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Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

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121–130 of 485 posts

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#121

As a European I have to say I am extremely jealous of a government with the willingness of doing something as radical as this. Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain. Neither the EU nor any member states seems willing to do anything about this though. Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent. But besides meani…

> Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain.

To be fair, Europe does have ASML which has something like 2/3 market share in DUV and almost monoplistic in EUV.

The moat is enormous, so they are unlikely to face any serious competition for at least a decade if not more.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity. Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the legitimate democratic ROC government then.

yeah its a civil war, lets see who will won. (Thank you for acknowledging that this is a civil war — that's something you rarely see on Western forums.)

I think a lot of us recognize it was a civil war. The idea that it is a civil war, conducted in the present tense, is the weird and dangerous one. When was the last actual fighting, WW2?

There are a number of frozen conflicts around the world, like North/South Korea and Cyprus. Both of those could be regarded as "civil war with external support", like Vietnam. What would be better is if those involved could recognize the situation as it actually is on the ground, and withdraw their claims and intents of actually resuming armed conflict.

Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts over ancient grudges, from the Hundred Years War to the Balkans. The post-WW2 world order was an attempt to finally draw a hard line underneath that.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's 100% common knowledge. I distinctly remember my teacher making a point to explain why Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jieshi were both valid transliterations in my 10th grade world history class. No one in America with a high school education believes that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map. Chinese history from antiquity to modern European/Japanes…

so the war in Venezuela...

.. would be an illegal American war, yes. Like most of the American incursions into South America and violations of sovereignty of South American countries.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first. Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I don't think China wants to destroy Taiwan. They want it to be a part of China.

By force. Because Taiwan doesn't want to be a part of Beijing's China.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify this for me: the Soviets don't exist, so how can they possibly take the whole of Japan - in some future? If you mean Russia, then no.

Ukraine has a proper army and the support of Europe, albeit with dated weapons. Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in. Hokkaido has always been under threat from Russia and the Soviets quickly took the Kuril Islands, which wasn't even originally theirs.

If the Okinawan Americans aren't going to do something useful for Japan, Japan would be very happy to kick them out and stop them harassing the locals.

A land invasion of mainland Japan is so unrealistic that even the US in WW2 didn't attempt it.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Who wants to be a military superpower or a manufacturing superpower, when they could be a regulatory superpower.

One of our problems (EU citizen here too) is the delusion that because everyone in the world wants access to European markets, everyone will bend their knees to our regulations and we can effectively dictate the world's standards. Given that our market share on the global economy is dropping steadily, this won't hold forever. By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucrat…

> By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.

in favour of what? Every other large market (China, India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#128
post #2

Is Hokkaido defensible? Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.

What kind of line is "once china solves the taiwan problem"? You assume that they will take Taiwan. Have you not been privy to the utter embarrassment of a continental power trying to take Ukraine right now? China is very aware of the isolated situation Russia is now in. They have desire to be in that situation.

Noone is letting China "solve the taiwan problem" like you said.

Such inflammatory language.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be darkly amusing if all chips come from either politically unstable Taiwan or seismically unstable Hokkaido. But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.

That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first. Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Spot on. And the mistake of considering appeasement of said totalitarian superpower by “letting them have it” would be just as enormous.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first. Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I don't think China wants to destroy Taiwan. They want it to be a part of China.

Become a part of a country with no freedom of speech? Yep, that's destruction.
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