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Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

nytimes.com

11–20 of 127 posts

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#11
post #5

China has an official plan, "Made in China 2025".[1] It's about moving up the value chain. Key areas are semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft engines. China is still way behind in wafer fabs, but SIMC is coming along. Wikipedia says they're at 40nm, which is not close to the state of the art, but is good enough for much consumer electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

Slightly off-topic (sorry for taking oxygen away from the semi-conductor fabrication discussion): I find that Wikipedia page you linked to very frustrating: understanding the central economic policy document of a growing superpower is very important but it's just a stub. A stub that almost only links to the non-independent sources. The page history shows that it was once a much bigger article but just a copy/paste jo…

You might find a public policy institute who would be willing to accept financial compensation for creating the article you’re interested in.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise is very narrow. Six or seven of the ten largest semiconductor companies are American. The US has a lot of big companies working in or around the semiconductor market. Eg - Texas Instruments, Qualcomm + NXP, Apple, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Cisco, Xilinx, Analog Devices, GlobalFoundries, Maxim, Microchip Tech + Microsemi, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Marvell, Broadcom, Micron, nVidia, Teradyne, Cypress,…

Unless I’m mistaken, your list contains both semiconductor companies with and without fabs. I think for this discussion semiconductor companies with fabrication facilities are more interesting. How much fab is still done in the US?

You can start answering that question with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#13
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise is very narrow. Six or seven of the ten largest semiconductor companies are American. The US has a lot of big companies working in or around the semiconductor market. Eg - Texas Instruments, Qualcomm + NXP, Apple, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Cisco, Xilinx, Analog Devices, GlobalFoundries, Maxim, Microchip Tech + Microsemi, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Marvell, Broadcom, Micron, nVidia, Teradyne, Cypress,…

Unless I’m mistaken, your list contains both semiconductor companies with and without fabs. I think for this discussion semiconductor companies with fabrication facilities are more interesting. How much fab is still done in the US?

If fab manufacturing is what mattered, ZTE would have never had a problem in the first place.

Those companies I referenced control a large part of the global technology industry. If you can't access their products or sell to them, you're often going to have a very hard time operating.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#14
post #5

China has an official plan, "Made in China 2025".[1] It's about moving up the value chain. Key areas are semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft engines. China is still way behind in wafer fabs, but SIMC is coming along. Wikipedia says they're at 40nm, which is not close to the state of the art, but is good enough for much consumer electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

Slightly off-topic (sorry for taking oxygen away from the semi-conductor fabrication discussion): I find that Wikipedia page you linked to very frustrating: understanding the central economic policy document of a growing superpower is very important but it's just a stub. A stub that almost only links to the non-independent sources. The page history shows that it was once a much bigger article but just a copy/paste jo…

It's grating to hear people calling each other shills. If the only evidence is motive then it's too weak to draw that conclusion. The world is full of politically motivated people on all sides who aren't being paid by anyone.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#15

I think history will suggest that the end of Deng Xiaoping's long-term strategy of "hide our capacities and bide our time" around 2015 was too premature to meet the government of China's long-term goals. The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion following the events of the past few years in the region. Because…

I agree this policy is likely folly and that China showed its cards far too early, but I also believe that the Western policy of hoping that welcoming in China would lead to greater democratic freedoms was one of arrogance.

The current landscape of trade deals and international law is clearly Western focused and to believe that other cultures are simply going to happily go along with that logic in the long run seems foolish. For instance, despite complaints about persistent intellectual property issues in China, there is no strong legacy of this right in Chinese history, but then the idea of rule of law is somewhat alien too.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#16
post #5

China has an official plan, "Made in China 2025".[1] It's about moving up the value chain. Key areas are semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft engines. China is still way behind in wafer fabs, but SIMC is coming along. Wikipedia says they're at 40nm, which is not close to the state of the art, but is good enough for much consumer electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

They're at 28nm and building 8 core x86 chips that don't look terrible.

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/zhaoxin/microarchitectures/wuda...

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise is very narrow. Six or seven of the ten largest semiconductor companies are American. The US has a lot of big companies working in or around the semiconductor market. Eg - Texas Instruments, Qualcomm + NXP, Apple, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Cisco, Xilinx, Analog Devices, GlobalFoundries, Maxim, Microchip Tech + Microsemi, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Marvell, Broadcom, Micron, nVidia, Teradyne, Cypress,…

Unless I’m mistaken, your list contains both semiconductor companies with and without fabs. I think for this discussion semiconductor companies with fabrication facilities are more interesting. How much fab is still done in the US?

I believe almost no Fab manufacturing happens in the US anymore. This is why the article seems a little hyperbolic to me. I understand US companies lead in chip design, but if Asian companies are manufacturing the chips, how long will it take to reverse engineer? To add to this, many engineers working for these American Giants are Asians and can be poached back. Look how it little it took for Chinese manufacturers to produce state of the art smartphones that are "almost" Apple level.
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