China’s economy depends on exporting to the world, as it will never have enough domestic demand to meet domestic supply. If the global economy crashes from an oil price shock, China goes down with it.
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Power is better than money though. China is communist in name only now, but they could extract huge concessions out of the rest of the world right now if they wanted to.
They could, but they’ll wait, they’re not ready yet. Until then, they’ll continue to electrify their economy, build out domestic energy supply, rebuild their oil inventories from Russia and Iran when able (at below market prices, dominated in yuan, avoiding dollar systems and sanctions) and prepare to take Taiwan as the US continues to weaken itself.
If Taiwan toasts TSMC when that happens, well, that’s part of what China is rapidly building out their domestic chip industry. China will then have a monopoly on that chip production besides what can be produced in the US and Europe, and have achieved reunification. And who is going to stop them? Nobody, based on the evidence and current trajectories.
>If Taiwan toasts TSMC when that happens ...
You can bet that all TSMC chip factories in Taiwan have strategic installs of explosives just for this scenario, China will get nothing, and the US has multiple TSMC chip factories now and will gladly accept Taiwan victims.
As mentioned, they won’t need the fabs. They’re spending tens of billions of dollars to advance their own vertical chip industry.
The US just pulled temporary status from hundreds of thousands of Hatians, so I wouldn’t be so confident what the future looks like for Taiwanese refugees in the US.
TLDR China is going to build whatever chip technology they need to accomplish their technology and geopolitical goals. They have the resources, the will, and the time.
China’s EUV Lithography Progress: Parsing Signal From Noise - https://thediplomat.com/2026/07/chinas-euv-lithography-progr... - July 2nd, 2026
China begins mass production of homegrown DUV chipmaking tools - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076684 - July 2026
China Tells Telecom Carriers to Phase Out Foreign Chips by 2027 (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48767466 - July 2026
US tells ASML it is concerned China may have top chip tool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48602369 - June 2026
The US has a long history of importing scientists, dating back to Vernon von Braun during WWII. It's sad, it's because Hatians aren't TSMC engineers.
The US also has a recent history of making it so hostile that they’re exporting scientists to China, Europe, and Singapore (not exhaustive). Hard to predict the future of who will be welcomed, if they’ll be welcomed, for how long, and if they even want to come to the US. There are many better places to go after all.
Physics PhDs Are Leaving the US at a Record-high Rate - https://www.aip.org/fyi/physics-phds-are-leaving-the-us-at-a... - August 4th, 2026
Top researchers leave USA for the Netherlands - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816003 - July 2026 (260 comments)
Pushed by Trump policies, top U.S. battery scientist is moving to Singapore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47985353 - May 2026 (37 comments)
Europe to burned American scientists: We’ll take you in - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906102 - May 2026 (12 comments)
Bad bet, wanking about TW blowing up their golden goose fabs is US hopium/threat - literally US Army War College insinuated US would blow up fabs to deny PRC while TW politicians/defense minister retorted under no circumstances was that acceptable nor would they evacuate semi talent to US before women and children. Not that they could under PRC blockade/quarantine. The entire notion is fundamentally stupid, TW with fabs is at least useful to PRC and sustains wealth after, or they'd be subsistence pineapple farmers. US has 0 TSMC factories that would operate for long with TW semi sole supplier, Arizonal would grind to halt until US reshores every piece of semi supply chain which even CHIPS ACT didn't pretend US was capable of. Only PRC pursuing end to end full vertical semi integration. TW goes byebye in next few years, PRC will likely be capable of making wholey indigenize 7+nm while entire western semi is fucked because they lost TW inputs. Now consider PRC land based munitions can make anything on TW go byebye in 7 minutes, reality is PRC has maximum semi leverage during war while US has semi leverage during peacetime (lawfare/export controls etc).