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A war between China and Taiwan would set back world technological development by 20 years
Asia dominates the global semiconductor industry with overwhelming force. 90% of memory chips, 75% of microprocessors and 80% of silicon wafers are manufactured on this continent. These numbers are overwhelming.. So much so, in fact, that in the medium term they remain absolutely out of the reach of the West. South Korea, Japan and China have a great specific weight in this market, but the undisputed leader is Taiwan.
90% of the highly integrated chips and 41% of all the microprocessors that we can find on the market are produced on this island. The leading Taiwanese IC manufacturers are TSMC, whose market share is approximately 60%, and UMC, which has a much more modest 7% share. However, many other companies that provide services have emerged around these two companies, which has consolidated the Taiwanese chip ecosystem as the most robust on the planet.
Taiwan’s role in the chip industry does not ensure its protection from China
TSMC is the authentic “Taiwan silicon shield”. As we have just seen, it leads the semiconductor manufacturing industry with overwhelming success, so there is a solid consensus among experts that a direct war between China and Taiwan is unlikely because this company would fall. And if TSMC falls, the chip industry would be seriously hurt for a long time. This is precisely what this company wants to anticipate thanks to its expansion plan in the US, Europe and Japan.
War games are nothing more than a simulation that is as realistic as possible created by military personnel, analysts or strategists.
However, in the current situation in which the tension between China, Taiwan and the US is increasing without the slightest truce, there are already experts who assure that the relevance of TSMC in the strategic semiconductor industry it’s not enough anymore to prevent China from starting a war with Taiwan. One of the experts defending this idea is Eric Chen, a DigiTimes Asia analyst based in Taipei, Taiwan.
Just a few hours ago he published a very interesting report in which he claims that some war games prepared by the CSIS have been declassified (Center for Strategic & International Studies) with the purpose of analyzing the dynamics of security, competition and the future of the countries that would be involved both in a possible conflict between China and Taiwan and in the future development of the semiconductor industry. A note before moving forward: war games are nothing more than a simulation that is as realistic as possible prepared by soldiers, analysts or strategists that usually allow them to test the effectiveness of a strategy during a conflict.
The result of the simulation carried out by CSIS anticipates that a joint defense against China orchestrated by the US, Taiwan and Japan would prevent a conventional amphibious invasion by China, but its cost would be enormous. Besides, the presumed blockade of Taiwan It would cause raw materials needed to produce semiconductors to become scarce, factories would possibly be damaged during the conflict, and exports would collapse. Eric Chen puts the finishing touch shortly before concluding his report: under these circumstances, global technological development would go back 20 years.
Image | ASML
More information | DigiTimes Asia
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