TAINAN, Taiwan — Business has never been brisker for construction companies in Taiwan as the world’s biggest contract chipmaker rushes to build facilities through the Lunar New Year holiday to meet surging demand.
Cranes, trucks, excavators and all manner of heavy vehicles stream in and out of the vast construction site for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s new factory in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan. The site will be the world’s most advanced 3-nanometer chip production plant — and is due to begin mass production in the second half of 2022.
TSMC, which produces chips for tech giants such as Apple, Google and Qualcomm, has told builders it will pay lucrative premiums to ask many of their workers — after only two days off — to begin work a little earlier during the period surrounding the island’s most important annual Lunar new year holiday starting this year on Wednesday, people with knowledge of the matter told Nikkei Asia. Read more…..
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Chinese military incursions into Taiwanese territory have raised tensions in the region. China sent 15 military aircraft into Taiwanese airspace between mainland Taiwan and the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the South China Sea on Sunday, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said. A total of six J-10 fighters, four J-16s, two SU-30s, a Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft and two Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, were sent by China, the ministry said in a statement.