TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) in a new CBS interview said that China will "refrain" from invading Taiwan if its priority is "economic wellbeing."
In a "60 Minutes" segment on Taiwan released on Saturday (Oct. 9), Lesley Stahl asked Chang to explain the "Silicon Shield" or "Chip Shield" that many experts believe TSMC has created by cornering the global market on the most advanced semiconductors. Morris said that because TSMC provides a great deal of chips to the world, "maybe somebody will refrain from attacking it."
Likely referring to China's Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平), he asserted that if "that person's priority is for economic wellbeing, I think they will refrain from attacking." Stahl then asked Chang what the consequences would be if China tried to seize TSMC and nationalize it as a state-run company controlled by Beijing.
Chang said that this would entail a war and "everything would be destroyed."
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇), said that members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are advocating an invasion of Taiwan to seize TSMC and transform it into a company owned by the party.
Wang said that the CCP believes that if they are able to control TSMC, they would dominate the world chip supply and the U.S., Japan, and Europe would be at their mercy. However, he said this is naive because they would fail to gain access to the industrial secrets, human capital, and manufacturing process involved.