(p. A21) Taiwan is an austere rock in a typhoon-laden sea with 24 million people. But this little island has — by universal acclaim — the most sophisticated microchip manufacturer in the world, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC.
About 100 miles away, across the straits, is mainland China, with 1.4 billion people. Most are the same ethnicity, speak the same language and eat the same food as the people of Taiwan. But they have never been able to master the manufacture of the most advanced logic chips that TSMC makes.
. . .
TSMC is a semiconductor foundry, meaning it builds the chips that lots of different companies design — particularly Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD and even Intel. Over the years, TSMC has built an amazing ecosystem of trusted partners that share their intellectual property with TSMC to build their proprietary chips. At the same time, leading tool companies — like America’s Applied Materials and the Netherlands’ ASML — are happy to sell their best chip-making tools to TSMC. This ensures that the company is always on the cutting edge of the material science and lithography that go into building and etching the base of every semiconductor.
I used to worry that Xi’s big idea — “Made in China 2025,” his plan to dominate all the new 21st-century technologies — would leave the West in the dust. But I worry a little less now.
. . .
And everything that Xi is doing — from Australia to Taiwan to Jack Ma — is driving them away. As one U.S. chip executive said to me of Xi, “The Chinese have replicated and mimicked,” but they have never created the kind of ecosystem like TSMC’s, “because there is no trust.”
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date October 19, 2021, and has the title “China’s Bullying Is Becoming a Danger to the World and Itself.” The passages quoted above are in both the online and print versions. The ellipses are appropriate for the print version, but would be slightly different for the online version because it has some additional passages that are not quoted above.)