China

Out of all of American anti-china pro-war talking points, this is the most insidious one that I have heard floating around.

The UNITED STATES is the one that sees TSMC as their core interest in Taiwan, hence they created immense pressure on TSMC to open a branch in Arizona, promising all kinds of benefits, but once there they revealed their actual policies will practically force TSMC to provide its trade secrets to the US government.

To the Chinese people, Taiwan is a lost piece of land and a lost group of people that is separated by a civil war where the mainland has long since won by sheer effort of being bigger and basically the recognized the government of China. There are strong emotions, poems, songs dreaming about reunification, for decades (from both mainland side AND Taiwanese side, btw). Whether one accepts the validity of their perspective or not is fair, but the fact is those desires are based on wanting to right a historical wrong, a period of humiliation where the country was broken apart, and wanting a lost relative back into the family fold.

The idea that that China wants to reunite for ECONOMIC reasons is sheer absurdity. And viscerally infuriating. A disgusting demonization, honestly. As though a China that can put a space station up into space by itself, after being barred by Americans from participating in any American based space initiatives, will have trouble to produce chips of any size in a couple of years now that there is the need to do so.