Companies may be able to take a side step of political interference from China
Last year, Taiwan was held as a role model in how to control the epidemic. Now, with a rising case number threatening the country's biotech industry amid a global shortage of semiconductors, its government is allowing its powerful companies to buy COVID-19 vaccines on its behalf. It's an unusual solution, but one that makes sense given Taiwan's complaints that China has scrapped previous deals.
As reported by Nikkei Asia and Reuters, the Taiwan government said on Friday it would allow chip maker TSMC and Terry Gu, the billionaire founder of tech aggregation giant Foxconn, to negotiate on its behalf with vaccine makers. Both TSMC and Gou (which will operate through the Yonglin Education Foundation) said they hope to purchase about 5 million vaccines from Germany's BioNTech and donate them to the government.
It is unclear whether this approach will work or not. “The government thinks it may be easier for companies to reach out to vaccine makers or distributors to reduce geopolitical interference,” one of the sources told Nikkei Asia.
“Can he get them to sell enough vaccines? Honestly, no one knows.”
But Taiwan Cabinet spokesman Lu Bingcheng was more cautious, telling reporters, "Even if Mr. Gu could discuss this with the original manufacturer or the dealer, could he convince them to sell enough vaccines? Frankly, no one knows."
TSMC and Foxconn are key pillars of both global technology supply chains and the Taiwanese economy. Together, the two companies account for more than 30 percent of the island's stock exchange by market capitalization, according to the Nikkei. The global pandemic has caused a global shortage of chip supplies, leading to price hikes and a loss of inventory for everything from PS5s to Teslas. Such problems could be exacerbated if cases rise among Taiwanese workers, leading to factory closures.
Taiwan has a population of about 23 million, but only about six percent of the island's population has received a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to Reuters. The island's vaccination work has been complicated by geopolitical tensions. China regards democratically governed Taiwan as a breakaway province that it wishes to exercise full political control over. The United States is one of the biggest obstacles to this integration.
Taiwan's government and sympathetic US senators say China interfered with the island's attempts to secure vaccines. In response, the United States promised to donate 750,000 injections to Taiwan "in a very short time" while Japan has already gone beyond that promise, donating 1.24 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this month.
With coronavirus cases on the rise, it appears that the Taiwan government is simply unwilling to wait for the generosity of its geopolitical allies. Instead, she hopes her companies can help buy much-needed shots.
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