Morris Chang

In June 2009, Chang returned to the position of TSMC's CEO once again. On June 5, 2018, Chang announced his retirement, succeeded by C.C. Wei as CEO and Mark Liu as chairman. Chang was awarded the Order of Propitious Clouds, First Class in September 2018.

Chang has served as Presidential Envoy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to APEC several times. He represented Chen Shui-bian in 2006. Tsai Ing-wen appointed Chang to the same role in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

As head of a government-sponsored non-profit, he was in charge of promoting industrial and technological development in Taiwan. Chang founded TSMC in 1987, the beginning of the period where firms increasingly saw value in outsourcing their manufacturing capabilities to Asia. Soon, TSMC became one of the world's most profitable chip makers. Chang left ITRI in 1994 and became chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation from 1994 to 2003 while continuing to serve as chairman of TSMC. In 2005, he handed TSMC's CEO position to Rick Tsai.

Three years later, he moved to Texas Instruments in 1958, which was then rapidly rising in its field. After three years at TI, he rose to manager of the engineering section of the company. It was then, in 1961, that TI decided to invest in him by giving him the opportunity to obtain his PhD degree, which he received in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1964.

During his 25-year career (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments, he rose up in the ranks to become the group vice president responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business. He left TI and later became president and chief operating officer of General Instrument Corporation (1984–1985).

In 1949, Chang moved to the United States to attend Harvard University. He transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in sophomore year and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1952 and 1953, respectively. Chang failed two consecutive doctoral qualification examinations and eventually left MIT without obtaining a PhD. In 1955 he was hired by Sylvania Semiconductor, then known as a small semiconductor division of Sylvania Electric Products.

Chang spent most of his primary school years in British Hong Kong between the ages of six and eleven. In 1941, the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began and Chang's family went back to Shanghai and Ningbo to live for a few months, eventually making their way to the temporary capital, Chongqing. In 1948, as China was in the height of the restarted Chinese Civil War, a year before People’s Republic of China (PRC) established and the Republic of China (ROC)'s retreat to Taiwan, Chang again moved to Hong Kong.

Morris Chang (Chinese: 張忠謀; pinyin: Zhāng Zhōngmóu; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tiuⁿ Tiong-bô͘; born 10 July 1931), is a Taiwanese-American businessman who built his career in the United States and subsequently in Taiwan. He is the founder, as well as former chairman and CEO, of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). He is known as the semiconductor industry founder of Taiwan. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$2.8 billion.

Chang was born in the city Ningbo, situated within Chekiang in China, in 1931. When he was young, he wanted to become a novelist or journalist, though his father persuaded him otherwise. However, the elder Chang was an official in charge of finance for the Yin county government and later a bank manager. Due to his father's career change and also the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chang family lived in Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Shanghai.