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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

Google, not exactly a small company, did experience an effective ban in China, and had to stop operations there.

I don't remember any major panic about it, and not even a spectacular NASDAQ crash due to that.

I see that a trade war is a war of attrition, but I don't see US industry as more vulnerable than Chinese in this regard.

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There's a difference between China banning Google from operating in China, and China sanctioning Google. The latter would prevent any company that does business in China from doing business with Google, effectively cutting Google off from most major companies in the world.

This is what the US did to Huawei. Huawei was already effectively banned from selling in the US market, and it didn't impact them that badly. They could still sell in China, Europe, India, Africa, etc. But being sanctioned by the US meant that they couldn't buy from critical suppliers, meaning they wouldn't even be able to manufacture their products in the first place.

The reason why China hasn't retaliated against a company like Apple, which would be devastated by any Chinese sanctions, is that long term, such a move would scare off other companies. Everyone would try to limit their supply-chain exposure to China, just as Chinese companies are now trying to do with the US.

China did not ban Google. Google is still doing business in China. It has research centers and Android is dominating in China. Plus it earns over a hundred millions of dollars each year from China by selling Ads. Google abandons its searching services in China because it does not want to cooperate with censorship from the government. They still could re-open if they are willing to cooperate. And they planed to do, then gave-up under pressure from its employees.

Apples and oranges. Banning Google in China meant that its product (user data) couldn't be produced in China. That's unfortunate but they still have users elsewhere in the world and on VPNs. On the other hand ad sales _to_ China have continued growing ever since the ban.

Huawei (or any smartphone company) has no alternative to chips that license US technology.

Last time I checked, most chips for smartphones were made in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan.

US-made chips are necessary for high-performance computers; there is no China-made Xeon or Power9. But this is not smartphone stuff.

Re Google: ad sales in China did not stop, but Google received no revenue from that huge market then.

Correction, I didn't just mean chips made in the US but also chips that license US technology. This was the reason ARM, a British company had to suspend their relationship with HiSilicon, Huawei's chip manufacturer. [0]

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18635326/huawei-arm-chip-...

There's no guarantee that the chinese government would respect US copyright and patent law in a split up. It's just as likely the payments to US firms would end, and manufacture would continue.

If China takes that action the US can cancel China's bonds.

I don't think either side wants to take such drastic action though.

If the US cancels Chinas bonds the US looses any trust, i.e. everyone has to assume that their bonds are worthless. No sane person/company would lend the US money in that scenario.

And if China nationalizes US technology nobody will trust it either. No sane company would invest there in that scenario. I think whoever takes drastic action first would lose trust of third parties. Anyway, I don't think it's going to go that far, too much collateral damage.

Google’s main source of revenue generation wasn’t happening in China, and Google still had room to grow in other countries around the world.

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