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Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

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Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#71

Nvidia is obviously a US company, but the chips themselves are manufactured in Taiwan. And of course China sees Taiwan as a rogue province, at at least treats invasion there as "on the table". While the US may decide to actively support Taiwan, at the very least a war over that will disrupt production. Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports from there to the US, then the fun and games would really start.…

> The ban exists as good politics (we don't ship to our adversaries)

Do normal people really view china as an adversary? I see this constantly being pushed by politicians and pundits but, unlike other countries in my lifetime, I don't really see that much animosity from normal folk. Expats who resent the PRC? Absolutely. Racism? Definitely. But there's not much appetite for the demonization of our largest trade partner, nor do I think people buy that we would ever want actual conflict with them—kinetic or economic (sans them doing something comically evil, of course). Genocide aside (for which there is at best sparse evidence available to westerners) most of the ways that they're supposedly our adversaries just seem like what we were brought up to see as "competition".

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#72

Nvidia is obviously a US company, but the chips themselves are manufactured in Taiwan. And of course China sees Taiwan as a rogue province, at at least treats invasion there as "on the table". While the US may decide to actively support Taiwan, at the very least a war over that will disrupt production. Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports from there to the US, then the fun and games would really start.…

> Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports

Are there any "exports" to ban after the fall?

The TSMC production was interrupted by a metro passing by few kilometers away. How can it sustain in a war?

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#73
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

It is ideological, but it isn't anything like China thinking that a "free, democratic society" is a threat. China has gotten incredibly rich under the CCP, the average stance is that its a great model. China thinks of Taiwan as a rogue province because of nationalism . A country of ethnic Chinese is both a reminder of the century of humiliation, and an affront to the idea of China being the nation of Chinese people.…

> China thinks of Taiwan as a rogue province because of nationalism

To explain: Taiwan was like the Jerusalem of CCP. The CCP was originally founded as a Leninism crusade on May 4th 1919 because League of Nations fuck-ups

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#75
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. So was everything with Taiwan hunky dory when they were a murderous military dictatorship for all those decades[1]? I thought the under-mentioned beef China had with Taiwan was the fact that the ROC took (and retains to this day) all the priceless cult…

Logically speaking if they weren't taken they would have been destroyed

How do you figure that? The CCP maintained a staggering number of historical and cultural artifacts for decades. What's so special about these that they would want to destroy them? Can you explain why you would view their destruction as logical?

I understand the cultural revolution did result in the destruction of history but people seem to wildly overstate its extent.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#76
post #35

Nvidia is obviously a US company, but the chips themselves are manufactured in Taiwan. And of course China sees Taiwan as a rogue province, at at least treats invasion there as "on the table". While the US may decide to actively support Taiwan, at the very least a war over that will disrupt production. Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports from there to the US, then the fun and games would really start.…

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

> china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons

That's absolutely not true if only for the existence of TSMC.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#77
post #58
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

> China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Can I ask what led to you generating this idea? As someone in Taiwan it really stood out to me as an odd take. First, considering Taiwan to be a democratic society of "Chinese" people is odd. The vast majority of Taiwanese wouldn't use the English word…

From the perspective of a third party and trying to understand things in a way that separates politics from reality (like PG says arguments involving identity are impossible to resolve), both Taiwanese and what might be called CCP-ese are largely political. Chinese has the rare quality of historically referring to ethnicity, language and culture to a degree not seen in most other peoples. There's also a final and most abstract concept, which is self identity. It is also the main lever of politics because it is almost impossible to change the other three. Both the citizens of the CCP and ROC are (virtually all) ancestry, linguistically and culturally Chinese. But politics has grabbed the stick of self identity and tried to steer it in different ways, leading to many contradictory results. From the CCP's destruction of culture during the cultural revolution, down to things like how (iirc) Confucianism is still taught in Taiwan as part of the curriculum but not China.

Edit: changed ethnicity to ancestry to be more precise.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#78
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

> China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. So was everything with Taiwan hunky dory when they were a murderous military dictatorship for all those decades[1]? I thought the under-mentioned beef China had with Taiwan was the fact that the ROC took (and retains to this day) all the priceless cult…

> So was everything with Taiwan hunky dory when they were a murderous military dictatorship for all those decades[1]?

It's good to remember that Taiwan's adoption of multiparty democracy is very recent, and that a one-party dictatorship preceded it.

And of course the PRC has always had lots of reasons to want to take back Taiwan, regardless whether it fears that mainland Chinese might see the Taiwanese system as preferable to their own.

But the gp's statement that Taiwan's example today threatens the raison d'être of PRC authoritarianism is also quite valid. PRC's authority does not rest alone on a monopoly of force and surveillance, but also reputation for stability and for organizing economic growth. Now PRC population is aging, growth is slowing and suffering from serious structural problems, economic management is becoming more centralized/ideological/less effective.

A successful, freer counter-example of what a Chinese nation might look like is actually quite dangerous to the PRC. Likewise, I think this is exactly why the PRC has kneecapped democracy in Hong Kong.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#79
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Chinese citizens know the US exists? This feels like projection. The US wants to act as if stock markets and political yard signs are the only usable system.

> But Chinese citizens know the US exists? of course, but the US is not mostly composed of chinese people. It is common belief in china that the state governance by the CCP is doing good for the country, and the proof is economic progress, material wealth and geopolitical strength.

Geopolitical strength ? Its a comon theme they want to emulate the british empire colonial model worldwide ,seeing it as what started the century of humiliation . Change by trade indeed.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#80
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exists a third possibility where the US and China sign an under the table deal for China to invade, the US to saber rattle and China to allow the flow of chips to continue. The present direction seems to be the US is "de-risking" from Taiwan by moving chip production to the US, so if China does invade they aren't caught in a bind.

Pretty sure TSMC has plans to destroy or disable their fabs in this event. They (or the Taiwanese) would be stupid not to.

Pretty sure the TSMC elite will prefer to work with the new CCP overlord if they were to give them a good enough deal.
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