TSMC, the world's largest professional integrated circuit manufacturing service company, is operated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. But when he was nervous, the current chairman Liu Deyin publicly claimed that "no one can use force to control TSMC" and expressed resistance to peaceful reunification.
This statement once again hit the semiconductor industry on the island of Taiwan, and also reflected Liu Deyin's distrust of the mainland system. So, why does Liu Deyin have such an attitude towards the mainland?
How will TSMC respond?
In the upsurge of reform and opening up, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. came into being in 1987 and made great contributions to Taiwan's prosperity. Liu Deyin, now at the helm of TSMC, his position is due to the promotion of the previous chairman Zhang Zhongmou.
Zhang Zhongmou is not only the founder of TSMC, but also the previous chairman, and his experience at Harvard University has had a profound impact on him. He has loved reading and various competitions since he was a child, and when the American economy was booming, he took three years to obtain a master's degree in Massachusetts.
Such an education and vision make him destined not to be satisfied with being an ordinary "worker". After graduating, he began his semiconductor journey at Sivania.
Zhang Zhongmou, a newcomer to the semiconductor industry, has made great efforts to familiarize himself with the industry, including reading a lot, doing experiments, and learning from industry experts.
After three and a half years at the company, he left for a number of reasons and went to a semiconductor company in Texas to continue his research career. This became the starting point of Zhang Zhongmou's career, and he helped Texas Instruments solve a technical problem with his own technology, and thus became a formal manager.
With the support of Texas Instruments, he earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University and became a Chinese student with experience at three top universities. These experiences provided strong support for his later founding of TSMC.
In 1987, Zhang Zhongmou, who had accumulated rich experience and technology, responded to Taiwan's call and established his own TSMC. Even though he is 56 years old, his optimism about the development of the semiconductor industry is unmatched.
He even personally traveled around the world to find great talents to serve TSMC. Liu Deyin is the first person he personally selected as the founder of TSMC. Liu Deyin was born in 1954 and is a native of Taiwan.
He showed excellent grades since he was a child, and was admitted to the best school in Taipei City in high school, and later was admitted to National Taiwan University through his own efforts, and got the opportunity to study abroad.
I have to mention that Liu Deyin did catch up with the critical moment of Taiwan's economic development, and many people chose to go abroad for further study at this time, providing strong support for the development of Taiwan's science and technology field, and Liu Deyin is also one of them.
However, perhaps it was this kind of Westernized education that planted a "seed" in Liu Deyin's heart, and his thinking underwent earth-shaking changes. He did not have an in-depth understanding of the motherland, so he was more inclined to the Western economic model and educational development in his heart.
Among the students studying in Taiwan, Liu Deyin is not a special case, after graduation, he originally planned to develop a career at Intel Corporation. However, the call of Taiwan** made him choose to return to his hometown Taipei.
At that time, Taiwan's economy was developing rapidly, and new enterprises were springing up. Under the arrangement of **, Liu Deyin entered TSMC as deputy director of engineering. Although he has been appreciated by the higher-ups, he has not yet attracted Zhang Zhongmou's attention.
It was not until 1995, two years after joining the company, that he led the establishment of the first eight-inch chip factory on Taiwan Island, which officially entered Zhang Zhongmou's field of vision. Under Zhang Zhongmou's careful training, Liu Deyin was quickly promoted, from an ordinary deputy engineer to the deputy general manager of TSMC's South Plant.
In just a few years, Liu Deyin was successfully promoted to the core member of TSMC and became the best person carefully cultivated by Zhang Zhongmou. Zhang Zhongmou himself is a person who is greatly influenced by Western education and has radical ideas, although he is calm and rarely expresses his views publicly, he has made it clear that he is not optimistic about the development of the chip industry in Chinese mainland, because he believes that the chip industry in the mainland still has a lot of room for development in the next few years.
Now, TSMC has handed over Liu Deyin, who also has a bad impression of the mainland, which undoubtedly sets up a barrier for the relationship between the mainland and TSMC. TSMC has also been greatly affected due to the complex relationship between Taiwan and the United States.
Since Liu Deyin became the chairman of TSMC in 2017, the completely different style of acting and the complex international situation from Zhang Zhongmou have pushed TSMC to the forefront again and again.
The particularity of the chip makes it irreplaceable and strategic, which makes the United States always eyeing TSMC. What's more, TSMC's market capitalization has surpassed Intel Corp. to become the world's largest semiconductor company, which is a very attractive target in any country.
According to reports, the United States has asked TSMC to stop the mainland's ** chips, which TSMC resolutely opposes. After all, aside from the appearance of chips, TSMC is essentially a commercial company, and the mainland market is its second largest market, so TSMC will naturally not easily give up this profit point.
However, anything that involves politics gets complicated. Despite rejecting the request of the United States, TSMC is also in a state of being controlled by others because the precision instruments and equipment required for the production of chips are imported from the United States, and it has been somewhat affected by the United States.
Moreover, although Zhang Zhongmou was once the chairman of TSMC, his stake is less than 8%, which is a tiny percentage for the huge TSMC company.
So, who is TSMC's largest shareholder? An escrow account under Citibank in the United States, but this escrow does not have actual control. Still, actual control of TSMC is in Zhang's own hands.
However, this has brought huge limitations to TSMC. Especially since the 2016 Sino-US war, the United States has been trying to suppress China in all possible areas and limit the development of our country.
And the chip industry, due to its relatively weak position, has naturally become a breakthrough point in the eyes of the United States. After Taiwan rejected the US demand, the United States continued to exert pressure on Taiwan and went to Taiwan to conduct "inspections" under various pretexts, which not only disrupted the normal life of the Taiwan people but also seriously infringed upon China's sovereignty.
China has also issued statements expressing its opposition many times, but the United States still goes its own way, and their behavior has caused an uproar in the world. Some people are in favor of it, and naturally there are people who oppose it.
Zhang Zhongmou or Liu Deyin has never publicly expressed their opinions, which can't help but give rise to all kinds of speculation. How will this international game end?
The chip market in the United States is ambitious, trying to monopolize the market by forcing TSMC to build a factory in Arizona, USA. It may have been covered up before, but in 2020, it has directly torn off the disguise, asked TSMC to build a factory in the United States, and successfully persuaded TSMC to invest $12 billion to build a wafer factory with 5nm technology in Arizona.
The factory will be put into operation in 2024, and TSMC will have to send its main force to the United States again, which not only means that the Asian chip industry may be hit, but also will reduce Asia's stickiness to the chip market.
The person in charge of our country responded that he did not comment on the production and commercial layout of any enterprise, believing that cooperation can achieve a win-win situation, and there is no way out of decoupling or cutting. The example of Foxconn's failure illustrates this point.
TSMC plans to build a factory in the United States and provide job opportunities, but it has repeatedly changed and even gone to court. Although the factory has not yet been built, the United States has put forward more excessive requirements, requiring TSMC to hand over core customer information.
The Taiwanese people are dissatisfied with this and raise ** against the authorities.
TSMC is a semiconductor company, and its core customer information is very important, including trade secrets. The recent U.S. request has upset TSMC and some other companies because it means their information could be monitored.
Samsung Group, another semiconductor company, has also come under pressure from the United States. TSMC's chairman, Liu Deyin, needs to deal with this issue, balancing U.S. demands and corporate opposition, but not allowing TSMC to be completely dependent on the U.S.
Although TSMC is greatly influenced by the United States, Liu Deyin still maintains ties with the mainland market, because the mainland is TSMC's second largest customer, and if it loses the mainland, it will cause huge losses to TSMC.
However, this situation is favorable for China, because TSMC makes money from China, but at the same time it opens factories in the United States, tilting its focus towards the United States.
If there is a conflict between China and the United States, such a situation will be very unfavorable to China. In his public remarks, Liu Deyin claimed that China needs TSMC and hopes that the international community will not discriminate against Taiwan.
His remarks show that China does business and does not need other people's opinions. If even this point is questioned, then the so-called "democratic freedoms" may just be a joke.
Taiwan Province's recent "visit" by Pelosi has triggered a global whirlpool, confirming that the wolf ambitions of the United States are still rampant. Liu Deyin's statement was even more chilling, claiming that the mainland could not take over Taiwan's economy, nor could it control TSMC by force.
However, Liu Deyin's speech at this time was really unwise. The great cause of the reunification of the motherland is imperative, and it is by no means something that a semiconductor company can stop, and this move may lay hidden dangers for TSMC in the future.
But in any case, if Taiwan is recovered in the future, the loss of TSMC may be a major loss for our country. However, the mainland's chip industry is developing, and it is expected to achieve "chip independence" and no longer be controlled by others.