Greetings from Taipei! This is Lauly Li, covering the tech industry's supply chains, from chips to smartphones to EVs. This week in Asia, all eyes were on U.S. President Joe Biden's first trip to the region since taking office in early 2021. His itinerary, however, did not include China, the world's second-largest economy.
A week after Shanghai announced it had reached "zero COVID," the tech industry continues to struggle to recover from the monthlong lockdowns in the city and its neighboring regions. Although many suppliers have shifted at least some of their capacity away from China in the past few years due to Beijing-Washington tensions, the Shanghai region remains one of the world's most important hubs for electronics manufacturing. Industry executives told us that the scale and severity of the lockdowns went far beyond their expectations, and even their overseas capacity was not enough to cushion the blow.
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