When Will China Strike Taiwan?
This is my latest entry in my experiment with daily posting. So far, I haven’t been thrilled with the results and will end the experiment at the end of this week.
Lai Ching-te was sworn as Taiwan’s new president on May 20th, and Red China is already rattling its saber.
If you’re unfamiliar with the China/Taiwan situation, here’s a quick rundown: when the commies took over mainland China, China’s deposed leaders fled to the small island of Taiwan and successfully kept it independent. Red China has always insisted that Taiwan is its territory, much like Putin insists that Ukraine belongs to Russia, except that China wields a larger stick. Everyone’s so scared of Red China that it was an international scandal when then-President Trump took a call from Taiwan’s president after taking off.
Back in the present day, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te is firm on the island’s independence, and Red China isn’t happy, as expressed through the communist party’s mouthpiece, the “Global Times”:
The speech was filled with hostility and provocation, lies and deception. In it, Lai took an even more radical and reckless stance on "Taiwan independence," vigorously promoting separatist fallacies such as the so-called "sovereign independence," "both sides of the Taiwan Straits are not subordinate to each other" and "the future of Taiwan will be decided by Taiwan residents." He desperately sought the backing and support of external forces, attempting to internationalize the "Taiwan question," and continued to "seek independence by relying on foreign support and by force." This speech is a thorough confession of "Taiwan independence." As the successor to Tsai Ing-wen and the new leading figure of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority, Lai's actions once again revealed his "independence" nature, with an extremely arrogant attitude and more radical propositions.
Tom Shugart, who built an impressive resume over his 25 years in the Navy, called the “editorial,” an “explicit threat of war.”
So why doesn’t China just take Taiwan already? They own the manufacturing and every other country is terrified of them. Simply put: Taiwan controls the spice. And by “the spice,” I mean the vast, vast majority of the world’s computer chip production. (Everyone likes Dune now, so I can make those references)
ASML is a Norwegian firm that supplies Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs, and according to Bloomberg, it can remotely destroy its machines in Taiwan:
The remote shut-off applies to Netherlands-based ASML’s line of extreme ultraviolet machines, known within the industry as EUVs, for which TSMC is its single biggest client. EUVs harness high-frequency light waves to print the smallest microchip transistors in existence — creating chips that have artificial-intelligence uses as well as more sensitive military applications.
About the size of a city bus, an EUV requires regular servicing and updates. As part of that, the company can remotely force a shut-off which would act as a kill switch, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Veldhoven-based company is the world’s only manufacturer of these machines, which sell for more than €200 million ($217 million) apiece.
So much like Paul Atreides, chip suppliers are threatening to nuke the spice fields if China takes Taiwan. The question is: would ASML actually do it? The cynical side of me says that Taiwanese firms like TSMC would try, China would swiftly get them working again, and everyone would carry on with business as usual.
But is that a chance China is willing to take? Likely not, or they would have already done it. We saw semiconductor production briefly grind to a halt in 2020, and the results were worldwide shortages of common products and unfinished vehicles piling up on lots.
Sooner or later, China will pull the trigger, but until China has a solid answer to the semiconductor problem I don’t see them going for it. They have plenty of time to wait.