Were it not for Communist rule, China might have played a much larger role in the semiconductor industry. When the integrated circuit was invented, China had many of the ingredients that helped Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea attract American semiconductor investment, like a vast, low-cost workforce and a well-educated scientific elite. However, after seizing power in 1949, the Communists looked at foreign connections with suspicion. For someone like Morris Chang, returning to China after finishing his studies at Stanford would have meant certain poverty and possible imprisonment or death.
