Taiwan Moves to Criminalize SI Chip Smuggling Under Foreign Trade Act
Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin announced on October 12 that the government intends to add SI servers and advanced semiconductors to the list of items controlled under the Foreign Trade Act, with DPP legislator Chung Chia-pin spearheading a proposed amendment that would create the first specific criminal offense for unauthorized SI hardware exports. No implementation timeline has been set.
Prosecutors currently lack a specific criminal offense for SI chip smuggling under the Foreign Trade Act and must rely on secondary statutes; existing strategic-high-tech-goods rules allow penalties of up to five years' imprisonment, but the absence of a dedicated SI provision leaves an enforcement gap. The amendment is also described as fulfilling commitments under the US-Taiwan trade deal.
Recent cases underline the push: in August 2026 Taiwan indicted nine individuals, including an Nvidia manager, for smuggling 130 SI servers to mainland China, of which 56 were intercepted and 74 reached their destination; in March 2026 the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Super Micro executives over Nvidia chips routed through Taiwan and Thailand to Alibaba, followed by raids on Supermicro's Taiwan office in May. (GSM, based on Forkast reporting)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 新竹科学园区台积电厂房。 Photo by Ernest Chiang, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
