T aipei, a city of over 2m people, stopped moving at 1.30pm on July 17th. Sirens rang out across the capital as residents rehearsed a civil-defence drill for a Chinese invasion. Half an hour later, as phones buzzed to mark the end of the drill, the top brass of tsmc , the world’s largest chipmaker, gathered in a hotel in the city centre for their quarterly earnings call. They brought good news: record profits, good progress on global expansion, a confident forecast of more.

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