Channelling the industrial oil: The establishment of Taiwan telecommunications from 1950 to 1976 for serving the United States semiconductor assembly industry. The domination and limit of the Taiwan state in a telecommunications-mediated development

The thesis primarily explores the contribution of Taiwan telecommunications to the offshore production of the U.S. semiconductor industry. The instrumental approach demonstrates that the control function of Taiwan telecommunications was created by U.S. aid in the context of containment policy. Taiwan relied on aid for building these industrial infrastructure and security system to facilitate the U.S. investments. Taiwan's contribution was not a given fact but rather a postwar historical formation. The structural approach argues that Taiwan's telecommunications was structured by the U.S.-Japan alliance for maintaining the Cold War defense. Mediated by telecommunications of the Nationalist regime, the domestic structure of the Taiwan state, U.S. aid, and local capital encountered with the triple industrial competition between Taiwan, the U.S., and Japan. This structure distributed the benefits of semiconductor production to the Nationalist regime and the U.S. and Japan semiconductor TNCs at the expense of the Taiwan local community and labourers.