For most businesses, risk diversification is a good thing. Still, late last year, Morris Chang, who heads Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest semiconductor company, laid out plans to start a new plant in the U.S. as fast as possible. Made it Globalization and free trade, he insisted, were nearly dead. He complained that the US government’s plan to bring semiconductor manufacturing home was “destined to fail.” Yet Chang knows best that as controversial as industrial policy is because it usually comes with high costs, his new plant in Arizona minimizes Beijing’s exposure. The dominant control of chip production would be enjoyed if it were to attack and dominate its smaller neighbor.
This week, it was French President Emmanuel Macron’s turn to downplay that worrying prospect. Macron went further in reference to Taiwan when he said Europe should not fall into “traps” and “get involved in crises that are not ours.” Commentators in China said Macron was “brilliant”. Pity Taiwan. With a population of just 24 million and a tiny fraction of China’s size, it needs the world’s support. Instead, multilateral agencies and world leaders have supported China’s claim that it is a renegade province by not recognizing Taiwan as an independent country with a vibrant democracy. Macron’s blunder and Chang’s murmurings about the cost of moving production overseas are the latest examples of such short-sightedness.
As Beijing steps up its military drills near Taiwan over the past several days and steps up its defiance by repeatedly sending fighter jets into Taiwan’s airspace, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, in an impossibly difficult task The brave woman seemed all right to comment on a recent visit to the US, but it was undermined by a simultaneous trip to China by the leader of the opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT). Ma Ying-jeou, who was Taiwan’s president between 2008 and 2016 when the KMT was in power, played to China’s script by recounting its past humiliations by foreign powers.
It is a theme that China has adapted from Mao to its present modernity. But President Xi Jinping has a particular dislike for the West, as evidenced by cementing his alliance with Russia at a summit with President Vladimir Putin. In 2009, on a visit to Mexico before becoming president, Xi Jinping memorably put it this way: “There are some bloated foreigners who have nothing better to do than point fingers at our affairs,” he said. “China does not, first, export revolution, second, export poverty and hunger, third, make trouble for you.”
And yet, since Xi became head of the Chinese Communist Party more than a decade ago, Beijing’s credit policies to promote infrastructure projects for its state-owned giants have created a debt trap for many developing countries. . Beijing promised to govern Hong Kong as a semi-autonomous, liberal financial center when it was handed over by Britain back in 1997. But, in December, Jimmy Lai, the city’s leading newspaper publisher, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison. , for allegedly violating a lease agreement for the headquarters of the tabloid he ran. Many so-called pro-democracy Hong Kong activists and legislators are in prison or have sought asylum abroad.
Optimists about Hong Kong’s future after it was returned to China in 1997 encouraged Beijing to keep its promise to allow Hong Kong’s free-market economy and free press as it seeks eventual peaceful reunification with Taiwan. will help with the project. Over the years, China, along with all its neighbors including India, has decided to do a better job of intimidation. The lead of its conventional arms on Taiwan is vast and growing; To take just one example, China has 400 naval ships, Taiwan just 26. economist This asymmetry is made worse by Taiwan’s military buying the wrong types of weapons, such as the expensive F-16, for example, instead of focusing on anti-missile defense. That report suggests that even some of its military officers appear to lack the resolve such an unequal battle demands.
Ukraine-style heroism lasting more than a year in the event of an invasion seems improbable for all of these reasons. Furthermore, the KMT may win the general elections next year and pave the way for In fact Hong Kong-style change in sovereignty for the island republic. When I visited Hong Kong last month, its capitalism seemed almost as alive as ever, even if its media is self-sabotaging. There were fewer expatriate businessmen and a film distributor had to cancel its screening Winnie the Pooh In March because memes compared President Xi to the cartoon character. After the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit our news feeds, few people have the stomach for a protracted fight in Taiwan – as Macron’s comments suggest. The troubling human rights implications of this are troubling enough, but Taiwan is also the center of global semiconductor production, with 90% of very advanced semiconductors. For several reasons, we should all be concerned as this geopolitical tragedy is unfolding.
Rahul is Jacob Peppermint columnist and a former financial Times foreign correspondent,
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