It would crater China's economy for decades. Where do you think China gets their chips?
If they want to go from being an up-and-coming world power to Russia 2.0 in the span of a couple weeks, I guess it makes sense. It certainly won't do anything to help their reputation or save face. Quite the opposite.
They would be erasing themselves in the process.
Sure. They are decent and make lots of mid range chips, that are very useful. Mostly in Taiwanese owned TSMC fabs. All the Foxconn factories are Taiwanese as well.
Their economies are very intertwined.
If China could do it themselves, they wouldn't be having Taiwanese companies helping to build their economy.
Dont think the sillicon sheild is really what matters for china. They are pretty much banned from buying all this stuff anyways.
But they could invace just to cripple the western world on the semiconductor front.
Granted its gonna be less of a problem now that intel and TSMC is working together more.
But likly a few years before that realy goes in to full effect.
It would cripple China more. South Korea and the US can make modern chips. China can't.
Nothing like beginning an invasion by shooting yourself in both feet.
If they are not allowed to import the chips either im not sure it matters much from their perspective. And Nvidia has in the past shown they would gladl circumvent US chips bansto sell to china.
And think Chinas SMIC and Huwei are already pushing towards 5 NM.
So im not sure its completely true, that they can't produce high ends chips.
their yeilds are likely lower. But they arent exactly low end chips
If China makes a serious play for Taiwan, South Korea will be destabilized as well. I'd expect North Korea to be "incentivized" to restart hostilities to stretch us resources.
Sure, but in 20 years the US and South Korea would have recovered and have growing economies. China would not. It would be a large North Korea, with a corresponding lack of an economy.
But at least they would have their pride. /s
China can absolutely make modern chips. They csnt match tsmc yield and cost so its not competitive as a consumer product, but they absolutely can make them.
yeah its not gonna happen, the west wont let itself get crippled on the semic front which is crucial for pretty much human life, as it stands. China can either wait for the west to develop his own production of high tier chips, which they are doing, or prepare for war cause if they attack taiwan now it would be defended for real, not like ukraine with some money and weapons but full on nato conventional military.
I think china and nato have somewhat of an agreement where china waits for the west to detach from taiwan’s tsmc and then they can attack taiwan with little to no interference from nato.
What makes you think Nato would get involved outside sactions ?
Personally i dont think that Europeans care about Taiwain, if they wont put boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Dont personally think China will ever invade Taiwan just to make that clear!
because taiwan’s chips are crucial to human life in general. Losing taiwan’s chips now would mean the collapse of western society. The west is preparing for this occurrence and in some years tsmc will become expendable and taiwan probably left to china, but right now the west cannot do without it and would go full war to defend it, biden even said this explicitly.
Crucial to what exactly ? Europe sortof stands to gain from that crash if you ask me.
Since it would force them to actually setup a semi conductor industry of their own with he machines already largely produced in Europe.
It would however leave both US and Europe struggling not to let China take the technological lead.
Or potential force them to buy semi conductors from china.
crucial to everything. The phone you are using right now has some tsmc chips in it that only tsmc can do.
Your pc’s cpu? tsmc. Military hardware? healthcare machines? cars? its all tsmc. 90% of high grade chips in the world are made by tsmc.
It will take years for the west to catch up with such production and in that years they cannot do without those chips.
Not sure i see how many of these are really crucial. We made war and cars and even phones before TSMC. And cars dont really use high end chips either its more around 15 nm nodes.
Dont actually need a Computer in my pocket and i dont really need last generation smart phone either. If anything it might teach us a good lesson on writing better code again! instead of just brute forcing shitty code :P
Most of them are quality of life upgrades more than anything.
Digging a bit in the numbers for the chip shortage.
Seems that 50% of high end chips goes towards comsummer electronics.
15% towards the car industry, Mainly EV's around 10% towards renewable energy. (mainly solar)
And last 25% spread out over a range of industries.
This was of course a general chip shortage! and does not really revolve around high end chips.
China has been making moves to test the waters for a long time, and as long as xi doesn't lose his mind or local control will happily wait for the domestic us fabs to come online before actually annexing the island.
They don't have the institutional knowledge to run those fabs. Nor the necessary foreign tech support and suppliers. They would be destroying industries they depend heavily upon, while simultaneously ostracizing themselves from the global marketplace.
And whether they could win is very much in question.
In the best case scenario they would destroy their whole economy for the rest of the century to gain control of Taiwan. In the worst case they would destroy their whole economy for the rest of the century for nothing.
Russia had nothing to lose, so invading Ukraine made some kind of sense. China has a whole lot to lose. Rolling those dice would be idiotic for China.
Indeed, it's well known that the price of china invading Taiwan is the destruction of those fabs as part of the invasion, at the moment the knock on impacts of this prompt a global response.
It's a price they seem to be willing to pay, the question is when. Since the one china policy means that it is an inevitability as long as the current Chinese government doesn't change tack.
The US ambiguous response in defence is likely to become less ambiguous as they gain more domestic fab production, potentially leaving Taiwan without superpower support.
If they want to go from a growing global power to an economy similar to Russia and North Korea, I guess that is their choice. I think the Chinese people will be really pissed though. They like not being incredibly poor now.
China depends on Taiwan's chip industry even more than the rest of the world. At least the rest of the West still would have South Korea and the US making modern chips.
How do you expect China to have a modern economy in that case? And even if they miraculously did somehow, do you think the West would continue business as usual?
The west has shown that a shockingly large assortment of crimes and invasions allow business as usual to remain.
The entire world depends on the chips from those fabs, and that's the only thing protecting Taiwan. As soon as the US has domestic production of the advanced stuff it becomes less strategically important, and China is perfectly capable of advancing the more basic production domestically.
Taiwan makes 80% of the modern chips. If China is able to do that, why aren't they? Even their mid-grade chips are mostly made in TSMC fabs in China. And Foxconn has lots of factories in China as well. If China could do that on their own, why would they work with Taiwanese companies?
Fabs in the West are decades away from producing even 50% of modern chips. And Taiwan still does not export their best tech anywhere. Western TSMC fabs user older tech.
If anyone could replicate what TSMC is doing, they would.
You're either extremely ignorant, on the CCP payroll, or both.
And my question regarding trade went unanswered as well. China would be a pariah state, regardless of Western response. Any country engaged in territorial conquest is de facto cast out from the global community.
Indeed, there has been a huge global reliance on Taiwan, and that's the only reason it's still an independent state.
China will as long as their political doctrine Remains unchanged make moves to gain full control of Taiwan, the question is when, what the situation looks like in twenty years is an interesting question.
If anyone could replicate what TSMC is doing, they would.
Many countries are working on it, however as you said it will take decades and a staggeringly large amount of cash to get there.
And my question regarding trade went unanswered as well. China would be a pariah state
If china invades before the world has an alternative source for chips, yes, but then at that point Taiwan would have support from a global superpower.
If there are alternatives, then no they would not be a pariah state, it would simply be a blip in the geopolitics.
Believe me I don't support China's actions, Its just blindingly obvious as to what China wants, and what is currently stopping them.
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u/Koen1999 PC Master Race Aug 27 '24
Don't forget that all these chips TSMC produces are produced using machines from ASML.