Under its new, post-Mao leadership, China began integrating into the global economy by attracting some of the basic manufacturing and assembly jobs that Taiwan had used to lift itself out of poverty. With lower wages and several hundred million peasants eager to trade subsistence farming for factory jobs, China’s entry into electronics assembly threatened to put Taiwan out of business. It amounted to economic “warfare,” Taiwanese officials complained to visiting Texas Instruments executives. It was impossible to compete with China on price. Taiwan had to produce advanced technology itself.
