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Thursday, August 11, 2022

Tech war: Pelosi meets TSMC chief in Taiwan as US ramps up chip pressure on China

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 US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waves to journalists during her arrival at the Parliament in Taipei on Wednesday. Photo: AFP 

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waves to journalists during her arrival at the Parliament in Taipei on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

 US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday spoke with the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s leading contract chip maker, during her visit to the island, to discuss an American legislative proposal, according to a report from Taiwanese news agency CNA.

The discussions between Pelosi and Mark Liu touched on the Chips and Science Act, which was approved by the US House of Representatives and Senate last week, Ker Chein-ming, chief commissioner of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan’s parliament, was quoted as saying.

The new US legislation is widely seen as Washington’s plan to weaken China’s role in global semiconductor supply chains.

 

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives in Taiwan as Beijing announces live-fire military drills

Pelosi’s appointment with TSMC executives did not appear on her official itinerary, which was packed with high-profile meetings with Taiwan officials, including President Tsai Ing-wen, legislature deputy speaker Tsai Chi-chang and Vice-President William Lai, among others.

TSMC declined to comment on the meeting, which was also reported by The Washington Post.

Pelosi’s decision to carve out time for a meeting with TSMC during her whirlwind tour shows the strategic importance of Taiwan – which Beijing claims as China’s territory – in providing advanced semiconductors that are crucial to both China and the US.

TSMC is currently building a 5-nanometre semiconductor factory in the US state of Arizona, which is set to be operational in 2024, although it is expected to produce chips that lag behind the ones it will be making in Taiwan at the time.

Pelosi’s high-profile visit comes as Washington has raised its efforts to curb the development of China’s chip industry, which has grown by relying on imported technologies.

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In addition to the chips act, which promises US$52 billion in subsidies to semiconductor firms building fabs on American soil, Washington has also been promoting the so-called Chip 4 Alliance – a partnership envisioned by the US to include South Korea, Japan and Taiwan – to exclude China.

US officials are also lobbying Dutch chip equipment giant ASML to stop selling more lithography systems to wafer fabs in China.

 
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s chip fabrication plants in Taiwan. Photo: Handout

While scant details of the discussions between Pelosi and Liu have emerged, reports of the meeting itself have already stirred unease in mainland China.

Xiang Ligang, a Beijing-based analyst who had blamed TSMC for withholding its state-of-the-art technologies from the mainland, said the cross-strait chip industry will focus on competition rather than cooperation, as China is determined to improve its chip production capability.

“Taiwan is only using the resources, talent and markets [on the mainland] for the sake of its own development,” Xiang said, adding that if TSMC sides with the US, it would cast a shadow over the company’s future development on the mainland.

TSMC only builds chips with older technologies in mainland China because Taiwanese law mandates that Taiwanese foundries, such as TSMC, only build products that are at least two generations behind the most advanced technologies available in Taiwan.

China still relies on TSMC’s home base and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics to supply the most advanced chips used in smartphones, as mainland chip plants still lag Taiwanese and South Korean firms by “generations”.

While China’s top chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, may have achieved the ability to make 7-nm chips, according to Canadian analytics firm TechInsight, the Shanghai-based company has neither confirmed nor denied the report.

The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp headquarters in Shanghai. Photo; BloombergThe Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp headquarters in Shanghai. Photo; Bloomberg

The leading-edge chip-making capabilities of TSMC, which Taiwanese people call “the sacred mountain of protection”, have long fanned speculation that Beijing would one day take the island by force.

TSMC’s Liu said in an interview with CNN this week that nobody can control the firm by force because any military operation or “invasion” would “render TSMC factories inoperable”. He also said that TSMC should not be discriminated against simply because it is “close to China”.

TSMC operates a 12-inch foundry in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing to make chips on mature 16-nm and 28-nm processes. It also has a 8-inch wafer fab in Shanghai.

Pelosi wrapped up her Taiwan tour, which prompted strongly-worded warnings from Beijing, on Wednesday afternoon. She boarded a US Air Force aircraft, accompanied by five US congress members, for the fourth leg of her Asia tour – South Korea.

Before leaving the island, Pelosi tweeted, “Make no mistake: America remains unwavering in our commitment to the people of Taiwan – now & for decades to come.” 

Conversations (8)

 Che Pan

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Che Pan joined the Post as a technology reporter in 2020, based in Beijing. Before this, he worked as a China economy reporter at Caixin Global, with a particular focus on the macro-economy, trade and real estate. He has a master degree in Financial Regulation and Risk Management. 

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 Notes:

My media friend from Taiwan said that the most important meeting in Pelosi’s schedule was not with the DPP authorities or President Tsai, but a meeting she specifically demanded with the CEO of TSMC, the leading manufacturer of the world’s most advanced semiconductors set up by Chiang Ching-Kuo and his technocrats, Sun Yun-Suan and Morris Chang, during the pinnacle of Taiwan's economic miracle in the 1980s. TSMC is the designer and manufacturer of the super awesome M2 chips powering our iPhones and Macbooks.

US Congress has passed bills forcing TSMC to set up chip fabs in Arizona and transfer their technology to the US, even though this is very much against the wishes of TSMC management. TSMC has repeatedly said that costs in the US are too high, and there are not enough quality engineers with the skills needed in the US. But the US Commerce Department and US Congress don’t care because they are run by lawyers who are only good at issuing sanctions and threatening other countries through legislation and the power of the US military.

In short, Pelosi and the US Congress do not give a damn about Taiwan's "democracy". They only care that TSMC’s fabs and engineering know-how are wholesale transferred to the US and don’t ever fall in China’s hands. This was the reason behind her demand to meet TSMC’s management while she was in Taiwan.

Poor Taiwan. It is getting stripped of its TSMC crown jewel and assets by the US even before it has died. 

 

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#US CHIPS Act will devour the global #semiconductor supply chain. 美国“芯片法案”将会扰乱全球供应链。

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Sunday, August 7, 2022

Why is it that the West is so preoccupied with demonizing China?


 

 Dennis EtlerAs I See It by Professor Dennis Etler*

American political analyst who holds a doctorate in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley

“Why is it that the West is so preoccupied with China? The usual answer is that China's economic growth is challenging Western global hegemony which has held sway for at least 250 years. The Chinese military has also reached parity with that of the West, so it is no longer subject to Western intimidation and bullying. All that is true and reason for the West to want to savage China and portray it as the root of all evil.*

But there is one other consideration that must be taken into account. It's not only China's economic prowess and military might that frightens the West, it is also China's success as a nation versus the West's failure.

Moreover, China has forged a society in which there is harmony between its different ethnicities in contrast to the systemic racism that characterizes Western society. 


Western ruling elites and their media mouthpieces do not want to acknowledge the fact that China has eliminated extreme poverty while more and more of their own people descend into poverty. They do not want to admit that China has constructed a 21st century infrastructure while they lag far behind. They do not want to confront the fact that the Chinese people ⁹overwhelmingly support their government while people in the West have lost confidence in their own, they do not want to accept that China beat COVIDC-19 while they haven't, and finally they are loathe to accept the fact that a non-white nation has out performed them and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

In order to deflect attention away from these truths the West has concocted a series of lies and slanders that allow them to deny reality. Instead of poverty alleviation the West imagines "genocide." Instead of the advances in HSR, EVs, alt-energy and e-commerce they focus on "IP theft," instead of a socioeconomic system that serves the people, they accuse China of forced labor and forced sterilizations. Instead of seeing China as defending its national sovereignty in the South China Sea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it's called an aggressor. 


*All the China-bashing serves multiple purposes but ONE of the main reasons is to make sure that people in the West do not get to hear nor see what the real China is all about because if they did they may get ideas that the Western elites don't want then to have, such as socialism works for the betterment of the 99% while capitalism works primarily to enrich the 1%.” 

This is the best one, do send this to your overseas friends because it is from the eyes of an American. 

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Friday, August 5, 2022

Defending one-China

 

 
 
 

 

 China sanctions US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her immediate family members following her Taiwan visit

 

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Photo: VCG

Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Friday to sanction US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her immediate family members because she disregarded China's serious concern and firm opposition and insisted on visiting China's Taiwan region.

It seriously interferes in China's internal affairs, undermines China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, tramples on the one-China principle and threatens peace and stability in Taiwan Straits, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said. 

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Nancy Pelosi: The sneaky opportunist

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Pelosi can come to Taiwan and go, but what about the people there?



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