The powerful semiconductor industry that protects Taiwan from China

Taiwan, only 180 kilometers from the People's Republic of China, lives looking at its eternal enemy with which it shares the same language and the same ancestors, but a different political regime. On one side of the strait, Beijing leads a communist China of 1.3 billion inhabitants under the rule of a single party. On the other, Taipei leads a democratic republic with 23 million inhabitants. The dispute between the two countries since 1949 - which intensified in recent days with the visit to the island of US Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi - has deprived Taiwan of access to international organizations and granted it an indefinite status and limited international recognition. But, after years of hostilities and tensions, Taiwan has a strategy that helps its national survival and with which it has managed to ward off the specter of a Chinese invasion: the so-called "silicon shield", a key industry on which it depends from the manufacture of fighter planes to solar panels, video games or medical instruments.

2022-08-11T05:03:56+00:00
Duration: 06:00