TSMC at the head of history’s tide: two high walls and one sharp knife | Hacker News Reader

TSMC at the head of history’s tide: two high walls and one sharp knife

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199 pointsavoidboringppl112 comments

I'm surprised to see a typical Chinese "self-media" article being shared here, coz I myself see these as nothing more than gossip blogs, so please take them with huge amount of salt or just avoid it.

At least in my experience these are highly refined entertainment product with little to no regard to what's fact, opinion and pure made-up bullshit, their only goal is to maximize click numbers, thus more often than not written by internet marketing gurus rather than ones with real and deep domain knowledge, influencer is a more apt name for them.

The owner of this self-media publicly pledging allegiance to Huawei coz he got scholarships from them also didn't help with it.

Nonetheless , I was unaware of TSMC and ASML making a lithography breakthrough before EUV and so that at least is valuable information.

That part of the story checks out too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_lithography

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn-Jeng_Lin

Myself, am amused how the translators did not consult English sources and also how the writers of the wikipedia article probably didn’t know about the analogy to immersion microscope objectives. This industry is curiously insular.

a lot people on hacker news believed if you throw enough money into something like China is doing with semi industry that somehow you can get your fab into a leading fab.

you can't just build something with off the shelves equipment. if that's the case then China big fund in 2014 (before trade war, China already pouring money into semi industry) already bearing fruits but SMIC have to poach TSMC engineers to get them into 14nm.

leading foundry like TSMC pour in a lot of money into R&D with their partners. TSMC's ecosystem along is unrivaled. there is also the trust issue. TSMC's main and only business is making chip for their customers unlike Samsung which is a Conglomerate.

what the author said about Apple is true(move away from Samsung's supply chain). that's why Apple is now a core customer of TSMC.

edit: i recall a interview with Morris Chang by a Chinese reporter. she bring up the question about the Chinese big fund. she say if Chinese govrt throw its weight behind the semi industry. it will over take TSMC. Chang said you can't buy "experiences" it will take time for Chinese fab to learn all the mistakes and gain the know-hows. there's a lot going into the production than simply buying semi equipment and somehow magically you can get to the yield level that'll be profitable. Intel's 10nm yield problem is the example of that. sorry, English is not my first language.

Everything you are saying is true, but chip fab independence is a national-security priority for China, and national-security priorities aren't constrained by next-quarter-earnings market pressures. The strategy also does not just consist of buying off-the-shelf equipment, but also recruiting experts and specialists and designers.

It may not overtake TSMC next year, or in five years, but I'd be surprised if a Chinese firm does not reach parity in ten years.

China already throw in the big fund back in 2014. i believed they started the big fund II. we'll see how that goes.

>recruiting experts and specialists and designers

they already did that by poaching engineers from TSMC and else where.

>I'd be surprised if a Chinese firm does not reach parity in ten years

that's if the leading foundries just stand still. GlobalFoundries drop out of 7nm. i'll be surprised if the Chinese fabs can catch up in just 10 years.

The difference being that the US already has companies with experts and institutional knowledge. The fact that China lacks those things is a function of the pace at which it is trying to grow its semiconductor sector. The fact that China is able to collimate spending far better than the US is a function of how bad the US government is at sending money where it needs to go rather than to the Department of Defense.

How is Chinese "self-media" being gossip blogs needing salt different from all the jobs, elon musk, paul graham and other kind of hero worship this place is normally overflowing with?

Don't get me wrong, I'm generally against Hero worship in general, and I have my fair share of beefs with ALL these different hero worship things, but I grew up on Bill Gates hero worship only to later find out that he sold the whole thing before writing a single line of code thanks to his moms connections and that the garage sale was a lot of money when you account for inflation.

Why is one ok, and the other one is Chinese "self-media". How are all those "Steve Jobs was a godly human being I was once in a meeting with him" not all "self-media" and why do we suddenly need the Chinese prefix?

> How is Chinese "self-media" being gossip blogs needing salt different

OP meant the quotation mark should be placed on the word "Chinese"

Coz Chinese people have been conditioned by a level censorship and media control unseen elsewhere, the resulting susceptibility to yummy and palatble disinformation is quite deep and prevalent, you may have read news about strong reaction about strange things from the west, you guessed it right there's alway legions of "self-media" behind it, it’s unfettered and state sanctioned algorithm-driven circlejerk machine, and the reason ByteDance's platforms make so much money.

Why do I need to point out it being "Chinese"? Coz these self-media platforms are the predominant way of getting information there, nobody but old people watch TVs and read newspapers, even stated-owned news orgs have to get on it to make money.

>The “Post-Truth” Publication Where Chinese Students in America Get Their News"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-post-trut...

Buddy, if you watch American news media with any level of knowledge about material reality you will be blown away by the level of deception, sensationalism, and servility to power. We all need to chill out when talking about foreign countries.

The difference is the access to information. In China the media you have access to is state-controlled so they control the narrative exactly how they want. You have very limited access to external news sources and media in general[1].

In the US at least you have a variety of different news channels that are everywhere from far left to far right. You can also access news sources from outside of the US that report on the US. Imagine if Fox News was the only news available in the US while Trump was president?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

The mainstream media in the US are all owned by capitalist corporations and are pro-capitalist. They represent a spectrum spanning from the far-right* (OANN) to the world right-of-center (MSNBC). The socialist and communist left nearly exclusively uses alternative distribution channels. Even centrist to social-democrats like Bernie Sanders are treated with scorn in US media.

US news is broadcast to the world as widely as possible to support the American empire's soft power projection. It also helps that they report on some news too.

* There are further right outlets in the world, but we're really getting up there these days. At least they're not outright monarchists (though supporting a presidential dictatorship by Donald Trump is getting close).

1. China has prior restraint on everything associated with working in the media - purchase of materials required for publication of newspapers, licenses to publish media, licenses for journalists, all requiring heavy inspection of political views.

2. The US doesn't.

Your other points stand, but this core difference still matters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_restraint

I'll agree with that. I'll reup with this criticism by Noam Chomsky though.

" "You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as “Commissars” – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies.""

https://www.alternet.org/2012/12/10-brilliant-quotes-noam-ch...

Another great criticism:

"Propaganda in the US vs in the USSR" https://chomsky.info/dissent02/

This is the kind of Chomskyism that leads to nowhere.

You can take the criticism to the letter, so that "no other society" is true because the total of the exact characterization matches only one society, and is thus a tautology. Or you read it more generally, and then the claim that no other society is as indoctrinated is absurd.

All societies are indoctrinated, but US society seems to think it isn't: that's the insight. Also, if you peruse the second link, he says things that are more concrete. I used a more general quote because it is difficult to give a strong argument in a limited space.

We all need to chill out when talking about foreign countries.

Alternatively, we all need to step up and say the same things about both home and abroad, and try to learn from and improve both.

True, but mischaracterization of an "official enemy" state is more than a simple mistake, it plays into official USG war propaganda and xenophobia.

I hear people saying these kinds of things all the time, but I've never gotten any concrete evidence except "they choose what things to report and leave out things we think are relevant". Ok, that's everyone, you only have so much time/space. I might agree with you for Fox TV, and news in general has had an element of sensationalism from the beginning (who wants to read/watch boring stuff?), but aside from that, what are some examples of deception and servility to power? Where would one go to determine if your accusations are true? And no right-wing / conspiracy sites, please.

Frankly, it seems to me that the only reason your comment is not be libel is simply because you didn't name any specific organization.

Take a look at any foreign policy story. The mainstream media is basically uniformly in favor of bombing and starving other countries. They have only tactical disagreements as to whether it is too costly rather than whether it is a fundamentally criminal act in violation of Article II of the UN charter.

Historically: see Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan. Today: Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba. There are many many examples. The new bugaboo is China as a part of the "pivot to Asia".

Example: https://mashable.com/2017/04/07/brian-williams-syria-missile...

This is a classic example of the self-imposed limitations.

Chinese are viewing Americans as lunatic as the opposite direction, and with the equal amount of sincerity and disdain. The same applies to almost any nations and people's group.

Not all countries behave equally, morally. Western media is, all considered, more open, and China spends much more and enacts stricter laws to achieve the opposite reaction you speak of. Chinese people would not have that reaction without that strict shaping of information by the state.

Equally is a wrong word, one should say they do not behave samely.

Equally is meaningless for such a large object, I.e. nations. Of course Western is more open, os they are more radical. Like covid, propaganda results into Asian people get attacked or even close to be killed. The more controlled method in China results into more moderate reaction towards Americans.

Appreciate the concession.

There no question that Bill Gates had a lot of luck. But if you had his luck could you have been as successful? I doubt it. Because here is also a skill, perseverance, and effort component that most people who spend time on HN probably lack, myself included.

I don't think "hero worship" is great, but I have tremendous respect for Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, etc who are better men than me in so many ways. I look up to them and wish to emulate their better features.

Why is that a problem? HN spends plenty time discussing blog entries and posts from people who are not professional media.

I'm also surprised to see this shared here, but mostly because of the timing. Jeff Ding translated it in June 2020: https://chinai.substack.com/p/chinai-98-techlore-the-histori...

Note also that he chose to translate it because it has the entertainment value of a typical Chinese "self-media" article:

This week’s feature translation is a joint work with Joy Dantong Ma, who pitched this epic piece. My term for these types of pieces is “techlore:” longform pieces that read, at times, like epic poems in which the heroes (tech company leaders) wage battle over the commanding heights of the economy. “Development Bloggers” or the “Industrial Party,” usually people who have experience working in the tech industry and espouse techno-nationalist views, are emerging as a formidable force in Chinese media and the semiconductor industry is especially fertile ground for techlore.

You've probably scrolled past thousands of "self-media" articles and dismissed them instantly, but for many here, it's their first encounter with the genre, so it feels new and exciting. And don't forget that HN is a highly-refined entertainment product optimized for delivering new and exciting content to its users.

For what it's worth I found this comic in the footnotes very touching:

https://images.nvidia.com/content/APAC/blog/tw/jhh-mc-illust...

Interesting read. A little "florid" perhaps, some turns of phrase probably don't survive translation.

I don't envy anyone who works the midnight shift in a 24/7 r&d boilerhouse. Liver eater indeed.

Given US strategic concerns in VLSI we are probably going to see another slightly different chapter in this story:TSMC being induced to bring core IPR inside domestic US production, presumably for cash injection and guarantees to Taiwan for their strategic interests being guarded.

Taiwan would be foolish to believe such American promises. The USA made similar promises to Ukraine in the Budapest memorandum (under Clinton), and subsequently did not fulfill its obligations (under Obama).

Could you be a bit more specific in what agreement the Obama admin did not honor? Which parts and how?

The Wiki article of the memorandum, particularly the Breach section, contains dates and overview of info on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

There is a Wikipedia page on the Budapest memorandum, which outlines its content, and at least one breach: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...

He's implying Euromaiden in 2014 as a EU and US instigated event to erode Ukraine's political independence, thus, justifying Russia's invasion of the Crimea.

We should know by now whenever region moves away from an authoritarian power's orbit is regarded by these powers' as some kind of foreign influence and subversive operation. They think it's impossible that the people themselves actually don't like authoritarian governments. It's the same in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea etc etc etc.

Nothing special to authoritarian governments. Both the left and right in the USA like to believe it's foreign influence than half the country having (sometimes drastically) different views.

The city/rural biases don't help either as you mostly see people with similar views to you.

This is a new phenomenon in the US, mostly because of party elder denial.

"Euromaiden" is a funny typo.

Russia puppet was the reason of Euromaidan.

Putins rating raised to 86% after Crimea annexation. Ukraine joined West in propaganda. It's just a fuel for informational autocracy.

Europe and the US never wanted to be forced to intervene in Ukraine, hence why they were not in a rush to consider Ukraine's push to join NATO.

The Budapest memorandum does not make any promises to help. Regarding Crimea, the breach is Russia's, not the West's.

> The Budapest memorandum does not make any promises to help.

It does, go read the text

I have. So where does it?

I think it refers to this:

    Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

Obviously, Russia did not use nuclear weapon... but maybe the fact that Russia has nuclear weapon and invaded Crimea means Ukraine is under threat of nuclear weapons...

That's not a promise to send any help or to help militarily.

It just says that if Ukraine is nuked (quite an extreme scenario to start with) they'll ask the Security Council (where Russia has a veto) to do something about it. You can argue that this constitutes a promise to 'help', but frankly sending a "get well soon" card would be more helpful.

Hence my first comment: The US and the West do not want to be forced to intervene and thus they never made any promise, binding or otherwise, to.

The UN did vote a resolution on Ukraine and Crimea in 2014.

As I also wrote, it is Russia that breached the memorandum but not respecting Ukraine's borders as they were but, tough.

The United States doesn't "need" Ukraine in the way the United States "needs" access to the most advanced digital chip creation technology in the world.

If Ukraine disappears tomorrow, we lose the next Milla Jovovich and Mila Kunis. A bummer, yes, but not an end to our way of life.

If Ukraine disappears tomorrow, Western Europe will follow, and with that the only US platz d'arme in Asia against Russia, and the only remaining US nuclear allies.

Following this, don't think you will be able to leisurely spend the remaining of your life. Everybody down to your granny will be forcefully drafted, and mobilised.

As recently as 1989, not only Ukraine, but all of Eastern Europe was aligned with Russia/USSR. Strangely, Western Europe was not drafting grandmothers at that time.

I don't see any reason to think that Putin wants to do more than control his near abroad. He doesn't have an expansionist ideology. He likes being rich and controlling his periphery and sticking a thumb in the eye of the West, but if he e.g. invaded and conquered Paris, where would he exile his oligarchs when he needs them to take a time out for a while? He needs the West as a pressure valve. As long as he can still have you murdered at your hotel in DC (Mikhail Lesin), he can keep you in line without needing to have ships in the Potomac.

And as recently as 1989, NATO had few tank armies on the border with USSR, and thousands of constantly armed nukes pointed at the enemy.

Not anymore?

>If Ukraine disappears tomorrow, Western Europe will follow

Ah yes, the dreaded invasion of Western Europe by Russia, with their 90% outdated tanks and planes that could be held back by a single major European army. A terrifying prospects that haunts every european at night.

> Ah yes, the dreaded invasion of Western Europe by Russia, with their 90% outdated tanks and planes that could be held back by a single major European army.

Tanks - Russia: 10000+

Tanks - Germany: 300 + 1200 US army tanks

Firstly, it's quite disingenious to take Germany as the example when they have never had a large army in the past 50 years and have not been a military power. Let's compare what is comparable: Russia and France use about the same percentage of their budget for military purposes: 9% for France, 11% for Russia.

Tanks - Russia

- T72 - 2000 tanks, 7000 in reserve

- T90 - 350 active, 200 reserve

- T14 Armata (i.e., top of the line) - 100 planned, 20+ active.

Tanks - France

  - Leclerc (top of the line) - 222 active, 200 upgraded to XLR-Standard

  - AMX10/20 - 300

Planes - Russia

  - SU57 - 1.

  - SU35S (refurbished Su27 from 2003) - 97

  - SU34 (from 1990) - 120

  - Mig35 - 4.

  - Planes from before 1980 - 500

Planes - France

  - Rafale B/C/M - 150

  - Mirage 2000 - 120

So, even if Russia intends to throw tanks from 1970 at Europe to have them be utterly crushed by aviation, a single country from Europe stands more or less toe to toe with it.

Germany has the biggest force on its territory given allied forces (US army) on its soil.

Tanks are a completely outdated military technology. Shoulder launched anti-tank missiles, anti-tank aircraft and now drones can all render large quantities of tanks scrap metal, especially the majority of old Russian tanks with WW2 era armor. There's a reason western countries have stopped investing in tanks and spend most of their military R&D budgets on airplanes and drones these days, air-superiority wins the day in modern conventional warfare.

Why the derision? Thousands died when Russia seized Crimea and kicked off skirmishes in Donbass.

It's denial. People are ready to deny the reality if doing so lets them justify their inaction.

Russia does not want and cannot invade (Western) Europe, and there is the slight issue of nuclear arsenals. I think the derision comes from that...

China will never take Taiwan with military force, at least not anytime soon. Any kind of military move against Taiwan would endanger the real value of Taiwan which is companies like TSMC. China will continue to work to increase it's political and economic power while weakening the US's and other western countries influence until such a time that they can take Taiwan with little or no force at all.

The difference is that the Ukrainian invasion had far smaller implications to US interests than an invasion of Taiwan would have.

Inducing TSMC to bring production capability into the US is all benefits for the US but strategically it is bad for Taiwan.

Indeed, if there are enough fabs in the US then the continued availability of fabs in Taiwan is much less important for the US, and thus Taiwan becomes less important for the US, which obviously has consequences in terms of any US involvement in defence of Taiwan in case of a military conflict with the mainland.

This is the US protecting themselves.

But Taiwan and TSMC don't really have a choice.

This is true. We have also seen such rapid policy flip flops in the past 5 years, it is untrustable. Even if you consider yourselves a close ally.

I don't think the plan is to move significant production capacity to the US. Apple and AMD would still depend on Taiwanese capacity. I can imagine two reasons for the US plant:

- political capital ("bringing hi-tec manufacturing back")

- national security ("manufacturing a few miltec chips")

It Taiwanese industry goes belly up, a single fab in US will make zero difference.

A big chunk of semi industry is single vendor, including consumables.

It happens every time when there is an earthquake in Taiwan: the entirety of semi industry, in, and outside of the country stands still for a few weeks.

It can be good for TSMC, due to increased revenue, forestalling competition, reduced risk (earthquake, geopolitical etc).

Whether these things are good for Taiwan at large is a matter of discussion; the decision is not obvious.

Propaganda at it's best (he refused outright, yet visited Samsung...just to have a look): "Morris Chang was now struggling to get sales/orders, but he was tired of being second and third, and he firmly refused Samsung. Lee Kun-hee did not give up, and invited him to visit Samsung. Morris Chang readily accepted, and after visiting the factory for half a day, he even praised Samsung's production capacity as "impressive", but still refused to leave TSMC. Seeing his firm attitude, Lee Kun-hee had to give up."

Yeah, I stopped reading at that exact point.

Some deeper context on how Morris Chang ended up being in charge of TSMC: https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1353369463190560773?s=...

TSMC vs Intel: https://stratechery.com/2021/intel-problems/

I've seen usage of Google Docs as a generic method for publicizing articles increase a great deal over the past year or two. Especially from China / greater Asia to a lesser extent.

Why?

Google Docs makes it easy to add annotations to parts of a text, which you can see used here by the author to add sidenotes, as a comment section and by readers to suggest improvements to the translation.

I'm not aware of it being some general trend, though; I've only seen Jeff Ding use it like that. Could you point to some other writers using Google Docs as a generic publishing method?

The vast majority of publications from Hong Kong protestors are through Google Docs for example: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZrIiXypVUvPIRs9JG8AsU55F...

Interesting! I checked the comment history, which has a lot of activity. Most of it is spam suggestions, but I also spotted a few that were accepted. I guess they're also using Google Docs for its collaborative features.

Oh yeah, don't worry about that. Just switch to view only mode if you want to read the actual document.

Edit: If you don't know how, here's a handy tip. Just add "/preview" to the end of any doc to link directly to it's view only mode. So for the document I linked above, it would be: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZrIiXypVUvPIRs9JG8AsU55F...

Fascinating. Stories like this really make me want to learn Chinese and/or move there for a while.

The story highlights how they were able to benefit from US culture and education, to the point where they now took the lead. I wonder how the West could benefit from Asian culture.

The cultural belief that other countries do things better is what you describe. It's pretty Australian and American to think your country is the best at most things.

As an Australian... I have no idea where this idea comes from. American Exceptionalism has historically been a thing, but other than a general impression that equipment which have been designed and built locally in Australia tend to be above average assuming that it wasn’t built to be the cheapest... the idea that “our stuff is the best” has never really been a thing, except maybe Beer... and only among people who are obviously fans of that beer.

Edit: This might be an east coast vs west coast of Australia thing. I’m from Western Australia and I just realised that this might be more of an east coast cultural thing...

> the idea that “our stuff is the best” has never really been a thing, except maybe Beer... and only among people who are obviously fans of that beer.

Are you saying that Ozzies regard their beer as world-beating (or are you saying the opposite) – I can't parse that sentence …

Are you saying that Ozzies regard their beer as world-beating

Australians are very proud of their flagship beers, Fosters and Castlemaine XXXX, but they are not considered premium products in any country with a beer-drinking tradition.

Are they? At least Fosters I get the impression is more popular outside Australia than in it.

"Exceptionalism" is pretty common among many cultures. The term "Chinese Exceptionalism" is used pretty widely these days.

> It's pretty Australian to think your country is the best at most things.

What? Australia is the land that gave the world the term “cultural cringe”. Often something is described as “world class” to justify its quality (whether correctly or not) by an external reference.

If you move to the USA you’ll see the opposite: people implicitly assume that the local thing is the world’s best, and don’t even bother to say so as they assume it’s self-evidentially so. The other country I’ve lived in where this is true is France, which is possibly why they criticize each other so much.*

Of course the truth is that each of these places does some things well and some not so well.

* The French also moan a lot — it feels like the national pastime — but that’s different.

the context behind such article I think should be provided.. China regards Taiwan as part of China, whether right now or eventually depends on how much CCP koolaid they've consumed. The whole Huawei chip ban from the US really shook Chinese to the core, and suddenly TSMC became strategic asset. And this is one of those articles wanting to sensationalise the history a bit. Largest grains of salt for me.

Chinese have invested absolute mind boggling amount of money to kick start their semiconductor industry, many people mentioned in the article have gone to work for and have already quit China; whether that was their intention to defraud the CCP or not is not obvious. But I haven't seen any signs of China having capacity on producing chips yet. Most high profile hires and companies have failed like the one Chiang went to

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3123429/troubled-chi...

The TSMC blockade of Huawei is about 1 year and that was really the shot that kicked the chip wars into overdrive.

I would expect see the first result of the Chinese scramble to ramp up self-sufficiency in about a year from now.

Probably the most interesting is Huawei's work with equipment manufacturer SMEE.

Lots of Taiwanese see themselves as Chinese; not under the same government. But of the same people.

% lower and lower. The recent 228 isa case. Many Taiwanese considered themselves Japanese as well. And many just Taiwanese. Let there be a vote ... actually it has been voted sort of.

To clarify this, they see themselves as part of the Chinese civilization (華人 = hua ren). A lot of Chinese diaspora do as well, for example Chinese Singaporeans are part this cultural sphere.

Taiwanese people have another term for Chinese Mainlanders (大陸人 = da lu ren).

The data: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7800&id=6961

So about 29.9% say Taiwanese + Chinese and 2.6% say exclusively Chinese.

> China regards Taiwan as part of China, whether right now or eventually depends on how much CCP koolaid they've consumed.

The problem with using "China" here is that it is always misleading if people have no prior knowledge of the situation.

Specifically "China" here means "People's Republic of China" because they consider that the "Republic of China" ceased to exist in 1949 and Taiwan, as a province of the Republic of China automatically moved under the PRC sovereignty. Conversely the Republic of China (in Taiwan now) does not officially recognises the PRC.

So it's a bit like if the two Koreas refused to acknowledge the existence of each other and claimed the whole peninsula for themselves, which I believe is actually not far from the situation there. But it's more complicated with China because of the existence of a "3rd faction" in Taiwan that would like to see Taiwan independent of any Chinese state whatever that state might be.

>So it's a bit like if the two Koreas refused to acknowledge the existence of each other and claimed the whole peninsula for themselves, which I believe is actually not far from the situation there. But it's more complicated with China because of the existence of a "3rd faction" in Taiwan that would like to see Taiwan independent of any Chinese state whatever that state might be.

I believe this is the official situation but I think the unofficial position is the People's Republic of China wants Taiwan while the Republic of China on the whole is perfectly happy with just Taiwan, but any official recognition of that fact just highlights the rejection in practice of the official position of the PRC and is likely to upset them further, so the official status quo remains as a strange diplomatic stalemate.

Well, I think this is the difference between the official positions (which are the same on both sides) and the reality on the ground in terms of relative power.

The PRC/mainland is massively bigger and more powerful than the ROC/Taiwan so they think that they have the means to pursue their official position.

Taiwan knows that they don't have the means to pursue their official position so there is little point making noise about it. And furthermore, the "3rd faction", which the current President belongs to, is not sympathetic to that position, anyway. But when the KMT is in power they do at in way that protects that position (eventual (re-)unifaction).

No native English speaker thinks of Taiwan when someone says "China".

I think the general lack of a common communication platform between China and rest of the world is pretty disappointing. There’s a lot of cool innovative stuff going on inside China which isn’t readily covered in-depth by mainstream tech media and you have to rely on a few substacks or twitter handles to fill the gap.

You should check the Taiwan Gold Card1[1] visa that gives you a resident permit for 3 years. It is quite easy to get, just earn more than usd5.5k/month at your last/current job, or work in a "trendy" field (AI/big data/energy/biotech...). Happy to reply to any questions

[1] https://taiwangoldcard.com

+1 this! I'm sitting in a cafe, working remotely from Taipei right now. Feel free to message me if you have any questions.

There's a large group of hackernews reader types of people here right now who all socialize here since Covid is non-existent.

> On the date Chang admitted TSMC’s disadvantage, its stock rose by 8%. Investors believed that Morris was very angry and there would be serious consequences. Indeed, TSMC started preparing for a multi-front counterattack.

I've seen a few of these on Google docs recently - is there a way they can turn the obnoxious margins off on mobile, it's not possible to read on there with 1 inch of padding on each side of the phone....

Use reader mode on firefox, or send it to Pocket

Safari reader mode improves things tremendously.

Taiwan population is around 24 million. It might be cheaper for US to offer to relocate whole country to the continental North America. Give everyone citizenship and free land, move TSMC to Texas. Make Taiwan island a huge military base.

Taiwan is bigger than Maryland. We need a military base bigger than Maryland?

Taiwan apparently stays between ~50F and ~100F, and the people are used to living near the coast. Putting them in Texas would be cruel. Although California has housing issues, transplanted Taiwan can be put on fresh soil -- no NIMBYs, and the housing development policy for Taiwan, CA can be written from the ground up to avoid previous mistakes.

No, thank you. But no. No way.

Texas is a ridiculous idea, but how about Connecticut? Near the coast, comfortable 8-24C temperature range, not too far from the US education and business hubs.

I think we have good education system to back the semi industry. Most of the semi engineers are trained locally.

The entire premise is ridiculous.

I wouldn't write off the whole premise of the state of Texas as ridiculous, it must have some non-ridiculous features if you look hard enough.

As someone who used to live in Texas, I certainly would.

the arrogance here is beyond shocking. go gauge an average Taiwanese citizen's interest in your offer, you might be in for a nasty surprise.

If this isn't some type of thought experiment to prove a point, then this is some off-the-charts chauvinism. Why do you believe they would actually want to relocate here?

It is, ,I'm sure, a thought experiment, but presumably the reason would be to get out of China's military reach. But I don't get the impression it was intended as a serious suggestion.

Taiwan has high speed rail, mass rapid transit (MRT) [in Taipei and a few other cities], universal health care, and 24-hour convenience stores within walking distance. Murder rate is low, and COVID is under control.

What on earth makes you think that people in Taiwan wants to move to the US?

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