Beijing had offered Taiwan the vaccines, amid a major shortage on the island, but Taiwan’s ruling party did not want to deal with China directly
Major Taiwanese tech companies have inked a deal to buy 10m vaccine doses for Taiwan, sidestepping months of complicated geopolitical wrangling between Beijing and Taipei.
The US$350m purchase from German manufacturer BioNTech, is split between TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, and Foxconn, one of the world’s largest contract electronics makers, and its charity foundation. The two companies will donate the vaccines to Taiwan’s central epidemic command centre for distribution.
