The founder of the world’s biggest chipmaker, Morris Chang (張忠謀), on Thursday said that increasing tensions over technology between the US and China would slow down the global chip industry.
Chang, who founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in the late 1980s, made the remarks at an event hosted by the Asia Society in New York.
The company has helped Taiwan become the world’s leading producer of advanced chips.
Photo: AFP
US officials earlier this month enacted another set of export restrictions that clamped down on what chips and chipmaking tools can be exported to China after Huawei Technologies Co (華為) last month showed off a phone with a new domestically manufactured chip.
Chang, 92, said that cutting off China’s chip industry from the rest of the world would affect other players beyond China.
“I think that decoupling will ultimately slow down everybody. Of course, the immediate purpose is to slow China down and I think it’s doing that,” he said.
The effects of such decoupling were already becoming clear, and many previous economic conflicts between established and emerging powers had ended in wars, Chang said.
“It looks like counties are mad at each other, that worries me,” said Chang, who characterized the geopolitical tension between the US and China as an existing power confronting an emerging power.
“Our only hope is it doesn’t lead to anything even more serious,” Chang said.
He also praised the system of higher education in the US, adding his optimism about the country as TMSC invests in chipmaking facilities in Arizona.
Born and raised in China, Chang built a career in the US, where he become a naturalized citizen in 1962, before being recruited to build the chip industry in Taiwan.
He is now regarded as a legendary figure in the industry that is caught in the middle of the geopolitical tension.
“I really think this country, which is my country, [the] United States, is still the hope of the world, that’s in spite of all the problems we are having,” Chang said.
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