The Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET) was invited to present its latest research findings at the 2026 China In The World (CITW) summit from July 7 to 8. DSET experts provided comprehensive assessments of China’s geopolitical influence through the twin lenses of economic security and research security, drawing significant attention from international academic communities, security analysts, and civil society leaders.
Economic Security: China Leverages Backend Advanced Packaging to Circumvent Front-End Process Constraints
On July 7, DSET Economic Security Research Program Policy Analysts Jin-Chian Seer and Ines Chung delivered a joint presentation titled “The Silent Gap in Allied Controls: How China’s Advanced Packaging Supply Chain Is Outrunning the Rulemaking Clock.”
Policy Analyst Jin-Chian Seer outlined China’s strategic pivot toward advanced packaging under the framework of “Tian Ji’s Horse Race”—a traditional strategic metaphor for leveraging asymmetrical advantages. Seer noted that rather than engaging in a direct race against Western front-end advanced node restrictions, China is focusing its resources and policy tools on backend packaging and system integration. By stacking and integrating the best available domestic chips via multi-chiplet architectures and system-level configuration, China aims to enhance overall computing performance. This allows Beijing to engineer a workaround to achieve “good enough” solutions capable of propping up AI applications, thereby executing a backend performance breakthrough.
Policy Analyst Ines Chung expanded on the industrial policies and ecosystem integration driving this development, revealing how state directives and capital flow accelerate the formation of a localized backend ecosystem. Citing Huawei’s Ascend series AI accelerators as a case study, Chung warned that system-level breakthroughs driven by advanced packaging have become a decisive new front in geotechnological competition. To address this regulatory blind spot, she put forward a comprehensive framework that incorporates key advanced packaging materials and equipment based on specific specifications and thresholds. She emphasized the necessity of transitioning from a traditional “node-centric” framework to one introducing “post-packaging metrics,” while calling for closer coordination between the United States and its allies to effectively close this silent supply chain gap.
Research Security: From Listing to First Indictment, Taiwan’s Experience Reveals a Blind Spot in Democratic Governance
On July 8, DSET Economic Security Research Program Policy Analysts Jin-Chian Seer and Yu-Ning (Charlotte) Chiu presented at the session “The Democratic Blind Spot in Research Security: How Taiwan’s Frontline Experience Fills the Gap.”
Policy Analyst Charlotte Chiu noted that Taiwan’s current research security regulatory system is built on three overlapping layers: the criminal pathway for National Core Critical Technology (NCCT) List, Cross-Strait Act, and institutional controls within academic institutions — together forming the key enforcement nodes of Taiwan’s research security governance. On the technology-listing front, Chiu explained that NCCT refers to technologies whose leakage would jeopardize national security and industrial competitiveness. NSTC established the review mechanism for such technologies in 2022, and has since announced technology lists in two consecutive years, covering the fields of defense, space, semiconductors, agriculture, and cybersecurity. In August 2025, Taiwan saw its first indictment brought under Article 8 of the National Security Act.
On enforcement, Chiu said Taiwan has established a multi-layered mechanism encompassing trade secret regulations, criminal penalties, and personnel management, alongside special control nodes established under the Cross-Strait Act. In addition, the Security Control Manual governs personnel participating in critical technology projects and their R&D outputs, establishing safeguards for confidentiality and incident response. As the strategic importance of dual-use technologies continues to rise, the scope of the technology lists is expected to keep expanding — closing the gap in enforcement will be a core challenge for the next phase of Taiwan’s research security governance.
Policy Analyst Jin-Chian Seer further presented a “four-flow threat model” mapping how PRC acquires Taiwan’s critical technology and senior talent: institutional infiltration of university campuses (the Tsinghua Straits Research Institute case), the absorption of senior talent and tacit knowledge (the Chen Kun-shan case), technology outflow through commercialization (the Hestia Power case), and industrial embedding through shell companies operating inside Taiwan (the Bitmain case). Seer noted that none of these four entry points falls within the reach of traditional research security instruments such as laboratory disclosure forms or export-control lists, and most were discovered only years after the fact.
Taiwan, he stressed, is not a model state for research security but a “pressure-test country” — its publicly documented map of attack surfaces and governance tool-chain offers democratic partners a yardstick for recognizing the research security threat from China. Democracies, he concluded, need not choose between open science and national security; guided by the principle of “risk-managed openness,” they should build identifiable, governable, and appealable tool-chains for each of the four entry points.
