Did anyone else see this and think: Man, they must have discovered some weird defense industry application and this will be the first remembered clue that future me had that the worldwide shit was hitting the fan.?
Drones?
China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
411–420 of 611 posts
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#412Earlier 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…
You're right in the large. Realistically, though my question still applies because of a one considerations.
Timeframe. Realistically china has only about 10-15 years to do this before demographics and horrifying rates of infertility stemming from their massive pollution and urbanization catch up to them. The idea of reunification could just be an abstract concept in perpetuity (and will be if PRC makes no moves). What takes it to being real is a question of when and that has everything to do with what's in it for the current leader in the here and now.
As an aside. If PRC were really big brained and had this as the #1 agenda they would realize that the taiwanese drive for independence is really contingent. If PRC were chill and democratic free, and not scary, Taiwan would come running back. Probably also china would actually contend to be #1 country in the world. The CPC only shoots itself in the foot.
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#413Earlier 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?
If I were him, I'd prefer the status quo. Invading Taiwan is not a 100% success guarantee and surely Xi doesn't want to end up like Putin in Ukraine. Even a (military) success would threaten his rule, simply by the economical consequences. That's a lot of risks for very little rewards. But who knows ... we can just hope for the sake of all of us, that the Chinese have better intelligence and better risk assessment th…
Inside of xi there are two wolves
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you even talking about. China is regularly rated lower than Vietnam on human rights rankings and Vietnam is trending towards improvement. China is trending towards regression. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/vietnams-human-righ...
Lived in China and Vietnam. There is no comparison. I don't care if Vietnam allows their citizens to use Facebook.
When did you live in China? China today is a different country to pre-Xi or even early-Xi China.
Also China doesn’t let you go where the real human rights abuses are in Xinjiang.
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you even talking about. China is regularly rated lower than Vietnam on human rights rankings and Vietnam is trending towards improvement. China is trending towards regression. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/vietnams-human-righ...
Lived in China and Vietnam. There is no comparison. I don't care if Vietnam allows their citizens to use Facebook.
Please go into more detail, as there's a dearth of comparative information.
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if China invades Taiwan, it's Americas fault really? Ridiculous.
While I don’t think America would be to blame for a war started by China, as an outsider, I think it has to be noted that America under Biden has been diplomatically rather aggressive and variably trustworthy. It’s fairly obvious than the whole alliance of democracies against authoritarianism is a paper thin cover for "countries which serve the US interests" and both include countries which don’t promote liberal valu…
This is stupid. NATO was falling apart until last year. Suddenly it's resurgent. Do you think the US was behind this? No. Europe is scared shitless by its neighbor to the east and it's pulling American interest to it. Honestly after all of its stupid adventures in the middle east the US has lost its appetite for this shit, and "the alliance of democracies against authoritarianism" for once is not drawn by american interests (it was never really an alliance against authoritarianism, jugoslavia and Angola were on our side of during the cold war).
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's one of several hard to defend routes into Russia. Russia needs Ukraine as a buffer. No, Russia doesn't need it. I'm sure you're correct that Russia believes this, but the reality is that no one actually wants to invade Russia, and no one has wanted to invade Russia for a very, very long time. All Russia's neighbors have only been worried about invasion and oppression from Russia , ever since the end of WWII. S…
It's self-projection, really.
Maybe they're still stuck in 1930s mentality. Back then, Hitler really did want to invade Russia (and did), along with Poland and a bunch of other countries.
However, the world has moved on in the last 80 years. Germany is part of NATO now, Poland and Germany are friends (and France, Netherlands, etc.), and no one is worried about invasion from Germany any more. Somehow, the people of Russia never got past the mindset they had back when Hitler tried to invade.
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to preach this on HN for months. The American propaganda is blindingly strong. The US will work with one-party countries as long as they're not a threat economically. How else do you think that Americans cheer when factories get moved to Vietnam, which is significantly worse in human rights? Both of these things can't be true at the same time: 1. The US is concerned for Chinese citizens economically…
To be fair, the theory that economic development leads to political liberalization isn't entirely fiction. Taiwan and South Korea both used to be de facto dictatorships.
Meanwhile, Russia's vastly more economically developed[1] than it was in the 90s, yet it went fully down the authoritarian slide over the past three decades.
Also, it may be worth dropping by much of the Middle East to get another reality check on this question.
The only thing economic development seems to consistently result in is a higher demand for imports.
[1] Well, the nice parts of it are much wealthier than they used to be. The provincial towns are dying, and all the productive industries have been pushed out by oil and services.
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US has effectively zero direct dependence on middle eastern oil due to domestic production and transportation costs For now and whilst those extraction costs are cheaper domestically. The US needs the Saudis as a backstop and for infill of the types of crude oils the North American continent doesn't have access to or is in limited supply. They're also a handy client state to do the US's dirty work in the Middle…
> You need to look at the bigger picture. The big picture is that the US needs middle east countries to price their oil in USD. Everything else is just a bonus.
The world's USD-settled oil trade is a tiny fraction of overall USD-settled trade.
The petrodollar is an interesting theory, but it doesn't really hold up to very much scrutiny.
Re: China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is the CCP so intent on controlling the land of another country? The way you frame the question already suggests that you're not interested in why China (not just the CCP - this is a broad sentiment inside China) sees things the way it does. Taiwan is not seen as "another country" in China. It's seen as a Chinese province that is temporarily separated from China due to the civil war. This was also the view of s…
Russia does not see Ukraine as a separate country, yet everyone else does. North & South Korea are still at war, yet they are separate countries. Why should Mainland and Taiwan be any different in the long run? While Taiwan may have historically claimed that it should control the mainland, I don't hear this from them now. I'm sure they would be more than happy to sign an agreement with mainland that recognized them a…
Why can't Spain let the Basques be? Why couldn't the Northern US let the Southern US be? Lots of states don't like the idea of part of them breaking off.