State-Market Tensions and Geopolitical Rivalry in the Global Semiconductor Industry

2026 ANU TAIWAN UPDATE

State-Market Tensions and Geopolitical Rivalry in the Global Semiconductor Industry

Using the global semiconductor industry as a case study, this lecture explores ‘decoupling’ amidst the complex web of state-market relations. Most studies of decoupling focus on the United States and China. By contrast, I focus on the relationship between the United States and the full range of key semiconductor producers (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China). I ask when, and how, states intervene in semiconductor markets and propose that while the main actors in the semiconductor supply chain are not hegemonic powers, their high production capacities mean that their power is ‘pivotal’. I argue that while technology production chains reflect the conflicting interests of states, because production chains also embody key shared interests, states cannot completely ‘decouple’ from one another. Meanwhile, key stakeholders are not always states, but also private companies and skilled workers. These actors have their own interests as well, meaning that production chains become further intertwined, rendering true decoupling impossible. Their resistance to decoupling means that this ‘stickiness’ will be a feature of any state-led attempt to forge supply chain independence.

Speaker

Chun-yi Lee is Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. She is also the Director of the Taiwan Research Hub at Nottingham. Her current research project concerns semiconductor supply chains and geopolitics; prior to this, she completed research projects on the influence of different foreign investors on Chinese workers and labour rights. Chun-Yi's first book, Taiwanese Business or Chinese Security Asset, was published by Routledge in 2011. Since 2022, Chun-yi has been working her second monograph on the topic of 'Sticky Decoupling: Geopolitics and Semiconductor supply chains', presently under contract with Cambridge University Press. She is the editor-in-chief of Taiwan Insight.

Drinks reception at 5pm for 5:30pm start. 

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The Taiwan Update is an initiative under the ANU Taiwan Studies Program 2025-28, which is a partnership between the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University and the Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan). We especially thank the Political Science and International Relations programme at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington for co-hosting the 2026 Taiwan Update in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.

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