Interestingly, in the 1970s, before any fabs on the island, Taiwan arranged for semiconductor engineers from the iconic but slowly dying American company RCA to transfer their knowledge to a visiting Taiwanese team, establishing what would later become TSMC. RCA pioneered so much: radio, TV, color TV, NBC... And just as it was starting to decline and die, its semiconductor knowledge was transferred to Taiwan!

Asianometry has a great video on YouTube detailing the creation of TSMC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fVrWDdll0g