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China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

341–350 of 611 posts

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles Who's going to vote their government out or jam things up with filibuster? For better or worse their government just 'does'. You cannot seriously compare a system like this to US/UK democracy paralyzation during things like COVID. I do not think their system is better or worse, it's just not subject to any kind of politics internally th…

> Who's going to vote their government out or jam things up with filibuster? Losing an election in the US just means you are out of a job - and lose all its perks. Losing power in an authoritarian government could mean you are arrested for “corruption” and sentenced to death. The paranoia (and occasional country sabotaging acts) of CCP critters are justified as it’s a no holds barred fight for power and survival. htt…

> Losing power in an authoritarian government could mean you are arrested for “corruption” and sentenced to death.

The US is nearly there.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#342

In a way this is good news. The more China overplays its hand in this undeclared economic war the more likely that Western countries will realize that they are making the exact same mistake with China that they have made with Russia. You can't play nice with dictatorships in the hope that your long term economic interests will be aligned to the point that the other party will be forced to continue to play nice. China…

If China is a dictatorship, what's the US? Gangster Oligarchy?

With the unprecedented indictment and arrest of an ex-president on trumped up and statutorily expired charges, how far is the US from a dictatorship? We already know about the rampant mass censorship, thanks to Twitter files expose, militarisation of police and accumulation of all wealth by a few corporates. The only thing left for a clear path towards dictatorship was persecution of political opponents.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the wrong question. The right question is: what does the leader of china gain by ordering an invasion of Taiwan?

This framing is incorrect. The official position of the PRC since its inception has been that Taiwan and the mainland are the same country. Reunification was always the plan of the CCP. Reuinification remains popular in the mainland. While few Taiwanese desire full reuinfication, a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence, indicating that both sides still see themselves as part of an abstract Chi…

> a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence

Given that doing so would put them on a path to an invasion by the mainland, this would seem expedient.

> indicating that both sides still see themselves as part of an abstract Chinese cultural nation.

So no, it indicates nothing of the sort.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#344
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible access to, and control of, most of the world's top chip manufacturing node fabs. They don't know how to run them, maintain them, use them. If they did, they'd have built their own. Only people help them here. And yet, they still don't have them. If China invaded tomorrow, just the power loss alone would render those fabs into useless tech, taking months to clean and repair. And they'd still gain nothing, for…

They could temporarily deny access to these nodes to other states. > Only people help them here. How many Hong Kongers aligned with the party after the preemptive takeover of the Hong Kong government? How many people simply cared more about making a living than fighting for their old political and legal system?

They didn’t have the benefit of seeing the example of what happened in Hong Kong.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#345

In a way this is good news. The more China overplays its hand in this undeclared economic war the more likely that Western countries will realize that they are making the exact same mistake with China that they have made with Russia. You can't play nice with dictatorships in the hope that your long term economic interests will be aligned to the point that the other party will be forced to continue to play nice. China…

If China is a dictatorship, what's the US? Gangster Oligarchy?

Elected, nepotistic, robber-baron-pimps in an old money boys club..

.. i'm hoping people get these references. Risky.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The us tried having an engineer leader, Herbert Hoover. It did not end well.

not sure how much you can blame Hoover for the great depression, guy just had bad luck in being president when the entire world economy imploded. The US didn't pull out of it until WWII

The crash of 1919 was way worse in terms of relative drop compared to the total economy. But the US bounced back quickly. Coolidge warned before hoover was president that hoover was meddlesome: "for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice – all of it bad". Despite how people seem to misremember, hoover was very interventionist, outright declaring that he thought that society was something with knobs and levers that you could engineer your way around.

https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-herbert-hoover...

Believe it or not, FDR ran on a platform declaring that hoover was dicking around too much, though when he became president he obviously doubled down on what hoover was doing.

"Although Roosevelt would oversee a dramatic expansion of the federal government himself, he attacked Hoover during the 1932 presidential campaign for engaging in “reckless and extravagant” spending and ran on a Democratic platform calling for “an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures” by at least 25 percent. Roosevelt’s running mate, John Nance Garner, went so far as to accuse Hoover of “leading the country down the path of socialism.”

I am not entirely sure how history got rewritten to be the exact opposite of what it actually was.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the wrong question. The right question is: what does the leader of china gain by ordering an invasion of Taiwan?

This framing is incorrect. The official position of the PRC since its inception has been that Taiwan and the mainland are the same country. Reunification was always the plan of the CCP. Reuinification remains popular in the mainland. While few Taiwanese desire full reuinfication, a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence, indicating that both sides still see themselves as part of an abstract Chi…

> While few Taiwanese desire full reuinfication, a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence

That relatively small number is only due to China's promise of automatic and immediate invasion if they were to declare independence. Remove the threat to their life and their families, the vast majority of them would want to be Taiwan rather than be governed by a dictatorship.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am less convinced that China is really good at playing the long game, and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles that we see in the US. It’s just so easy to tap into our fears of China that we want to believe that they’re this smart and ruthless. We look for evidence to validate our feelings. There are deposits of these rare earth minerals elsewhere. There are always more depos…

You don't need to be afraid of China to realize that outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to a single non-democratic country doesn't serve our interests in the long run.

> outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to a single non-democratic country doesn't serve our interests in the long run

You do realise that a sizeable chunk of the world's oil and gas are sourced from "non-democratic" countries in the Middle East, yet somehow we leave them alone to openly torture, abuse and murder their citizens? And on top of that they're left alone to operate a cartel (OPEC) that holds the world to ransom when they decide one day to cut production and push up prices. Feels like there's a whole load of double standards on display here.

Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

#350
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face. As an East Asian myself, the amount of stupidity that goes on in all of the East Asian countries at all levels because of “face” is astounding. Call it “honor” or “nationalism” or “XXX Pride” - ultimately all the same thing.

This is the answer. It is so simple and yet so alien to the west that it simply doesn’t register in most people’s minds.

> yet so alien to the west

> Chinese state planners when they successfully cloak their plans in a cloud of Orientalism

https://media.tenor.com/isrmdo9Xr9EAAAAC/mission-accomplishe...

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