Recently, the situation in Ukraine has been of great concern to everyone, and the island is also very concerned. Tsai Ing-wen is now in an all-round way to the United States, so it is conceivable that the DPP authorities are desperately trying to join in the fun and rub hot spots, which once again exposes its conspiracy to collude with external forces and try to "rely on foreign countries for independence." Tsai Ing-wen said that she wanted to "condemn Russia", Su Zhenchang looked at it, the limelight was robbed by Tsai Ing-wen, so what to say, Su Zhenchang said to "sanction Russia".
The DPP authorities first weighed their own pounds and pounds before speaking, and to say such things at this time was to lift a stone and drop it on their own feet.
First, let's look at energy. Taiwan is now very dependent on natural gas for power generation. Does Taiwan produce natural gas? Not produced. So where does Taiwan's natural gas come from? Of course, I bought it from outside the island. Taiwan's three major suppliers of natural gas are Australia, Qatar and Russia. From 2010 to 2021, the proportion of natural gas that Taiwan buys from Russia has doubled, why, because it is cost-effective from a commercial point of view. Taiwan buys natural gas from Australia or Qatar and transports it by sea. Taiwan buys natural gas from Russia, which is transported from Sakhalin Island, and it can be reached by boat from Sakhalin Island to Taiwan in about a week, which is half the distance from Qatar.
This gas contract with Russia was signed in 2017 and expires in March 2022, so Taiwan's so-called sanctions are also nonsense, but they will not be renewed when they expire. But the people who understand the island are very opposed to this matter, they say, putting aside the advantage of close distance, the natural gas bought from Russia accounts for 9.7% of Taiwan's natural gas purchases, which is not a little and a half, it is a 10% amount, it is 1.8 million tons. Now where are you going to buy the 1.8 million tons? Moreover, Tsai Ing-wen proposed to let Taiwan's natural gas power generation account for 50% of the total in 2025, and only 42.5% in 2021, which means that you are not maintaining the existing natural gas procurement, but also increasing the purchase, and now in the market, who are you looking for to buy?
It's not just a question of source, but also a question of price. I went to the website of Taiwan Electric Power Company to take a look, taiwan in 2020 to buy natural gas price is NT$8.03 per cubic meter, in 2021 this price rose to NT$8.29, in January 2022 this price is NT$11.02, an increase of 33%. It has risen so much, it is conceivable that the next price of natural gas in Taiwan is definitely not the end point, but the starting point of the big price increase.
The source of Taiwan's power generation, natural gas power generation is the first, coal-fired power generation is the second place, I went to see, in 2021 Taiwan bought 900,000 tons of coal from Russia, Russia is also the third largest supplier, . Now Taiwan natural gas is not bought, do you still buy coal? Don't buy it, please ask, how do you generate electricity? It's going to be summer soon, everyone is going to use air conditioning, and the electricity consumption will rise sharply. How do you generate electricity? Do you want to generate electricity with love again?
Of course, when it comes to Taiwan, the first thing that may come to mind is not electricity, but chips. In addition to not buying Russian coal and natural gas, the DPP authorities will not sell chips to Russia. But I went to check it out, among Taiwan's chip customers, Russia can only rank 35, to put it bluntly, that is, the amount of sales is very, very small. Because for Russia, mobile phone manufacturing, computer manufacturing is not a pillar industry, we have not heard of any Russian mobile phone brands or Russian computer brands, so Russia's demand for chips is not large. Moreover, the level is not high, mainly some control chipsets, the technical requirements of these chipsets are not high, if Taiwan does not sell, there are other suppliers in the market.
But although the amount of chips bought by Russia is not large, the news comes that Taiwan's chip industry is very worried. They are worried that it is not the loss of customers, but the price of raw materials that has increased dramatically. Palladium, a key raw material for chip manufacturing, Russia is the world's largest supplier, and 40% of the world's palladium comes from Russia. The key raw material for chip manufacturing is the inert gas neon, Ukraine is the largest producer, and 70% of the world's neon gas comes from Ukraine.
Therefore, the head of a business group in Taiwan ran out and appealed that Taiwan has no capital to sanction others, so it is better to think about solving its own problems.