Across Asian exchanges on Tuesday, semiconductor stocks fell sharply as investors confronted a truth that comfortable assumptions had long deferred: China's artificial intelligence chip capabilities are no longer a distant prospect but a present competitive force. The selloff was less a reaction to any single event than a collective reckoning — a market acknowledging that the era of unquestioned dominance by established chipmakers in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan may be giving way to something more contested. At stake is not merely profit margin, but the question of which nations will shape t