INTERVIEW/Taiwan key partner to U.S. chip leadership: Scholar

Washington, Feb. 10 (CNA) Taiwan is playing a key role in the United States' reindustrialization and maintaining its lead over China in the semiconductor industry, an Asian studies scholar said Monday.

In an interview in Washington D.C., Michael Cunningham, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's China, Asian Studies Center, told CNA that the cooperation between Taiwan and the United States was "perfect."

Cunningham said the cooperation between the U.S. and Taiwan in the semiconductor industry is important to the U.S. in two ways.

The first is that China is no longer able to obtain advanced chips from Taiwan, meaning that they need to develop, design and manufacture their own chips, which will rely on heavy investment and compensation from their government.

As long as it works with Taiwan, "the U.S. will always keep ahead of China," Cunningham said.

On the other hand, Cunningham said that the United States needs to revitalize its manufacturing sector and boost "reindustrialization" in the automobile and artificial intelligence (AI) industries, for which the demand for semiconductors will keep increasing.

Taiwan has the largest and most complete semiconductor industry cluster, enabling it to produce inexpensive chips of "the best quality," he said.

Cunningham said that this cooperation model, in which the United States develops and designs chips for Taiwan to manufacture is "perfect."

Constructing a chip fab is very expensive, but Taiwan is a trustworthy partner for U.S. semiconductor companies to invest wholly into development, he said.

As for strengthening cooperation, both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. wish that Taiwan can help with America's reindustrialization, while the public may wish that more chips could be manufactured in the United States, Cunningham said.

As the industry cluster is located in Taiwan, bilateral coordination between the two countries' governments and businesses is needed to find a way for Taiwan's companies to support America's semiconductor manufacturing, he said.

Cunningham added that China cannot currently wage a war against Taiwan, nor would it dare to.

As long as the United States keeps supporting Taiwan, China will not be able to attack Taiwan in the future, he added.

Taiwan is a very safe place with stable politics, without civil unrest or terrorism, he said.

On the other hand, the semiconductor supply chain involves many countries that specific equipment or components are dependent on. Any issue in any of these countries will affect the whole supply chain, he said.

Regarding "The American Case for Taiwan," the report that Cunningham published in March 2024, he said it was written to inform the American public of Taiwan's role in geopolitics and the global economy.

He noted in the report that Taiwan is the world's number one in manufacturing many materials and components, such as high-functioning screws for cars and airplanes.

Severe disruption in the supply chain would ensue if these products were suddenly in shortage, he said.

"I wrote this report because, of course, I support Taiwan. However, I did not write the report for Taiwan, but for the U.S. -- this is how important Taiwan is," he said.