News center

During the trade war between China and the United States, the most discussed topic in the industry is whether China can successfully develop the semiconductor industry with its overwhelming capital strength. Or is the United States stepping up pressure to rein in mainland China? After discussing with a number of Taiwanese engineers, journalists found that many views predicted the rise of China's semiconductor industry.

To capital centralization is the history of the semiconductor technology, as the continent ", a run between cross-strait enterprise technical personnel more than 40 years old Taiwan semiconductor said, "for semiconductor equipment manufacturers in the United States, mainland enterprises has become the most important clients. The United States in order to make trade negotiations in his favor, temporarily put pressure on the mainland, is not really want to destroy China's semiconductor industry".

ZTE was briefly unable to source semiconductors from the us in 2018, leaving its business struggling. In October 2018, the us government restricted domestic companies from providing technology to jinhua integrated circuit (JHICC), which is in charge of fujian province. The trump administration is stepping up its criticism of Chinese companies for stealing technology from American companies.

Instead of backing down from the American push, China is more determined to nurture its own semiconductor industry. Many technicians in Taiwan said that they have received many invitations from the mainland, offering two or three times the current salary.

The embattled tsai ing-wen administration, which has been under pressure from China, has sought to stay afloat by reaching out to the United States, and has shown a willingness to work with the United States on sanctions against China. According to industry sources, it appears that Taiwan's UMC was instructed by Taiwan authorities to stop providing technical cooperation to jinhua IC in 2018. In January 2019, Taiwan's public research institutions also banned the use of huawei technology equipment.

But there has been criticism of the Taiwan authorities' China policy. Because Taiwanese companies don't want to be enemies of China, which has a lot of buying power.

In November 2018, Lin wenbo, a director of ASEH, the world's largest semiconductor testing company, wrote in local print media that Taiwan should not help outsiders beat their children.

Ase is not alone in its reliance on mainland customers. TSMC's mainland sales accounted for 17 per cent of its sales in fiscal year 2018, which ended in December 2018, up 6 percentage points over the one-year period. In the context of slowing demand for apple mobile phones, customers in mainland China, as the new driving force for growth, are increasingly feeling their presence.

In January 2019, David wei, TSMC's chief executive, said that TSMC was a contract manufacturer that serves all customers, showing that it will also pay attention to mainland customers in the future.

But the greater the reliance on mainland companies, the greater the risk of accidental policy losses. How should Taiwanese companies deal with the mainland business, where the contribution and risk of earnings increase at the same time? This is an important issue not only for Taiwanese companies but also for Japanese equipment manufacturers.