The Imagined “Territorialized” Capital and Economic Subjectivity in the Geopolitical Economy of the GPN: A Case of the TSMC

Keywords: global production networks, geopolitical economy, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Economic Nationalism
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper argues that the GPN (Global Production network) theory has to theorize endogenously the work of Geopolitical Economy (GPE), particularly the practices of economic subjectivities, to extend its explanatory scope after the resurgency of economic nationalism in the international trade and investment. The GPE perspective emphasizes the state as an economic subject, attempting to situate itself at the nodes of the GPN in order to control the seemingly "non-territorial" flows of knowledge and material in economic activities. This paper will use the case of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), one leading firm in the global production network of the semiconductor industry, to demonstrate the GPE as the endogenous, rather than external, factors influencing the developmental trajectories of the GPN. It argues the TSMC has been geopolitically hailed as the “holy mountain” that protects the Taiwan nation (hu-guo-shen-shan) from the military attack of China, given its enormously success in the pivoting position in the semiconductor GPN which might be seriously damaged and lead to the international intervention, mainly from the US to render world economy safe. In other words, the TSMC is not only the national champion in terms of developmental state, but is imagined as the guard of national security in the geopolitical economic sense. Given the saintized “territorial” capital, the environmental pressures induce by the huge water and electricity consumption of the TSMC will be paradoxically tolerated and eased by the investment of utility infrastructures by the state under the hegemonic discourse of national security in Taiwan.