> China just needs to infiltrate Taiwan, which is geographically and culturally closer than the US.
Taiwan is China. Their official name is the Republic of China, and they're the remnants of the losers from the civil war that ran away go to an island and assimilated the locals. They still officially claim to be "the one and only real" China. For Americans, think it the Confederation ran away to Puerto Rico (assuming it used to be American before being occupied by Spain for a few years, before they went there) and was still there.
But today Taiwan is de facto independent. More and more of its people consider themselves Taiwanese, not "the real" China. Ideally, they should be left to self-determinate. Unfortunately China (PRC) considers itself to be the one and only real China too, and wants all of it. And it would consider Taiwan, with which it has a lot of bad blood (its former dictator literally preferred fighting the Communists over defending over the Japanese that were invading and committing mass atrocities; and he started all that with multiple purges of anyone left aligned), becoming "independent"/separate as a big humiliation. But they also know that any war will probably result in TSMC being sabotaged, so it might be all for nothing, economically. The question is will they risk it for "prestige".
This is a sever case of word nit-picking and misinterpretation.
When (western) people say China they mean "China (PRC)" _never_ Taiwan and pretending they don't isn't helping anyone.
And just because two countries have the same root in a civil war of a past now gone country which both claim to succeed doesn't mean they are the same country. Nor is today's China the same country as idk. China during the Ming dynasty. Yes they are political successor, yes they use the same name, but no they aren't politically the same country if we really nit-pick. I mean if they where then we also would need to treat Austia and Hungary as the same country. Or say the BRD (i.e. today's Germany) is the same country as the 3rd Reich, Weimar Repulic and the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation. They are all predecessors of Germany, Germany has to take responsibility for some of it's past predecessors, too. But they aren't the same country from a political nit-picking POV. Same for Russia and the UDSSR etc. etc.
And yes it's complicated as both countries still claim sovereignty over the territory of each other. But for Taiwan that is ironically more to appease China, i.e. dropping that claim would signal Taiwan trying to finally fully break away from China (PCR) which China would never allow.
Are the machines German or am I misremembering? The ones in the video were maybe 14nm and I vaguely recall the machines being manufactured in Germany and flown and assembled for TSMC.
I know, for example, that Motorola and Texas instruments know how to fab, and a dire shortage would be things like 680x0 and 6502 and 386 (see intel quark for the state of 386/486 processors a decade ago...) And ideally there'd be national RISC-V chips or something idk let's keep it fun.
The machines are Dutch, but there's more to it than just the machines (or we'd have cutting edge fabs in Germany, France, US, China, South Korea, and all around).
The bad blood is mutual. Mao's armies stood aside while the NRA tried to hold off the Japanese, with the sole intention of weakening the NRA. They could have prevented several blood baths.
Chiang Kai-Shek's policy was to prioritize the fight against the Communists over the fight against the Japanese. He only agreed to a united front with the Communists against Japan after he was kidnapped by some of his own generals, who forced him to talk with the Communists.[0]
No. As the sibling comment points out, Chiang ignored the Japanese invasion until he was forced by his generals to take action. After that the much smaller Communist forces (diminished after multiple purges and military campaigns by Chiang's Nationalists) fought a guerilla war against Japan, which is the only thing they could do with the forces at their disposal. Meanwhile Chiang had a proper army, and as such fought proper battles against the Japanese.
Taiwan is China. Their official name is the Republic of China, and they're the remnants of the losers from the civil war that ran away go to an island and assimilated the locals. They still officially claim to be "the one and only real" China. For Americans, think it the Confederation ran away to Puerto Rico (assuming it used to be American before being occupied by Spain for a few years, before they went there) and was still there.
But today Taiwan is de facto independent. More and more of its people consider themselves Taiwanese, not "the real" China. Ideally, they should be left to self-determinate. Unfortunately China (PRC) considers itself to be the one and only real China too, and wants all of it. And it would consider Taiwan, with which it has a lot of bad blood (its former dictator literally preferred fighting the Communists over defending over the Japanese that were invading and committing mass atrocities; and he started all that with multiple purges of anyone left aligned), becoming "independent"/separate as a big humiliation. But they also know that any war will probably result in TSMC being sabotaged, so it might be all for nothing, economically. The question is will they risk it for "prestige".