I'd guess they looked at their options and decided this was the best hedge.
If I were China, I would give them relative economic independence if they limit advanced process silicon to other countries and let Huawei and others monopolize the advanced nodes. The US at present does not appear to be a dependable partner.
I wonder if China actually benefits from this drama and rather not claim Taiwan (despite what they say out loud).
It's currently:
- the best place to show military might (the "drills")
- the best place to continue a proxy war with the US / EU
- replaces Hong Kong as the gray area to do business
If China says they want control of Taiwan, the base scenario is they are serious. The only thing holding them back is how expensive it is to execute on that want. Although since the action is off the Chinese coast and China appears to be stronger than the US right now I don't see how this ends well for Taiwan.
Even if China can control the waters around them, they may find them selves boxed in. It doesn't take a lot of sunken cargo ships for operators to refuse to run the boats
explain?
Taiwan has most of its trade with China (like it or not).
There are numerous things that are e.g. illegal in China but "legal" in Taiwan and so Chinese business is conducted there e.g. online gambling sites.
Then there are plenty of Taiwanese companies that end up being a disguise for China 1 way or another e.g. to bypass sanctions (well so is Singapore as per recent news on nvidia gpu smuggling). 1 of the best examples is VIA technologies, that helped China create x86 CPUs back in the days.
A lot of Chinese gangs in Asia used to operate out of Hong Kong. When 1997 happened (i.e. return to China), most of them gave up or moved to other places like Taiwan since China has the death penalty.
Does that make it a place for shady deals?
> There are numerous things that are e.g. illegal in China but "legal" in Taiwan and so Chinese business is conducted there e.g. online gambling sites
Gambling is illegal in Taiwan
> Then there are plenty of Taiwanese companies that end up being a disguise for China 1 way or another e.g. to bypass sanctions (well so is Singapore as per recent news on nvidia gpu smuggling). 1 of the best examples is VIA technologies, that helped China create x86 CPUs back in the days.
Citation needed
Where do you expect them to go then? It's the most logical place.
> Gambling is illegal in Taiwan
They aren't offering gambling services in Taiwan to Taiwanese people. Hence it's definitely a gray area.
> Citation needed
VIA technologies? Too old, link likely wiped, but you can look the history. VIA technologies went into a JV with China in 2013 called Zhaoxin. Before that they literally never touched the x86 for years. There was no way for China to otherwise acquire an x86 license (this was before ARM would be a thing).
For reference you can compare it to how AMD handled a similar JV [0] and see stark differences. AMD went to long lengths to protect their IP and then stopped once they no longer needed to.
If we have to keep going, HTC also eventually suffered a similar but different fate. Funny that both companies have something to do with a certain someone...
[0]: https://wccftech.com/no-amd-did-not-sell-keys-kingdom-how-th...
China does. Xi does not. Trump has been the bailout to Xi that China’s wolf warriors and Putin were to America after the Iraq & Afghanistan wars.
At the end of the day the leadership is who makes the decisions. The notion of a "country" does not.
What Xi has said so far may have been misrepresented by the media, and exaggerated to rally public support for the new Cold War and for more military spending. What Xi actually said is he would not allow formal independence of Taiwan, and that he prefers closer relations/integration with Taiwan for an eventual "reunited" outcome, saying nothing of the status quo or that he would change it by force. For as long as the economic deterrence exists, I highly doubt that a war would happen over Taiwan barring one of 2 scenarios: 1)Taiwan declears formal independence by amending its Constitution, or 2) western troops, bases, or "security guarantees" are established over Taiwan
Being a realist Taiwan joining China willingly under those conditions before they basically technology transfer to America and make themselves worth much less (In China's eye), is their best bet, or I would say if ASML wasn't a thing.
Sadly for Taiwan they are between a sword and a wall, ASML is required for them to continue innovating, if they were to annex themselves to China they would lose access to EUV and High NA EUV and basically lose their ability to produce sub 5nm semiconductors no matter how talented they are, and I don't think that SMEE in China is close to EUV let alone High NA EUV.
I understand this comment will upset some people but I tried to be a realist about what would happen if things were to hit the fan
What authority do you think China has over Taiwan?
Authority, none. Power, plenty.
By this logic China should be returned to the winners of the Opium Wars [1]. No countries for losers! (To say nothing of the CCP’s inaction against Imperial Japan in WWII [2].)
Anyone can come up with reasons for stealing stuff based on decades, centuries or millennia-old gripes. What matters is where the people alive today live and how they identify. For good reason, the Taiwanese have been drifting away from China since Xi.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
[2] https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-ccp-didnt-fight-imperial...
No. Similar to how the Han Chinese don’t have one to Tibet (and other parts of modern-day China).
Practically all land touched by humans has multiple verifiable historical claims to it. The further back we go, the more there are and the more ambiguous they become. The only thing we can say with certainty is who is there today. Every other path means violence and is honestly a bit stupid.
I would be surprised if he doesn't do this, judging by his long track record of not paying his contractors and business partners after receiving their goods and services.
Current administration is fast tracking nuclear prolifiacian. A future president might want to stop such trends.
This is correct. Gone are the days when countries could count on the US to provide some protection against illegal invasions. All nations without nukes have to be considering them seriously now. Sure, they signed the NPT. But agreements no longer mean what they used to. Russia violates most of the agreements it signs. US already trashed the Budapest memorandum that it signed in 1996. We were supposed to provide security to Ukraine in exchange for them giving up nukes.
This is a common misconception. If you read the memorandum (it's rather short) you'll see it isn't true. We only promised to seek UN Security Council action. We went far beyond that.
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
And ended up voting with Russia anyway.
The promise to seek UN Security Council action is only in case Ukraine is attacked with nuclear weapons.
The language does seem really ambiguous though. I'm surprised it wasn't written more clearly.
It’s also a common misconception that NATO article 5th means immediate military action by rest of the alliance. It actually says that an armed attack against one shall be considered an attack against all, but crucially, the assistance provided is “what each of them deems necessary”
With the current administration I’m not convinced the US assistance that it’d “deem necessary” would amount to anything more than a call to Vladimir Putin to see how best to help him.
A treaty where the guarantor is known to give sketchy legal interpretations about why them backstabing you is actually faithful to the treaty they signed is barely more useful than a treaty where the guarantor won't honor their word.
The ripple effect is already there: many NATO country are now wondering whether the alliance is worth the paper it’s written on.
And to gain those allies they will give them control over these key supply lines so that said allies can dictate America's foreign policy?
But it's very worth pointing this out. The Taiwanese announcement is just an announcement. When a chip, any chip, rolls off the line (from this investment) let me know.
The reality is that in 4 years Trump will be gone. Building a plant will take longer than that. This is nothing more than good PR.
Taipei needs nukes. There simply isn’t another guarantor of sovereign security anymore.
This essay explains very lucidly why it's not as straightforward as you think: https://taipology.substack.com/p/no-nukes-are-not-going-to-s...
This is correct and why any such project would need to be intensely covert and/or externally facilitated.
> doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) rests on both parties being left in guaranteed ruins
You don’t need MAD. Tehran isn’t aiming for MAD with America, and neither is Pyongyang. The threat of even a tactical retaliation has, to date, been sufficient to keep great powers at bay.
Oung is speaking the language of deterrence and non-proliferation; we are past that, unfortunately [1].
Good neighbours, strong fences. You don’t need to hate your neighbour to appreciate sovereignty. If anything, returning to mutual respect between Taipei and Beijing, a stance which was being moved towards until Xi, should further cross-strait ties.
Regardless there’s very probably multiple USA nuclear subs surrounding the place.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCKJi3CKGE&t=226s
There's a huge reason for Taiwan to announce that: their primary opponent already has nuclear weapons!
The reason Israel is heavily encouraged to maintain nuclear strategic ambiguity is an attempt to dissuade the entire Middle East from developing nuclear weapons in response.
Besides, that rests on the assumption that the US is going to have a “free and fair” election in 2 and 4 years. Trump said loud and clear on the campaign trail that you need to come out and vote for him just this one last time. Won’t need to vote afterwards at all, they’ll fix it.
This seems like one of the promises he’d be really inclined to hold, if he can.
What I don't get is, in what universe is any US president going to engage militarily against China across the ocean, let alone the current one? The US population does not seem ecstatic to enter something that could turn into WWIII, which makes me feel that even a president in favor of this would quickly fail to do anything.
A managed escalation would blockade China, or at least ensure the rest of the free world never trades with China again.
Similarly, a local conflict could ensure chip facilities in Taiwan aren't surrendered intact.
The US doesn't have to win a hot conflict. Just start a cold war.
I still think the US has allies in Europe that would sanction China indefinitely. They'd probably also show up with something, if called.
which is why china is pre-emptively claiming ownership of the south china sea, in an attempt to prevent the ability for any blockades to form in the first place!
While on paper, the US makes "guarantees" about freedom of navigation, this is even less reliable than the toilet paper it is written on.
China only needs to wait for a couple of years for Musk, Trump and Vance to have destroyed any remnants of the alliances, though.
And by "free world" I guess you mean the anglosphere, gradually shrinking globalist parts of the EU, and perhaps Japan/South Korea. That's now less than 15% of the global population and declining. Economically BRICS overcame the G7 back in 2018 [2], and the difference has only grown far more stark since. The times have really changed a lot over the past ~20 years. I think the collapse of the USSR was probably the worst thing to ever happen to the US, because it gave us a taste of global hegemony that was never sustainable, yet left us addicted to its fleeting flavor.
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_of_T...
[2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-wo...
As is China in respect of energy.
Beijing knows this. But the timeline on which they become energy self sufficient unfortunately meshes poorly with their military demographics. Of course now, they have former American allies from which to recruit manpower if necessary.
Aren't they buying cheap oil and natural gas from Russia?
Most of China’s energy arrives by sea. That makes them intensely vulnerable to blockade.
And how will the free world replace goods and raw materials they now buy from China?
Apart from NATO countries all the rest will continue to do business with China. They do not care about the quarells between US, EU and China.
If a collective west made transitive trade embargoes, anything could happen.
But yes, the world is growing, and the west is a smaller piece of the pie than we used to be.
The whole premise of TSMC is that losing TSMC would cause such a global economic collapse that defending Taiwan is the only option to prevent this from happening. All high-performance computing is dependent on TSMC right now.
How many of us really depend on the latest cpu to survive ?
The question is, is it better to wage a massive war that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and many lives than to make an equal investment into the semi-conductor industry.
TSMC just hits the media often. If Taiwan goes the global economy will have way more problems than just TSMC. There is a long list of companies in many supply chains that would be impacted (not just computing).
This never works. The security through economy pitch. It has never, ever worked.
America was a reliable security guarantor. We promised to protect and had honour. Honour isn’t in the American cultural vocabulary anymore. So the guarantees are proven useless and everyone has to scramble back into realpolitik.
It is, but it also isn't, given the US forces on Okinawa, and also just generally in the region. The US military is not a force that exists for homeland defense, it's a force designed purely to project power across the ocean.
> engage militarily
This can mean a lot of things though. A steady flow of matériel and intelligence given to an island that's basically a giant and highly-defended mountain-range is going to go a very long way.
> is any US president
I mean in the last 150 years they've shown a remarkable willingness to intervene, more than once in proxy wars against the Chinese.
How will they project power? With aircraft carriers? China can destroy those in hours once in close range.
China has more ships than US and 100x shipbuilding capacity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/16h4gw8/us_militar...
As if you needed more proof, covid hickup disruption of the supply chains were an ample demonstration.
The US gets this, and has now turned towards being less dependant. The EU still doesn't understand, or is willfully blind as an acknowledgement would mean giving up some fantasies they have.
Since the 70's the US' main export has been printed money, 'IP' and war. The first two are worthless if not backed by the threat of the third. Weapons is about the only thing dollars can buy if oil can be traded in other currencies. BRICS is rapidly becoming a contender for a trade platform that they failed to stop.
You can't wage war in the manufacturer you rely on.
This means drastic changes in US policy are needed. This means returning to self sufficiency. This will take time even when you try to speedrun it.
I guess it comes down to how dependent on Taiwan's chips the US actually is (I don't know the answer to that).
The US isn't dependent on Ukraine and it's pressuring them to hand over land. If it turns out the US isn't dependent on Taiwan it could show similar indifference if China were to attempt to take it.
In practice, probably yes, officially probably maybe. Giving a security guarantee would allow Taiwan to do provocative things, so hence, why there isn't a formal one.
If it actually came to be today, I guess the US would at-least offer token support. To (a) embargo China, (b) ensure chip facilities Taiwan aren't surrendered intact.
Both of which doesn't require winning a conflict, just making it painful.
'Security guarantee' conjures thoughts of defending a population and its cities from destruction, whereas what it actually means is the opposite: to ensure all items of value are fully destroyed before they're taken.
And without it, Taiwan would probably press harder for nukes.
The world is largely dependent on TSMC, not only for the latest GPUs but also for embedded chips that we keep putting into everything from cars to toasters.
For me the questions isn't whether the US would help Taiwan because we're dependent on them. I wonder whether we actually have the backbone to step in militarily at all, and whether out military is as combat ready as we like to think they are.
I think the whole "minerals" thing is a play. Trump gives Zelensky the "deal" he cannot accept even theoretically. Zelensky predictably plays the tough guy by telling him to pound sand. Trump throws Zelensky under the bus and negotiates repayment of loans with his (now scared) successor.
With respect to Taiwan, it is not really possible to "win" in any real sense against China in Taiwan. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a dimwit who can't even do cursory research on industrial capacities of the potential belligerents, not in terms of dollars, but in terms of units/tons/etc. That is where the comparison is very strongly not in our favor. Especially when it comes to shipbuilding.
Best case if things kick off (which I hope to god they do not) - only Taiwan gets destroyed, a-la Ukraine. Worst case - both US and China really go at it directly, full bore, and then we will lose due primarily to our weak industrial base, and far more extended logistics. Moreover, a lot of other countries will totally provide "lethal aid" and intelligence to China, if it needs it, in hopes of taking the hegemon down a few pegs. Nothing personal - just business, such alliances happen in every major war. The extreme case one of the sides feels they're gonna lose and presses the red button, in which case everyone dies in a fire.
All of these options are objectively extremely shitty and incompatible with prosperity, and in the extreme case, with survival. All of them mean millions of body bags for the parties involved, far more body bags than either country has ever seen.
Both Biden and Trump administrations understood this, hence the strong-arming the re-industrialization, especially in higher end fields, which started under Biden. The era where you could just get your stuff made elsewhere for pennies and then charge $$$ for it is coming to an end.
This seems...not true. The Phillipines especially would like a word. Most of China's neighbors are begging for more American Hegemony (America is just not good at it anymore). China's industrial prowess is clear, but it's also true that. China (esp the CCP) has a lot more to lose from a direct confrontation with America. America could lose a president, China will lose a whole regime.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_Russian_invasion...
P.S: I especially question the mental faculties of someone who can't see other angles to a problem. China's hegemony is the mainstream opinion, it's obvious. Maybe try to question what you're not seeing now.
Not really a good comparison. Trying to build a coalition of people who didn't really care vs supporting countries in the region who are highly motivated by their own self interest.
BRICS will support China. Most of the unaligned countries will do the same.
It will be US, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, Philippines against the rest of the world.
And it's not so much about military might as is about industrial capacity, raw materials and logistics.
Zelensky flew to Washington to sign the agreement, and fully expected to--they waited an hour after the blown up press conference before being told to get out. Diplomatically, Zelensky wasn't even badly behaved in the press conference. Vance and Trump kept escalating the discussion. If there was a play, it was one constructed by Trump to give himself a reason to withdraw aid from Ukraine when he clearly wants to side with Putin.
Sequence of events -
Trump downplays the need for security guarantees. "Security is maybe 2% of the problem, security is the easy part, I'm worried about getting the deal done."
A "reporter" from OAN asks a kiss-ass question that can be summarized as "President Trump, how amazing and courageous are you for negotiating with Putin?"
Trump gives a rambling answer including his usual vague statements of how the war wouldn't have existed if he'd been in power and then starts talking about Hamas for some reason.
There's a moment of levity where Trump says Zelensky's attire is fine.
Zelensky indicates he wants to respond to some of the earlier statements. He says Russia has broken many promises made in past negotiations and this is why security guarantees are actually critical to Ukraine.
"Reading the room" in this situation would mean "buying into the Putin-led narrative currently being peddled by the Trump administration."
Fuck that.
Zelensky correctly recognizes that appeasing bullies does not make the bullying stop. At best, it slightly delays the bullying.
Much of the US population desperately needs to reach the same recognition.
Emotional thinking and platitudes about "bullies" are not really applicable here. You have to think about the eventualities that we could be affected by if things go sideways, and with the current set of characters in Ukraine, they most definitely will, and soon.
Here's John Mearsheimer telling you _exactly_ what was going to happen, in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
As if taking the hundreds of nuclear red lines Putin has laid down and allowed to be crossed without a nuclear response, isn't "emotional thinking".
No one in that room recognized more than Zelensky that worthlessness of American promises of security. What value then to humiliate oneself? Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal on American promises of security, and look where that got them.
On the contrary, the display in the press conference did do some good for Ukraine. There was an emergency summit in London that weekend where the heads of Europe agreed to step up their support for Ukraine, increase defence spending, and to work towards total independence from the US in 10 years. NATO is now a vestigial treaty that's a foreign policy option rather than a commitment. Who's responsible now for pushing us closer to WW3?
Living 200km from the Russian border, I worry that 10 years is far too long. If Putin “reads the room”, he knows his best bet is to push things forward before the midterms. In case Tramp doesn’t manage to rig the elections.
So militarily, we might have less than 2 years.
I really, really, really hope I’m wrong.
From analysts I follow, the feeling is that EU support will sustain Ukraine at least through 2025, with the greatest weakness being ammunition for Patriot and GLMRS systems (though thankfully those have decreased in importance as drones take over). And 2026 is when the cumulative damage to Russia's economy really snowballs. If Ukraine makes it through 2025, I'm relatively optimistic.
My great fear in 2024 was the flagging support for Ukraine due to war-weariness and lack of a resolution, would push some parties towards a more passive, accommodationist outcome. We can thank Trump for this: the fire to see Ukraine win has been lit again.
Slava Ukraini, my friend. Stay safe.
They still think it's worth more than surrendering now to China.
While US is dependant of Taiwanese fabs, they will intervene if China tries to occupy Taiwan. But US is working towards not relying on Taiwan's fans, so US based security won't last long.
In the end, they'll either have to surrender or build nuclear deterrent fast and unnoticed.
We do?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...
or: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpol...
etc.
The T word...
Granted, the US president who was pushing the most for inspections of Israel's Dimona nuclear facility was JFK, who ended up no longer being a problem for them (how very convenient).
Really, personal opinion, yet America and most countries on Earth, should probably be able to get lithography machines cheaper than $380,000,000. However, that's an argument for the lithography industry. At an average Taiwanese salary of $18,000 / yr (NT$50,000 / mnth) that's 21,000 labor years / machine. Even with amortized development that seems like a lot.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/asm...
US provided security guarantees to Ukraine in 1996, when it signed the Budapest memorandum. Ukraine gave up its nukes in return.
It appears that US doesn't honor its agreements.
Trump also signed free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico in his first term. But trampled on it in his second term.
In 1971, Treasury Secretary John Connally famously remarked how the US dollar was "our currency, but your problem," referring to how the US dollar was managed primarily for the US' interests despite it being the currency primarily used in global trade and global finance.
Taiwan is hugely reliant on US defense guarantees. The US has a protectionist president who likes big numbers in announcements and a base riled up about American production capacity.
Long-term this is bad for Taiwan since it reduces its leverage with the US in administrations with short-term geopolitics (or no real geopolitical talent.)
In the short-term, they might not have much choice.