US-China tensions will slow global chip industry, TSMC founder says

By Krystal Hu

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The founder of the world's biggest chipmaker, Morris Chang, said on Thursday that increasing tensions over technology between the United States and China will slow down the global chip industry.

Chang, who founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in the late 1980s, made the remarks at an event hosted by the Asia Society in New York. The company has helped the democratically governed island of Taiwan become the world's leading producer of advanced chips.

U.S. officials earlier this month enacted another set of export restrictions that clamped down on what chips and chipmaking tools can be exported to China after Huawei Technologies last month showed off a phone with a new domestically manufactured chip.

Chang said that cutting off China's chip industry from the rest of the world would affect other players beyond China.

"I think that decoupling will ultimately slow down everybody. Of course the immediate purpose is to slow China down, and I think it's doing that. I'm specifically talking about chips," Chang said.

Chang said that the effects of such decoupling were already becoming clear and that many previous economic conflicts between established and emerging powers had ended in wars.

"Our only hope is it doesn't lead to anything even more serious," Chang said.

(Reporting by Krystal Hu; Writing by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler)