Chips with everything: how one Taiwanese company drives the world economy

A Covid-driven global shortage of microchips has put manufacturer TSMC at the heart of the world's recovery, as well as US-China tensions

Living on an island long coveted by a large and increasingly powerful neighbour, the residents of Taiwan have given some thought to where might be the best place to go should the worst happen. Some think it might be the hills, others historic buildings that China will want to preserve. By the same reasoning, some believe it is the factory run by the world's biggest computer chip maker, TSMC.

Taiwan has for decades been both a global strategic flashpoint and one of the world's economic powerhouses. In an industrial park about an hour's drive from Taipei, those twin identities merge almost perfectly in the form of the factory run by TSMC, the world's largest maker of computer chips - a facility so vital that some Taiwanese think it could be the safest place to flee to should China one day invade.