The West should deal diplomatically openly with Taiwan: some limited production creation in EU/US in exchange for international recognition and protection of Taiwan.
That would be incredibly dangerous for Taiwan because China would react if it felt the military balance would actually change.
More importantly, the EU/US are not really in a position to make a credible threat to China. Let’s say they China declares its intention to forcibly ‘reunify’ Taiwan. EU sanctions on China would be incredibly painful... for the EU. The EU just signed a new trade treaty with China which probably tells you all you need to know about that option.
So down to the US. If the US didn’t deter China by trying to change the facts around Taiwan when it was considerably weaker it’s hard to understand why the US would take that step now.
That’s kind of the problem here. There isn’t anything that would credibly deter China at all so taking moves to antagonize China don’t accomplish anything. Even if other countries felt threatened by this they would much prefer to engage in ‘buck passing’ rather than taking actions that would directly hurt them.
From the Taiwan point of view, allowing any competition is opening the door to trouble in the long run. Political winds come and go, but building semiconductor capacity can't be done overnight, so the longer they can keep their edge, the longer they'll be relatively safe from their neighbor to the north.
More importantly, the EU/US are not really in a position to make a credible threat to China. Let’s say they China declares its intention to forcibly ‘reunify’ Taiwan. EU sanctions on China would be incredibly painful... for the EU. The EU just signed a new trade treaty with China which probably tells you all you need to know about that option.
So down to the US. If the US didn’t deter China by trying to change the facts around Taiwan when it was considerably weaker it’s hard to understand why the US would take that step now.
That’s kind of the problem here. There isn’t anything that would credibly deter China at all so taking moves to antagonize China don’t accomplish anything. Even if other countries felt threatened by this they would much prefer to engage in ‘buck passing’ rather than taking actions that would directly hurt them.