During the Industrial Age, the US was the world's leader in the automotive industry, but that is no longer the case now. In 2018, 370,000 units of electric cars were sold in the US, but the sales in China were as high as 1.255 million units.

The PC market used to cater mainly to white-collar workers, with manufacturers relying mostly on HP and Dell. The traditional PC and handset assembly sector remains a stable supply chain with the US still being the largest market. Currently, Taiwan still accounts for 80% of the worldwide notebook manufacturing, and for servers, the percentage is even higher at 94%. With the business opportunity of datacenter growing rapidly, Taiwan makers' manufacturing bases in Taiwan are still the best places for their Internet service provider partners.

The worldwide ICT industry is formed by supply chains that cooperate with each other. Prior to 2000, the ecosystem was structured simply in linear partnerships between upstream and downstream sectors with US-based first-tier vendors dictating the standards and specifications, and outsourcing manufacturing orders to their Taiwan- and Korea-based partners. At present, the ICT supply chain that has worked for 30 years continues to serve as the key foundation of the global ICT industry.

I call the first island chain in East Asia the "Asian Edge," which carries a double reference: cutting-edge technologies in an IT context, and the peripheral in geopolitics. In the ICT market, the US is the first superpower, while China, which has been catching up fast, comes in second. Following the two dominating forces, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan that feature cutting-edge technologies form the third camp of superpowers lurking on the geopolitical edge of the top-two superpowers.

How is the trade war between the US and China affecting Taiwan, Japan and South Korea? Why are semiconductors and 5G becoming the key issues of their brawls? 5G technologies are bringing revolutionary changes to the ICT industry's operation and ecosystem. Apart from the economic benefits, they have strong implications in terms of many sensitive issues, such as data and national security. This is the reason why both the US and China are taking the matter seriously.