I see this news as a loss for the US. It has to resort to regulations to stop TSMC from doing business with Huawei. When you can't incentivize your ally, that means your opponent's business is still very attractive. Regulations will only cripple your ally. Taiwan may comply on the outside. But inside, they'll cut under-the-table deals with China. They'll find loop holes to skirt regulations.
Taiwan seems to be heading to be the next Hong Kong. Their political class is still publicly resistant. But their business leaders are slowly surrendering. At some point, the political class will follow. The US will then need to rely on the activism of the young renegade "colonels" like Joshua Wong. Crippling an ally can buy the US some time. But it is losing ground.
Hopefully such movements can reduce the business interests in Taiwan towards China in the long run, and establish multilateral-ism with many identities other than China.
> Taiwan seems to be heading to be the next Hong Kong.
The US will defend Taiwan by any means necessary, including nuclear options. If they don't, they've already lost to China. Chip superiority is everything. If the US can't manufacture or source modern chips then it's over for them. US leaders and the military know this to be true. Taiwan is not Hong Kong. The US doesn't need Hong Kong. The US needs Taiwan.
You think the US is prepared to use nuclear weapons in a conflict involving Taiwan? Over semiconductor chips? (or are you using "nuclear option" in the rhetorical sense?) Or, given your next sentence says "if they don't..." I suppose you're only offering a non-expert sports-fan level of opinion.
Well, my opinion is that the US government, and the US public, is unwilling and has been demonstrably unable to muster any kind of support for significant military force over any issue that is complex and intangible, for the last 15 years. Name one recent strategic issue aside from Iraq/Afghanistan that the US and allies haven't backed down from (involving military force)? If it doesn't involve weapons of mass destruction, an imminent danger, or American lives being threatened, our collective attention span doesn't care to cash in our chips. And unlike oil, semiconductors don't hit big conservative wallets and their motivations.
I don't think America (in the popular sense) knows or cares what Taiwan is, to be honest. We can't even get our shit together to defend our supply of toilet paper and cloth masks. So I have strong doubts that a conflict over such a technical / intangible issue would rile up America's political will enough to convince people to go to war. And especially not with this administration's political skills.
>the US public, is unwilling and has been demonstrably unable to muster any kind of support for significant military force over any issue that is complex and intangible
Americans would be directly affected by a conflict. Where do all of these electronics come from?
People here are talking like Intel fabs have all ceased to exist or something. They haven't. It's really Europe that needs to panic about China/Taiwan (where there are NO firms that can manufacture semiconductors at scale), but, they aren't of course.
Intel has fabs but they don't make anything except Intel products. They tried a few years ago to set up a contract foundry business, but it didn't work out despite signing some big deals initially (Nokia).
The Chinese didn't get to their current position via chip superiority. They got there by being a low cost producer of a whole pile of other things. Clearly chip superiority wasn't everything to them.
In fact also by definition most countries don't have chip superiority. Not the UK (home of ARM), not Japan, not Germany, not Canada, not Australia (who happens to be a medical powerhouse). Yet they all have dynamic successful economies.
It's a big world out there. Being master of one trade doesn't make you the master of them all.
China has always had access to state of the art chips though, as has the UK, Japan, Germany etc.
When I say chip superiority, I'm implying China will move to starve the US of modern chip fab capacity. That's huge. The US needs them for military, intelligence and productivity purposes.
All negotiations with Xi the PERSON will get nowhere if you go around insulting and humiliate him publicly. Instead, you have intense private discussions and then smile for the camera and say polite exaggerations or lies. This is politics as usual under ANY administration. The results of those private discussions are shown in public actions against the COUNTRY for failing to act as desired.
Trump says nice things about Xi while passing the most restrictive legislation against China that we've seen in decade. Make things against Xi personal and the chances of war skyrocket. His sensitivity and crackdowns about Winnie the Pooh jokes shows that Xi isn't exactly the most stable dictator where his public image is concerned.
The fact that bills concerning China make it through both Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate (especially as they can't seem to agree on almost anything else) speak volumes as to the importance of what's going on.
TSMC is in a much shakier position than the US. It makes more sense for the US to bear the mantle given the geographic proximity and commercial entanglements between Taiwan and the USA.
In practice I believe this action doesn't reduce the soft power of the USA -- everyone knows the immense sway that US demand has on Taiwanese foundry companies.
SMIC, China’s biggest chipmaker, saw its shares surge 245% at the open on its first day of trade in Shanghai.
SMIC issued issuing 1,685,620,000 shares at 27.46 yuan per share, raising 46.28 billion yuan ($6.62 billion). Shares were trading at 95 yuan at the open.
When Intel refused to make Apple's ARM processor for iPhones, TSMC was also unable to build a competitive high-end SOC. And yet 13 years later, here we are. Of course, Intel and TSMC both shop with ASML, and that's not a possibility anymore for SMIC, so it's not a quite similar comparison...
Yet I think it's important to keep some perspective: this Chinese/US spat is not a championship where a winner will be declared at the end of the summer. There's no reason to believe that 50 years from now either China or US will have collapsed. Xi Jinping dictatorial inclinations [1] are a threat of course, as he might decide to consolidate his power at the expense of China. But US recent [2] trend of politicians running on the hate of the other half of the US population is also a tremendous existential threat.
In any case, assuming that both US and China still stand 50 years from now, the only way for TSMC, Samsung or even Intel to stay ahead is, well, to stay ahead. It's a never-ending marathon, and in that regard funneling Huawei money into SMIC sounds very counter-productive.
[1] Moreso than his predecessors IMHO, with the notable exception of Mao. And indeed, Mao was very good at keeping China poor, underdeveloped and starving.
[2] Is it really recent? I'm French, during my two stays in the US (first time 3 years, second time 5 years) I felt a major polarization of the population, but it might have been there all along and I simply didn't notice.
>TSMC was also unable to build a competitive high-end SOC. And yet 13 years later, here we are.
I think this doesn't paint an accurate picture. TSMC were "high end" sans Intel. Since you cant Fab with Intel, TSMC was the best any Fabless Vendor could get, now it just happen TSMC is also the best in industry.
Compared to SMIC, they aren't even close to TSMC, nor Samsung, or even Global Foundry. In Tech lead, Volume and yield. To put things into perspective, they will have to accelerate at 2x the speed of current industry's rate for the next 5 years in other to be level with TSMC.
SMIC's 14nm is still no where near Samsung, or even Global Foundry ( GF ). And GF has been shipping 14nm in volume for nearly 5 years now.
You are right indeed, TSMC probably didn't need Apple cash to get to where they are now. I forgot that for a very long time Apple was shopping at Samsung...
>When Intel refused to make Apple's ARM processor for iPhones, TSMC was also unable to build a competitive high-end SOC. And yet 13 years later, here we are. Of course, Intel and TSMC both shop with ASML, and that's not a possibility anymore for SMIC, so it's not a quite similar comparison...
When Intel refused to make Apple's ARM processor for iPhones Apple went to Samsung didn't they?
Indeed, until the A8 it was Samsung, then the A9 was split between Samsung and TSMC. And from the A10 it was TSMC only. In any case, Apple cash going away didn't help Intel. I'm pretty sure it helps financing TSMC RnD now, just like it helped financing Samsung RnD before.
Now Huawei cash is going to finance SMIC. It's cash being funneled at a competitor, supported by the Chinese government. Which means that if Huawei is not competitive because of SMIC, SMIC is going to get further money/intelligence from the Chinese government to become competitive. I don't see how TSMC, Samsung or Intel win from that situation, at least in the long term.
I can be completely wrong of course, and maybe China will be in a similar situation to that of the Soviet Union during the cold war: without access to competitive electronics. But SMIC is not that far behind, or are they? They can do 14nm, so they are at TSMC level of 2016. 4 years late? Without ASML support though, it might be harder to catch up.
I think TSMC having to drop Huawei is more a side effect of American sanctions than anything being done by design. Again I can be wrong. US sanctions are very far reaching and problematic for a lot of companies (see: Airbus, BNP Paribas, etc.), it doesn't mean that these companies in particular are targeted by the US. Unintended consequences.
The patterning machines used for the leading node isn't exported to China due to export restrictions. Only the Dutch company ASML is able to manufacture these patterning machines.
That's so funny. ASML holds the market for a reason, this is not so simple. You could probably do it on a Friday night but the Chinese may take a bit longer than that.
This is essentially a Manhattan project like initiative. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. China now has some of the best universities doing research in optics.
If it happens in 5 years what will ASML do then ? The west’s monopoly on this sector would be finished.
At this point China has no choice but to develop the tech or be forced to not have processors. Time will tell.
Given that hard power is being used to punish China they will use every means at their disposal from massive investments and manpower to poaching talents and even espionage.
If North Korea can make nukes then this shouldn’t be impossible for a power like China.
I have a sneaking suspicion that they are much further ahead than they are revealing in public which explains their confidence and refusal to back down. Time will tell.
>Given that hard power is being used to punish China they will use every means at their disposal from massive investments and manpower to poaching talents and even espionage.
Espionage is usually the first thing, not something of last resort. Pretty much all major players are doing it all the time. Doesn't even take much incentive.
The west isn't quite as free with giving the stolen information to the private sector (though the US really likes giving their domestic companies bidding advantages) - but since we're talking about China here, there's pretty much a guarantee of anything and everything finding a way to their private sector.
The Soviet Union didn't collapse because a lack of capability. They collapsed because it was too expensive to forge their own way, when most of the world could pool capital via free trade.
China is big. But the rest of the world is bigger. And despotic regimes inclined to trade with an embargoed state aren't typically the most flush economic partners.
Don't think its a good idea to act like China is a isolated nation like the soviet union.
Lets see a guaranteed market is China + Russia + Iran + ASEAN seems like a good block amounting to almost 2.3 billion people.
China already has quiet a strong foothold in Africa with tech brands giving a potential 1 billion future customers.
If one thing the EU should worry about not turning into a Hotel Europe where people only go to visit instead of producing stuff.
It depends on what they need to fund. I don’t see why an investment of say 200 billion dollars over 5-7 years can’t bring them to the forefront in chip making. They have forex reserves in the trillions.
SMIC which is their Intel raised 7 billion dollars last week from investors inside China. That’s on top of what the government is putting in. People underestimate the resources at chinas disposal.
China's economy looks very different if the world starts treating them differently. All while they're attempting to transition their economy from lowest-cost manufacturer to value-add.
It's benefited from 20 years of optimistic free market access.
No doubt they'll find trading partners, but it's not going to look anything like the open doors they've been used to. And they're going to start finding that their domestic and international choices now have trade consequences, rather than the look-the-other-way, laissez-faire approach the world has taken thus far.
Exports are 17 % of China’s GDP. High but not as high as say Germany. It doesn’t seem like a fall in exports would be unmanageable. Not to make a virtue out of a harsh reality but chinas export heavy model wasn’t sustainable anyway.
China has been able to develop advanced stealth technology, quantum computing, supersonic combustion engine, and more, after the state decided that they were priorities that had to be developed.
I don't see why EUV would be impossible for them to replicate. The list of times when we (and I too) thought that they could not catch up in a certain technology is long, and I won't make that bet anymore.
The resources of the Chinese state are incredibly vast. If they decide that they absolutely must get something done, that will most likely happen. It would be a Manhattan Project level initiative, but even more important.
Yea, it will get done, but it will take a bunch of years.
One of the best things I feel like I've learned in systems eng is that this stuff is just too disorganized and difficult. It's not enough to steal all of the plans - you're not going to make sense of them and they don't have the rejiggered edition Jimmy's WAR from last Tuesday.
IP theft occurs because employees are owned for years at a time and are able to slowly push useful tidbits across the proprietary barrier.
I agree, it will take bunch of years, but Chinese EUV research has already been underway for a while and they've been hiring like crazy in optics for years. I'm fairly confident that they will have it functional in the next 7 years.
Half the stuff you just mentioned China has not actually developed. Fancy demonstrations are not actually products. I don’t get why so many people on hacker news are falling for obvious propaganda.
There are (probably) various degree of success.
Let's say that some X.Inc in China managed to manufacture EUV machines in 5 years. However, it's 3 time more expensive and only quarter of lifespan compared to ASML.
That's still a win since PRC gov can easily subsidize both fabricators to buy them and X. Inc to do more research. Of course it won't be competitive, but that's another goal.
the question is - how much of that "reason" is protectionism (patents, etc)?
if you no longer care about pissing off the US and EU (because they're up in your business anyway) then maybe it doesn't matter so much if you violate those patents.
Same thing as with Taiwan's "special trade status", Trump thinks that revoking their status will get China to leave them alone, because he has a very simplistic bullying-oriented view of international politics, but it's widely predicted to have the exact opposite effect as intended and lock in PRC control. Or trying to bully Iran with further sanctions even though they're already in compliance with treaties.
The approach is "carrot and stick", if you only use the stick then you provide no incentive for future compliance, people realize it's more effective to just start preparing for the inevitable future beatings and set yourself up to mitigate as much of the pain as possible.
This often leads to countries building up their own domestic industry to make themselves impervious to sanctions - that's how it's worked with Iran, after 50 years of sanctions they are more independent and less susceptible to the effects of sanctions than ever. That's how it's working with China, this is far from the first thing we've tried to choke off, there was the spat with memory too and they just ended up building their own plants.
And it often leads to further "escalation" and violation of norms. If you're going to get shit on anyway, why would they respect ASML's intellectual property?
Patents have never stopped China from obtaining something if they felt it was strategic. The fact that they haven't done it yet is proof positive - to me - that it isn't all that easy. Note that this is not for lack of trying.
> Same thing as with Taiwan's "special trade status", Trump thinks that revoking their status will get China to leave them alone, because he has a very simplistic bullying-oriented view of international politics, but it's widely predicted to have the exact opposite effect as intended and lock in PRC control.
Have I missed major developments, or have you confused Hong Kong and Taiwan?
The US under Trump is just far too unpredictable and unreliable. China appears more stable and predictable. Case in point: even post pandemic, when the US is withdrawing from the world, China doubled down on its commitment to Pakistan and initiated massive billion dollar projects last week.
If I were Pakistan and in desperate need of financial assistance, I would look to China instead of USA, simply because of the former's consistency (despite all the strings attached to these investments).
Predictability is highly underrated, in international politics and elsewhere.
I'm not defending Chinese actions in Pakistan (I am Indian; I have no reasons to). I'm just pointing out that Chinese actions have been consistent and hence, more reliable.
Yes, and China has started a program to make EUV patterning machines a few years ago. Time will tell if it will work, but I don't really see why it wouldn't, given enough time.
I dont think there is an official export control for ASML yet. US are pressuring it, but it is not confirmed.
In reality ASML doesn't need that export restriction to stop shipping to China. Their EUV TwinScan production capacity is behind schedule, with or without the pandemic. And with factory closing and now not working in 100% capacity the delay will be even longer.
The next two years order are already booked by TSMC and Samsung Foundry, and looking at Intel's roadmap I would not be surprised if 2023 is also filled. Samsung are looking at EUV for their NAND and DRAM.
All ASML has to do is to reply SMIC they are all sold out. Which itself isn't a lie and also an Industry standard excuses for not shipping to a competitor.
If the American plan fails and the Chinese are able to produce high quality chips without ARM IP and without relying on TSMC. Then this would have been a strategic blunder of historic proportions.
I'm actually cautiously excited about new competition in high end semiconductor fabrication. Huawei and China won't just sit around twiddling their thumbs, they've got to manufacture chips somehow/somewhere.
What you missed is the massive global interconnected supply chain that goes into building the fab (not the building, but the process equipment and software).
China’s isolationism will cause massive pains to do it all in house. If they can, we are all fucked.
But between investing a ton of money into that and negotiating with the US, I can only see China doing the former.
They've done it before (quite recently, too), whole tech supply chains inside China. I don't think the CCP would want to be seen as "begging" to lift the bans...
What you are calling monoculture is somewhere around 1/6th population of the world. If you take into the account the inroads that China has made into Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe we might be seeing ourselves entering another phase of the cold war.
The quality of the deliverables hasn’t been great, they have been poorly managed and have left many countries either in significant debt or with onerous obligations.
That's the problem with state-driven investment. Most people are lazy and/or greedy, and given a known state-sponsored payday, have no incentive to deliver quality.
So even if the Chinese state may want the projects to go well, the conduit by which the projects are funded and managed doesn't have much more than shame and prison as sticks, and that's only for people who are caught.
I worry that you're right about this. I've been saying for a while now that I expect Africa to be a continent on which the US and China wage a new cold war
Guys you are really panicking here. No way China is going to do everything in-house. Crucial technology? For sure, but definitely not everything. China's isolationism is imposed on it by the United States (and not only to China, but to other countries as well as businesses everywhere is forced to NOT do business), and it is going to use all weights to find ways to do business with other countries.
China's isolationism is mainly self-imposed. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and most of the modern internet is banned there. It has very strict currency controls that prevent its citizens from transferring funds out. Foreign businesses are very restricted in what they're allowed to do and what they can own. And if they make money, it can be very hard to get it out.
>But putting a halt to a decrease is not enough. Now we must invest massively, with the objective to produce in Europe high performance processors (with a 2 to 3nm of feature size) and reach 20% of the world capacity in value.
That would be extremely nice, but sadly I don't see it happening right now. Strange, since the EU has some major designers and suppliers of specialized equipment for the purpose. But maybe we can get a fab in Eastern Europe somewhere in the future. Don't know why you're downvoted.
That's a nice speech, but it's only an aspiration. It also says all Europeans should have 1gbps internet by 2025, which suggests some fantasy is occurring.
Hm. Given the development of DSL/Cable/LTE/5G/whatnot speeds in the last few years, and more and more FTTC/FTTH roll outs it's not total unrealistic. I could have it, but I'm too cheap for that :-)
With ASML not delivering the much wanted machine, they have another hurdle to take. It will be a big challenge, but of course they will do it. It's the new arms race.
Apparently this is the result of a May 15 rule change[0] to the Export Administration Regulations[1], which affect anything exported from the US.
The lesson here is that if you're a foreign company that buys US software and equipment, apparently the US government can tell you who you are and aren't allowed to do business with.
PS. Some hilarious quotes from the DoC announcement:
> "Huawei and its foreign affiliates have stepped-up efforts to undermine these national security-based restrictions through an indigenization effort. However, that effort is still dependent on U.S. technologies,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “This is not how a responsible global corporate citizen behaves. "
Maybe it's just me but the term "global corporate citizen" just seems so absurd and dystopian.
Wondering if America government has the power to forbid foreign companies or countries from using open source software such as Go, Rust, React, Kubernetes, Docker, Ubuntu etc especially those with strong stewardship by US corporations.
That seems like a "no". Anyone can get access to those things as they are freely downloaded. Access may get restricted but they can keep an old copy indefinitely, and the internet is fairly useful for getting around arbitrary blockages.
> The lesson here is that if you're a foreign company that buys US software and equipment, apparently the US government can tell you who you are and aren't allowed to do business with.
Sometimes referred to as sanctions. I don't think this is a revelation for anyone doing business internationally.
My dad's uncle fought for the USA in the Pacific. At one point during the war, he was close to a Japanese bomb when it exploded. He survived. The interesting part of this story is that some scrap metal from the bomb had a stamp that said "Framingham, Massachusetts". He was from Northampton, MA, and he'd almost been kill by scrap metal made at a factory less than 100 miles from his home.
Bonus story: My dad's uncle was scheduled to get out of the Army on December 8, 1941. He was on a ship from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco. When his ship got the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, his shipped turned right around. He was in the infantry, and he spent the next 3+ years fighting in the Pacific, including storming 4 beaches (e.g. just like storming the beaches of Normandy in the first scene of Saving Private Ryan). His battalion had 250% turnover during the war, and by the end of the conflict, he and 1 other guy were the only original soldiers left.
Bonus bonus story: He told me about a time when the Japanese were shelling US soldiers from the top of a hill with an artillery piece. The artillery was hiding behind some pretty thick trees, and was hard to target, so the US decided to have soldiers run up the hill in a direct attack. I guess it's smarter to charge artillery that's shooting at you if you have no place to hide? Anyway, it was a trap. As most of the soldiers got close to the top of the hill, the Japanese fled. It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives, and they blew that hill up big time. My dad's uncle was towards the rear of the charge, and he got knocked out from the shockwave of the explosion. When he awake, he was buried up to his waist in dirt and surrounded by the body parts of his fellow soldiers. Holy crap :P
Ye gods. That reminds of Felix, a character from the book Armor, by John Steakley.
> It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives
Well, there you go. Nothing is new under the sun. Beneath Hill 60 [0] is a movie about the Allies doing the same thing to the Germans in WWI. The explosion was heard in London, about 250km away. It killed around 10,000 Germans [1], but according to the movie had very little effect on the eventual outcome.
I thought it must have been pretty unique event. Apparently not.
Thank you for the stories! I study in Worcester, MA but haven't lived there for very long so I'm not too aware of the local history. I'll have some fun looking into this.
From a US perspective when it comes to Japan, the definition of WWII is typically “Pearl Habor” since Japan was not at war with the US until that point. From your first link in the first paragraph it says “ In 1940 Japan invaded French Indochina... This move prompted the United States to embargo all oil exports”. The Pearl Harbor attack was in 1941 and at least partially caused by the US cutting off oil to Japan.
If foundations of geopolitics is anything real, then pitting the US vs China would be the ultimate best outcome. The book believes China is the true threat to Russia and "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled".
As secondary goal would be the disruption of the US which also has been propping China up.
"Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S."
The interesting thing is how they're succeeding. We haven't exactly seen a resurgence of the Klan of late, you might notice.
What's happening instead is that anything that can even be vaguely construed as racist, even if it doesn't hold up under scrutiny -- especially then -- becomes the subject of mob focus and attack.
Because if you can convince the mob to "righteously" attack innocent targets then you get fireworks. The mob is told that they're on the side of the angels and the target is a despicable fascist who should burn in hell, so they cross every line to take out the intolerable evil. Then it turns out the target wasn't, in actual fact, the literal devil, and that gets other people hopping mad at the mob over the real perils of mob justice. But by that point the mob has moved on to the next target who we're again assured is a very bad person, this time for real, promise.
It's tempting to go too far with this and come up with some kind of conspiracy theory where BLM as a whole is nothing but a Russian plot, but there are far too many real people in it for that.
What seems more likely is that you have an existing movement with many well-intentioned people but no strong leaders, and all it takes is an adversarial propaganda effort to whip enough of them into a frenzy and point them at a false target that will purposely generate a backlash.
Then you've got two huge camps of honest people fighting each other over a manufactured conflict which isn't even at the root of their genuine concerns.
> The specific ideology of each group varies, and views on topics such as race differ widely. Some are white supremacist or neo-Nazi groups who believe that the impending unrest will be a race war; other groups condemn racism and white supremacy.
> opinions on racism and attitudes towards law enforcement are among the views that differ the most between groups in the movement
> 4chan
> The term boogaloo alludes to the 1984 cult sequel Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
> Hawaiian shirts
> satirical
It's the exact thing you would expect when the other side is desperately searching for an enemy to smash. Literally attention-seeking trolls from 4chan show up in a place and manner that causes people to pay attention to them.
Then law enforcement will take them seriously, because they have to, which gives them exactly the false legitimacy they're after.
And in any event not much of a big bad fascist/racist group when they can't even agree whether they're racists and the thing they do agree on is that they're anti-government, i.e. the complete opposite of fascism.
It's wishful thinking to hope that people realize there's more in common than differences. Class/racial strife is the most effective bludgeon remaining, unlike traditional nations surrounded by enemies where suspicions can be inflamed effectively (ex: "It's the '-ists!'"). The Project Lincoln co-founder John Weaver is a registered foreign agent (Russia), a spy, endorsing a political candidate.
Your comment seems awfully misleading and inflammatory considering John Weaver publicly announced that he has cancelled the contract with ROSATOM and did not accept any money.
Yeah, but Russia is so isolated these days that pitting anything non-Russian vs. something else non-Russian is almost guaranteed to be advantageous to Russia.
That also doesn't change the fact that long term, China is the biggest threat to liberal democracies. In terms of geopolitics, Russia is actually quite complementary to China due to its large area having an abundance of resources to feed Chinese factories and both countries being authoritarian governments.
Why would China be a threat to liberal democracies? I get that people don't like the fact that China is not democratic, but how does that suddenly turn into a threat?
Australia recently pushed for an investigation into COVID-19 and allowed Hong Kong citizens to obtain permanent residency. Both of which China strongly opposed. As retaliation they imposed tariffs on Australian imports, issued travel advisories telling students not to travel there and directly told the government to comply.
Now a country like Australia which is heavily dependent on China for trade and overseas students has in this case had to choose between ethics and economics. And China is doing the same thing with countries all around the world with smaller ones being forced to comply or risk severe economic harm.
Australia has been drumming rhetoric about China for a long time now. They’ve been talking about decoupling.
And now China is actually decoupling. Shouldn’t Australia be happy that they’re getting what they want? Why did it suddenly turn into “China is bullying us with tariffs”?
As for Hong Kong, are you aware that most of the protesters are young people with poor backgrounds and without higher education? And that many protesters are not so peaceful, and rioted? Yet Australia announced the other day that they will only accept people without a criminal record, and only people who are highly skilled. What?? Is Australia genuine in wanting to help Hong Kong citizen?
Do you believe Australia’s push for COVID-19 is genuine? Yes China did make mistakes in the beginning, but for more than a month after the Wuhan lockdown, at which point countries outside China had almost no cases, various countries neglected to take action despite obvious warning signs. So if an investigation is to be initiated, it should not only be about China’s mistakes, but everybody else’s mistakes too. Why does Australia not talk about investigating everybody? Do you think Australia would accept a bidirectional investigation?
Does freedom of speech mean freedom from consequences?
If you are my supplier, and I accuse you of various crimes (which may or may not be true), and as a result you stop supplying me, then are you shutting down my free speech? Do you have an obligation to keep doing business with me no matter what I say?
That is on the assumption of there is an accusation. Australia will simply be doing anything not in China's interest, that does not mean it oppose China nor accusing China or anything but China would immediately retaliate. Which in reality means if you are a major business partner to China you are ultimately controlled by China.
And you are right, no one has obligation to do business with anyone. And that is why some people has decided not to do business with China.
All right. But one thing I don't understand. Australia has been talking about decoupling for a long time now. Now China is actually decoupling, shouldn't Australia be happy that they are getting what they want? Why did it suddenly turn into 'China is bullying us' the moment their wish came true?
If you really want to help the Uyghurs, offer them passports, or refugee status, instead of using them as an excuse to start another cold war. They'd appreciate it more, it would be cheaper, and it would be far less likely to escalate into a shooting war.
But given how Syria went, we know that given the option between bombing a place for some geopolitical aim, or taking Muslim refugees, the US would take the first option every time it presents itself.
That's because nine times out of ten, the humanitarian plight is the excuse for war, not the end to itself.
Even if those people have a beef with the CCP, and even if Adrian Zenz’ stories about Uyghurs are true (which still remain to be seen, as there are many flaws in his methodology), what does that have to do with the rest of the world? Do you think that the US’s Hong Kong “Human rights” bill really does anything to help the ordinary citizen of Hong Kong?
Really second tier [1], just holding nuclear weapon [2] and good brainwashing by state media. Economically far behind [3]. Nothing to gain with direct confrontation, no TSMC in Crimea, wars for prestige should be successful.
When talking about war, the only measure more useless and irrelevant than GDP and economic strength is toenail length.
Afghanistan is sitting at around $500/capita. Russia and the US have completely failed there despite four decades of conflict. Vietnam was about $60-70 during the tail end of the Vietnam War[1]. We know how that ended.
I'd say that maybe you could win if you abandoned traditional war tactics and just bombed indiscriminately and avoided suffering too many casualties, but, well, that was tried and failed in those wars. You also wouldn't want to try it against a country that can and will fire back.
Compared to US, maybe. But you are not doing justice to them just by looking at the USD expenditure since they produce almost everything within Russia and it might be far cheaper to produce stuff there. Here is what GFP ranks their military at: https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp. Even an economically more powerful country like China still has defence imports from Russia.
It's ranking countries by an opaque "power index" (sorry, "PwrIndx", because vowels cost more or something?), and there is no description of what this entails other than "over 50 individual factors". The only thing I could find to drill down on contains effectively a bare listing of things such as army size, population size, number of tanks, oil reserves, etc.--which emphasizes quantity over quality.
So you might understand why my trust in those numbers to mean anything is rather lacking.
Yeah, not sure about that power index calculation myself. But I think it would be very hard to compare things on quality. Like take the example of air power. Sure F-22, F-35, B-2/B-21 combination probably beats any other force. But after that, it gets murky as every country will hype its own inventory. I think PRC still purchases some of the planes and parts from them, so I guess Russian made planes might have an edge on them at least in some areas.
It's worth pointing out that there's a distinction to be made between having modern military kit and being able to effectively use it. This is a problem that most notably plagues the Arab militaries, in that they have the funds to buy the good stuff, but they are unwilling to invest in the training (or the operational independence) to effectively use it [1].
I'm not sure how modern Russia and China fare in this regard, compared to each other or to Western powers. Both countries have definitely showed signs in the past decade or so of trying to push through military reforms and adding more junior officers compared to senior officers.
[1] Classic case study: first Gulf War, where the casualty ratio was a lopsided 100:1, despite the Iraqi military having rough numerical parity and access to modern kit.
I was comparing to EU (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy in the list), maybe should compare with NATO. Following your logic China production is far cheaper. Israel has a lot of exports too [1] vs [2] but that's a good point [3]. Unfortunately your list is opaque.
Is anybody going to go to war with Russia, China, or the US though? All three of these countries are too big and difficult to invade. You would quite literally have to decimate any one of them to keep hold of it. And economically it would be extremely unprofitable to the US and China. Russia could theoretically gain quite a bit if it managed to annex China but there is the whole issue of how would you even go about that? Nuclear war because it turns into an asshole measuring contest seems more likely but that is a straight doomsday scenario.
No I think future wars between these three will all be proxy and economic. It’s easier to do the asshole measuring in the Middle East than on your own turf. And economy is ultimately what matters.
I think the main issue is that Russia has a lot of tendrils in the US at this point starting with the one they have up Trump’s cloaca. They can do a lot of damage with cyber attacks and propaganda but ultimately it’s all about weakening the economy, not about annexation.
It looks like he may have swiped the tripartition from Burnham, THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION, but it also corresponds nicely to who has the bomb.
Eastasia - CN
Eurasia - FR (sub/air only), RU
Oceania - UK (sub only), US
Edit: FWIW, after skimming a summary of Burnham (the precursor to IngSoc), I'd say that capital, having devised hedge funds, LBOs, and PE, have shown they know well how to keep management in their place.
Conflicts between capital and management are nothing new: roman senators were not supposed to be "in trade", but owning commercial ventures was perfectly respectable. (I've heard it jokingly said that one's golf handicap in strokes ~= one's office time in hours per week...)
Yeah, you are right. Wars between these three are going to be proxy or economic.
I think actual war is unlikely between any two of these three but I think skirmishes are very likely. Russia and China/US I doubt as Russia doesn't seem to have a concern which overlaps with the interest from other two on ground except Syria I guess, but between US and China, South China Sea might become a flashpoint if they both keep pushing each other there out of ego.
Russia, as an ailing/former superpower, is quite sensitive to foreign incursions into its sphere of influence, especially the former USSR. Its wars against Ukraine and Georgia were motivated in large part by the fact that said countries were maneuvering closer to NATO and the West, for example. Conflict between Russia and China over expanding Chinese influence in Central Asia (given Chinese investment into infrastructure there) is not impossible.
Another flashpoint between Russia and China could well be the Russian Far East; Russia has long been pretty paranoid that China is going to try to claim the land as its own.
> I think Russia might be fine with those considering they themselves[1] are part of China's flagship BRI project.
I can see that changing quite quickly if there's evidence of a political shift in Central Asia that disfavors Russia. Say a new Turkmeni strongman decides to start his foreign trips by visiting Beijing and doesn't call on Russia for a few years. Or a Putin-successor with flagging popularity sees being more combative here as an easy way to boost popularity (much as the Crimean annexation was driven in part by Putin attempting to improve his support)--although targeting Western country is more likely here.
> Didn't Russia and China settle their border differences in early 2000s?
The lack of existing border disputes doesn't mean that the population accepts the border. Take Alsace-Lorraine--the border was never a live dispute, but France and Germany sure saw fit to switch it to their side every opportunity in the early 20th century. The Chinese have their own self-image as being a nation unjustly carved up and tormented by foreign powers, and the current border is seen as being one of those examples [1].
To be clear: I don't see any of these flashpoints as likely; I'm just pointing out that there is a split between Russia and China that could lead to a war, and that war between any two of Russia/China/USA is plausible.
Further, these three countries are completely different, culturally and ethnically. Germany invading and occupying Austria might work - there isn't a great deal of difference between their people. But Russia, US and China are poles apart. Especially China
Dugin's position on China is based off fear that an rising China is a vector for Atlantism aka alignment with the west / NATO. That risk has now dissipated so Russia and China's interest are now more congruent than ever.
Interesting, had never thought from that angle, especially since Russia and China for most part seem chummy.
But in reality, they are neighbors and China has (or is in the process of) replacing Russia as the #2 power. So, while US has a lot to be careful for, it does indeed make sense that Russia has a more immediate threat.
If China becomes more powerful, it will start flexing muscle as the Russia-China border also, just like it flexes its muscle at its every other border.
Now, if we add that to the whole conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia, then things will start to add up even more.
> But in reality, they are neighbors and China has (or is in the process of) replacing Russia as the #2 power.
China is well beyond replacing Russia as a world power. Russia's GDP is ~1.658 trillion USD, which puts it below Canada. China's GDP? ~13.61 trillion USD.
Russia is pretty much a washed up has-been with nukes.
It’s shocking how far they’ve fallen. But they let corruption take hold of everything, gov, economy, etc., so no one in their right minds would want to invest.
They weren’t going to be the second economic power, but no reason they couldn’t have been number four behind Japan. But they could not help it, they squandered it.
Russian GDP is frequently touted as why they're overrated. However, the Russian kleptocracy believes real power is now coming from mastery of the cyberspace: disinformation, cybersecurity, offensive hacking capabilities, AI superiority[0]. This is a likely accurate understanding, and Russia has immense experience.
All they can do (bar actual war) is make other countries worse. It's pretty sad, "if we can't be better than them, then we'll make them worse off than us" is a terrible strategy for the world.
I don't think that theory is as true as you believe.
China ceded a whole lot of territory to Russia without too much of a fuss. The whole of Mongolia was part of Qing, and they gave that up. Dittobfor Vladivostok.
China's border disputes with India was created by the British, who just draw a line somewhere without consent. China offered to draw turn the Line of Actual Control into the official border, which means China would get about 30% of the land, but India rejected that offer, so now we are at a perpetual border conflict.
The description of that book reads like it was penned by a highschooler who went on a camping trip took some acid and wrote down how they’d conquer the world by channeling their version of Stalin.
I would assume because you want it to. The worlds are quite different, foremost being that there is no active war going on. Is there something more substantiative than “Trade controls in Asia” that is being drawn on to inform this opinion?
The Chinese need more reasons to invade Taiwan right :-/
Can someone please bring up and discuss with world leaders that we are potentially heading toward terrifying conflicts. I'm very concerned about nuclear war over things like this.
I liked the world much better when we did our best to level the playing field (not always successfully) but which caused huge growth and prosperity for maybe billions of people.
We need a world forum on how we can move back to everyone playing by the rules - a new Bretton woods for our time that tries to prevent this technology arms race the Western governments and Chinese government want to fight with each other.
This is an extremely naive point of view. The CCP is a revisionist, expansionist rising power that already has been actively committing genocide of Uyghurs. It has more territorial disputes than it has physical neighbors. They want this, and have been fighting for this all this time.
Dude, you should check the map of the Qing, compare it to the Republic of China (Taiwan), then compare it to the PRC.
They ceded a whole lot of land all over the place, peacefully, as part of negotiations. For example the whole of Mongolia was part of Qing. They are not as war mongering as you believe.
The CCP is incredibly war mongering. Any look at 20th century history would tell you that. What is it with so many people reporting constant misinformation about the CCP into hacker news threads recently.
CCP is formed from people who wants to defend China's interests and defend the country from imperial powers of Japan, British, France and more. CCP fought wars to defend the country, it is the imperial powers that invaded China in the first place, and they thought to divide the land, the rich resources and colonize all of the Chinese people. Who is war mongering? Are we reading the same 20th century history? What about 19th century history?
CCP inherited many positions on sovereignty and territorial rights from Qing and Republic of China, which the US historically supported. Western media reports on China is far far from factual as well, with so much disinformation, biases and subjective views. Chinese positions and views are rarely covered in the media. Its so rare to see any positive views on China, despite a lot of amazing work that government has done to improve ordinary Chinese person's live. Here is the thing, we all view the world through our own lens and our culture. And the media is the reflection of how people interpret the world. The west has its position on China, Chinese people have their position on China. Chinese people and by extension CCP never want to dominate the world, they just want to defend what was part of China previously and be able to do so as equal peers. Any disputes and sovereignty claims should be negotiated and settled with mutual respect. And of course, no one is perfect, are there times when China is unethical and way to aggressive, definitely, but we should all use dialogue and attempts to understand each other's point of view.
Chinese wars are all about sovereignty and border disputes. U.S. wars are all fought on foreign lands in the interests of U.S. global dominance in foreign policy, trade, economy, technology etc. US uses diplomacy, ideology and identity politics, and military to challenge anyone who is considered a threat to the U.S. dominance. Who is more imperialistic and dominating you tell me.
They are in Africa to do business. I don’t know whether your claim of them selling surveillance technology is true, but even if it is, what does that have to do with your implied assertion that China is war mongering?
Many people point to the Sri Lanka port as an example of debt diplomacy. But what they fail to mention is that Sri Lanka is the ONLY example, that Sri Lanka is happy with the outcome, and that China recently cancelled debt payments for many African countries.
No I don't think they're war mongering, because a war is exactly what they don't want.
What they want is to leverage the power of a (well-run) hybrid command/market economy, huge population (larger talent pool), and power of being unsuspecting #2 and slowly absorb all the other countries and economies.
The US does this too, but at least we also want to spread democracy, so the people have a say.
If they can achieve the above, they will take control of the world.
What does 'absorb' mean? They want to be influential, that I agree with, but that's not really unique about China.
As for US spreading democracy, you should read up on how they overthrew Iran's democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship that suits the US interests better.
There is certainly some parallels but I doubt things will get so far.
It is in China's interest to stall for time. As their growth is higher than USA's, they will eventually have a bigger military and the US will be unable to fight a war over the South China sea.
Trump however is a joker. If he stands to loose the coming election he may choose to provoke a conflict.
We do seem to be in a secular upswing in semiconductor demand, while TSMC remains the last foundry standing at the 7nm node. It seems like Samsung and Intel alternatives are bit too captive (internally competitive) for a large mobile phone producer. I don't think it's about actual 5G chips themselves, it's about ARM processors and mobile SoCs.
It's doubtful to me that UMC and Global Foundries will catch up, but I do wonder at the long term effects. There are many billions of Yuan to spend on solving this problem. In the past they could get enough of the right people to move to China as they did with OLED.
> In the past they could get enough of the right people to move to China as they did with OLED.
TSMC was founded by a "returnee" as well. Obviously he and his family were rather anti-communist (his father was a ROC official) so he fled from mainland China to Hongkong then the US during the Chinese Civil War.
He built a career at TI then returned to China (Taiwan) and founded TSMC when the government was investing in the development of hitech industries. [1]
There are quite a few similar examples on both sides (communists and nationalists). For example, and that's quite a twist of history, the 'father' of the PRC missile and space program was an MIT professor, Caltech professor, co-founder of JPL and was even involved in project Manhattan... Then he returned to mainland China in 1955 [2].
These days there are many more mainland Chinese in the West and Taiwan who work in the semiconductor industry and it's not uncommon for them to return to mainland China to take key positions.
There is no doubt that they'll catch up. The only question is how fast.
Qian Xuesen was stripped of his security clearance in 1950, as a result of the Red Scare, meaning he couldn't work on his areas of expertise any more. He tried to leave the US, but was arrested on his way out and kept under house arrest for 5 years. That's the thanks he got for helping found the US rocketry program, so when he was released, he founded China's rocketry program.
That's what I am wondering about. Is ASML the weak point? Would a US, Taiwan, or other company be able to develop and manufacture comparable lithography or EUV machines, or do they essentially have a chokehold on the market for now?
You can't fast-track the technology developed by ASML. We're talking about a company with 4,000 engineers (correct me if I'm wrong btw) who have been working on lithography magic for decades. EUV took decades of dedicated research to finally become a reality just in the past few years. They literally vaporize tin into a plasma in order to create the EUV light, which then has to pass through incredibly complex optics on its way to the mask. 97% of the light is lost on its way to the target... This thing consumes megawatts. It's literally magic.
What's odd to me is that - why is it just one group in the Netherlands doing this? vs. interest in other academic or industrial groups?
Vs. say FinFETs or other groundbreaking tech - I remember Intel coming out with the paper however many decades ago and fast forward a few years later, TSMC and Samsung came out with their own products utilizing it.
Or maybe they did it by themselves because they are capable of independent decision making. Just the other day someone here was loudly proclaiming we shouldn't be interested in US politics from overseas because it doesn't affect us. HN should make up its mind about this in a well reasoned way.
Yeah, exactly. TSMC has the premier process right now and is at capacity making chips for Apple, Qualcomm and other high margin (i.e. well-paying) customers. Cutting off the oddball folks for PR reasons costs them nothing at the moment.
Not as a TSMC fab customer it isn't, not remotely. The overwhelming bulk of Huawei's revenue remains in device manufacturing. They're a very recent entrant into the SoC market, and not moving a lot of product there.
Is it true or not that Huawei wanted to use HiSilicon for all of their phones? That is obviously true.
The consequence is that Huawei needs more chips than Apple, that would have been sourced from TSMC. Therefore, they had the intention to be a customer of at least equal size as Apple to TSMC.
How is any of this a lie? I fail to see how much money Huawei makes from this or that changes that Huawei needs more processors than Apple.
> Is it true or not that Huawei wanted to use HiSilicon for all of their phones? That is obviously true.
"Wanted to" is not the same as "does". If TSMC wanted to preserve a potential growth market for their fab, they'd prioritize Huawei/HiSilicon. But they don't, because they're at capacity making chips for western designers already. So they can kill off the Huawei business without worry, because it's not costing them anything. Free PR.
So what you are saying is that A who buys less from them is a bigger customer than B who buys more? Huawei buys more SoCs than apple hence they are a bigger customer. So that would make Apple small fry in your world. Not very likely.
Total phone sales, in number of units, which is what matters when figuring out how many chips to make, as well as market share as a proportion of units.
What this means is that TSMC stops producing Huawei designed chips. Huawei has to buy third party designed and manufactured chips, most likely MediaTek. Manufactured in TSMC factories but not Huawei designed or Huawei owned IP.
The founder of SMIC on the mainland is actually Taiwanese and a former TSMC executive. Loyalties cut across the strait both ways, westerners overemphasis attachment to values and ideology over bloodlines and ancestry. It's true for some but not for others. There are quite a lot of foreign engineers working on the mainland, especially Taiwanese engineers. If you are a industry vet or got some kind of special talent you can easily 3x your salary by moving to the mainland from Taiwan.
For example, Justin Yifu Lin, the former World Bank chief economist was a Taiwanese defector who to swam to Mainland China. Before he defected in the (early 90's I believe) he was a rising star within the establishment in Taiwan.
Short term definitively bad for Huawei, but the long term it should help the development of the indigenous semiconductor industry on the mainland. Necessity is the mother of invention and nowhere else is there the capital, political will and now sheer necessity as there is on the Mainland.
A lot of "huaqiao" i.e. overseas Chinese that go back to the mainland (I include Taiwanese people here) despite the repressive political atmosphere and bad environmental quality, food safety are motivated by this. In the West you can only go so far, back there, especially if you have specialized technical knowledge, you have a chance to make an impact at scale that would never be possible in the West.
I am not sure what the U.S. can really do about this without adopting essentially the same repression as in China. I.E. control the flow of personal. On the mainland if you are a leading expert in this field or that, or belong to specific establishments (such as public security or state security) you cannot exit the country without permission from higher up the food chain.
Anyways, my point at the end, is the central point of competitive advantage or a company or nation is human talent. You can restrict technology or natural resources but it's human beings that make a company or a nation competitive. So unless the U.S. finds a way to prevent talent from flowing to the mainland, either from the U.S. and/or other parts of the world it is very hard to prevent another country, especially such a big one from doing what you don't want. And when they eventually do get to that point they will be twice as bitter at you for having tried to stop them.
> In the West you can only go so far, back there, especially if you have specialized technical knowledge, you have a chance to make an impact at scale that would never be possible in the West . . . . I am not sure what the U.S. can really do about this without adopting essentially the same repression as in China. I.E. control the flow of personal. [sic]
The U.S. economy is nearly 2x larger than China's, and if you're counting the entire "West" (I'm guessing you mean Europe + US?), it's about 4x larger. And that's just looking at GDP; if you consider GDP per capita, the difference is even starker: the U.S. is nearly 7x higher. In terms of immigration, the U.S. has roughly 750x more inbound immigration than China [1], and the EU has similar numbers [2].
I don't think the numbers back up what you're saying here — they contradict it pretty soundly. In fact, the U.S. currently is (IMO stupidly) trying to prevent people from coming at all because it has such a huge volume of inbound immigration.
It seems that GDP should only tell part of the story with respect to specialist incomes. A senior engineer in the US will have their salary and contribution diminished by regulatory requirements and business inefficiencies, and will lose a lot of their potential compensation to health insurance, investor compensation, and other rent-seeking. In China, someone with a skill the Party has designated as critical to national goals may have a lot of the bureaucracy and bullshit cleared for them, or may be offered zero-interest loans to develop their business. Or perhaps not... I have no experience here, but GDP is a terrible metric for how much opportunity is available to skilled engineers.
Furthermore, compensation for technically skilled individuals is significantly lower in the rest of the world than in the US: visa barriers are definitely holding US tech salaries up. Although China has even stronger restrictions on foreigners, for those who can get into China but not the US it may be a good deal.
GDP(PPP) is useful for observing changes within domestic markets but not global economic power. As per the page you linked: "GDP comparisons using PPP are arguably more useful than those using nominal GDP when assessing a nation's domestic market . . . It is however limited when measuring financial flows between countries." When we are discussing a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer stopping shipments to Huawei due to US-led pressure, GDP(PPP) isn't particularly relevant. TSMC doesn't care how much the cost of production in the US is; it produces chips in Taiwan, not America. But it does care about the total dollar value of American economic support, which nominal GDP measures, and GDP(PPP) does not.
And for the result of GDP(PPP) on individuals within domestic markets — which was another of the OP's claims, that individuals are likely to obtain more impact and success in China than in the West — you want GDP(PPP) per capita, not overall GDP(PPP). And the numbers still don't back up that claim: China is closer to Iraq than it is to even a fairly economically-challenged Western country like Greece, and nowhere near the US. [1]
Hong Kong — when measured separately from the rest of China — is actually very close to US-level GDP(PPP) per capita. But... I think HK's futures in that respect have declined significantly due to the PRC. In fact, Hong Kong used to be slightly higher than the US, and HK has declined on that metric over time while the US has risen.
It depends on the type of economic power. US is a bigger market, by virtue of bigger real GDP. Chinese can produce more by virtue of bigger PPP GDP.
I agree that for TSMC, market size is more important, but the blanket statement about global economic power is a little bit excessive. If we want to have COVID19 PPE, mass-produce medical equipment, or rapidly build military equipment, China can out-manufacture the US.
I know 2 of those three will be controversial (esp. military equipment), but I think they're true. The US military is probably superior to China's today, but the US had an inferior military at the start of WWII as well. However, the US was a manufacturing superpower and produced a superior military quite quickly. If China were to focus its manufacturing and engineering prowess on military technology, I think it would pass the US rather quickly at this point too. Yes, I'm aware of US technological superiority, and yes, I've seen estimates of how long it would take China to bridge the gap. No, I don't believe those estimates. I think there are a lot of mistaken assumptions in them, and it's to everyone's benefit (US' and China's) to believe the US is further ahead than it is.
> it would pass the US rather quickly at this point too
only if that military power is _used_. During WW2, the USA had to use that power of manufacture to win the war.
So unless you're suggesting that china is willing to go to a hot war with the US, and out manufacture military products to win it, this argument holds no water. and this isn't even taking into account nukes.
Not quite. Most wars are avoided since one side or the other backs down. If it's obvious you'll lose, you don't go to war. The US projects a lot of power worldwide because of its superior military. It's sufficiently superior that you have peace through superior firepower. If the US asks for something, and an aircraft carrier shows up off your coast, what do you do?
The only time you have wars is if either the military powers are nearly equal, or the demands are over-the-top unreasonable.
* China won't take over Taiwan while the US is defending Taiwan if the US can defeat China in open warfare.
* If things are close, it'll think twice about trying. That'd be an expensive bit of work.
* If China has clear military superiority, I think they'd topple Taiwan's government overnight. The US would back down.
The whole point of a big stick is that you don't have to use it. If I come up to you on the street, point a gun at you, and politely ask for your wallet, I'm much more likely to get your wallet than to need to use my gun.
Er, no. By definition a country with higher nominal GDP can afford to import more chips than a country with lower nominal GDP. That's exactly what nominal GDP calculates. This is probably why you're being downvoted into oblivion. It's also why TSMC isn't exporting its chips to Huawei anymore.
Also, there's a reason that the yuan is worth 7x less than the USD: it's because the PRC has intentionally devalued its own currency to keep manufacturing costs low and prop up local manufacturing instead of relying on imports, most recently in 2019 in an escalation of the U.S.-China trade war [1]. This helps bolster China's domestic manufacturing capabilities, but bites China in predictable ways when it wants to spend money abroad, e.g. importing chips from Taiwan.
For a while, but nations with twin deficits (trade and fiscal) historically saw their currency lose value, which was a natural correcting mechanism to close inordinately large imbalances, which US has.. massively.
Of course what sustains this is $ as global reserve and for most of last few decades need for dollars to buy oil
These things are changing. China's size and demand for commodities pushes oil exporters and commodity exporters more and more to accepting yuan.
US loss of industry on the margins means $ has less use as reserve. Why stock pile dollars and treasuries if you anticipate large devaluation (deficits) in the future and are purchasing more goods from China?
What does US do as a result? Sanction and or invade oil exporters trading for other currencies. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Russia.
Nordstream 2 is a big one. Germany and Europe perfectly content to buy cheaper oil from Russia going forward. Much less need for $ though, as a result.
Thus, this overvalued $ (based on balance of trade fundamentals) won't perpetuate as it has previously.
> On the mainland if you are a leading expert in this field or that, or belong to specific establishments (such as public security or state security) you cannot exit the country without permission from higher up the food chain.
That alone will be enough to deter people from moving to China for even 10x salary. Getting locked into an insane Han-supremacy regime is walking into the dragon’s mouth with a torch.
Intellectuals get attracted to more than just money. Especially industry experts.
It would be less a deterrence for someone from Taiwan, with linguistic, cultural and maybe family connections to China than it would be for someone with no connection to the Sinosphere. And it's not like they're getting locked into Belgium. (I like Belgium! But it's a small place compared with China.)
ANY place one is in is exactly as small as the collar around one's neck is tight.
> [..] any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer. There is no way out of this. No tirades against ‘individualism’ and the ‘ivory tower’, no pious platitudes to the effect that ‘true individuality is only attained through identification with the community’, can get over the fact that a bought mind is a spoiled mind. Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Any writer or journalist who denies that fact — and nearly all the current praise of the Soviet Union contains or implies such a denial — is, in effect, demanding his own destruction.
-- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature"
This is just as true for scientists. Bought, caged, too addicted to harmony with peers -- all these and more have the same result.
If you cannot even say that the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, if there is an arbitrary set of facts you are even allowed to acknowledge, determined basically by brownshirts through violence, you may be doing something, but you're not being a fully fledged scientists anymore than an elephant could be found in a small fridge. I don't even need to look at the person, the circumstances are fully sufficient for this determination.
Vietnam right now seems like South China ~15 years ago (from an outside perspective), but with way more hope of not turning into a greater dystopian nightmare. I can imagine feeling very lucky to be able to do what these people you're talking about have done.
Also, if you are a billionaire the government can take everything away from that person in the blink of an eye if decides it doesn't like what that person says. In the west there are far more protections and due process rights.
Like you are a billionaire. In the West, as anywhere, the poor people have little due process rights in practice, and the rich depend far more on power than process for protection.
The government has many "legal" means to "take everything away" from someone, including taking away their means of doing business or their access to power, running stories to defame them, using threats of tax issues, fraud, sexual crimes, national security violation, and other means of control. Sound familiar?
If you think human nature is different because there is some scrap of paper from two hundred years ago you may be sorely disappointed when trying to redeem on your protections and rights, which it sounds like you've never had to do. This, mind you, is the same scrap of paper that claims all men are created equal.
In China, even a billionaire can be crushed by the state - for corruption, for being a power rival or for speaking out against state policy.
In the US, a certain level of person has nearly carte blanche against scandal, against being accused of crimes or pursuing pathological policy positions. Of course, in the US, a small person's life can be snuffed out if they annoy the wrong cop and their life can be made miserable if they go up against the justice system or other powerful forces.
I'm sure what how well the two system play against each other on the world stage at this point.
Oh come on man (woman?), this comment is completely disingenuous. You're comparing 2 completely different things.
Is US / the West fair? Not by a long shot. Tons of shitty stuff happening, from George Floyd, to Harvey Weinstein, to Jeffrey Epstein, to Julian Assange. But at least we know about them.
But compared to China? You won't even hear about the "small person's life". I'm sure life in China can be great, unless you're Muslim, or Buddhist / Tibetan, or Falun Gong, or Canadian, or ...
I don't know about you, but for me, there's no question which of these systems I'd prefer to live under. Even if I were black! (Notify me when China gets a black president.)
Tons of shitty stuff happening, from George Floyd, to Harvey Weinstein, to Jeffrey Epstein, to Julian Assange. But at least we know about them.
I would prefer live in the West also. I also know a lot of people in the world value security over free expression.
Just as much, I'm reasonably sophisticated in my reading of the news and the open expression here allows me to pick the truth reasonably easily out of a stream of lies. But the stream of lies is there, every day I encounter people online who instead fall for the stream of shrill claim sloshing around both the Internet (aside from Murdock crap, you have "Russian Bounties", etc). Again, the US still looks better to me but the way things are going, the US is not doing a good job selling it's model.
Of course, if you mention Epstein, everyone here knows about him but few-to-no US paper, "pedophile, apparently murdered in prison by persons unknown" and people in China know often know the operations of the state to that degree, at points when the real story is obvious and the state isn't that concerned. Admittedly, there are stories about prison officials moving Maxwell around the prison to prevent her from also being murdered - but directly calling officials for Epstein's murder, not visible (no, I don't miss him but his murder was clearly to protect the guilty and nations should pretend the rule of law at least).
If Epstein happened in China, would anyone even be allowed to go on the internet and claim that he was killed because he had dirt on everyone in the government?
Lots of people make claims on the Chinese Internet - it's censored but stuff still gets out. The claim/canard that Covid came from a lab in Wuhan came from the Chinese Internet, for example.
The US definitely has more free expression, of course.
That might be true for you, but that clearly isn't true for everyone. I know people in HK (mostly elderly) who are fine with China coming and taking over. They see security and wealth.
Most of those people in HK who are fine with it already have deep connections with the Mainland and want to maintain those. They are a small fraction of the population.
It's also fairly short-sighted and selfish thinking in my mind to sell the off the rights of the younger generation so they can keep their assets and businesses safe.
In the US we have been selling off our privacy and ability to affect public policy through our leaders for much the same reasons, ie short-term gains for the few. Difference is we gave it voluntarily.
If you're a billionaire, yes. If you're a person of color of not so great means, education etc. in the U.S. from a somewhat infamous area like Chicago, am not so sure. Just see the ongoing protests right now.
The intersection between South side Chicago resident and semiconductor expert is vanishingly small. Those who grow up in a disaffected part of the US and go on to study EE or CS do so through a US college opportunity which will funnel them into a US semiconductor job where they will be treated better than the treatment dark skinned people get in China. It’s common for restaurants in major Chinese cities to have “No Black” signs in their windows as a “COVID measure”, for example. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/05/china-covid-19-discrimin...
> Those who grow up in a disaffected part of the US and go on to study EE or CS do so through a US college opportunity which will funnel them into a US semiconductor job
The probability of that happening is not so big considering people from such areas tend to have low quality schools around them, which tends to mean low test scores, maybe even involvement with the "justice" system, no real opportunity to land a semiconductor job.
What you said sounds nice, but I doubt happens much in practice.
I have friends living in Shenzhen, I asked them, and they said they never saw such signs. It could be that they are visiting different groups of restaurants or hotels etc.
If you had bothered to read the article, not only would you have seen the linked image and video[1], you'd have also read the tomes of evidence that goes against your anecdote.
> In the west there are far more protections and due process rights.
Not necessarily. You could also lose your job and get totally screwed professionally if you speak against the last political trend. University professors could for instance lose a job over a pronoun matter. Sharing a memo have also been proven risky. The actors are different (state in one case, mob and PC in the other) but the end result can be pretty similar.
Dude, this is very ingenious. If people get "cancelled", they don't have to fear for their lives, if they are white men they generally can find a job quite easily (maybe not the same one but eh) and there is enough diversity of opinion that they will have defenders like you in public fora.
Try organising a Tiananmn protest, or criticising the Uyghur internment camps within China
> Getting locked into an insane Han-supremacy regime is walking into the dragon’s mouth with a torch.
I think he's referring to Han people studying/working overseas returning to their ethno-state. I can't imagine many non-Chinese would move to China instead of choosing to live in a fairer, rule of law Western democracy where the work is often better paid.
The reality is the opposite, western expats in China get paid much more and are afforded much greater legal latitude. They get paid like kings and mostly live like kings. Make money in China and retire elsewhere has been going on since the 90s. It's how China developed with western expertise.
> They get paid like kings and mostly live like kings.
Careful with present tense, things have taken a stark turn for the worse in terms of the day-to-day reality of western foreigners in China, and it already was not spectacular (minders checking in on your domicile every couple weeks or month, basically zero standing in legal disputes including routine contract disputes).
TBH, these are exceedingly fringe scenarios that doesn't affect majority of expats living in China, i.e. certain motorcycle vloggers who got on the government shitlist. For the purpose of this article, if you're a sought after silicon engineer, you'll essentially have diplomatic immunity. China is going ham courting foreign talent in strategic field like 3x salary for entry level position, building churches for Korean silicon engineers. That said, things have recognizably declined for segments of expats in China in the last 10 years, Xi's policies is one component, but another driver is local elites have usurped expats at the top of the social hierarchy, plus you have a lot more bitter failed expats. Compared to 15-20 years ago when the expat population were almost exclusively professionals from multinationals instead of English teachers / losers back home. Sure, the fun, unregulated, drink with local corrupt official days are over. But if you're a professional who just want to enjoy a big paycheck and Chinese culture, you'll be fine. The company will take care of you.
I'm familiar. China arrests Canadian spies and (threatens) executes Canadian drug dealers in retaliation for Meng. Just like the Garrats after Su Bin, and Fujita employees after Senkaku. They're calibrated retaliation that separates diplomacy and business. China is a surveillance state that dismantled every CIA asset in the country 10 years ago. They're not arresting random people among the 100,000s expats in China. Plenty of guilty ones to pick. Don't be a spy in China and don't sell drugs. Or do if your country isn't in a diplomatic spat with China, you'll still get privileged legal recourse compared to locals. FVEY spies should leave GTFO of China, especially Canadians. China is still UNDER retaliating for Meng.
Silicon Valley pays way more than any good/known tech company in China, which is why their good engineers are all emigrating to work there and to other places where life is better.
It's easy to romanticize tech in China from afar, but in reality it's like how it was in the 90's in the US and needs a lot of catch up. One issue that I'd highlight right away is that there seems to be a real lack of interest in the actual work; everything's done at breakneck speed for purely practical reasons and they wouldn't get very far without being able to copy/paste from github.
Hence throwing money at strategically important industries like semiconductors. The goal isn't to pay more the west in everything, but to enough premium attract the necessary talent to meet development objectives. Like attracting sufficient Chinese engineers from the valley to sea turtle back to bolster domestic innovation while locals spam derivative products until something competitive arises. At least data from the last few years shows it's drawing Taiwanese and Korean semi engineers. But semiconductors are very hard, like turbojet engines which China also has difficulties tackling, so who knows how well this strategy will work. Only that it's worked for everything else.
>Chinese Tech
It's not romanticization, I'm not in tech and I don't know what goes on method of cultural wise behind the scenes. I just know most everyday services I interact with when in China is ahead of the west, with exception of Google maps. Maybe the code is all duct taped from github, the workers are underpaid and overworked, but the experience is better from a consumer experience. So for me whatever is happening is sufficient, and breakneck speed for practice reasons might be the kind of consumer oriented process I prefer. Silicon Valley may poach most of the talent, and have the best pay, but they haven't made my life as convenient in comparison.
Some intellectuals would be attracted to principles which aren't there in PRC and might not go but not everyone. Like OP mentioned, for some creating an impact at an scale that is possible inside China might be attractive enough. Also, as long as you toe the CCP line I doubt they would be making life difficult for you. At worst, you will be free to travel within China and possibly live a very comfortable life there. I can totally see mainland Chinese companies poaching talent(specially overseas Chinese) in areas they lack by giving very good opportunities.
The way China has developed and the growth potential still there, I can totally see Chinese expats moving back there.
The problem is that you can’t trust any CCP promise when there is no rule of law. What’s to stop them from paying you less than you earned abroad and simply denying you an exit visa once you arrive? They would probably treat you well at first so that you can tell your friends still overseas that the deal is good. But once they have their talent then they don’t have a reason to keep treating you like a king.
Anecdotal, but...I don't know a single person who is interested in either returning to China or starting a new life there, and my social circles are overwhelmingly Chinese of all types (born here or Vancouver, moved here in grade school and grew up here, moved here for grad school, moved here as H1-Bs from PRC/Taiwan/HK/SG). For the ones who did not grow up here, they're predominantly from Beijing and Shanghai, with rich parents and connections back home.
My girlfriend (Beijing-born, came over as a grad student and stayed) has told me several horror stories of her time spent working as a SWE in China and Singapore. Based on her experiences, it seems like women should be especially disinterested in returning.
For the record, I would be ok with living in China for some time, or even relocating there long-term if/when the mantle is passed. Though I wouldn't do it without someone who speaks Mandarin.
> My girlfriend (Beijing-born, came over as a grad student and stayed) has told me several horror stories of her time spent working as a SWE in China and Singapore.
What happened in Singapore? I moved here earlier this year but haven't heard much beyond the usual grumbling about long hours.
China has only recently been able to reverse or halt the brain drain it was having for decades. As far as talent coming from the US, you will need to provide actual data to back that up, unless you are referring to Chinese students that have been unable to secure a work visa as coming from the US.
The old idea that westerners, particularly Americans, overemphasize values and ideology is a great example of a perspective that leads others to underestimate their competitors.
Sure, economic impact and power are huge. And that's far from a settled zone of conflict, I would add. But when a values-based culture leans into its strengths once again, in the famous United sense, one must ask how well its competitors can compete, or if they can compete at all, in that specific arena.
The idea that adopting repression is the only recourse here is in effect directly advising against the deployment of established strengths. (By the way, did all those millions of Hong Kongers in the streets suddenly disappear, or...?)
Really? GFW definitely helped a lot of newer internet company take off by shifting the market from a US directed tastes to a more domestic. I.e. one would not immediately think Instagram is cooler than douyin. (As a result, Instagram like photos sharing were never main stream)
GFW by itself is no small engineering feat either. It's technology is widely relevant in many technical areas related to traffic control and network management. For example, deep packet inspection was applied in GFW, and had been quite useful in intrusion detection. Of course now with the popularity of encryption, DPI is no longer very relevant. But that's the example of it being advancing technology.
Baidu has worse UX after google search exited the mainland china. The many so called newer internet companies are actually copying and localizing. Blocked by the GFW, the inaccessible instagram can never be the main stream. Instead of the detecting intrusion, DPI plays a huge role in controlling the freedom of speech. And with the help of ML, DPI is even smarter than before. Fewer people of new generation in China know Google, Facebook and Twitter, and they only know the second-class analogue of these service providers.
Maybe this is history repeating itself: the story of the father of Chinese space program [1] was quite pertinent:
> During WWII, he was involved in the Manhattan Project, which ultimately led to the successful development of the first atomic bomb in America.
> During the Second Red Scare, in the 1950s, the US federal government accused him of communist sympathies. In 1950, despite protests by his colleagues, he was stripped of his security clearance. He decided to return to China...
> Upon his return, he helped lead the Chinese nuclear weapons program. This effort ultimately led to China's first successful atomic bomb test and hydrogen bomb test, making China the fifth nuclear weapons state, and achieving the fastest fission-to-fusion development in history.
> Qian was invited to visit the US ..., but he refused the invitation, having wanted a formal apology for his detention. In a reminiscence published in 2002, Marble stated that he believed Qian had "lost faith in the American government" but that he had "always had very warm feelings for the American people."
Other than the money, you also need to count in the fact that as an Asian/Chinese you are not really that secure/free in the US especially now with a president saying Chinese Virus all the time.
That, plus policy instability like the recent H-1B ban. Effect of instability is amplified by the long wait --- the longer you wait, the more likely some policy changes and hurt your bottom line. It is true that something good could happen too, but (1) the current "climate" does not suggest that (2) a H-1B holder with a priority date has more to lose than to gain (through policy changes).
US is a stable democracy with an independent media and judiciary. And Trump’s unpopularity (~60%) means that his world view is not shared by the majority of Americans.
So this idea that it is not that secure/free because of a minor uptick in racism is ridiculous. China is routinely kidnapping and torturing anyone who disagrees with them - citizen or not. And we still don’t know where many missing journalists have ended up.
Actually the mainstream TV & newspaper media are overall owned by a very few holding companies and there's plenty of stories of people being subtly or overtly pressured to either change tune or be forced off the air if they ie spoke extensively against the Iraq War pre-invasion.
The state-controlled CPB exerts significant influence via funding and the FCC via regulatory reach. This isn't theoretical. Whether that's "direct" control or not is in the eye of the beholder, but people have accused media in other countries of being not independent under similar circumstances.
Personally I think anyone can live in their own fiction as long as they are not hurting anyone else, but to consider a strategic resource like the media as being truly independent in any country is naive. You're literally missing an entire world if you do not look outside your home country.
> They aren’t directly controlled by the government though.
No. They're controlled by multinational corporations with clear profit motives and conflicts of interests and thus tend to be biased in favor of those industries.
In China you have state dominance so you have state controlled media, in the U.S. you have corporate media. That's not independent media, just the other side of the same coin.
And if your argument is "they don't control the army", the military industrial complex means they don't have to do so directly.
The US is neither a stable democracy (incredible levels of partisanship and voter suppression) nor does it have an independent judiciary (justices even in SCOTUS mostly vote around party lines on issues of voting ie power). The most popular media network is Fox News which is openly subservient to the President.
The uptick or racism is not minor either. Racism has been embedded in the American way of life and the fight against it has been long and painful. Being a minority in the US is absolutely a huge risk factor.
> China is routinely kidnapping and torturing anyone who disagrees with them
American police kill a lot of citizens, and incarcerate a large number of mostly POC.
And the current POTUS has repeatedly said he won’t leave office even if votes out, and has speculated openly on staying in office beyond term limits. So please don’t give me crap about China when our country is at the precipice of losing its status as a Democracy.
One can be critical of China and the US at the same time. Difference being is only in one of those two countries can you open to do both.
I find these 'but the US' responses to be particularly unhelpful as they attempt to frame things very much in the vein of China's own 'do not meddle in our internal affairs ' rhetoric.
Those responses aren't rebuttals, but rather disbelief in the intellectual honesty or humanity of whatever is being debated. In short, people don't actually give a shit about other countries or how their people live, but they use the inferiority of others to make themselves feel superior. That's all exceptionalism really is.
As a Canadian living in the US: it really isn't. The US wants to believe it isn't a dumpster fire but beyond its natural beauty (literally the Chinese name for America means "beautiful country", of which I'm jealous because the Chinese name for Canada is Jianada) and high salary there are so, so many reasons why it is not a very desirable place to live. Institutional racism and a comically horrible healthcare system are some examples. Many Americans are quite delusional about this.
One big benefit of living there is you won't be bombed by the US military, I guess.
Fresh water doesn’t come from Canada for most of the US. Additionally, it’s not nearly to the point of being a war-worthy resource. There would be plenty of water in California if farmers just paid for it the same way everyone else does.
California grows a lot of water-expensive crops (e.g. almonds) because legacy farmers don’t pay anything near what residents, commercial, or new farmers do. That would rebalance quickly and obviate the need for any invasion if we just dumped wasteful “water rights” and instead priced water like any other rivalrous good (e.g. govt auctions).
Exactly, throwing around "US Military bombing everyone" is a hyperbole seeded with deep prejudice and anti-US sentiments with no objective backing. The question raised was to show the absurdity of this argument.
There is a lot of shit wrong with America. But, seems like people are getting more nationalistic and throwing away logic, reasoning, objectivity, rationale and common sense - most importantly self introspection of tribalism that is going on these days.
Folks - the world is getting more inwards looking. Be careful if your psyche falls into the trap of nationalism. It will cloud your judgement and pretty much everything with it.
I am seeing this, frankly, a lot from our friends in EU. Authoritarian governments want the west to fragment and cause infighting amongst themselves. We must use facts, truth and integrity. Our democracies is at stake. It is unfortunately, not going to go well with this type of climate exasperated by Coronavirus travel restrictions.
It is only hyperbole to the exceptionally privileged, exactly mirroring the belief that internal police violence is hyperbole. It is or is not depending on who you are/where you live.
Many authoritarian governments in history and today exist because people desire security and fear the incredible violence exhibited by an external, dominant power. If you don't make sure this actually is hyperbole and check the abuse of power at home and abroad, the violence will one day (perhaps soon) come to you, along with authoritarianism. Not recognizing the cause and not seeing the already creeping trend in the face of all evidence is what's clouding people's judgement.
Currently: high salary and partner is in medical residency for the next number of years. After the only candidate who actually wanted to fix your ridiculous healthcare system dropped out of the presidential primary, my desire to continue living here has dropped precipitously. I'll probably end up moving back to Canada before long, or some other country that doesn't literally drive you slowly insane.
Curious, as a high salary earner, you must have good health coverage. Do you still feel that the Canadian healthcare system with it’s infamous delays, etc is better?
Basically: yes, absolutely. Canadians in general love their healthcare and my personal experience with it has been nothing but positive. My frustration with American healthcare is augmented by how much better I know it can be. I pay $500/month for shit-tier health insurance here and actually using the healthcare costs even more money!
Most of the drawbacks you've heard about Canadian healthcare have been promulgated by the many many entities whose pockets are lined by this idiotic system continuing to grind forward.
Ah, so you’re not with a company that has a good healthcare plan. This is part of what leaves the US healthcare system so broken. The experience is drastically different if you have an employer with a “Cadillac” healthcare plan.
A recent tech company I worked for in the Bay Area charged about $50 pre-tax twice a month and I paid nothing out of pocket. The gulf between good healthcare coverage and bad coverage is what’s obscene in the US.
I haven’t seen an argument for how the good coverage is worse, which is why I always ask.
Third world countries have rich people who live with a substantially higher standard of living than the rest of their society, and yet we don’t consider that fact as evidence that the country is doing well.
The existence of premium healthcare plans for the high earners or the wealthy is not a reflection of the healthcare system. It’s how much access most people have that matters, statistically.
The argument is the US health care system is worse. People like to bring up wait times, but your wait time is infinite if you can't afford a specialist / non-acute care.
Oh, I definitely would. The only things keeping me here is my job, and my wife’s job, and my family, and my wife’s family, and my friends, and my wife’s friends, and my daughter’s friends...
Moving countries isn’t easy. Sometimes you just gotta find a part of the dumpster that isn’t on fire and do the best you can.
I agree with you in regards to the delusion. People in the EU are so much happier and have better quality of life in comparison with your average American. Working in tech is one of the most valid reasons to remain in the United States. We still have the best salaries, job opportunities, and employers. That might change someday, but it's still the case.
True, it does not. But who is the judge? The idea is that you have your own backyard cleaned before barking about someone else. Otherwise you just do not have that high moral ground to speak from.
You don't know what you are talking about until you live in a communist country. Just making a joke at the wrong time about the "emperor" could put you in jail for a long time. U.S has its flaws but you can't compare it with China. See how the minorities are treated there(i.e the muslims) and the talk about racism in the US
They weren't comparing the US to China, they were explaining the flaws with American democracy/judiciary/media. The US is not a shining beacon to be held up in those categories compared to eg New Zealand/Germany (proportional representation), Denmark (judicial independence - the US doesn't crack the top ten[1]), or most of the rest of the West (see how far you have to scroll in press freedom rankings to find the US [2] - they have very weak media ownership rules, and while the media is free from a lot of govt limitations, it's free to be biased and partisan as hell)
Offending a politician and making bomb jokes in airport are different things in US but not in China. This is pretty much my point.
Of course they were comparing US with China, implying the US has its own flaws and shouldn't lecture China. That's like saying US had its own racisim in 1930 so it had no right to interefere in Nazi Germany's internal policies.
US may not be a shining beacon of democratic values but it's a country that can do something about China's rise as a world super power(unlike Denmark, NZ or Germany).
> So please don’t give me crap about China when our country is at the precipice of losing its status as a Democracy.
I’m not sure you know what the phrase “at the precipice” means, but the US isn’t even close to losing it. The separation of duties between the state and the federal government in conjunction with the branches of government means that even a fully compromised election for one of the positions cannot take the whole country.
By what objective criteria do you classify it as “on the precipice”?
By the objective criteria that the current POTUS retains his office despite ample, credible evidence of committing impeachable offenses. By the objective fact that he continue to commit more such offenses routinely and Americans seem almost numb to how unusual it is anymore. The precipice is the upcoming election, which if the current POTUS wins, will signal the de facto end of Democracy in the US, as he and his cronies will consolidate their power and forever remake the institutions that are supposed to keep democracy functioning (Federal Agencies, Judiciary, Education, EPA etc).
Nope, only one of the parties thinks that the president should be impeached and removed. This isn’t an entire party (House and Senate) going rogue either. The polls are similar across the entire population.
Democracy existed before the EPA, the department of education, and essentially every other federal agency. Consolidation of ever more power at the federal level is antithetical to democracy anyway - the federal govt is a republic of democratic states.
> which if the current POTUS wins, will signal the de facto end of Democracy
You’re saying that if he wins a democratic election, it will be the end of democracy? That just sounds like sour grapes over an asshole being picked.
To be honest I as a European wouldn't even consider moving there at the moment. Trump is really polarising American society (which already was quite polarised due to the two-party system).
Wow, I didn't expect this to get such a huge thread.
Just wanted to add a few comments. Yes, I realized after I wrote it, the chief economist guy definitely didn't swim across the entire straits. He deliberately asked to be posted to Kimen or (maybe it was Quemoy), anyway they are very close to Xiamen on the mainland. Allegedly, he actually paddled by holding on floatation ballons or something.
My comment about only going so far in the U.S. has more to do with the executive and political leadership roles in the U.S. and not about compensation (which is far higher in SV, though I am not sure how comp works at top SWE roles in China). Very few Chinese top performers make it to senior executive roles in the U.S. much less, much less the big chairs (CEO, board, etc).
Also I was more talking about hardware talent then software. I think in terms of software the quality on the mainland is already quite good, at least in certain domains, but all the hardware comes from the U.S. if you think of NVIDIA or this semiconductor duke out, the weakness is hardware. So if you have "special hardware" talent you are feted like a debutante in China.
Anyway, as someone who has been around the block a couple of times on both sides of the Pacific, I see no happy ending to the current situation. I have said this multiple times in other threads, we used to think economic engagement will turn the Chinese system more liberal but I think what is really happening is that it is turning the American one more authoritarian and state driven. If we look at the policies of the Trump administration against China, it's basically the type of economic statecraft China uses herself. So great, if you are anti-Chinese that's rich irony, but I think ultimately, there will be no winner and the process of fighting China will make America become just like China.
"As a captain in the Republic of China Army in Taiwan, he defected to Mainland China on May 17, 1979, from the island of Kinmen off the coast of Fujian to the nearby island of Xiamen of Mainland China."[1]
You guys need to understand that there are many categories of users who might post something like that in good faith.
First, a lot of Westerners hold anti-Western views—for whatever reason. This leads them to pro-China positions as a matter of tactics—the enemy of my enemy etc.
Second, a lot of Westerners hold anti-US views. That's similar to category 1 but different. We see this from some Canadian, Australian, and European users, and of course even from some American users—again, for whatever reason; people are complicated. This sort of user will also take China's side in a China/US conflict, for reasons of their own that have nothing to do with being Chinese communists.
Third, there are Westerners of Chinese background, either immigrants or children of immigrants, who have pro-China views because they identify with the Chinese dimension of their family history. Sometimes the children of immigrants have more strident views on these things than their parents. Where the parents naturally sought to fit in as immigrants in the West, the next generation tries to balance the two worlds by leaning back towards the country of origin. This group is the most likely to sound like "CCP propaganda" because they have deep knowledge of the culture and usually the language. And of course, if they're first-generation immigrants, their English may not sound native.
Fourth, there are Westerners of non-Chinese background who have spent a lot of time in China, usually for work (less often for travel), who developed pro-Chinese views, or complex/ambivalent views, simply by the natural process of having spent time there. This sort of user often feels like their fellow Westerners have a cartoonish and ignorant view of China, and wants to educate them. Sometimes they 'educate' them by insulting their ignorance, which is unhelpful. These users have native English and can sound like ardent propagandists as well, but actually their motive is to correct what they perceive as a distortion in Western public opinion. Their own views tend to be critical of the CCP, but they dislike what they regard as ignorant anti-Chinese views, and so will argue a pro-China position out of contrarianism. They tend to favor friendly trade and political relations with China, and since the trend of the last few years has been clearly against that, they can come across as rather aggrieved.
Fifth, there are many people who grew up in China, who came to the West for school (or work) and stayed here. Often they are caught between two worlds—having to defend the West and their choice to stay there to their families back home, and at the same time struck painfully by the ignorance, misunderstanding and hostility that they encounter about China here. HN has such users and they are in a difficult position: vastly outnumbered on intense, divisive questions that they happen to have deep personal experience of.
Sometimes these categories also intersect: for example there are Canadian children of Chinese-Canadian immigrants who speak Mandarin and have spent time working at tech companies in China. Their views come from having grown up in a Chinese-Canadian family and having spent time in China itself, and they feel demeaned and even slurred by the generalizations about China that they see on Western internet forums. They show up in the threads with counterarguments, and their counterarguments are often intensely detailed because they have so much personal experience with the topics.
Can you see how complex this situation is? Each of these categories is a minority on HN, but HN is big enough that 'minority' can still mean thousands of people, any of whom may comment in a thread like this—and no doubt there are additional categories that I didn't list (edit: here's another: Westerners with Chinese spouses). Any of these users can post what seem like absurdly pro-CCP comments in a HN thread, for complicated reasons that come from their own life experience. When they do that, other users run into their comments with no idea of the background that would lead someone to post that way, and it creates a shock experience. (For more on the shock experience, see [1] and [2]). Basically, they go 'WTF?' and wonder how anyone could possibly post like this.
Now here comes the pivot in the whole business. When you experience that 'WTF?', you have two choices. First choice, you can say "wow, I wonder how different our experiences must be that you would post what seems to me like such an obviously wrong and evil comment!" That fork leads to curious conversation in which people get to know each other better. Second choice, you can say "You must be a communist party shill! No one would post like this for any other reason! How much are they paying you?" Which percentage of HN users makes the first choice vs. the second choice? Exercise for the reader.
Thank you for the well written and thought out response. I do agree with you that there are users who would post that in good faith, and I think your 4 categories of people make sense.
My concern was based on intuition which in turn was based on the fact that I have seen a lot more pro ccp comments in recent months on HN, as well as seeing that people who openly question the ccp in ways such as their human rights records, diversity, IP theft, etc be downvoted when raising these points. Although this may be anecdotal and is definitely not proof of interference, I thought it would be wise to finally raise the issue with you.
Thank you for taking a look at this, and for all the work you do on keeping HN a healthy environment.
I think what you're perceiving as happening in HN comments is a consequence of the macro social/geopolitical trend. HN can't be immune from those.
There is a growing rift between the West and China, and especially between the U.S. and China. It has complex interactions with growing political divisions in the West (and especially the U.S.). This cluster of topics is being increasingly covered in Western media, in an increasingly polarized way. HN users are not coming to HN to talk about this stuff from a blank slate—they're coming with pre-existing views that are conditioned by whatever media and online sources they're engaged with, as well as by their own life experience, as I described above.
What all that means is that we're likely to continue to see more pro- and anti- comments on China-related topics, for reasons that are easily explained by the dynamics in our own societies. Reaching for "CCP shill" as an explanation is unnecessary, and to some extent is harmful because it reflects an assumption that no one could hold certain views in good faith, when we know for a fact that some people in fact do hold those views in good faith—again, for reasons of their own life experience.
This does not imply that we're closed to investigating claims of abuse and manipulation. On the contrary, our contract with HN users is that if someone is worried about abuse, they're always welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com and we will always take a look. I wrote new code the other day to help with such investigations. Another part of our contract with HN users is that we will tell the truth about what we find. The truth is that we haven't found even a trace of anything like that on HN—just a lot of human beings with very different backgrounds and very strong feelings. There's more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602 from a couple days ago.
People are welcome to post critical views as long as they do so thoughtfully—same as on any topic.
It's an obvious fact that nationalistic passions are inflamed these days and getting worse. That inevitably shows up on HN and leads to low-quality, denunciatory comments and even outright slurs. We need to try for better than that.
> On the mainland if you are a leading expert in this field or that, or belong to specific establishments (such as public security or state security) you cannot exit the country without permission from higher up the food chain.
Why don't you just call it what it is: A Prison!
Say no to political correctness!
Sure some may want to work in such an environment but this is modern day slavery. Nothing else!
article conveniently doesnt mention the fact that huawei's 5g chip isnt sourced from an American design, rather its the Balong 5000 which has been around since january of 2019. the 16 nm chipset can easily be cranked out from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) in mainland china, which is capable of 14nm runs. barring that, GlobalFoundries as they havent expressed any serious interest in Americas trade war witch hunt masquerading as a security concern.
Huawei had an encrypted email address explicitly for stolen trade secrets and offered bonuses up to employees who delivered stolen tech and secrets. [1]
I don’t like the CCP but I also find it extremely distasteful how the US is always bossing around their smaller allies. Alliance with the US is such a one sided deal.
America is a poor role model. Through these actions it is really just telling China that “night is right” It is like saying “When you become as powerful as us, you also get to boss around small countries”
I really wish the world was not as dominated by a few hyper powers.
The bully really stems of that some do not recognise "one China", which is not the point of view in Beijing. You cannot say it's bully if Taiwan is part of China.
Even if you think Taiwan is part of China, it’s perfectly possible to claim that one set of Chinese people (the PRC government) is bullying another set of Chinese people (the Chinese people of Taiwan).
George Orwell already demonstrated this long time before: Who controls the present controls the past. Most Taiwanese have been realizing that the so-called 1992 consensus is a total nonsense.
I feel like this plays into China's hand. Now Huawei and China will build up their own microchip design and manufacture capabilities which will, at some point, rival the west. Strictly from a strategic standpoint, it seems like keeping China dependent on US technology is a good way to maintain hegemony
"Snapdragon" is a core designed by Qualcomm (based on ARM IP), which is a fabless semiconductor company, and has no relation to Huawei. TSMC is a semiconductor foundry (fab) company that does not design any chips but manufacturers them for other companies. Kirin is currently being manufactured by TSMC for Huawei, but will not be in 2 months.
What's to prevent China from re-branding Huawei, or something along those lines? Then, US / UK / Taiwanese companies could say: we're no longer dealing with Huawei. We're dealing with Uawei. It's different? China could do something like that indefinitely, as a workaround, no? Or, China could just have any number of new shell companies order TSMC parts, and then hand them over to Huawei.
That's exactly what got Huawei into this mess in the first place. The US placed sanctions on selling telecom equipment to Iran and Huawei went "We aren't selling telecom equipment to Iran, this totally unrelated company 'Skycom Technologies' is" who happen to be comprised of employees who still had Huawei email addresses.
> Then, US / UK / Taiwanese companies could say: we're no longer dealing with Huawei.
This is one of the big differences between laws and code, and many programmers get this confused. In code, intention does not matter. What code you write, is what the CPU executes.
In law intention matters. If you came before a judge and pleaded innocent because Huawei changed their name to Uawei, the judge is going to laugh as they sentence you to the same punishment as supporting Huawei.
He's downvoted but he's got a point. What if it's not as simple as just changing their name? What if you dismantle Huawei and sell it off to "other" companies, operating independently and/or cooperating with each other?
At some point it would be extremely hard to say "this is still Huawei".
The US gov should've banned all major Chinese companies, because that seems like a big loophole to me. Even then it still seems like just a temporary measure.
MediaTek is fabless and relies on TSMC. I am sure MediaTek could be pressured as well. Also going from in-house designed SoC/Modem to third-party is still detrimental.
Please don't. You may not owe the CCP better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it. We want curious conversation, not denunciatory rhetoric. Those two are mutually exclusive.
Here's another way to look at it. When posting, ask this question: what's the expected value of the subthread of which this is the root? If the answer, as in this case, is "poor to destructive", please don't post. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I'm sorry, maybe I didn't fully explain my point or was too blunt about it? It seems its too late to delete the root comment now so in future I'll try to be a bit more detailed and not just post a one line conclusion...
For things like this there isn't a "the U.S." there's groups of people, interest groups, political economy, political will, etc. If China were rapidly liberalizing and didn't have stains on their reputation like the HK protest lockdowns, minority subjugation, and horrible prison conditions it would be a lot harder to push any of these changes through. As it stands, democrats and republicans are both turning hawkish on China and the business interests that used to dominate have started to turn sour too.
When I say "the U.S.", I mean the current admin and associated groups.
It is fairly evident that the U.S. is worried about China putting it in a position where it's not as easy/effective to go around the world, exploit foreign natural resources under false pretenses and sanction "non-compliant" nations to the brink.
It has absolutely 0 to do with human rights and all to do with economic power.
As for Chinese domestic human rights, the thing is doing coups etc. as was done so many times in i.e. the Middle East and Latin America won't lead to a better outcome because a coup is a forceful, violent and sudden, unnatural event that requires forces usually as bad if not worse than the current regime to pull off and denies the chance for long-term institutions to develop that adopt naturally by increasing human rights, however slowly.
It's the same problem with introducing modern economic theory, manufacturing, technology to a nation that did not had that trickle in at least somewhat continually over a period of time. It's a shock to the system in a way that rarely leads to better long-term outcomes.
> As for Chinese domestic human rights, the thing is doing coups etc. as was done so many times in i.e. the Middle East and Latin America won't lead to a better outcome because a coup is a forceful, violent and sudden, unnatural event
There is a political theory that any transition from a repressive to an open society involves going through a risky zone of instability:
Now if you consider that this involves a country of 1.5B people, and take into account past experience with radical political changes (e.g. the Cultural Revolution), it seems that even for the most enlightened political leadership, both domestic and foreign, there may not be any easy answers how to proceed.
But is it really? Were the people complaining about the war in Yemen or the atrocities of Saudi Arabia or the horrors of the Iraq War able to meaningfully change anything?
Or is it the case that the only time that human rights actually enact change is when there is an underlying material interest, making them little more than a veneer?
Well yeah, of course. Pretty much every US city is buried in homeless populations because human decency is off the table if there isn't a profit motive behind it.
You can look at the glass is half full view of this, though - thanks to selfish interests an evil regime is being cut off from market access to spy on people around the world. Its of mutual benefit to the capitalists that saw this happen and the people whom China would have invaded the privacy of.
Of course that begs the question what Oppo, Xiaomi, etc are still doing in US markets... just because they are using international SoCs doesn't mean their assembly in China is trustworthy. But if you start asking those questions you start wondering about all the phones assembled in China by external companies like Apple or all the chips added to Samsung phones sourced from China, etc.
First, will isolating China from the US and it's client states actually do anything to make the CCP act in a way that will respect human rights more? I think it is pretty clear that won't be the case.
Second of all, is the entity that stands to benefit actually going to be better for human rights? In this case it pretty much is a zero-sum game. This is a bit more debatable, but I don't think that if the US won this Cold War against China the situation for human rights in the world will become any better.
The answers to both questions is no. Trying to isolate China will only make the lives of Chinese people worse and extinguish any hope of democracy in the medium term. But the US is terribly afraid of losing its grip on power, so it has to be.
Second, the country that is now invading the privacy everywhere in the world (anyone forgot Snowden?) and raging wars without end in sight is the country pretending to be for democracy. This only tells me that the only greatness we still have in the West is the ability to spread propaganda. Somehow, people can be easily convinced that all this is for the greater good.
We are already in pretty bad shape. I particularly don't think this new "Cold War" will have any winer, ever, other than the ones making money from it. Good luck supporting these crimes.
Except US gov responses to cripple Huawei predates the liberalization narrative. China is the largest purchaser of western semi products, private industry in this sector absolutely wants to continue sales. Hence US was forced to implement entity list, twice, to starve Huawei of components. Prior, US has been unilaterally crippling Chinese semi efforts via CFIUS and other instruments before HK/XJ, since MadeInChina2025 was announced. Human rights is just a convenient smoke screen. These moves are particularly desperate since it demonstrates that US is willing to coerce private industries for it's foreign policy goals, an accusation levied at CCP, which CCP hasn't actually done.
Exactly. The human rights narrative is the clearest smokescreen ever used. The US was working just fine with China until 5 years ago, when they decided to enter the same markets (technology). China may not be the freest country in the world but it is way better than it was 20 years ago. Moreover, I don't remember the US trying to put ANY sanctions on Saudi Arabia for all its recent history of human rights violations.
Can you name a nation that does not care about their own interests? US or not, replace it with France or Brazil or India.
It’s not just US, - Japan, EU, SK, APEC, India, Australia, NZ, everyone is piling up on the CCP’s regime that it has built up by abusing its own citizens, iron grip over the society, surveillance and extreme form of asymmetry in trade.
So bashing on US is convenient and easy but you’re turning away from the actual geo political climate against China, clouding your own judgement perhaps with prejudice but I won’t go that far.
Oh, come on. You're pretending that the U.S. is not the world's sole superpower right now and that all the countries you just named aren't U.S. partners with hardly independent foreign policies. Or are you telling me that Saudi Arabia has better human rights than China? Because it's certainly not being pilled on anywhere as much by any of them.
That's completely hypocritical. The US was just fine with the exploitation of workers in China while it made economical sense. Now that the US is losing its grip on power, they want to create this nonsensical narrative.
Actually, you're right. American executives sold off their souls to cheaper prices, moved factories out of US and exploited cheap labor. It is still going on at a monumental scale - Apple for example.
So, it is capitalism at its worst. The government failed to keep American interests and now they're back peddling.
Furthermore, literally every developed country is at the helm of Chinese goods. Every nation in the world.
There is a giant Huawei office as soon as you get out of the Zurich airport housing probably 5000 people.
The Japanese sold off their local businesses and shut down factories, moved them to China for cheaper labor.
What IPAC is doing is to bring right government officials together to back peddle and put brakes on it because capitalism will bankrupt their host nations and enrich China.
Exactly. I think Noam Chomsky said something along these lines: I cannot think of a case where a nation intervened in or influenced another country in a purely disinterested humanitarian fashion.
That doesn't mean national interests cannot coincide with good outcomes, though.
Kosovo was a part of Serbia, a Russian-backed client state. You would never see the US advocate for the people's right for self-determination for Palestine or Scotland.
Yes. But I don't think that giving more power to the US Empire will be better for human rights long term. The US and it's client states also kill millions of people for profit.
Iraq War, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, 90% civilian death rate from drone strikes? Yemen and supporting the Saudis who are much worse than anything you think of in terms of the CCP? Coups in Iran, Latin America, elsewhere? For profit prisons denying people basic rights and what's basically slave labor, police killing unarmed citizens, horrific COVID response that's guaranteed to have led to preventable deaths?
US prison system, law enforcement system. BLM movement. We do systematically repress them to lower classes, and also kill them directly (through a violent law enforcement system), and indirectly (deaths of despair, deaths from crime as a result of systematic poverty).
Exactly. US entry into WWII was mainly for reasons that had little to do with human rights. But the defeat of Nazi German and Imperialist Japan had huge, favorable results for human rights.
Back then the politics were a lot less polarized and you had sane domestic policy under FDR, these are different times. That was when U.S. understood that you can only attain so much by brute force.
Is this the same FDR that tried to pack the US Supreme Court and interned over 100,000 Americans of Japanese decent in camps?
> That was when U.S. understood that you can only attain so much by brute force.
WWII was pretty much brute force all the way. Around the clock bombings of enemy cities and civilians. Firebombing Tokyo, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that was from the US side. The Soviet side had such things as massive artillery barages of cities, no step back rule where people with machine guns shot their own soldiers for not advancing fast enough.
You're confusing foreign policy and domestic policy.
FDR was horrific on foreign policy and had his problems at home, but he understood with the Great Depression at least that some serious economic steps had to be taken in favor of your average worker for the system "as is" to survive.
Right now, the U.S. is "number #1" at handling COVID 19 the absolute worst and still calling Medicare for All a crazy idea, even in the middle of a pandemic, while apparently Biden, a proven right-leaning centrist as somehow being a socialist.
Less polarized? Huey Long got shot for FDR to get in, and actual socialism was a thing in the United States. Assassination attempts were regularly made against union busters.
What I meant was that there was a better sense of what left or right actually means on an international scale.
Nowdays centre-right presidents like Barack Obama or Biden get called socialist, somebody on the international centre left like Sanders is apparently a communist and Chomsky is an out of his mind, left of Mao crazy person. Pink haired college kids are apparently a serious threat and there's a "culture war" or something.
It seems fairly abnormal, especially considering Medicare for All is apparently still crazy, even in the middle of a deadly pandemic the U.S. is currently doing terrible at.
I don't think polarized is necessarily the right word for it, it just seems like American politics has jeered strongly to the right, dragging the people who dislike it into liberalism to seem reasonable.
There are gradients to everything. Where in the US we have a free press to document human rights violations and people can voice their opinion, China has none. The problem with statements like yours is that it completely trivializes the major violations of one country and the progress that has been made in improving human rights of the other.
That's fair, on the other hand, is China semiregularly bombing hospitals in the Middle East? You can cherry-pick certain facts to suit you either way.
As for "free press", the U.S. has the appearance of free press that is shockingly uniform on issues of war for example, controlled by very few entities in total.
Hard to tell with a free press, since people just find the news they want to hear anyways.
I guess our situation with getting news from Facebook is voluntary censorship. Maybe that’s better than forced censorship?
What if the controller of news is benevolent?
I think the situation is that the Chinese government is mostly benevolent to its own citizens, which is why it has fairly good political support domestically. They are however not benevolent to the US interests, which is why we want to stop them. One benefit of a free press is that we’d be able to introduce our own propaganda into the country to push agendas that benefit ourselves.
So silencing the original Covid-19 whistleblower allowing the virus to devastate Wuhan and propagate to the rest of the world is better than free press? How is that benevolent?
Huh? Have you looked at American press? The history is filled with literally thousands of articles condemning the government in every aspect of its operations.
American press is brutal, you like it or not. If US is bombing hospitals in the middle east, there are news papers writing about it. Btw, would like to get the source on this from you while you google your away into another example of American freedom of press.
Incredible how American image on the world has tarnished and people go in with a swoop of imaginations, away from hard truth and facts.
The NPR story is about a coup that happened in the 50s, so not much you can do about ti today. They're not saying "don't escalate with Iran today, we did a lot to wrong them too". They didn't say don't go to Iraq or Vietnam pre-invasion.
Even in China you can say that Mao did this and this wrong, because guess what? He's dead and that's no longer relevant.
A good press opposes things when there's something that could still be done about it.
As for their criticisms of Trump, it's more about decorum and his lack of polish/civility rather than some hard-core policy disagreements from what I've seen.
It's a different country :) And it has different level tolerance in the freedom.
Try making any speech about a race in the US despite it's correct? US has no such freedom or tolerance right?
True that there are lots anti-Trump material out on the internet, but that's the US culture. The media is a tool for winning an election. One cannot force the other world to adopt the same system US has, right?
What is your argument? The point is that in one country you get the truth and in the other you don't. It doesn't take a genius to understand which is better.
> One cannot force the other world to adopt the same system US has, right?
Yes, you're right, China should stop forcing Tibet, Uyghurs, and Hong Kong to adopt their system.
In the grand scheme of things, whether they are "countries" is not the issue right? They are places that had their own distinct cultures and way of life and China invaded and forced their way of life upon them. By the way, Tibet was an independent state prior to forced occupation.
> And China didn’t force them to adapt to Chinese Cultural
This is factually incorrect. There is definitive evidence of destroying cultural and religious artifacts of these groups, desecrating their ancestral graves, banning speaking of their native tongue, among other things. In order to have a fair discussion on this, the facts must be straight. These are all things that have plenty of photo, video, documented, and testimonial evidence via primary sources. Unfortunately, you would never see this evidence presented through Chinese media or textbooks. In fact, you would see the opposite as China propaganda portrays these people as having wanted to be a part of China.
It is hard to feel sorry for them with all the blatant human rights abuse, bullying neighbors and arm twisting weaker countries.
As expected, this thread is full of people responding with whataboutism!
There is a difference between what the PRC says and reality; they have absolutely no control of Taiwan and no country (including the PRC) actually believes that the Chinese Communist Party has any true influence/power over Taiwan. So either you are seriously uninformed on geopolitics or you like to spout BS CCP propaganda.
You mean after invading Taiwan? TSMC is in the Republic of China, not the People's Republic of China. They're not, for practical intents and purposes, the same country.
I specifically said 'for practical intents and purposes' to head off this sort of obnoxious "well ACKSHULLY..." response. The CCP does not rule in Taiwan. Until that changes, the CCP nationalizing TSMC isn't in the cards. And even if that happened, there probably wouldn't be anything left of TSMC to nationalize.
Taiwan seems to be heading to be the next Hong Kong. Their political class is still publicly resistant. But their business leaders are slowly surrendering. At some point, the political class will follow. The US will then need to rely on the activism of the young renegade "colonels" like Joshua Wong. Crippling an ally can buy the US some time. But it is losing ground.