Taiwan tries to cool down Washington war talk on China

SEOUL — Taiwanese officials are trying to tone down alarmist comments made by U.S. investment gurus and policymakers about the risks of a clash with China, risks that are now clouding the island’s security, its business climate and the future of one of its best-known corporate giants.

Many in Taipei have watched with growing unease the escalation of the war of both words and deeds between Washington and Beijing in recent months, with the future of the island democracy China claims as its own territory the main flashpoint in the superpower dispute.

“The government will do its utmost to let the world know that Taiwan is stable and safe,” Economic Affairs Minister Lin Chuan-neng told a legislative hearing on Monday, according to reports from Taipei.

The hearing came in the wake of new warnings of geopolitical risk Saturday by Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, and the apocalyptic suggestion by a Massachusetts congressman that the Pentagon should consider bombing the chipmaking operations of Taiwan Semiconductor, the undisputed world leader in the industry, in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Mr. Buffett, the famous investor, said the Taiwanese semiconductor company was a long-term investment gamble simply because of its location.

“Taiwan Semiconductor is one of the best-managed companies and important companies in the world, and you’ll be able to say the same thing five, 10, or 20 years from now,” Mr. Buffett said during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting. “I don’t like its location, and re-evaluated that.”

Taiwan Semiconductor, also known as TSMC, is the world’s leading supplier of leading-edge nonmemory chips. Chips are at the heart of the digital economy, making TSMC a strategic node in global value chains at a time when Washington is seeking to wall China off from acquiring the most advanced variants of the technology.

Mr. Buffett is famous for being an investor for the long term. However, after acquiring $4 billion worth of shares in TSMC last year, he divested most of it within three months, according to Reuters.

“It’s a marvelous company,” Mr. Buffett said. But he acknowledged he feels “better about capital that we’ve got deployed in Japan than in Taiwan. … That’s the reality.”

The entire island of Taiwan is in China’s crosshairs, as repeated air and naval drills by Chinese forces around the island and increasingly aggressive comments by the mainland make clear. But some in Taiwan say the fearmongering talk coming out of Washington isn’t helping, either.

U.S. Air Force General Mike Minihan warned in a leaked letter to his troops this past January that they must be prepared for a conflict with China by 2025. In 2021, U.S Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Philip Davidson had told a Senate hearing that China’s threat to Taiwan would “manifest” by 2027.

Mr. Buffet was not the only high-profile American whose name was aired during Monday’s hearing in the Yuan, Taiwan’s unicameral legislature.

Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng faced questions about comments made by Rep. Seth Moulton, Massachusetts Democrat, at the Milken Institute’s 2023 Global Conference last week, outlining one ominous scenario in the event of a war over Taiwan.

“One of the interesting ideas out there that is floated for deterrence is just making it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we are going to blow up TSMC,” Mr. Moulton, who represents Massachusetts, told the conference on May 2. The Taiwanese, he added, “of course, really don’t like this idea.”

Mr. Moulton, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and China, was immediately called out by fellow panelist Michele Flournoy, a managing partner at WestExec Advisors and a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration.

Ms. Floury called it “a terrible idea” because it would cause a “$2 trillion-dollar impact on the global economy” within one year and “put manufacturing at a standstill.”