China tweets satellite photos of Taiwan's critical Hsinchu chip hub in pressure-ratcheting political stunt — 'where all the world’s advanced foundry IP is created,' highest concentration of chipmaking facilities in the world

On Friday night, China’s embassy in Washington posted a familiar message to X: “There is but one China in the world.” But this time, the predictable rhetoric from China came with a glossy photo carousel that included a sweeping aerial shot of Hsinchu Science Park, the epicenter of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

As analyst Patrick Moorhead highlighted in a response to the embassy’s post, Hsinchu includes TSMC’s Fabs 12A, 12B, 20, 3, 5, 8, 2 and the Advanced Backend Fab 1, all crammed into the park’s core, along with the company’s Global R&D Center, “where all the world’s advanced foundry IP is created,” he wrote, pointing out that chips for Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, and even Intel depends on this small square of land.

While the post didn’t mention chips directly, it didn’t have to. Hsinchu is home to TSMC’s original fabs, the headquarters of MediaTek and UMC, and key government agencies that oversee Taiwan’s space and chip strategy. There is no other place on Earth with the same concentration of cutting-edge logic process nodes. This is where the GPUs that train AI models begin, where desktop and server CPUs are etched, and where bleeding-edge silicon IP is designed. Expand the embedded tweet below to see the images.

This isn’t the first time that Beijing has tried to remind the world of Taiwan’s vulnerability. In recent months, Chinese naval forces have staged simulated blockades in the Taiwan Strait, inspecting commercial cargo ships and raising fears of a chokepoint disruption. The Trans-Pacific Express Cable System, which directly connects Taiwan to the U.S. East Coast, Japan, South Korea, and China, was damaged by a Cameroon-flagged freighter, Shunxing39, earlier this year, prompting Taiwan to increase legal penalties for damaging undersea cables.

According to a recent special report from Reuters, U.S. officials have begun modeling worst-case scenarios for the Bashi Channel, a key shipping lane essential to Taiwanese exports like advanced wafers and electronics, in response to recent incursions.

In September, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Taiwan’s chip sector the “single greatest point of failure for the world economy” because 99% of high-performance chips are manufactured there, and back in June 2021, a White House review warned that even a temporary hit to TSMC output could ripple through everything from datacenters to defense.

China’s embassy didn’t need to mention any of that directly. A single photo of Hsinchu was enough at a moment while tensions remain high.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.