TSMC warns China… If Taiwan invaded, world order would collapse.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Visits Malaysia [사진=AP 연합뉴스]

As the US-China conflict escalates over whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will visit Taiwan, Liu De-yin, chairman of TSMC, Taiwan, the world’s largest foundry, said, “If China invades Taiwan, it will not only cause economic chaos, but also cause world order. It will also collapse.”

Chairman Liu said in an interview with CNN on the 1st, “Since the semiconductor manufacturing process relies on real-time connectivity with the US, Europe, and Japan, if China attacks Taiwan, the TSMC plant will stop.” This statement comes from a situation in which the tension between the US and China is intensifying ahead of Chairman Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on the night of the 2nd.

“If TSMC’s production is halted due to the invasion, economic chaos will be inevitable for China, which also depends on TSMC for 10% of its semiconductor chips,” he said.

“We must learn a lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war has created a scenario in which the West, Ukraine and Russia are all defeated,” he said.

TSMC Chairman Ryu De-in [사진=EPA 연합뉴스 ]

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a Japanese economic media, also estimated on the 2nd through data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (WB) that if China invaded Taiwan, it would cost $2.61 trillion (about 3409 trillion won) in the aftermath. Reportedly, it could cause losses to the global economy.

Sanctions against China, which have built an economy ten times that of Russia, are inevitably a double-edged sword.

With Pelosi’s upcoming visit to Taiwan known to be imminent, Taiwan has raised its readiness posture in case of a Chinese military provocation. Pelosi, who is on a tour of Asia, will arrive in Taipei, Taiwan on the night of the 2nd, to visit President Tsai Ing-wen the next day, local media reported.

Chairman Pelosi, who departed from Singapore and arrived in Malaysia, the second country to visit on the morning of the 2nd, will visit Korea on the 4th and meet with Speaker of the National Assembly Kim Jin-pyo.

By Kang Kyung-joo, reporter at Hankyung.com [e-mail]