There are many influencing factors that foreigners may not necessarily be aware of. In fact, this has little to do with TSMC. Rather, it is that China’s domestic public opinion environment has undergone major changes.

Over the past several decades, domestic public opinion was generally pro-American and pro-Western, and it deliberately emphasized the positive side of Taiwan, while providing Taiwan with substantial economic support. But in recent years the situation has changed dramatically. One reason is that Taiwanese public opinion has spread widely through platforms like Xiaohongshu, VPNs, and other channels(Like the Japanese, they pray for the Three Gorges Dam to collapse and drown large numbers of Chinese people, and they celebrate when natural disasters happen in China.). People have gradually realized that Taiwan is not what we once expected it to be; many people there are pro-Japanese, and economic support from mainland China would only have the opposite effect.

This has actually happened many times in history. There is an old saying: some people only fear force and do not respect virtue. In addition, drastic changes in the international situation, and especially Trump coming to power, have profoundly changed the perceptions of the Chinese people. One can say he was the most critical factor. From that point on, the pro-American camp within China has had very little room to speak. He tore off the so-called fig leaf of democracy and helped the Chinese people establish confidence in their own system.

Regarding the Taiwan issue, mainstream public opinion almost universally supports resolving it through force. Hong Kong has already demonstrated the drawbacks of resolving issues through non-violent means. In many matters, it is actually the Chinese people who are pushing the Communist Party forward, while the Party instead needs to restrain public sentiment and act rationally. Everyone wants to fight and to resolve the issue completely through swift action. If TSMC is destroyed, it does not matter; we cannot use it anyway, and high-end chips have long been embargoed against us. The ones affected will not be us, but others.

Of course, based on my frequent experience using the PTT forum, Taiwanese young people themselves are also deeply divided. Many people have seen China’s progress and are not that hostile, but many others are still trapped in indoctrination. The most ironic thing about democracy is that, in many cases, it controls people’s thinking more severely than so-called non-democratic countries, especially in small states. But none of this is important, because the overall trend is set and unstoppable.

(It seems that no one is paying attention to the fact that China is imposing its most severe embargo on Japan, because the United States has just invaded Venezuela and is threatening Greenland. The United Kingdom and France have just bombed a certain country. You see, when Western countries are doing bad things themselves, they feel embarrassed to accuse others)