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

nytimes.com

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

#31

Post by [deleted] »

lopmotr wrote: post #14
shasheene wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#32

Post by Iolaum »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
zeth___ wrote: post #20

If Chinas leadership was smart they would push for open source commodity ics. Opensource always wins and they could do a run around the US where old technologies like x86 die and all the experience built around then becomes irrelevant.

> Opensource always wins Zero evidence of this claim at any level.

Linux Kernel vs Windows NT kernel

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

#33

Post by yborg »

Iolaum wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opensource always wins Zero evidence of this claim at any level.

Linux Kernel vs Windows NT kernel

In what sense did the Linux kernel "win"? Microsoft continues to make a lot of money from Windows Server. Nobody but Red Hat makes any money off the Linux kernel.

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

#34

Post by Taniwha »

adventured wrote: post #23
dmode wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I believe almost no Fab manufacturing happens in the US anymore. That's incorrect. The US has four or five dozen fabs. It's one of the largest fab manufacturers globally, along with Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea. The US is likely to grow its domestic fab manufacturing over the next decade, thanks to the new lower corporate income tax rate and tighter restrictions on IP exportation (those two things l…

If you mean stolen chip designs, no we're likely not to want to use them ... but there are lots of smart Chinese chip designers doing great stuff - some using on licensed US IP (the ESP chips), others based on licensed Arm IP (I've lost track of who owns that), some home built.

Remember China is not just 1/4 of the world's population, it also has 1/4 of the world's smart people

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

#35

Post by fspeech »

While there couldn't be a better case than ZTE for the Chinese government to muster domestic support for its "Made in China 2025" policy, the Sputnik analogy is actually wrong for China. Sputnik was a national security matter and ZTE is a case about commerce.

China can actually supply most what ZTE needs to build functional telecom products (for example when the Obama administration cut off Intel sales to Chinese supercomputer projects, China went ahead and built the world's then fastest supercomputer with domestic chips anyway), it is just that they won't be competitive enough commercially. If both Huawei and ZTE were denied access to US products the pair could probably survive nicely in a closed Chinese market with somewhat inferior but perfectly functional offerings to Chinese telecoms. As it currently stands ZTE can't survive when its competitors don't suffer the same disadvantage.

This being a commercial matter means the Chinese effort may very well be commercially wasteful even if their defense ministry might appreciate the enhanced capability. Indeed if they could make commercially competitive products in the area there is no reason why they would not have made them already.

The right way to deal with this really is to just treat it as a commercial matter. ZTE would have failed with its resources transferred to a more capable firm. This still could be the effective outcome -- it is hard to imagine how telecoms world around can have confidence in ZTE when the supply could be turned off again over any minor infractions in the next ten years. The fine may be just the price to pay to buy time for a more orderly re-org.

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

#36

Post by zeth___ »

yborg wrote: post #33
Iolaum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux Kernel vs Windows NT kernel

In what sense did the Linux kernel "win"? Microsoft continues to make a lot of money from Windows Server. Nobody but Red Hat makes any money off the Linux kernel.

That you mistake a monopoly for a victory and not a market failure says a lot more about your values than about the relative merits of open source vs closed source.

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

#37

Post by zeth___ »

analognoise wrote: post #25
zeth___ wrote: post #20

If Chinas leadership was smart they would push for open source commodity ics. Opensource always wins and they could do a run around the US where old technologies like x86 die and all the experience built around then becomes irrelevant.

If it was smart, wouldn't the people who possess the knowledge and talent to turn sand (silicon) into borderline magic (modern nanometer fab) currently be doing that? They aren't. So they are themselves either 'not very smart' or the contributions from 'open sourcing' is not actually very valuable. I think it's the latter.

They were the first movers so they cornered the market with an inferior product. Now that China has no hope of capturing the market to extract rents the next best alternative is to make extracting rents impossible, destroying the business model of the US companies who rely on said rents.

In terms of a trade war this has all the downsides of dumping products on the US firms with none of the downsides to the rest of the economy outside of the very top end of the supply side.

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

#38

Post by Udik »

endtime wrote: post #27
obelix_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk I think US has bigger problems than whether it's semiconductor tech gets stolen. Social media and the news media have created such a dysfunctional environment that I am finding it increasingly hard to believe constructive debate/solutions on anything are possible until the underlying environment producing the dysfunction is cleaned up. If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped…

> If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped up purely for skills to pander. While I share some of your concerns about the media, isn't this (just an uncharitable way of stating) the entire purpose of democracy?

Western democracy has always been tempered (and sometimes subverted) by the control exerted by cultural elites on mass communications. Now that control is faltering, and we're seeing the results.

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

#39

Post by obelix_ »

endtime wrote: post #27
obelix_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk I think US has bigger problems than whether it's semiconductor tech gets stolen. Social media and the news media have created such a dysfunctional environment that I am finding it increasingly hard to believe constructive debate/solutions on anything are possible until the underlying environment producing the dysfunction is cleaned up. If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped…

> If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped up purely for skills to pander. While I share some of your concerns about the media, isn't this (just an uncharitable way of stating) the entire purpose of democracy?

My feeling is the kind of pandering a leader used to do to get into a seat of power has changed thanks to the internet and the state of info overload we live in. They are much more aware of who to target and what that group wants to hear. And since every targeted group is overloaded with info, getting/keeping their attention creates this arms race of who can be the most touching, entertaining or outrageous circus clown. Not just in politics but in every sphere I see more and more absurd attention craving characters being propped up. And I am finding it hard to see how democracy benefits.

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

#40

Post by ttflee »

The recent rhetoric of NYTimes around a Trump-administration related issue is always like 'Why A would actually become not-A'.

A professor in physics dept. in University of Science and Technology of China at Hefei has complained that he could not find any student able to solve problems in textbooks, e.g. condensed matter physics, for years. Demography together with education reforms favoring liberal arts has destroyed tomorrow's engineers in China. Salary gaps from IT and financial sectors prohibited talents from entering traditional industries. Investment into the new tech surely helps but is not likely to completely overcome existing shortcomings in traditional materials and manufacturing industry in China.

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