This paper empirically highlights the role of nationalism in the development of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. First, it demonstrates how the pre‐1980s Taiwanese developmental state mobilised Chinese economic nationalism against Japanese colonialism and Chinese communism and adopted the strategies of graduated sovereignty, selectively subsidising certain areas and sectors, and promoting national (homogeneously imagined) territorialisation to integrate with the international market. Second, the paper exhibits how in the late 1980s, when the outflow of capital to Mainland China became a compelling phenomenon and Taiwan democratised, popular sovereignty became the norm and Taiwanese nationalism emerged. In response, the democratised state started employing Taiwanese economic nationalism and implementing populist territorial policies to consolidate the support of ‘us’ (the Taiwanese/Taiwan) versus ‘them’ (the Chinese/China). This made China and everything related a security concern that had to be excluded as ‘the other’. This paper responds to the appeals of political geographers to give nationalism a central place in contemporary theories of the nation‐state and contributes to the theory of the developmental state by bringing ‘the nation’ back. While most of the existing developmental state literature focuses on how the roles and effects of ‘the state’ influence economic development, taking ‘the nation’ seriously can provide more accurate explanations for how and why the state focuses on development or not. Accordingly, through valuing the nation this paper promotes a theory of the developmental nation‐state.