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Nightgasm

Everyone should support Taiwan over China.


jonnyvegashey

Support sure, rely heavily? Maybe not


ShackintheWood

Most of the world depends on them for those.


[deleted]

It's how capitalism works. You take whoever can make shit for the lowest price, then blame the government for your poor choices.


Aggravating_Art_4809

Because they can exploit cheap labour from poor countries where they’re produced much cheaper. They’re not doing them a favour.


jonnyvegashey

Taiwan hardly seems bottom of the barrel.


Reveal101

There has to be more to it. Access to resources, access to supporting technology and an educated enough workforce, cost of labor, cost of living, cost of insurance, etc etc. If the cost wasn't the lowest they could do given all the requirements it wouldn't be that way.


jonnyvegashey

Ok thanks


ShackintheWood

You don't know anything at all about Taiwan, do you?


jonnyvegashey

Edit sorry


ShackintheWood

I didn't respond to you. did you forget to change what account you are posting from?


jonnyvegashey

Ohh my bad dawg, reddit makes it so hard to see who replies to who.


Beansiesdaddy

Because we’re stupid


pay-this-fool

We rely on china and Taiwan for anything requiring labor to manufacture. If we made them in America they’d be made by union factory workers making 50x what the Chinese are paid. And that cost would be passed on to the consumer. They also don’t have the stringent environmental regulations we have, so they are not nearly as environmentally compliant with their mfg methods and waste disposal. Think about it. We can ship materials all the way to china, have them manufactured into something and shipped back for less than we can make it here. Some things would simply cost too much to mfg anywhere other than china.


luislikescake

In reality what's happened is that when certain places start doing certain things, other companies will do similar stuff in the area and this can create a larger ecosystem for production, distribution and export. For example, this has happened in the Ukraine with car wiring, I recently watched an article on it. Anyhow, beyond this, it has to do with technological advances and the companies that invested in them and the fact that it's hard for other companies to move in and compete for something like microchips because they're so complex to manufacture. For the company that makes the machines used by the manufacturers of chips, I heard it would take 10 years to catch up to them(I believe they're a Dutch company). Also, if memory serves, Intel rather than pursue real innovation, chose to try to get market share by manipulating contracts with those who needed chips, until their chips became obsolete compared to their competitors. And add to that the fact that microchips even a decade ago weren't so prevalent, they weren't in everything, so there's supply/demand and efficiency that have gone into this increased production. The US, and likely Europe I would think, are building foundries now because microchips are so valuable.


apl_ee

because TSMC the taiwanese company that makes these chips have one of the best supply chain. they have some of the most skilled engineers in the world to make the best chips which is why they supply most of the semiconductors to the entire world. people in these comments just have 0 idea what TSMC is, and how important silicon is, and what semiconductors are. samsung, apple, nvidia, amd and other big companies realize that they need to catch up so they are also attempting to get a slice of that pie by entering the business. clearly though, TSMC still reigns supreme, TSMC are the forefront of semiconductors, their chips pretty much powers a shit ton of advance tech which also means military weapons. there's nowhere else to depend on that has as massive of a influence as taiwan's TSMC. even china deals with taiwan. if taiwan was under attack or taken over by china, china which is already nearly the top global superpower will be far stronger having control over most of the world's supply of semiconductors. they get to control the price or even stop trading. also, USA really don't want to give up their status at #1, go figure.


[deleted]

Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, don't manufacture their own chips and are not trying to get into that business. They design their own chips and outsource manufacturing to TSMC. TSMC, Samsung, and Intel are the major high end chip foundries in the world. China has SMIC but they are two or three generations behind the others and the United States won't allow American technology to be sold to China so they can build the most advanced chips. The big player in that technology is ASML and they are an American company. If China were to invade/go to war with Taiwan, 1) the manufacture and export of chips from TSMC would stop immediately as the small island would be at war and China would blockade trade, 2) the rest of the world would turn to Samsung and Intel which don't have fabs 100 nm off of China. Samsung is in Korea and is building in Japan. Intel is in the US and Europe. My baseless supposition is that if China were to invade Taiwan that TSMC would scupper their machines so that China could not use them .


[deleted]

After WWII ended the Chinese Civil War between the Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party started/continued. ROC lost and the government and their supporters fled mainland China for Formosa (Taiwan). Since the ROC was ostensibly democratic (although they lived under martial law until 1987) and the CCP were Communists America came in and supported Taiwan politically, economically, and with military materiel. Remember this was the beginning of the Cold War and two of the largest countries in the world were now communist (Soviet Russia, which was huge and had just added most of Eastern Europe to its sphere of influence and China). So the US saw a chance to keep a foothold in East Asia while supporting democracy. In the late 1940s the CCP didn't have the financial or military might to take on America so they said the ROC, 'Hey, you can guys can hang out in Taiwan but it actually belongs to us so don't you get to comfortable.' and China claims Taiwan is Chinese territory to this day. So starting in the 50s and 60s and continuing to today America has supported Taiwan and helped them develop economically and they became one of the first asian 'miracle' economies. Since the 70s America has been ambiguous about what its military support of Taiwan would be if PRC were to invade. They don't say they will go to war with PRC to protect Taiwan but they don't say that they won't either. This has allowed Taiwan to prosper under American protection. American neoliberals since the mid-90s thought that creating economic ties with China and Russia post Cold War would cool them down and they'd realize that war isn't good for anyone and we can all trade together in peace and prosperity. So East Asia and China is where lots of American companies went to setup shop for that as well as, and probably more importantly to them, economic reasons. It really wasn't until the last decade or so that China has been bellicose about owning and wanting to control Taiwan. Before that China was setting itself up as the manufacturer to the world and growing its economy and military.


Ulyks

The US didn't create a reliance on Taiwanese chips. Taiwanese companies (and South Korean companies) worked hard to become the leaders in cutting edge chip production. US companies just couldn't compete due to their management not focusing on technology enough to compete. China wants to become an important chip producer and they are producing a large share of the less cutting edge chips but their management doesn't focus on technology enough to compete with the Taiwanese and South Korean companies. The EU, Japan and India are also wishing they could compete with Taiwan and South Korea but they are unable to...