China sent dozens of warplanes towards Taiwan, said the island’s defense ministry on Saturday.
The Chinese military planes entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone days before Taiwan is set to conduct anti-invasion military exercises.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent a forceful flight of 37 aircrafts and seven navy vessels between Friday and Saturday, the Taiwanese defense ministry said in a statement.
Among these were J-10 and J-16 fighter jets as well as H-6 bombers.
The Taiwan defense ministry detected that 22 of these warplanes had entered the island’s air defense identification zone and had crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait which is an unofficial boundary between China and Taiwan.
Taiwan is due to hold the annual Han Kaung exercise next week, during which the country will conduct military exercises aimed at defending itself against a possible invasion. A deepening divide
Deep divisions between China and Taiwan date back to the civil war in 1949 which ended with the ruling Communist Party taking control of the mainland.
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of mainland territory.
In recent years, China has shown its displeasure at several political activities in Taiwan by sending military planes towards the island.
Beijing stepped up its efforts to isolate Taiwan after former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
In April, in response to a meeting between Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the PLA held large-scale military drills around the island’s sea and air.
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Compare the importance of China vs Taiwan, China wins by a large margin.
The only thing Taiwan has is a momentary (in the grand scheme of things) importance in chip making. This is a strategic risk so the US wants to make their own domestic production.
Quick research on Taiwan and chip production reveals that Taiwan produces ~60% of the world’s semiconductors, and over 90% of the most advanced ones. Considering the size of the country that is insane.
TSMC took a bet on chip manufacturing only (no design) and it worked. But it will be temporary, it won’t last.
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It’s not like the US industry has no experience with this, there is a long history doing it and expertise. Where do you think TSMC got the ball from? I don’t know exactly how many cycles ago Intel stopped. It’s just cheaper and maybe slightly better to get TSMC at the moment. So it’s not like the US is starting from scratch.
And this will be private, govt will seed it a bit. Companies see their own risk and want to mitigate it.
TSMC last I heard is setting up a plant in the us.
When I say momentary I’m talking 5-10 years, that’s why I said in the grand scheme of things. Long time horizon if you prefer. Taiwan will not have an unceasing advantage for decades to come.
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I’m not sure about that. The trend in the industry overall has been towards separate designers and specialized fab operators, in part because the capital costs and expertise for running a modern semiconductor foundry are incredibly high. ARM, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM anre all fabless. Samsung makes their own chips, but they’re essentially ARM reference designs. Apple’s expanded their own in house design team, but even with their enormous piles of money don’t want to take on the risk of running their own fabs.
Then look at Intel’s constant stumbling towards newer process nodes vs the guys who do contact work. AMD and IBM spun off their chip manufacturing into GlobalFoundries, and AMD now uses TSMC for their CPU cores and chiplet packaging. Even Intel is talking about using TSMC for producing some of their chips.
(I know technically Intel now counts as a contract foundry, but all of the major names that were part of the IFS announcement have backed away. I’m skeptical)
I mean it won’t continue to be concentrated in Taiwan. Fab will open in the US, especially since it’s now a strategic issue.
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This is a good synopsis of the complexity of the problem with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
To add to that, the US stance since 1972 has been to abide by the One China policy. As such, the US recognizes that Taiwan is legitimately owned by China. I am doubtful that this will change with this POTUS or the next. However there is also the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) which allows the US to treat Taiwan in some capacity as in independent state. The TRA does include the sale of arms for which Taiwan may use to defend itself from aggressors, and the US does sell heavily to Taiwan. The TRA also neither includes nor precludes US military intervention in the event of conflict.
What’s interesting is that in 2022 Biden said that Taiwan can define itself however the fk it wants to - not his exact words. This is a big departure from our One China policy which states no, absolutely no independence whatsoever of Taiwan. So I think things are evolving a bit, but agree with /u/Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever that there’s a lot more at stake to the US than with Ukraine.
Love the name btw.