The struggles of China’s chip industry predate US sanctions, and “people” are the country’s “biggest hurdle,” former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) co-chief operating officer Chiang Shang-yi (蔣尚義) said in an interview.
Speaking on Era TV’s Taiwan Insights on Sunday, Chiang, who worked in China for several years after leaving TSMC in 2013, said that while Chinese firms might be capable of solving the technical aspects of research and development, he found during his time there that “the biggest hurdle was always people.”
Regarding his dealings with “political leaders” when serving as vice chairman of Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), Chiang said he felt that he was “not trusted.”
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
“SMIC is headquartered in Shanghai, but has factories in Beijing. I was asked by then-SMIC chairman Zhou Zixue (周子學) to fly to Beijing when a high-ranking official wished to visit the factories, but twice I was shut out of the meetings because they only allowed People’s Republic of China citizens to attend,” Chiang said.
Zhou had tried to iron out the issue by setting up personal meetings with the Beijing official for Chiang, but “it was not a pleasant feeling,” he said.
With regards to US sanctions against Beijing, Chiang said they would slow down the development of China’s chip industry, but it remained to be seen if the pressure would end up forcing chipmakers to stand on their own feet.
“We do not know whether self-reliance could be achieved [in China’s semiconductor industry], but one also has to note that China has been developing the industry for more than 10 years and the US sanctions are actually very recent,” Chiang said.
China’s chip industry was “not that successful either when it was not restricted,” he added.
Chiang was first recruited by SMIC, China’s top foundry, as an independent director in 2016, before leaving to take up the position of CEO at Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Corp (HSMC, 武漢弘芯) in 2019.
He left HSMC in July 2020 and returned to SMIC in mid-December 2020 to take over as vice chairman, but left China a year later.
After leaving SMIC in 2021, he told local media in Taiwan that he would not work in China again.
Chiang in November last year joined Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) as its chief strategy officer to integrate the resources of its semiconductor subsidiaries. In June, he was appointed to chair ShunSin Technology Holdings Ltd (訊芯科技), a semiconductor arm of Hon Hai that specializes in offering system-in-a-package modules and optical transceivers.
Additional reporting by Lisa Wang
AI REVOLUTION: The event is to take place from Wednesday to Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s halls 1 and 2 and would feature more than 1,100 exhibitors Semicon Taiwan, an annual international semiconductor exhibition, would bring leaders from the world’s top technology firms to Taipei this year, the event organizer said. The CEO Summit is to feature nine global leaders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), Applied Materials Inc, Google, Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc, Microsoft Corp, Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre and Marvell Technology Group Ltd, SEMI said in a news release last week. The top executives would delve into how semiconductors are positioned as the driving force behind global technological innovation amid the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the organizer said. Among them,
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a