Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Joe Biden during their four-hour meeting on Wednesday that Taiwan was the biggest, most dangerous issue in U.S.-China ties, a senior U.S. official told reporters.
The official quoted Xi as saying China’s preference was for peaceful “reunification” with the Chinese-claimed island of Taiwan, but that he went on to talk about conditions in which force could be used.
Xi was trying to indicate that China is not preparing for a massive invasion of Taiwan, but that does not change the U.S. approach, the official said.
“President Xi … underscored that this was the biggest, most potentially dangerous issue in U.S.-China relations, laid out clearly that, you know, their preference was for peaceful reunification but then moved immediately to conditions that the potential use of force could be utilized,” the senior U.S. official told reporters, referring to Xi’s comments on Taiwan.
Biden responded by assuring Xi that Washington was determined to maintain peace in the region.
“President Biden responded very clearly that the long-standing position of the United States was … determination to maintain peace and stability,” the official said.
“President Xi responded: look, peace is … all well and good but at some point we need to move towards resolution more generally,” the official said.
Not totally true. There’s a reason why TSMC chips have better yields and efficiency than Samsung chips, even though they are on the same nodes and also use ASML machines. AFAIK, you still need to develop a know-how to build good chips, and ASML’s tools enable that, true, but they don’t know the rest of the process to make that happen. Neither does Apple nor other chip designers, and that’s worth value.
Without the tools, the knowhow is worthless. Apart from that, Taiwan say they have made sure TSMC will never fall into the hands of China.
I’m not disputing it will cause major disruption in western supplies too, obviously neither Samsung or Intel will be able to replace TSMC immediately, they are behind both on quality and volume, and they are the only existing alternatives to high end process manufacturing. Apple doesn’t know shit in that regard, they are not a manufacturer, and TSMC is not a chip designer.