This mitigates only half of the problem - yes, China won't be able to use the factory for themselves, but if you take a closer look at the list of the largest TSMC customers from the article those are mostly American companies. Destroying TSMC factory would hurt the US disproportionately more than it would China. Which might matter in the current China-US trade war.
Also "planting bombs at the factory" scenario is one of the reasons why all armies in the world have spies and special forces - you send your special ops soldiers before your main attack to take control of the facility and prevent initiating the self-destruction protocol. I'm not saying it always works, but China can take a calculated risk here, since they win either way.
And what would China win exactly? Even if they somehow miraculously manage to keep TSMC up and running they would not be able to export anything produced there to other countries and permanently loose access to all western IP.
And the sanctions from US and other countries would massively outweigh any perceived economic benefits from invading Taiwan.
Any scenario where China invades Taiwan, global sanctions and embargoes are already happening. Blowing up the wests high end chip fab capacity for a minimum of 2-3 years at that point is a bonus.
Taiwan won’t necessarily care, but intelligence agencies of every other country undoubtably would. And putting proactive mines in a facility like that would be noticed.
Why wouldn’t those people just move to different countries? I’m sure that most countries in the west would be very happy to receive large number of highly qualified engineers for free.
China can’t really close them in labour camps and expect them to be very productive...
I’m sure it would paralyze everyone economically, since China would just end up with a bunch of ruined factories with no staff and no way to replace most of the machines needed for fabrication (which are made in other countries).
simple replicating everything TSMC is doing in China would be several magnitudes cheaper (if you factor in the economic outfall of a military invasion)
I’m sure they are already duplicating (or attempting to) everything in China. They’d need to stop new research and development though to not always be a few (or more) steps behind. Blowing up the fab and putting all the engineers in a prison camp would do quite well at accomplishing that, no?
> it would paralyze everyone except them economically
It would cause a lot of economic damage to PRC too.
If they attack Taiwan, definitely the US and its allies will retaliate. They'd likely place trade sanctions on PRC which would damage much of it export businesses. They might even consider a naval blockade of PRC.
A naval blockade of a nuclear power probably leads to a nuclear war.
Taking Taiwan is a giant pain in the ass for China which is why it is unlikely to happen in any foreseeable future (e.g. 30-50 years). Honestly, it seems like China despite its words sometimes is perfectly content with the current status quo so long as Taiwan doesn't try to foment political unrest on the mainland.
> A naval blockade of a nuclear power probably leads to a nuclear war.
Suppose PRC tried to blockade Taiwan, US might respond by trying to blockade PRC. In that scenario, what does PRC do? Nuke US? Try to work around the US blockade? Come to negotiating table?
I don't think "Nuke US" would be at the top of list of strategies for PRC. Nuke US, US nukes you back, game over. Not a winning strategy.
The PRC could survive a nuclear exchange with anyone except the USA or Russia, as both went completely overboard during the cold war arms race. Both superpowers have been constantly disarming since the 90s and there's still an order of magnitude difference in number of nukes between them and the rest of the world.
The current plan seems to be a takeover from within, using Chinese sponsored agents and social movements.
It probably won’t let them march troops on the island for a long time - if ever - but I bet they’re getting plenty of intelligence and trade secrets from it.
Also "planting bombs at the factory" scenario is one of the reasons why all armies in the world have spies and special forces - you send your special ops soldiers before your main attack to take control of the facility and prevent initiating the self-destruction protocol. I'm not saying it always works, but China can take a calculated risk here, since they win either way.