Taiwan is ramping up international cooperation deals with countries like Canada and France in recent months as it parlays its role as the world’s chip kingpin to boost its global standing.
Just over the past week, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) announced two tech deals. It signed a science, technology and innovation arrangement with Canada to jointly grow talent training, while it will set up an office in Prague to help foster Czech chip design engineers.
Taipei’s chip diplomacy drive is its latest effort to break through China’s stern opposition to any formal exchanges with other nations and global powers.
Photo: CNA
“The situation of Taiwan was very difficult in the past, but in recent years we’re getting better and better because a lot of countries discover the existence of Taiwan mostly because of semiconductors,” NSTC Minister Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Taiwan has become a powerhouse of advanced electronics engineering, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) rising to become Asia’s most valuable company.
TSMC and a coterie of local chipmaking suppliers have carved out an indispensable role in the global electronics supply chain, and other nations have begun to offer subsidies to get them to export some of that knowhow and production overseas.
Japan recently completed a TSMC factory in Kumamoto, while the US authorized US$11.6 billion in grants and loans for an ambitious TSMC project in Arizona. Germany has also joined the US and Japan in pursuing plans for a TSMC facility within its borders.
France and Germany last year signed science and technology cooperation agreements with Taiwan. France said it was cooperating in areas of research including quantum computing, artificial intelligence and green industries. Taiwan started the string of international pacts with the US, its key security and trade partner, in late 2020. Wu said similar arrangements with other countries are coming soon.
Both the Czech Republic and France are also looking to leverage TSMC’s growing presence in Europe to their advantage. Czech Representative to Taiwan David Steinke has been busy convincing TSMC suppliers to set up operations in his country, while his French peer Franck Paris has been pushing for more collaboration between Taiwan and CEA-Leti, a top chip research institute in Grenoble.
In related news, the production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is forecast to stage a rebound this year, rising by 13.6 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.17 trillion (US$128 billion) following a 16.7 percent fall to NT$3.67 trillion last year, the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) said on Tuesday.
The semiconductor industry is expected to make a comeback as inventory adjustments on global markets is coming to an end, MIC said.
It is also because global demand from end users has returned to growth, while emerging technologies such as automotive electronics, high-performance computing devices and artificial intelligence of things applications would push up demand further, it added.
The MIC expressed optimism over the pure-play wafer foundry business this year on the back of solid demand for advanced processes, forecasting production value would rise 15 percent to NT$2.4 trillion.
The production value of memorychip segment is expected to grow 20 percent to NT$152.2 billion this year, while the IC design and IC packaging and testing segments are expected to see their output increase 10 percent and 13 percent to NT$994 billion and NT$619 billion, respectively, it said.
Last year, the pure-play wafer foundry, IC design, memory chip, and IC packaging and testing segments saw their output drop 13.1 percent, 21.2 percent, 35.5 percent and 17.9 percent, respectively, it added.
SECTOR LEADER: TSMC can increase capacity by as much as 20 percent or more in the advanced node part of the foundry market by 2030, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to lead its peers in the advanced 2-nanometer process technology, despite competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, TrendForce Corp analyst Joanne Chiao (喬安) said. TSMC’s sophisticated products and its large production scale are expected to allow the company to continue dominating the global 2-nanometer process market this year, Chiao said. The world’s largest contract chipmaker is scheduled to begin mass production of chips made on the 2-nanometer process in its Hsinchu fab in the second half of this year. It would also hold a ceremony on Monday next week to
TECH CLUSTER: The US company’s new office is in the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan US chip designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) yesterday launched an office in Tainan’s Gueiren District (歸仁), marking a significant milestone in the development of southern Taiwan’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the Tainan City Government said in a statement. AMD Taiwan general manager Vincent Chern (陳民皓) presided over the opening ceremony for the company’s new office at the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City (沙崙智慧綠能科學城), a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan. Facilities in the new office include an information processing center, and a research and development (R&D) center, the Tainan Economic Development Bureau said. The Ministry
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
RSS