The human factor spoils a lot of things.
In 2013, TSMC’s COO Chiang Shang-yi left Taiwan to actively participate in the rise of the Chinese semiconductor industry, and by 2016 he became an independent director of SMIC, which is now considered the flagship of the Chinese contract manufacturer. chip production. By 2019, the expat put his talents to good use as CEO of Wuhan-based HSMC, which failed to launch contract chip manufacturing, and Jiang Shang-Yi left the post in July 2020. By mid-December of that year, he tried to return to SMIC as vice chairman of the board of directors, but a year later he resigned and returned to Taiwan, publicly admitting that he had no desire to ever work in China again.
As CNA explains, Jiang Shang-Yi now allows himself to make critical statements about the political system of the PRC and the state of affairs in the local semiconductor industry. According to him, some features of the Chinese industrial management system frankly irritated him. Coming from Taiwan, he regularly faced wariness from China’s senior leadership when it came to making contacts to showcase SMIC’s successes. It got to the point that officials simply did not want to discuss with him directly issues related to the strategic development of the Chinese semiconductor industry.
Image source: CNA
As Jiang Shang-Yi added, he cannot predict with certainty whether the PRC will eventually be able to achieve self-sufficiency in the production of advanced semiconductor components, but he is convinced that the local industry lagged behind foreign ones even before the imposition of US sanctions, and on its own this factor is unlikely to play a decisive role in the future. At the same time, there is no doubt that US sanctions will slow down the development of the Chinese semiconductor industry.
