brains to use, and no plans to realize.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
How is a civilian work force supposed to flee from an island during wartime?
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Most believed it to be just a ploy
Nope. The longer the Russian army stayed congregated at the border, the more certain the US military became that Russia was going in. Biden was offering public early warnings right after the Russian wargame event was supposed to be finished, but the Russians lingered months afterwards.
I agree, there's no way China is going to be able to conceal an invasion attempt. My predictive surprise is that China will attack US military satellite systems before launching.
Re: Good luck with that (Score:3)
> They may already have the capability to deny US aircraft and surface vessels access to the area. And in 5 years time they definitely will have this capability.
Thatâ(TM)s a pretty bold claim. You got some data to back that up?
America might be in decline, but the military remains second to none in terms of capability.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah... you might want to read that article more carefully before taking it at face value. Any author/article/publication so utterly clueless as to get destroyers confused with battleships should by no means be taken seriously when trying to comment on naval warfare matters. And that's just one of a whole slew of glaring screwups in there.
Re: (Score:3)
The insanity in China and Taiwan is the whole One China policy. There are still many nut jobs in Taiwan that think they're a government in exile and have a hope of returning to power. That's never going to happen.
Probably not but, then again, we didn't expect the Berlin Wall to come down or see a reunified Germany. We didn't expect the Soviet Union to collapse suddenly. We didn't expect an orange fraudster in the White House, or people licking his allegedly-billionaire boots.
We are in the Crazy Years. Buckle up, because I think I can do this, but I've only seen it on cartoons.
Re: (Score:2)
Ships and boats, my friend. It's only 75 miles to Japan.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, good point. I'll have to do some reading on that, once I get done with this delicious Vietnamese takeout.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
How is a civilian work force supposed to flee from an island during wartime?
Good question. Unless China fly jets over and decimate airports, shipping ports, and everything which looks like a boat on day one the answer is obvious. Why not ask refugees from Africa who arrive in Italy as the first port of entry into the EU how they got there?
Speaking of which maybe you recall that everyone in the world except for Fox News knew that Russia was going to invade the Ukraine about 4 weeks before the first Russian even set foot in the country. You can do a lot of things in secret, assassinations for one. Waging war, not so much.
Re: (Score:3)
If you sink the ships with the semiconductor physicists onboard, you can't make them rebuild the fabs.
Re: Flee to China (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Flee to China (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/02... [cnn.com]
If you think that's for "common prosperity", think again. The Chinese government really doesn't like it when they feel people respect anything more than itself. Why else do you think that popular social media influencers have disappeared even though they haven't broken any laws? In China, being more famous than the dictator is unwise.
They'll take away that million dollar salary for no reason at all.
Re: Flee to China (Score:5, Insightful)
And when in China they'll discover that the surveillance is worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Who says the million dollars and luxury lifestyle still happen once they have you by the balls?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I think it is a mistake to consider China's conventional warfare capability less than Russia's. China has less nuclear capability or weapons count than Russia but for conventional warfare their capabilities are very significant. Don't forget they also have a few inside men including Milley who promised to let China know if we were going to attack them.
I'd like to think both the US and China (and Russia too) have a somewhat functional system to prevent a leader who is not quite right in the mind starting WW3. That could be a friendly phone call, or a bullet to the back of the head, whatever works. Our lives all depend on it. '
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is a mistake to consider China's conventional warfare capability less than Russia's.
Perhaps, but launching an amphibious assault across 160 km of ocean is way more difficult than what Russia did in Ukraine.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? The PRC Navy is so much larger they could lose 1/2 the fleet and still have a 5x advantage and enough to setup levels of blockades so that no one can leave Taiwan by sea.
Russia was attacking from only 1 side & Ukraine was being resupplied from the far borders. A blockaded Taiwan with an enforced no-fly zone is entirely on their own unless someone wants to risk going head-to-head with Chinese ships & aircraft.
Re: (Score:3)
Why? The PRC Navy is so much larger they could lose 1/2 the fleet and still have a 5x advantage and enough to setup levels of blockades so that no one can leave Taiwan by sea.
The PRC can only shuttle 30,000 troops across the straight at a time with their current capability, and that is without any heavy equipment.
A blockaded Taiwan with an enforced no-fly zone is entirely on their own unless someone wants to risk going head-to-head with Chinese ships & aircraft.
China doesn't have the capability to enforce a no-fly zone around Taiwan.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
The PRC Navy is so much larger
How many of those ships are amphibious troop carriers?
they could lose 1/2 the fleet and still have a 5x advantage
Taiwan doesn't need ships to counter ships. They can fire Tomahawks and other anti-ship missiles from land or air.
enough to setup levels of blockades so that no one can leave Taiwan by sea.
The ships enforcing the blockade would soon have the same fate as the Moskva.
A $100k missle can sink a $1B ship.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
The PLAN (it's called the People's Liberation Army Navy, not the PRC Navy) is large in terms of ship numbers, but is severely lacking in experience. In all of military history the most difficult operation to carry out is an opposed amphibious landing. We tend to think it's not difficult because the Marines did it quite well, but that was through a ridiculously high cost in men to learn the lessons required to do it successfully. It requires extensive coordination and combined arms assault; Naval bombardment and aerial attack to support landing forces. Those landing forces must then secure both a massive buffer zone as well as a deep water port in order to continue to be resupplied and maintain readiness and combat effectiveness, otherwise they will be besieged and destroyed by the defenders.
The PLA (and it's cadet branch the PLAN, because the Army controls the Navy in the Chinese military) must choose a single port to attack, secure it's facilities intact, and hold off any counterattack to build up strength. Taoyuan port seems obvious, as it's 45 km from Taipei and the goal would be to take out the government as China's policy is that the people of Taiwan are Chinese and the government is illegitimate. However this would be the most opposed landing they would face and likely lose. The Port of Kaohsiung would make more sense; it's the largest port in Taiwan with significant infrastructure, but it's also the furthest away from Taipei meaning they would need to secure the port, build up a massive army, and fight the whole way across the island.
Meanwhile, the US, India, Australia, Japan and the majority of Europe opposes this kind of tactic. Each of them would continue to resupply the Taiwanese forces to resist. The PLA could not stop that resupply, because if they blockade the Eastern ports of Taiwan, 1) they would stretch their Navy out, not able to support their landing forces, and 2) America could just run the blockade. If the PLAN attacks an American ship doing business in Taiwan, that would justify the US Navy getting involved and in that situation China loses big. The Japanese are already making statements that they will defend Taiwan, and the Japanese "Self Defense Navy", the 4th largest Navy in the world, is also well equipped, trained, and experienced participating in US actions. Australia likely joins in too; the PLAN would be facing American equipment by well trained, professional, experienced Navys that combined are on par in terms of size. Meanwhile, all Taiwan needs to do is destroy the cranes and port facilities if they're losing the landing; the landing forces will then be unable to resupply, run out of food and ammo, and surrender or be destroyed.
The PLAN has zero experience at Naval warfare outside of anti-piracy patrols. The PLA in general has not fought a serious war since 1950. They are severely lacking in a non-commissioned officer corp, meaning that the high level control is good but the unit-level leadership is sketchy. Notably every unit above company has dual control; a military officer and a political officer, and we all know how well that worked for the Soviet Army. Many of China's new weapons have not been tested in battle and their soldiers are not experienced. In the hell that is an opposed amphibious landing, most units would crumble. Meanwhile the Taiwanese military is supplied with some of the best equipment the US can build and trained by the US military (FYI, the Ukrainian military was also trained and supplied by the US, which is why they are so effective), and they will have no where to run; they'll be fighting for their homes.
China likely cannot successfully take Taiwan without leveling it completely, and that would make them an international pariah, go against thier stated political position of Taiwan to their own populace, and risk delegitimizing their government.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
In WW2, the US was only ahead in terms of military technology with code breaking. The US Navy was at least as good, if not inferior and certainly less experienced than the Japanese Navy. Their fighters at the start of the war were not quite good enough compared to Zeros, spitfires, and ME-109s. Their army was relatively new and reasonably experienced, but not compared to the Japanese military or the German military. Shermans were 1-to-1 inferior to most German tanks (japanese tanks weren't really an issue). Yet America utterly obliterated all of it's opponents and created effectively a new global order.
You don't win wars on the strength of technology. You win on logistics and organization. The Sherman may not have been the most powerful tank, but it was the superior tank in that it could be repaired in the field, supported by trucks, and be back in the fight in hours rather than weeks. The F4 may not have been the best plane, but it's pilots were given the freedom to come up with unique tactics to win and handedly beat Japanese pilots with tactics like the Thach Weave; Japanese pilots were fantastic but rigid. More importantly, America could not just build up it's military over time, but could replace losses at a significant rate; the Japanese and Germans simply could not keep up. Many people talk about how Russia really beat the Germans, or the UK, but the UK and the Soviet Union stayed in the fight by being supplied by US factories. Usually this is where people say "but we've outsourced all our manufacturing to China! They could stop selling to us and we'd be screwed!" That's a political talking point; don't believe it. The US industrial base has increased 600% since WW2. The only reason manufacturing is not a large part of the economy is that the service sector has increased about 3000%; as a proportion of the US economy manufacturing is less, but in real terms the US is a better manufacturer. "Wait, but what about small piece parts? The US relies on small parts manufacturing from China!" Well, let me introduce you to the world's second largest small piece parts manufacturing country: the US' dear friend to the South, Mexico. The transition of more manufacturing from China to Mexico is already under way, the logistics are easier and easier to defend, and we already have a great free trade agreement with them. China needs the US as a market much more than the US needs China as a supplier.
The new weapons like the DF-17 work well on paper. In the field it's an entirely different story. The Chinese military has not been in action in 70 years. They have not utilized their new weapons in an opposed engagement against a serious threat. They have a large submarine force but no experienced submarine captains. They have a large Navy in terms of ships, but have never once, in the entire history of China, been a naval power or won a naval engagement in the ocean. More importantly, can they replace those once fired? Weapons like hypersonic missiles require advanced computer chips and other resources that China can not make domestically. They import a significant amount of food and raw resources. Their economy runs on exports. When they fire all those missiles, can they build more? Not if they're being blockaded.
The US military is the master at winning wars; not battles. New weapons might tip the scales in a battle, but so what? After Pearl Harbor, the US Navy was knocked down, but not out. They knew the Japanese were following traditio
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
China can probably ramp up manufacturing faster than us.
China is as dependent on the West as we are on them. Chinese manufacturing still depends on imported parts.
Until 5 years ago, China could not even make ball-point pens without balls imported from Switzerland.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:3)
The west can survive without the latest iPhone.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
The west can survive without the latest iPhone.
You have no idea the depth of inter-dependency in our supply chains. Finished consumer goods are not the real problem.
Mining, industry and agricultural production all over the world will be suffering from a cascade of unpredicted shortages of vital inputs, if there is a major trade disruption. Some poor countries will see starvation.
Have we not learned the vulnerability of just-in-time warehousing in the last 2 years?
Re: (Score:3)
You are aware that almost everything we produce here needs parts from China? You won't build a car, a power plant, construction equipment or even get any buildings built without material or parts from China.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Until 5 years ago, China could not even make ball-point pens without balls imported from Switzerland.
I've heard this story repeated a lot and then I look at the USA's non-existent capabilities of semiconductor manufacturing. The reality is it's not a case of China not being able to make balls for ball point pens. It's China choosing not to and importing the result from another country. Much like the west does with a lot of things we can *only* get from south east Asia right now.
Just like in this article when (if) Intel opens an advanced manufacturing facility in the USA for 5nm nodes, the media will be all over it in the same way, but it wasn't an issue of "couldn't" be done as much as it was "didn't want to" be done. You can see this play out right now with investment picking up due to the global supply chain issues. Countries are realising domestic production may not be bad, not because they couldn't do it in the past, but because it was cheaper to let someone else do it for you.
Re: (Score:2)
Lol no they can't. ASML is in the Netherlands.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
That's nice. Where are they getting lenses from? ASML doesn't design nor make those. Zeiss does.
This is the fun thing. Everything that makes TSMC successful except for engineering of the actual fab and economic side is made elsewhere, and it's decentralized. Designs for chips come from US. Machines to make chips come from Netherlands. Lenses for said machines come from Germany. And that's just a few things without which you cannot make a TSMC clone.
Grabbing it is utterly pointless for anything other than de
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Problem being that 1-2 generation behind implies that this is just incremental improvement.
When in reality, it's about moving to EUV. Something that was so fundamentally difficult, it was over a decade late for Western companies to get done compared to what they expected.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
The same Germans who recently put rules in place to basically block Chinese from buying any meaningful tech from them because of the scandal with several pieces of critical tech getting basically stolen by Chinese using company purchases through third parties? Sell one of their crown jewels, Carl Zeiss AG to China?
And while many nations can design chips, few can design top tier chips.
And that's how we get to current state of PRC chip industry. It's significantly behind in both design and manufacturing both, which is why it's utterly uncompetitive for anything but domestic pet projects. With next jump in litography being the massive jump to EUV, something that came over a decade late for Western and Japanese companies who were working on it for a very long time, so that's not on the cards.
Guess that means it's going to have to be some top tier chip designers. Which leads us to multiple programs to attract top tier chip designers to China for about a decade, with poor results so far. And that was before the crackdowns on foreigners in last couple of years and tyrannical lockdowns that caused a massive exodus and loss of reputation.
Intel? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
War is more nuanced than you believe it to be. If it makes you feel any better, war is probably more nuanced than Chinese generals and politicians believe it to be.
While I'm more inclined to think that the Chinese will fail to invade Taiwan, there's nothing to stop the Chinese from leaving a parting shot of blowing up everything of value in Taiwan, particularly TSMC, if the Chinese leave enough missiles in reserve. We don't "win" even if the Chinese don't "win".
Re: (Score:3)
The problem here is that Taiwan has at least some retaliatory capability, so it might just do some significant damage to China's industrial capacity along the way. A war between the two has no certain outcome, other than leaving a lot of stuff smashed on both side of the Strait.
Re: (Score:2)
so it might just do some significant damage to China's industrial capacity along the way.
Ukrainians have a better chance of mounting an offensive into Russia. Shanghai is a big place.
Re: (Score:2)
One thing is for sure, the US will try to be one of the last to join WW3. But it won't be the huge economic win that it was last time because we already outsourced most of our manufacturing.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
China has shit seafaring capability. Could they destroy Taiwan's economic capability, certainly. But could they easily take the island intact unless the US and Japan roll over and let them? No.
Re: (Score:2)
China has shit seafaring capability.
China doesn't need a world class navy to deal with Taiwan. Taiwan isn't on the other side of an ocean. It's just off shore. Militarily China needs only three things to take control of Taiwan:
1.) China needs a strong anti-capital ship threat to keep Western navies at bay. Hypersonic anti-ship missiles will do nicely, so China is rapidly developing exactly that.
2.) China needs air superiority over Taiwan to protect bombers and naval patrol assets. That part is easy given the extreme advantage of oper
World's largest navy (Score:2)
Granted most of their ships are small and only suitable for operation within a few hundred miles of shore - like for example against an island 70 miles off the coast?
China could not do patrols in the Gulf of Mexico like US does patrols in the China sea but off their own they can absolutely dominate.
Re: Good luck with that (Score:2)
Oh wait...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Good luck with that (Score:3)
The US military is mostly not in the US.
Re: (Score:2)
America has a major military and logistical center on the island of Okinawa, very close to Taiwan.
A Marine Division and a Marine Air Wing are on Okinawa. There is also a major USAF base at Kadena and a big logistics base in Naha.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the exact opposite. Ukraine didn't even have a credible military eight years ago. Russians have exceptional ground warfare capability, which they allowed their corruption to hollow out from inside. Chinese have at least as much corruption as Russians, and they have to assault over water which is far harder while having far less assets capable of such an assault. And worst of all, Ukraine is flat tank country. Really easy to advance in outside cities and previously dug in areas. Finally The only way to get any materiel to Ukraine is to fly it to Poland, put it on a train, drive a train to Ukraine's border, unload, reload into Ukraine's rail gauge train, and have Ukrainians drive it across the border and into Ukraine. It's extremely logistically complex.
Now compare it to Taiwan. Taiwan has been preparing for Chinese invasion since 1950s. It's an island sitting quite a distance from Chinese mainland. It's extremely mountainous, with much of waterline being cliffs of various kinds. It has an intricate network of dug in positions built over more than half a century of preparations aimed specifically at stopping invasion from PRC mainland. And if you want to send help, you just put it on a ship and send it to a Taiwanese port on the opposite side of the island, because blockading those is basically impossible for PRC.
Finally whatever you say about Russia, they're net producers of everything you need to have modern civilization. Things like oil, food and ores needed for basic civilizational necessities like steel. They're net exporters of all those things. War is taking quality of life of Russians way down due to trade sanctions which reduce efficiencies of all those critical sectors, lights aren't going to go out, trucks are't stopping and people aren't starving in massive numbers. Because there's enough domestic food production to feed Russians and they have precursors for everything they need to survive as a civilization domestically. It won't be an existence nearly as comfortable as it was before the war, but it's also not an extinction event either.
China on the other hand is a massive net importer of everything that you need to have a modern civilization. They're massive net importers of fuel, food and most ores needed for basic civilizational necessities like steel. If US and its allies were to put sanctions like ones that have been put on Russia on China, it would have mass starvation event within a year after it ran out of whatever hasn't been stolen from its strategic reserves by the corrupt elite. Bonus points of failure to recover from African Swine Flu that would accelerate this even further. And it wouldn't even be able to make war at that point, because it would have little oil left to run war machines, much less supply lines for them. Even most of the manufacturing would shut down, because a lot of Chinese manufacturing imports precursors and then assembles them. It cannot function without access to global markets, because it needs imports to assemble things.
One of the reasons for extreme political instability in China right now is that CCP leadership saw in Ukraine that pretty much all of the foundational assumptions they based their long term plans for retaking Taiwan... were wrong. Everything from "it's going to be easy, we just roll in and most people will surrender" and "Westerners will accept it and keep doing business as usual" to "we can have connections with a handful of elites which will let us control the international response". Remember how among the first ones to pull out of Russia were the three majors of oil consulting, Halliburton, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes? Three companies who's activities in Russia were in no way sanctioned by anyone, and who's social responsibility record speaks for itself in... frankly utter lack of any social responsibility. Until now. Because they got massively pressured into it by actual individual stock holders who were collectively outraged at the events in Ukraine.
The fact that ordinary people rather than a small handful o
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
>What do you have against electronics?
They need energy to run, and multiple inputs that China lacks to be manufactured.
>Sure Russia can pull off subsistence farming for a little while.
Russia coupled with allied nation of Belarus is world's biggest exporter of potash, which is suitable for pretty much all of their staple ag production. They're going to be fine on modern farming. China on the other hand currently has ban on exports of phosphates in place and a strategic purchase program for them specifically because cannot fully source their precursors domestically. And Chinese staple plant protein source that is rice requires a lot of phosphates.
>But then you missed the Russian housewives fighting over sugar?
No, just like I didn't miss Americans fighting over toilet paper, and Germans over cooking oil. None of these are essentials. Unlike actual basic necessity level foodstuffs, and I've also seen Chinese housewives fighting over them even in Shanghai.
None of which is really relevant to the discussion, because while the only ones fighting for actual survival are the Chinese housewives, their current problems aren't really because of the problems I've talked about. Those problems will be far, far worse than just fighting over food scraps left in the isles of the markets.
>And you didn't notice Russia stealing all Ukraine's grain...
Which they plan to sell abroad, rather than use domestically, all while continuing to export domestic grain. That's called "having a surplus". Something that China doesn't have.
Which is the whole point.
>I guess with no airline industry anymore, Russians will just get used to long distance walking again.
Russia traditionally used trains for most of their domestic logistics. There are cities in Russia that aren't even connected by roads to the rest of the nation, only by railroads. And they produce everything to keep trains running domestically. Unlike China, where sanctions would remove ways to get fuel to move things around on anything that isn't powered by domestic animals.
But since China still has tens to hundreds of millions of people who still live a subsistence farming lifestyle, at least you'll have domestic expertise on how to drive Shanghai and Beijing elites around their cities to watch their citizenry starve. On donkeys.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, if the West decides to boycott Made in China products, like for the Russian gas, well... all the stores will have a lot of empty shelves, and no more IStuffs
Re: Good luck with that (Score:2)
Taiwan invasion would be different. Just look at the terrain. It would be more like Afghanistan where invaders had to fight tribes and failed due to terrain issues. With people motivated like the Ukrainians and trained it would be more like Gallipoli.
Re: (Score:2)
It's even worse than that.
What would seizing TSMC do? I'm sure the Taiwanese would destroy the fab making it useless - there are plenty of things that once destroyed cannot be brought online anymore. The EUV light source, for example - if you destroy that, the whole fab's useless.
Then there's the supply chain as well - destroy the machinery and the fab's useless. You think the US and EU are going to supply China with the necessary parts to fix the fab? (TSMC doesn't work in a vacuum - they rely on parts fro
China can sabotage TSMC (Score:2)
What about China's learning? (Score:2)
Easy to say, hard to do (Score:4, Insightful)
Taiwan is much stronger militarily than Ukraine, and China is somewhat weaker than Russia. And invading across an ocean is harder by several orders of magnitude.
Re:Easy to say, hard to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually not hard at all, if you read the earlier papers (you know, clicking not just the headline but the actual PDFs inside the stories) it is described in detail.
TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, is one of the world's most valuable companies in market cap, and provides a huge amount of the world's premium computer chips and silicon wafers. They've (successfully) threatened companies like Huawei, they're about 1/5 of the global chip production, especially on the newest generation of 7-nm and 5-nm chip fabrication. In response to China's threats have been looking at expanding operation in Japan, the US, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, and other countries. Not just big on the global scale, they're the biggest economic target in Taiwan by far.
The articles describe how the company would need to make it automated, essentially giving the executives a self destruct button that would automatically destroy the fabrication equipment in all their manufacturing and fabrication equipment in Taiwan and mainland China. Most of it could be in software, the fabrication equipment driving itself beyond the limits then deleting everything, but some of it would need to be with extra equipment -- which is inexpensive relative to the business overall -- that could destroy itself.
Executives could push the big red self destruct button and the world suddenly loses about $50B/year in microchip fabrication equipment, hitting mainland China harder than any other country. We'd see the sting in video cards and high-end CPUs in the US, but our sting would be mild compared to the hit to China's economic damage. As the researchers point out, the loss of that one company's equipment to China would mean one of the few things China would value that it doesn't already have if they attempted to seize control over Taiwan. The company's global operations would suffer for a few years, but they could gradually recover elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Alternatively in the months leading up to the invasion when China is amassing their forces, TSMC just has the Tawainese military wire up the buildings to blow them up or more likely asks the US government to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
Just park mobile AA and anti-ship batteries next to the plants. Lets China decide, sending in invasion forces with active modern area denial is suicide.
Re: (Score:2)
One of Taiwan's major exports is food. They have rice growing everywhere, even between buildings in some cities. The most advanced aquaculture industry I have ever seen, pig farming, duck farming, fruits from the South that are bigger and juicier than from any other country. Their wine sucks though, so that could be problem, the whisky (KaVaLan) and beer (Taiwan Draught, LeBleDor) is decent and great, but they aren't going to starve.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1. full facility access,
2. some gasoline,
3. matches
4. a few 5 pound sledgehammers.
The chances of china seizing TSMC? Zero, unless they pull
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Taiwan is much stronger militarily than Ukraine, and China is somewhat weaker than Russia. And invading across an ocean is harder by several orders of magnitude.
The big factors for military are manpower, equipment, logistics, and discipline.
China has a MASSIVE amount of manpower, and probably pretty decent equipment. I don't know about the logistics and discipline but judging by the way they locked down their country during COVID I suspect they're pretty decent there.
I'd give Taiwan the edge over China in logistics and discipline, but they don't have nearly the same manpower, and even if their equipment is more advanced they have a lot less.
Russia's major disadvant
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Easy to say, hard to do (Score:5, Interesting)
Chinese men are pampered beyond belief by their parents and coddled and cloistered. They are not the lean mean fighting machine shown in Hollywood movies. All nice crisp uniforms and bravado. A recent skirmish with India, they suffered casualities 3 to 1.
Re: (Score:3)
That's an ignorant analysis. Russia has more land than China, so what? You can't figure out which military is stronger just by looking at the land area. You need to do a more sophisticated analysis, which you didn't even attempt.
Re: Easy to say, hard to do (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an ignorant analysis.
Comparing Russia and China is difficult; there are so many intangibles that counting heads, acres or tanks is mostly pointless.
First, unlike Russia, China is at its height; its military men are not corrupt drunkard wastrels pretending to work for pretend pay. Second, unlike Russia, China's military equipment is not a vast horde of neglected cold war crap; much of it is in good condition operated by well trained men and of recent manufacture, if not design. While China isn't yet at parity with the West in many respects, it is more advanced in others, particularly in key tactical missile technology. Third, unlike Russia China is wealthy; it can sustain costly operations for lengthy intervals. Finally, unlike Russia with it's decaying, subsistence level industrial base, China has the most massive, adaptable and vigorous industrial base on the planet.
The one thing China clearly has in common with Russia is that it's strongly nationalist and the Chinese leadership and Chinese people are 100% aligned in the belief that Taiwan is a renegade state the owes allegiance to China. Thus, they will accept hardship, casualties and condemnation from their enemies as the righteous price that must be paid. Like Russia what opposition exists in China will keep its mouth shut.
Re: (Score:3)
China is at its height; its military men are not corrupt drunkard wastrels pretending to work for pretend pay.
Yes, actually they are. They are massively corrupt, and are more of a corporation than a military [youtube.com].
Chinese people are 100% aligned in the belief that Taiwan is a renegade state the owes allegiance to China. Thus, they will accept hardship, casualties and condemnation from their enemies as the righteous price that must be paid.
Hard to know for sure (because there are no reliable polls), but after many conversations with Chinese people, I would say it's not so clear. A lot of people just want the CCCP to not cause them any problems. They will go along of course, much like the Russians have gone along with their government.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
China has a high population, but the PLA is not as well armed as the Russian Army, and the Chinese Navy, which is a salient point here, is nothing to write home about.
They'd be more than welcome to (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
How outrageous (Score:2, Troll)
I am trying to think about how this is worse than invading a country that never attacked us and then having a future U.S. president declare "we should have taken their oil."
Re:How outrageous (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the sentiment but lets move forward. Iraq I actually agree in some respects but what DJT said before he was president is just fluff politicians/people say lots of stuff what matters is what they do.
TSMC is also critical for the US, possibly we need to defend Taiwan on that basis alone. The time of appeasing China is over (IMO.)
Re: (Score:2)
TSMC is also critical for the US, possibly we need to defend Taiwan on that basis alone. The time of appeasing China is over (IMO.)
Sadly that is the sort of dumb rhetoric that leads to war and suffering. China is saying the exact same thing, the time of appeasing the US war machine is over.
Seize TSMC. And then what? (Score:5, Insightful)
TSMC would be destroyed (Score:2)
Would be a perfect example of a Pyrrhic victory (Score:3)
The phrase originates from a quote from Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose triumph against the Romans in the Battle of Asculum in 279 BCE destroyed much of his forces, forcing the end of his campaign.
In this case, any attempt to seize Taiwan which appeared to be succeeding would no doubt trigger the destruction of TSMC factory.
Could luck putting that humpty dumpty back together again.
Re: (Score:2)
Tautology (Score:2)
This is a tautology...
If the US (and the world) were to sanction China, like it has Russia for invading Ukraine, it would make twisted sense for China to invade Taiwan and seize its most valuable asset.
But what would prompt such sanctions? China invading Taiwan and seizing TSMC.
Such logic.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah pretty much, this also stood out to me. They're already genociding freely and nobody is looking to sanction them over this. Another skirmish with India won't do it either. Nobody cares about Mongolia. We'd send them flowers if they attacked Russia. So this is really the only scenario where mega-sanctions could hit.
China is doing some sabre rattling (Score:2)
Knuckling under to China will have exactly the same result as knuckling under to Russia when they seized Crimea. China respects power and the resolve to use it, nothing else.
Perhaps providing some kind of support for the people of Hong Kong might send a message to Winnie the Pooh about the consequences of making threats.
Foolishness (Score:5, Insightful)
#1, TSMC is not transferring the new tech to the US, just the old tech we can already duplicate. The plans for the new 2mm plants are set to remain on Taiwan. Why? Because they know it is their key to making sure that the US actually defends Taiwan from Chinese aggression.
#2, The idea that China could gain anything from invading Taiwan is ridiculous. Not only would Taiwan reject China and fight back along the lines of Ukraine, but the one thing they are sure to do is sabotage and destroy the chip plants. These are factories that use clean rooms. A few hand made pipe bombs can turn them into junk steel. Not to mention that they require highly trained employees who are not pro-communism.
Without the chip plants, Taiwan becomes a war torn horror story, not a desirable jewel. Te entire world would suffer and everyone knows this. It is the main reason China has not invaded since they built their army up.
China wants Taiwan to willing rejoin them, and they think they can scare them into this. The problem is they believe their own propaganda. They make sure none of their own people can complain about them and they think this makes the entire world believe China is a paradise.
Taiwan is not so foolish. They know the truth and how China hides it. They would rather blow up the factories than rejoin.
Rebellious provinces do not stay rebellious provinces for over 70 years without good reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me see...
Uyghurs (in now called Xinjiang region) willingly joined China back during the revolution day... ... not so willingly...
Tibet joined China
Hong Kong joined China very recently due to international agreements.
China also wanted Vietnam back in the day, and they refused.
I think Taiwanese residents can see the pattern here. Those who joined vs those who did not.
Re:Foolishness (Score:4, Informative)
It's not TSMC's tech. It's ASML's, a Dutch company, and the only company in the world producing equipment to manufacture such advanced chips. TSMC and Samsung are their two biggest customers.
But US is economically dependent on CN, unlike RU (Score:3)
All China needs to do to combat US sanctions is respond in kind. We'd both be crippled.
This strategy only works with Russia because the US is almost entirely economically independent from Russia. We just have to put up with expensive gas. With sanctions on China, we'd have to put up with expensive consumer goods. Across the board.
And that's just our side. I won't begin to try to predict what Chinese sanctions do to the US. However, I will hazard a guess that China will suffer less than the US, especially thanks to the First Amendment (China can suppress complaints, the US can't).
Re: (Score:2)
China can suppress complaints, the US can't
That's not an advantage, it's a major disadvantage. Open criticism is by far the most efficient means of information. (Long-standing) police states are brittle, ever doubtful of opportunity, and ever willing to believe the worst, and that fact has historically been one of the greatest security blankets to the free world. We can make a lot of mistakes and recover by the flexibility of liberty, but regimes made of glass and fear don't dare to make any.
Still, you're not wrong that economic harm would be
Sanction not seize (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I guess that's all right, as long as you can still get the paint chips you need to make your lunch.
The Non Destructive Defence of TSMC (Score:2)
All of the machinery in an advanced fab is controlled with complex software. If TSMC thought an invasion was due, they should have daily unlock encryption and certs that need to be provided from offshore sources before fab can operate each day.
In the event that TSMC is not longer in control of their facilities, offshore agents have been instructed to withhold the download of the daily digital ignition keys -essentially mothballing the facility until invasion forces have withdrawn from the island.
PRC hacker
Taiwan ranked 8th strongest democracy, USA 26th... (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
originally Chinese? (Score:2)
A company that originally belonged to China? (Score:3)
"A company that originally belonged to China" does not compute.
Re: (Score:3)
Don pissed off half our allies. How was that helpful?
If he was still in charge he'd probably have already made a deal to send extra weapons to Putin.
Re: (Score:3)
Taiwan ranked as the eighth-strongest democracy in the world last year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's new 2021 Democracy Index. The USA ranked number 26 as a 'flawed democracy' while Taiwan ranked as 'Full democracy.
Re: (Score:2)