Chinese smuggling: Woman caught with belly full of semiconductor chips

A woman in China was caught smuggling semiconductor chips inside a fake belly. The chip shortage in China is so severe that it is manifesting in the most unusual smuggling situations like this one. According to Bloomberg, Chinese customs officials caught the woman going from Macau to Zhuhai on November 25th as she was trying to smuggle 202 semiconductor chips and 9 smartphones inside a large pregnancy prosthesis. In a statement, customs also added that the woman initially aroused suspicion because she had said she was about 5 or 6 months pregnant We will likely see more cases like this. The underground market for semiconductors, while it has existed in China for a long time, exploded in 2020 when global shortages due to COVID shutdowns disrupted supplies and the situation has been worsening ever since. And added to the sanctions applied by the US, which prohibits exports of US technology, semiconductors, and chip manufacturing equipment to China, the situation has now become untenable for China. US restrictions are mainly aimed at preventing the Chinese regime from using them to build weapons. But how serious is the situation for China and how could it indirectly impact other countries? Let's see. China consumes more than three quarters of the world's semiconductors but produces only about 15% of the world's output. So the combination of high domestic demand and extremely tight supply has created a hectic underground market where second-hand chips can fetch 500 times their original cost. And many have seen the opportunity to make a profit. In fact, one unauthorized semiconductor broker told Bloomberg everyone's a speculator. And this raises another major problem. As the boom for electric vehicles grows, low-quality chips infiltrate the supply chain. This, of course, puts quality and safety at risk. This, according to the unauthorized broker, is because the conventional system where car suppliers place an order through an authorized agent and wait for original chip distribution is either deficient or no longer works. On the other hand, some see the situation further and say that China may now be considering taking over Taiwan's burgeoning semiconductor industry. One who agrees with this is Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel, which is a U.S. multinational hedge fund. As reported by Fortune in a recent interview, Griffin said, You can argue that by depriving the Chinese of access to semiconductors, we up the risk that they seize Taiwan. He added that this could be exploited by the CCP to bring down the U.S. economy since the U.S. is completely dependent on modern Taiwanese semiconductors and does not have anywhere near the capacity to produce the amounts it needs to run the economy.