The US President’s trip to Asia has reached a climax. The US-Japan-India-Australia “Quad Security Dialogue” (Quad) summit was held in Tokyo today. Biden talked more regarding Ukraine rather than Taiwan. However, Taiwan has long been determined to enter the “chip quadrilateral alliance”. It is worrying.
The White House administration proposed on March 28 to establish a four-party alliance consisting of the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, code-named Chip 4 in English, with the aim of removing China from the chip supply chain. The storm of the semiconductor industry”, the world is no longer flat, and the future will be full of destructive “American disasters”.
Preliminary information shows that companies participating in Chip 4 include Intel, Applied Materials, Micron, Broadcom, and Qualcomm in the United States; Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea; Toshiba, Renesas, Tokyo Electronics in Japan, and TSMC, MediaTek, and ASE in Taiwan. Industry insiders pointed out that the above list is equal to the whole of the global semiconductor industry, including almost all of the upper, middle and lower reaches. For example, the upstream is semiconductor equipment and materials, and Applied Materials and Tokyo Electronics have almost a monopoly in some important projects. The midstream is Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek. The four companies have super-first-class chip design capabilities. TSMC has advanced chip manufacturing capabilities and shares the world with Samsung in downstream production foundry and wafer manufacturing.
Looking at the lineup of the Chip 4 list is indeed scary. In fact, the US shot is so ruthless that there is no room for it. However, we need to add a footnote in front of it, that is, “if all the manufacturers on the list withdraw from China at the same time”, then it will be true. It makes China very uncomfortable. Why? South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix have been in China for a long time and have invested a lot of money. Samsung has built the only overseas memory chip production line in Xi’an, accounting for nearly half of Samsung’s output, which is 10% of global supply. SK Hynix has just announced The expansion of memory chips in Dalian, the situation of all other Chip 4 members is similar, what is the benefit of leaving China?
According to industry analysis, Chip 4 was established with only one goal—to kick China out—for semiconductor companies that not only utilize local talents, land, and equipment, but also open up a huge market in China, this is a move that will cost nothing—if you let it go The US will close its factories in China, which will inevitably reduce its production capacity by half, and at the same time give up the market to Chinese rival manufacturers who are catching up (due to the strong support of the Chinese government in recent years, it is estimated that China can control 25% of the world’s chip production capacity in the short term) ). The most terrible thing is that you also want Chip 4 members to open new factories in the United States at the same time, which will lead to repeated investment and excess production capacity. This is not only for the strong man to break his arm, but also for the strong man to jump into the sea. The analysis believes that “no matter what choice is made, these manufacturers will face enormous pressure, and Chip 4 will disrupt the entire industry.” The conclusion is that “the success rate of Chip 4 is not as high as imagined.”
No matter what everyone’s inference is, the four-party alliance in the United States will sprout up in various fields. As long as there is China, there will be alliances of various names. In the future, under the leadership of the United States, the pursuit of competitiveness by the United States and the West is not It is destructive power, and there is no room for win-win cooperation between China and the United States.
China plans to supply 70% of its chips independently by 2025. It seems that the goal has a chance to be achieved. The US Chip 4 is a little late. If so, the attack point will fall on its own people instead of China. I mentioned earlier that Taiwan’s participation in Chip 4 is worrying. In fact, I want to say that the worry is that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry will soon become a ghost because of Chip 4.
