TSMC wants to build new plant in China

But while some global chip makers have struck joint ventures with Chinese companies, TSMC’s new plant will be wholly owned, as the company seeks to maintain its technology edge over its Chinese counterparts. As a result, the company’s net investment will be less than $3 billion. The company said it submitted an application to Taiwan’s Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs to build a wholly-owned 12in fab and a design service centre in China’s inland city of Nanjing.

TSMC said that the new plant’s production output will be 20,000 12-inch silicon wafers per month, and it will begin using a 16-nanometer process in H2 2018.

A more significant outcome that will come with TSMC’s 12-inch fab in Nanjing is that upstream and downstream partners of TSMC, including equipment and semiconductor material suppliers and IC backend service companies, will also flock into Nanjing to form a large-scale semiconductor cluster there, duplicating the successful establishments of the science parks in Taiwan and bringing a boom to China’s semiconductor industry. (TSMC) has announced that it aims to build its first 12in fab in China to take advantage of the strong demand in the world’s fastest growing chip market. TSMC chair Morris Chang said “Inventory is being depleted more slowly than we expected”.

Already, China has moved to bulk up its chip industry, which it sees as essential to moving up the value chain of products it makes as well as securing a safe domestic source of components.

To expand its advanced technology capacities, TSMC is expected to boost its capital spending to between US$9.5 billion and US$10.5 billion next year, compared with US$8 billion this year, representing annual growth of between 12 percent and 31 percent, the researcher said.

According to Digitimes the commission has to approve investment in China because of that whole “Taiwan is a renagade province” thing.