At that time, the strength of the emerging semiconductor industry in mainland China looked likely to be in design and development rather than manufacturing.
“We have a team in mainland China trying to understand market needs and the requirements of the fabless companies,” Dr FC Tseng, deputy CEO of TSMC told me in 2002, and we’ve identified 200 fabless companies.”
The month before we spoke, TSMC had announced it would build a fab in China and sent in an evaluation team.
