Not the OP, but I imagine there's at least some market watchers who assume the PRC will gobble up Taiwan sooner rather than later. Intel seems like a poor alternative, but if it's all you had...
A lot of thing, China's economy and the country itself, might be numbered if they decide to invade Taiwan.
This isn't like Ukraine where there was an implicit agreement that nobody will send actual troops into Ukraine to fight its war. If Taiwan is invaded, the US will send its own troops. And if the US is involved, the EU is likely involved too. China is big but not enough to challenge the US militarily. Not yet.
It would take an absolute madman to make China go to war just for Taiwan.
The problem with China is that it's been building its army up steadily for quite a while, and it's quite large, but also probably expensive.
And, if you've got a big army (and navy), just sitting around doing nothing.... what are you going to do with it?
The army themselves must be itching for a fight, just to justify their existence. Maybe that's why they're trying to hot things up in Bhutan.
It’s in nobody’s interest to start a war over this. It’s all fluff.
There’s a cottage industry of war hawks who sell various narratives about China to rile up the mostly republican base.
My favorite is Gordon Chang, who a few years ago was predicting that the Chinese communist party and state was going to collapse and start some sort of war. Now the Chinese are beating the USA in space and are about to invade Taiwan.
It’s all stupid. Semiconductors are a high risk capital intensive business. Just like Verizon bet and lost on mmWave 5G and is getting its butt kicked by TMobile, Intel bet on 450mm wafers and lost.
Strategically, they’re in a recoverable position. TSMC is at capacity and needs to invest billions and execute to maintain their lead. Cloud is challenging their margins, but their relationship with Microsoft gives them leverage.
People said this about Russia for the longest time and were wrong. Dmitri Alperovitch predicted the Russian Invasion 3 months before it happened and he’s predicting a hearty chance that China will attempt to invade Taiwan in 2025 - 2030. If you don’t have similar credo about past events like that, then I wouldn’t trust your opinion over his.
Russia isn’t China. People may have disagreed over the timing, but the Russians already seized crimea and interfered with US elections to advance their Ukraine policy.
Russia is a declining petrostate. China is the world’s factory. Antagonizing their biggest trading partners won’t be a winning strategy for many years, if ever.
It's very revisionist to act like the prevailing wisdom was that a full invasion was coming. Please cite your assessment or prediction about the upcoming Russian invasion at least a month before it happened, since it was so clear.
We’re talking on a message board. Nobody here has “geopolitical cred”
You can be pedantic about Nostradamus like predictions. But if you were surprised that Russia invaded Ukraine, your threshold for surprise is low. After all, they annexed a big part of the country a few years ago.
> But if you were surprised that Russia [China] invaded Ukraine [Taiwan], your threshold for surprise is low.
After all, they claim it's their territory, won't disavow claiming it through force, dissuade other countries from even visiting it, regularly perform military drills around it, and annexed Tibet while people today were still alive.
Gordon Chang is a favorite straw man for Chinese nationalists. They basically just mention him as a summation of all western reporting on China.
My favorite is Andrew Left, who shouted the alarm on EverGrande in 2016 and then was fined for it in Hong along because he obviously didn’t understand the Chinese market.
> Now the Chinese are beating the USA in space and are about to invade Taiwan.
China isn’t beating the USA in space by even the most pro Chinese nationalist measurements.
Taiwan and China are nowhere near the Ukrainian situation.
Also TSMC is planning to open outside Taiwan soon.