Not a Travel Blog|Humor
Taiwan? Who Cares?
Note: Please be aware that I’m attempting humour with sarcasm, irony, subtle satire, and self-parody. I may have failed. So please tread with rubber boots on in case you don’t want to react to any crap you step on.
I am typing this at 3AM on a Monday while sipping on hot Taiwanese Oolong tea, and I know this twilight activity won’t be good for my work day starting in five hours. But it’s a topic that is very close to my heart.
I’ll be the first to admit that until five years ago, Taiwan was just another East Asian country that was home to less than a handful of friends who immigrated Canada or Australia. I had never visited and — sincere apologies to all my Taiwanese friends — perhaps never desired to visit the island due to a lack of knowledge and interest. That all changed with the pandemic.
At the time I began thinking about going to Taiwan, I was working in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Before the official admission by Beijing about the spread of a new SARS-like coronavirus, my intuition was telling me to look for alternative destinations to work in Asia, based on how things were going pear-shaped at my workplace.
Taiwan came up in our discussion, and my colleague, who had once lived there, mentioned some positive points about the “territory that must not be recognized as a country”.
Fast-forward nine months, I narrowly escaped a lockdown that would have trapped me inside PRC indefinitely — not an exaggeration. After a brief stay in Tokyo to sort out work visa documents, I departed for that non-nation destination that welcomed me in wide, warm and open arms.
Of course, I was required to do the mandatory 2-week quarantine at a designated hotel in the capital — Taipei 台北 — but I was comfortable enough, considering the circumstances and the alternative of being stuck on the other side of the Strait. Besides, Food Panda (think Uber Eats) were always on time delivering my favourite Taiwanese beef noodles and sweetened milk tea with tapioca pearls.
I spent that time continuing my Mandarin studies and memorizing zhuyin 注音, the Taiwanese phonetic system, which is entirely different from the romanized pinyin system used in PRC. I recommend anyone seriously about living in Taiwan to have a go at learning zhuyin and not just pinyin-based Mandarin because most Taiwanese I know are not too learned in pinyin. To them, it is more foreign than English.
Time Out
We interrupt this story with a purposely delayed disclaimer:
I am not going to discuss politics or make any statements of that nature. My use of the words Taiwan, PRC, and country or synonyms thereof are to spare readers — particularly those who are not familiar with Taiwan’s history and the situation between the two regions — that burden of digesting the complexities of geopolitical dialog. I do not want to get into a debate about jargon, like what defines a country.Hint: If I am traveling within the borders of my country as its citizen, I don’t need to show or carry my passport from one state/province to another. Next time you meet a Taiwanese citizen, ask them what they need when visiting the PRC. And that’s already too much information.
I have no interest in becoming a diplomat or activist either. I have good friends on both sides and will not take sides, unless we’re talking about the price of mangoes and pineapples. Taiwan wins hands-down.
This is also not intended as a lesson in Taiwan 101. Wikipedia will do a much more thorough job if I’m not getting commission for it. This is also not a tourist brochure about Taipei 101 either, which is not a country but a building — wait, I apologize — a skyscraper and formerly the tallest one in the world. It looks like a giant pineapple branch. (What is it with me and pineapples today?) But others might envision stacks of square buckets, a pagoda, or even a genetically-modified monster of a bamboo shoot.
So, what’s the fuss about Taiwan?
Point #1
Panda, pearls, and pineapples — though a tasty alliteration — doesn’t even tell us half the story. Agricultural products and tourism (symbolized by pagodas in this piece) together accounted for just 6% of Taiwan’s GDP in 2019 (pre-Covid). In stark contrast, the service industry covered around 60%. Manufacturing contributed a third. What we don’t see immediately is that the semiconductor industry — with the now well-known Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC taking the helm — claimed nearly a fifth of the total GDP. As an aside note, the company makes up about a third of the value on the Taiwanese stock market[1].
As a non-economist, do I care?
On one hand, no, I don’t. Why should I? I haven’t bought their stocks. But if I asked myself if I should care, how would I answer?
Shouldn’t we all care?
Well, let me ask you this: Do you need to use a personal computer, a tablet (iPad), a smartphone, an audio speaker, a microwave, a digital clock or watch, a commuter card with a microchip, and…
You understand where I’m going with this.
Is your life riding on silicon?
All of the devices mentioned above and plenty more contain electronic or integrated circuits — IC for short — that are fused onto a piece of semiconducting material, usually the element silicon (not silicone, a synthetic compound often found in rubber, adhesives, and intimate lubricants). We can thank Robert Noyce and Nobel laureate Jack Kilby for the prototypes upon which they built the world’s first monolithic IC, the ubiquitous microchip that basically defines our modern lives.
Please forgive the little history blurb there. My former students in Taiwan might be reading this someday, so I want to remind them that their iPhones don’t just come from Apple or pineapple trees.
Point #2
On this topic, my ideas align with those of Johnny Harris, an American investigative journalist and YouTuber, who recently made a comprehensive and engaging video about the microchip war between the US and China.
Getting straight to the plot, we need to understand that Taiwan is literally caught in the middle of this perceived war between the two giant economies. We can start to see why. Taiwan is essentially a key player in the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and America’s industries, military complex, and government all heavily rely on Taiwan’s capacity to supply them with superior quality microchips.
Obviously, the US economy is deeply entrenched in this semiconductor supply chain, and that consequently becomes a matter of national security for Uncle Sam.
Enter the PRC. For their part, they see Taiwan as one of their own provinces acting like a disobedient family member. And the parent’s patience is running out, especially when a foreign rival is perceived to be wedging into family ties and freely helping themselves to their rich chip dip.
So, too, is the PRC heavily invested in the semiconductor industry for ensuring its own national security as well as strengthening their economic and military might.
Again, in this post, I’m not taking sides, except for Taiwan who is in the middle of this tug-o-war. Hey, bro, I get how tough life is being so popular. Been there, too — not.
Seriously, though, just because we might be on the other side of the planet and don’t hear bomb sirens during incursions of Taiwan’s air space, it doesn’t mean we should ignore it. Taiwan is the world’s most important semiconductor supplier. This is a matter of our survival! Stand in solidarity!
How else am I going to get the next iPhone upgrade?
Thanks for reading!
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