Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 485 posts

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

#171

Post by breve »

MangoToupe wrote: post #143
SllX wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now there is no non-violent path to achieving that because Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that. Probably with the aid of America, although I’m a lot less certain of that than 5 year ago, and it’s looking like it’s a lot more likely to be with the aid of Japan as well. Also a success by the PRC would still result in the political destruction of the Republic of China and the subj…

> Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite. If anything I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today's climate

What is your country? China is always looking for more territory. If you've got water and mineral resources, all the better.

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

#172

Post by noduerme »

MangoToupe wrote: post #146
noduerme wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that even if Taiwan's military resistance were negligible (or on the order of Tibet's), which it's not, that would not validate invading them and taking away their autonomy. For all intents and purposes, Taiwan is a self-governing nation, distinct from China precisely because it does not wish to be part of China.

Taiwan is not distinct from China. Both the ROC and the PRC view Taiwan as part of China (ironically, at the cost of the mass slaughter of taiwanese to in service of the chinese).

From that perspective, the ROC is the legitimate government of Beijing.

Facts on the ground appear otherwise, but facts on the ground also imply that Taiwan is not part of the PRC's version of China.

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

#173

Post by inglor_cz »

noduerme wrote: post #168
inglor_cz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, context matters and we are likely not talking in a "let us decide whom to invade" context. BTW "Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli" is not really true, sometimes this happened, but wars have been declared for all sorts of putative reasons, like "our particular minority is being oppr…

The cloak of words has always been needed, for some reason, to convince a population to make the sacrifices necessary to go to war. Yes, there have been other spoken reasons for invading a peaceful sovereign country. This does not change the fact that Russia is the belligerent party against Ukraine, or that China is the belligerent against a completely harmless and peaceful Taiwan. Taiwan's situation right now is ver…

It is indeed somewhat similar (though the sea is a better barrier + they don't have a major fifth column on their territory). And I would smell rat if it was a Chinese CCP official uttering the words about "political instability", but that would exactly be the change of context necessary.

If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability", they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what will happen in context of their own jobs.

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

#174

Post by rixed »

kamaal wrote: post #77
gsky wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. China occupied big chunch of Indian land. They will be a big war sooner or later. It's just how the world works

You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We stubbornly refuse to. Both countries, have now have growing economies with stable politics, and social direction. Things can only get better from here, and will. Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok. Because way bigger good things await these both nations. And we want them. Either way there is n…

Thank you for voicing a different tone than the seemingly prevalent obscene warmongering. I believe people of good will are generally less comfortable speaking out and are therefore underrepresented, including here on HN.

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

#175

Post by amunozo »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #113
constantcrying wrote: post #75

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…

Hah... europe will become king of the world! We'll tax and regulate ourselves to enormous wealth! No... jokes aside, europe is a failed union, and will slowly collapse or decompose in a decade or two. Then we can again focus on trade, lowering taxs and creating value. The only thing that is happening now is that the political class has become enormously rich through bribes and by having managed to phase out democracy…

There are issues with Europe, no doubt. But this kind of comment is ridiculous.

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

#176

Post by noduerme »

jabron wrote: post #151
elefanten wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Comparing Nazi Germany and the PRC in any way is certainly an interesting choice, considering they're the one major power in the world that actually doesn't have a recent history of invading sovereign nations.

Come again? Tibet was absolutely a sovereign nation. I guess it depends what you mean by "recent", but the colonization is still underway, daily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

ivell wrote: post #152
mytailorisrich wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arunachal Pradesh is a historic part of Tibet and was part of the Qing Empire before the Chinese revolution of 1912. When Tibet then broke away from China the Brits got what is now Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet. Hence the ongoing Chinese claim but the days of any military actions are long gone.

If historical claims are valid, then Mongols would be very happy to claim large swaths of land. Or if more recent claims are to be taken, then the Brits have claims over quite a large amount of countries. Historical claims are meaningless and are just an excuse for expansion.

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by RobotToaster »

noduerme wrote: post #68
rich_sasha wrote: post #58

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.

It's been in vogue since the American invasion of Vietnam

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

#179

Post by corimaith »

_t9ow wrote: post #101
adrian_b wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China. Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese. So Taiwan has becom…

> not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop May I ask if you actually live in one of these neighbouring countries? I do -- in fact I have lived in more than one -- and I can assure you that many/most people living in these areas outside of the Western media bubble absolutely do not share your view. From the CCP's (and many Chinese people's) perspective: 1)…

>Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC than it is to the West

The cultural distance between Taiwan and Japan, Korea and Hong Kong is less than the distance from mainland China. Aka Asian liberal democracies (or at least with strong political plurality and civil society). You're mistaking a regional difference with a commonality with the PRC, when in reality the PRC's epistemic worldview is highly distorted in comparison to virtually every other actor in the region. They don't speak for the region.

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

#180

Post by sofixa »

constantcrying wrote: post #82
mono442 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least European countries excel at introducing new regulations and taxes.

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

You're saying that like the two are at odds. France is a military superpower with almost entirely France, worst case scenario western EU, based supply chain. Italy, Spain, to a lesser extent Germany are too. Manufacturing is also pretty strong across (most) of the EU. Automotive is struggling in Germany, but booming in France (Renault are killing it). Leading in Aeronautics too. It's just mostly high value manufacturing. In the EU, 25% of the economy is in manufacturing. Compare with 10% in the US.

And those regulations are, more often than not, for everyone's benefit - at least EU, but often the Brussels effect applies so a lot of the rest of the world benefits too.

Post reply on HN