Summary
China is gaining global support for its claim over Taiwan, with 70 countries now endorsing its sovereignty and unification efforts—many omitting calls for peaceful resolution.
This shift follows China’s diplomatic push targeting the Global South, leveraging economic ties through infrastructure projects.
China looks to preempt Western sanctions in a Taiwan conflict by securing international legitimacy. Meanwhile, the U.S. and allies struggle to counter China’s influence.
Trump’s return signals a firmer stance, but China’s diplomatic momentum complicates efforts to rally support against aggression.
Taiwan and mainland China were never unified to begin with.
Paywall
This shift follows China’s diplomatic push targeting the Global South
Trump’s return signals a firmer stance
Trump cutting USAID probably isn’t helping if the metric here is “who are countries in the Global South more likely to pay attention to”.
TAIWAN #1
China #4!
Apparently TSCM will raise prices on all chips/customers by a baseline 15% in order to offset tarrif costs in America.
Invade away China. Time to take the capitalist class down a notch.
/s in case it’s needed.
So with the new plants coming online in the US, how much of the world’s chips does Taiwan make?
All of them.
The US plants may be coming online but it will still be years before they’re at production capacity, and they’ll probably never have all of the same production capabilities. The chip fabrication lines in Taiwan have been decades in development and growth.
Also even if we could make all of the chips, Taiwan still holds almost all the other incidental processes (especially packaging) that most advanced chip designs require these days.
Yeah, it’s more than just the fabrication machines, it’s a massive logistics network.
The chip fabrication lines in Taiwan have been decades in development and growth.
Decades the US can learn from to catch up quicker and eventually eclipse them.
We literally eliminated the Department of Education.
Maybe. Some of the older fabrication is still in heavy production use (e.g. 28nm, 16nm, 7nm):
These produce a lot of the chips that go into everything electronic, things like bus controllers and timing ICs, which are needed in higher volumes than CPUs and GPUs. But I kind of doubt the older fab technology will be a priority to build in the new facility.
TSMC isn’t just a single factory production line that gets upgraded to the latest and greatest every year. It’s a collection of many fabrication technologies that has grown and developed organically over time. While it will be helpful to build a new facility with the benefit of lessons learned in Taiwan, it will not be possible to completely replicate what that original facility is.
It’s wild how much stuff is manufactured on processes considered obsolete for high end cpu/gpu production
The Z80 (which was the core processor of the TI-8x calculators) was only just discontinued last year. Lots of old chip designs find uses in embedded devices and consumer electronics.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
AFAIK the American plants use inputs from Taiwan. I don’t know what inputs exactly.
Idiots. Do they realize how massively popular jackie chan was before he got to close to them. I wonder how much was lost with hong kong.
What allies? Not sure what motivation Europeans have to defend Taiwan when we’re already dying in a war against Russia with no help from the US.
Taiwan is a sovereign, democratic nation, but the PRC is more of an ally to the EU than Trump’s America right now.
Sorry… who’s dying in a war against Russia? Taiwan or Europeans? Because I’m pretty sure unless you mean the Europeans specifically in Ukraine, it’s neither.
You read:
This shift follows China’s diplomatic push targeting the Global South
And you somehow thought they were talking about Europe?
From the text:
Meanwhile, the U.S. and allies struggle to counter China’s influence.
What allies? There are some regional actors in Asia opposed to the PRC’s imperialism, but the list of potential allies has gone down by a lot with Trump’s actions.
You read:
the world
And somehow thought that the opinions of some of the most stable and respected nations in the world don’t matter?
