China would be shooting themselves in the foot by invading, because it would equally fuck them. I've read in may places that as soon as China invades, Taiwan will blow up all the fabs and supporting supply lines. So even if China takes control of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry will be a smoldering pile of nothingness.
This article[1] does a great job in describing why this would be the case. Even if China prevents the destruction of those fabs and factories, there would still be tons of obstacles.
[1]: https://doxa.substack.com/p/why-a-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan
Invading Taiwan...the risks are substantial and the gain is legacy. Hardly a convincing for a nation, but potentially convincing for a man facing mortality.
We can also hope that the US refrains from creating another conflict to try to provoke China the same way they have been doing in Ukraine for the last 8 years. This "Pacific NATO" is the next thing. I am very pessimistic because the US is not going to allow China to overtake them in any way, and they have been behaving like that in their entire history.
That sounds incredibly stupid. If China invading is shooting themselves in the foot, then Taiwan blowing up their (worlds most advanced) fabs would be suicide. Nobody ever won a conflict by doing that.
The average Chinese person is no more responsible for Chinese foreign policy than the average American is for American foreign policy.
During the Opium Wars, foreign invaders occupied many of the mainland's ocean ports.
Taiwan, as part of the First Island Chain, represents a critical strategic asset for those wishing to control mainland China.
You have to start somewhere, it took us decades to delocalise everything to Asia, it'll take decades to build these industries locally.
There are no individual chemical plants, there are huge chemical complexes owned by many companies with own well guarded know hows. There may be 2-4 suppliers in a row producing some intermediary product used in making of only 1 output.
Just to make the semiconductor grade hyperpure propanol you need ultrapure catalysts, ultrapure sulphuric acid, ultrapure water, and ultrapure input hydrocarbon stock. Ah, forgot, you also needs an ultrapure tare manufacturer, because bottles you ship ultrapure materials are single use.
You need decades just to replicate this. Now you need to move 100+ of such material chains.
> If it's just for historical and/or economical reason
Simple answer, yes! Taiwan has quietly swallowed near an entirety of the wider precision manufacturing industry.
It been consistently swallowing very capital intensive industries producing exportable niche products one after another simply because nobody else been taking such hard, and risky ventures. Yes, their profitability is not high, but their "moat" is gigantic.
Taiwan been an industrial titan for 20+ years, and the US only finds out about it now.
Better get started right away then.
"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today."
"The best time to stop quoting stale platitudes is 20 years ago. The next best time is today."
I think decades is a stretch. Keep in mind most of these chains sprung up in the last 3 decades organically in Taiwan and China (and many of them are still elsewhere-- e.g. BASF is still a titan.)
If it's a national priority, you can get some production going a lot faster than this.
Defeating CoVID was too a national priority. Did they manage to build a single new mask manufacturing line?
No, but they actually tried really hard. Dozens of companies were recruited for the effort, and they just gave up after realising that they can't even get a single part in the blowing machine to be made in the US.
I don't think this is a fair representation of what happened. US capacity existed and some additional came online, but then largely failed because of overseas product still coming in below their cost. Semiconductors after a shooting war with China would be a different picture: an imminent return to normalcy wouldn't be in everyone's economic calculations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/business/dealbook/america...
> that they can't even get a single part in the blowing machine to be made in the US.
Not even a single part? Now you're in hyperbole-land.
Of course it's not enough to just pay Intel to open a fab you have to compete successfully with places like Taiwan and have a growing industry, otherwise that won't happen. That's the main risk here.
With a fab, that's still difficult, but necessary.
Without a fab, however, that would have been deemed impossible and unrealistic.
It would still suck in the interrim, of course.
You mean like Linde, Air Liquide, Dow, Merck, BASF, Entegris, Shiply, Fujifilm, Wacker and so on?
Those are not Taiwanese.
Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that huge there.
All 300mm fabs working outside of Taiwan are just few shipments of consumables away from stalling all the time.
When Russia attacks Ukraine, the 3rd world is fucked.
When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.