This talk explores Dr Lee Chun-Yi’s ongoing research on semiconductor design and production in the United States, Taiwan and China, as well as the inter-connections between them in the global semiconductor supply chain. Drawing from concepts such as the national security state (Weiss, 2014) and the ‘techno security state’ (Cheung, 2022), it asks whether the semiconductor industry is a junction for the intersection of industrial policy and economic statecraft. Semiconductors are a dual use technology, meaning they have both civilian and military applications (Patrick, 1986). As a result, the semiconductor industry can serve as an instructive case study when thinking about the divergence – and convergence – of national industrial and economic policies in contexts of inter-state competition and collaboration.
The selected case studies embody different models of how states relate to private industry, ranging from authoritarian ‘state capitalism’ in China (Naughton and Tsai, 2015), to Taiwan, which has embraced a free market economy after a period spent as a developmental state (Greene, 2008). Meanwhile, the role of industrial policies in the US (as another free-market economy) is subject to debate (Graham, 1992). Data for this research was taken from semi-structured interviews in Taiwan and the US, and material from nine different Chinese media outlets. Taking an approach founded in IPE, this research shows that the semiconductor industry complexifies our understanding of the state’s involvement in industrial and technology policy.

Dr Lee Chun-Yi (李駿怡) is Associate Professor at school of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. She is also the director of Taiwan Studies Program at Nottingham. Chun-Yi’s first book was published by Routledge in 2011: Taiwanese Business or Chinese Security Asset. The book is under Leiden Series in Modern East Asia History and Politics. Chun-Yi applied from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) with Prof. Andreas Bieler on the project, ‘Globalisation, national transformation and workers’ rights: An analysis of Chinese labour within the global economy’ in 2010. This project successfully received the funding from the ESRC and started to operate from October 2011 to September 2014. In viewing the Chinese labour facing the challenge of industrial upgrading, ChunYi applied a research project funded by Chiang-Ching-kuo (CCK) Foundation in Taiwan in relation to ‘Chinese Investment in Taiwan: Challenge or Opportunity for Taiwan’s Industrial Development’. This project has finished in December 2016. Currently, Chun-Yi is working on a public policy research project, to compare Taiwan and UK government’s strategies to counter Covid-19. Meanwhile Chun-Yi is working her second monograph on the topic of ‘Sticky Decoupling: Geopolitics and Semiconductor supply chain’.