In the escalating battle over semiconductor supremacy, the United States has struck at the brain of China’s chip industry—its design software.

Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL), Japan’s top semiconductor equipment manufacturer, held a groundbreaking ceremony on June 2, 2025, for its state-of-the-art production site in Taiwa, Miyagi Prefecture. Initially referred to as an expansion of its main plant, the facility has now been officially named the Miyagi Production Innovation Center. Scheduled for completion in the summer of 2027, the site is a cornerstone of TEL’s strategy to address surging global demand for advanced chipmaking equipment.

GEM Terminals (GEM) reported consolidated revenue of NT$248 million (approx. US$8.28 million) for May 2025, marking a 23.06% year-over-year drop and an 8.62% decline from April. The company attributed the weaker performance to fewer working days in China during the May holidays and the ongoing impact of uncertain US tariff policies, which have delayed shipments and prompted customers to deplete existing inventories.

Academia Sinica announced on June 10, 2025, the successful development of several advanced fabrication processes for superconducting qubits on an automated 8-inch platform, positioning Taiwan to expand its leadership from semiconductors into quantum chipmaking. While Taiwan dominates global semiconductor manufacturing, the institute underscored that quantum chips demand fundamentally different process technologies, with process stability and uniformity still posing major hurdles to scalable quantum computing.