91–100 of 149 posts
I wonder if these actions will have the opposite effect. China will only more invest into producing their own. And I think we should not underestimate them. Could be good for competition though.
If these are so beneficial, why didn't China / Russia institute this kind of import/export restrictions on their own? It sounds like cheap propaganda ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, though it's not only about delaying China so the US can catch up in semiconductors, but also about trying to delay China so that they miss their window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s. The US is trying to deter that using a comprehensive deterrence strategy - military, diplomatic, economic. Hence new US bases in northern Philippines, US suppo…
I really dislike this warmongering. Looking at the last 150 years, or even the most recent decades, it's us having a history of invading countries or conducting military operations to support different parties. Yet, we are so blind of that. China has been mostly on the receiving stick (by European countries as well), not the offending one. Even when it comes to Vietnam or Korea it has been us who meddled in those int…
Isn't it ironic that you're accusing others of warmongering, but then suggest an action which would almost certainly provoke a war? (China has been pretty explicit about declaration of sovereignty being their red line)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, though it's not only about delaying China so the US can catch up in semiconductors, but also about trying to delay China so that they miss their window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s. The US is trying to deter that using a comprehensive deterrence strategy - military, diplomatic, economic. Hence new US bases in northern Philippines, US suppo…
I really dislike this warmongering. Looking at the last 150 years, or even the most recent decades, it's us having a history of invading countries or conducting military operations to support different parties. Yet, we are so blind of that. China has been mostly on the receiving stick (by European countries as well), not the offending one. Even when it comes to Vietnam or Korea it has been us who meddled in those int…
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-Russia-trade-top...
https://www.politico.eu/article/china-firms-russia-body-armo...
I wonder if these actions will have the opposite effect. China will only more invest into producing their own. And I think we should not underestimate them. Could be good for competition though.
It is just a delaying tactic. ASML is 5-10 years ahead in their technology so it will take a while for China to catch up. Which will grant the USA some extra time to build its own chip industry and not be dependent on two or three other countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has been pro-market since the 80s. But they don't view markets as fundamentally incompatible with socialism. Their approach is to utilize markets and to further open up, but to step in when the market fails. In other words: yes to markets, but use it as a tool and don't trust it blindly. For example the recent real estate bubble pop was intentional. They've recognized for a decade that the real estate market is…
China was pro-market until Xi Jing Ping tightened control. The moment when everyone realized that things had changed was when Jack Ma's ant group was prevented from going IPO, and Jack disappeared shortly after for a long while. Now it's regressing quickly back into state controlled economy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, though it's not only about delaying China so the US can catch up in semiconductors, but also about trying to delay China so that they miss their window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s. The US is trying to deter that using a comprehensive deterrence strategy - military, diplomatic, economic. Hence new US bases in northern Philippines, US suppo…
> Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s Do you have a source on that? > AUKUS The one that is supposed to result in submarines getting delivered sometime in the 2030s at the earliest? Hardly relevant for the 20s.
Xi himself, as recently as just last week, centering reunification in his New Year's speech [0]
Delaying China is absolutely critical for democracies to remain globally viable. The fundamental principle is that any person or country who wants to remain self-determining must be better armed, prepared, and able to fight than the local bully or global authoritarian; if not, they'll take your lunch and democracy every time. With Russia, supported by China [1], we are already far past a new Cold War and into a Hot War with the autocracies.
The better defense capabilities of the democracies rely on the concept of "Defense Offset", which is basically maintaining a technological advantage so that a numerically much smaller military can prevail against a numerically superior military (e.g., US mil 2019 total size 1.388MM [2], vs China 2.535MM [3]).
This military advantage, since at least the late 1960s, has relied on advantage in microchip technology.
When the first Cold War ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Grand Experiment was tried. The idea was that free flow of economic benefits and information would inevitably lead to open and democratic societies. Sadly the generous experiment failed miserably — all it did was further empower the dictators. Now, Russia is attempting to regain all it's territory back to 1917, and China is continuing it's expansionist ways. This is because they now have significantly closed the technology gap to the point where even Iran is contributing significantly to Russia's war on Europe with the Shaheed drones, using a lot of off-the-shelf technology, and Ukraine is significantly bolstering it's defense with FPV drones.
So, even if China does eventually manage to catch up (which is unlikely considering how many insanely complex and globally-non-China-sourced technologies go into one $450MM ASML chip lithography machine), the key is to delay CCP sufficiently that we can extricate them from the democracies' supply chains and maintain a sufficient military offset to defend democracy around the world.
We are starting very late, so this is truly critical, unless we are OK with us and our descendants living under a regime like CCP or Putin.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67855477
[1] https://www.voiceofeurope.com/chinas-advanced-machine-tool-e...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/mili...
[3] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/military-arm...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, though it's not only about delaying China so the US can catch up in semiconductors, but also about trying to delay China so that they miss their window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s. The US is trying to deter that using a comprehensive deterrence strategy - military, diplomatic, economic. Hence new US bases in northern Philippines, US suppo…
> Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s Do you have a source on that? > AUKUS The one that is supposed to result in submarines getting delivered sometime in the 2030s at the earliest? Hardly relevant for the 20s.
Xi Jinping's own words. He continues to say publicly that China and Taiwan will be reunified, most recently at his meeting with Biden in SF and then again in his new years speech a few days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38828960
He has been saying that for a decade without equivocation or ambiguity. If we take him at his word, then the optimal time for Xi to do it is in the 2020s, 1) while the US Navy is at its weakest since the Cold War, 2) China has the demographics and economic strength for a war, 3) while Xi Jinping is young and fit enough to handle a war, and 4) the US president is either aging Biden, chaotic Trump, or incompetent Kamala.
Xi has instructed the PLA/N/AF to be fully modernized and mission capable by its 100yr anniversary in 2027, and they are on the largest fastest military buildup since Germany in the 1930s. They're also acting belligerent and aggressive toward Taiwan, other neighbors in the South China Sea, and vs India on their border. We've seen this behavior and mentality in dictatorships before and know where it leads.
> Hardly relevant for the 20s.
The announcement is diplomatically relevant now, even if not militarily relevant till the 2030s. It's part of a package of reassuring US allies in the region that the US is committed to defense of its democratic friends and allies there. Without such clear reassurance, some may conclude they have no choice but to pre-emptively concede and capitulate to the CCP on Taiwan, SCS militarization, CCP stealing SCS resources in other countries' exclusive economic zones, etc. This is part of a comprehensive diplomatic/economic/military strategy of preventing that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really dislike this warmongering. Looking at the last 150 years, or even the most recent decades, it's us having a history of invading countries or conducting military operations to support different parties. Yet, we are so blind of that. China has been mostly on the receiving stick (by European countries as well), not the offending one. Even when it comes to Vietnam or Korea it has been us who meddled in those int…
> The way I see it, western countries and US should take a clear stand about Taiwanese statehood, and Taiwan needs to do it first on their own in order for the rest of the world to take a stand, as they legally still lay claim on the entirety of China (and beyond). Isn't it ironic that you're accusing others of warmongering, but then suggest an action which would almost certainly provoke a war? (China has been pretty…
This tension can only be relieved by de jure integrating Taiwan in Chinese statehood under very huge degrees of autonomy, which no one, let alone Taiwanese people ever trust or by unilateral statehood declaration (which has no support internationally, least of all in US since Taiwan not declaring independent statehood is the entire basis of the US-Taiwan relations act).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately for the Chinese it's extremely tricky for even private capital to pick the winners in these spaces. I'd guess there is almost zero chance the Chinese government giving out free cash beat the market and even build the right stuff. Can they even build the light sources or optics for these devices. Don't Zeiss make the flattest mirrors ever made for this? There's probably hundreds of technologies that are…
They have already proved time and time again to be able to make gigantic leaps, some of those, completely on their own in the sector. Pouring billions in the sector highly increases the chances of breakthrough technologies. I personally think more competition in the space is good for everyone, albeit I'm not a fan of those trade wars, they accomplish little at the end of the day and they are funded with a lot of our…
Yes, we shall see. An awful lot of those giant leaps were extremely dependent on technology that was either systematically forced to hand over from democratic countries, or outright stolen by espionage (see their fighter jet vs F35, and some sub technologies).
Have the Chinese managed to reach critical mass of knowledge to continue to advance? Time will tell. But, if Russia is an indicator, even leadership in some areas will slow, stagnate, then become dependent on outside sources [0]. Notice also that Russia is dependent on outside sources even for CNC machines, in which it used to lead, with China's exports increasing 10X after Ukraine invasion [1].
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-08/russian-w...
[1] https://www.voiceofeurope.com/chinas-advanced-machine-tool-e...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russians got their assets frozen because they are aggressive genocidal invaders.
It doesn't matter if it was ethically justified or not. The fact remains that the assets were frozen by the US government which runs contrary to the notion that the US allows unrestricted capital movement. Today it's Russians' assets, yesterday it was Afghanistan's central bank's assets and tomorrow it can be any other country
US can even invade any other country tomorrow. There are risks everywhere, every country has to evaluate "Do I need to insure myself against US invasion / asset freeze in the next 5 years? How much will such insurance cost?". Unless you plan to invade your neighbor, the chances of such events are pretty low and the cost of insurance usually does not outweigh the benefits.