Kharis Templeman
Research fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of its Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. A political scientist, he studies Taiwan politics, democratization, elections, and political and security issues in Pacific Asia.
Taiwan’s Alternatives to Chinese Suppliers Still Depend on Chinese Inputs
Taiwan’s supply-chain exposure extends beyond advanced chips: moving production away from China does not necessarily remove dependence on Chinese-controlled suppliers operating abroad or on Chinese feedstock and processing. In a Hoover Institution roundtable, researchers from Taiwan’s Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology institute argue that resilience depends on building and qualifying alternatives without disrupting production before those substitutes are ready.
Taiwanese Support for Self-Defense Is High but Conditional
Wen-Chin Wu, in a Hoover Institution talk drawing on multiple public-opinion surveys, argues that Taiwanese support for self-defense is high but conditional. He separates backing for national defense measures, including U.S. arms purchases, from personal willingness to fight or resist, and finds that both depend heavily on perceived threat from China, expectations of U.S. intervention, party identity, costs, and question wording. The result, in Wu’s account, is not a Taiwan that is either complacent or uniformly resolved, but a public that is “worried but cool” amid coercion and strategic ambiguity.