US, Taiwan seek 'like-minded' democracies in supply chain shift from China
reuters.com
reuters.com
TSMC - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is arguably one of the most important companies in the world, manufacturing chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and many more. The barrier to entry for semiconductor fabrication is so ridiculously high, not even Apple owns its own foundries. Intel has been struggling with 7nm processes (now delayed), while TSMC is already churning out chips using the newer EUV 5nm process for Apple’s upcoming ARM devices (including some iMac and Macbook models). The US recently struck a deal with TSMC, pressuring it to drop one of its largest Chinese customers (Huawei) in return for opening an advanced foundry in the US (a $12B dollar project with enormous tax breaks for TSMC).
Due to its critical positioning in advanced electronics, I genuinely believe the US would get involved if China were to “mess with” Taiwan. A sobering realization is the increasing significance yet fragility of the global technology supply chain - something the pandemic recently exposed. There are geopolitical risks to the United States having a dependency on other nations for something as critical as semiconductors. It’s increasingly becoming a matter of national security.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/economy/china-ta...
I believe there are many Chinese people, visiting HN everyday to discover and share cool stuff, and look forward to conversations that are intellectually beneficial to the participants. If anything, I hope I'm one of these good people, not a troll.
When the situation started to get tight, the meaning of word "we" here is shifting to "we Americans", but you see, unless HN put up a rule to block Chinese users, they will be here. Still looking for fun stuff, but end up seeing the theme turning to "tension", "conflict".
They think differently. Some views may seem unfair, or don't make sense to them. They usually just keep quiet, hide the entries and move on. But sometimes it gets too annoying, so they'll also raise a few points.
It is you who thinks defending China is not ok. So in converse, there will be people who think it is.
It doesn't make one troll because she's not speaking in your favor. I thought this was all fine? Can we just, sit down and compute?
Unfortunately, the last few remaining adults interested in and capable of doing the hard work of political and economic diplomacy, and domestic industrial policy left in 2016. Most had retired already as they were old enough to have lived through either WWII or the Korean War and thus knew what the stakes were. Taking their ball and going home was never an option for them no matter how much the opponent cheated--the task at hand was constant engagement, which however difficult and seemingly pointless was preferable to the alternative.
It's a different Cold War from the USSR, but democracy may still again prevail against a totalitarianism.
It probably won’t get more than some small multiple larger than the US economy and it may never approach the US in GDP per capita.
My point is that the the imbalance is unlikely to get large enough that they US keep fielding a credible nuclear threat.
So again what has changed that makes conventional war between nuclear powers likely or possible.
As far as proxy wars go is trade going to stop those? History has examples of proxy wars fought between countries that engaged in trade.
The Russians want to sell Europe their gas despite being somewhat politically opposed: that money props up a huge chunk of their economy. The oil and gas oligarchs would not be happy with Putin if he stopped exports.
Post-war European democracies and CCP China are apples to oranges. Not only in the freedom and democracy ratings sense. The EU has still to makes leaps in terms of becoming a union, and they're geographically next to each other, and culturally close, to a level the US and China will never be.
China needs to trade far more than we do. That's why there will be no war even if some decoupling happens. China can't afford it, at many levels, including the US being the oceanic route police.
https://i.imgur.com/Lt5akKR.png
[Feel free to swap North Korea for China in that graphic. The end result is pretty much the same.]
> A total of 3,693 armed North Korean agents have infiltrated into South Korea between 1954 and 1992
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_inv...
But the point isn't to provide accurate information, it's to provide something that tries to makes a point and would be a huge pain to bother refuting or diminishing, as all propaganda is designed to be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_P...
Also, as a democracy the US has released information about those events. We don’t expect the PRC to release evidence they behaved poorly (since they already forbid talking about TS)
>The graphic is inaccurate...
https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/
Which events do you deny happened?
But you [and the rest of the western world] still seem to unquestioningly believe that you're the 'Good Guys' [0]. I mean, having a fondness for the land of your birth is all well and good, but it never fails to amaze me how many Americans just have this complete mental block when it comes to the actions of their own country.
If any other country had carried out a tenth of the actions that the USA has done, throughout recent history, it would be a pariah nation. But the US gets away with it, time after time, after time.
Considering that quite a few countries now fit in that category (you're now talking ~4 incidents), well into the double digits, you're argument is now just boiling down to "US bad!".
I think it’s a sign you’ve gone off the deep end when you’re elevating the morally bereft.
As a casual reader of history I always thought US interference in Iran was a pretty clear cut example of wrong doing but now I'm not so sure.
I can't speak on the other examples in that image but knowing more now about Iran it makes me question the narrative of the nefarious motivations behind US interference.
And the US is run by a wannabe dictator, authoritarian loving, narcissist that was obviously elected by a significant portion of the US population and that has a pretty reasonable chance on getting reelected. And yes, while the mail-in voting mess might have an impact on it, it is by far not the only reason.
Like-minded democracies might be the European states, but while they actually still have a lot of american products banned for food safety reasons, similar to Taiwan, Taiwan has actually caved to White House pressure on something I would hardly call a trade deal but more a bully forcing its way on country such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.
We can start with a shared adversary.
>It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.
Honestly, I think the long-term plan here is relocating as much of Taiwan to the US as possible so that there's not that much left for the PRC to take in an invasion/annexation. That means everything short of actual physical territory, from people (scientific & industrial expertise) to patents, materiel, and industrial capacity.
Denying valuable personnel and equipment to the PRC could potentially be as significant as the advantage that the US gained over the Soviet Union from Operation Paperclip, where the US got the "best and brightest" Nazi scientists, and the Soviet Union got the leftovers.
Just for one example, compare the population age pyramid of China[1] to that of India[2]. The way in which China's long standing (but now retired) one-child policy has shaped their population pyramid into a top-heavy column is truly unreal. They have a huge cohort entering retirement age and another big cohort entering their late 30's where they're experienced rather than cheap workers. If you want young, cheap labour in China, the supply is about to start contracting
Meanwhile India's age pyramid really is a pyramid. As China's cheap labour pool shrinks, India's is set to grow massively. Factory wages in India are currently about one fifth of China's too. If you're building a shiny new iPhone factory that will need a multitude of the cheapest human hands money can hire, they're not in China anymore. The gap is going to widen substantially over the next decade or so too.
It will take a lot to break up existing supply chains and pry them out of China, but the economic incentives exist today and will become more irresistible each passing year.
Automation is, of course, a wild-card, but what might work to keep factories in China will work to bring them back to places like the U.S.. Automation works in any country, but demographics no longer favour China when it comes to the one thing that has attracted manufacturers looking to make things as cheaply as possible: cheap labour.
This may be why we've seen China becoming increasingly aggressive over the last few years. Their economic base is peaking and decline is in sight. Now is the time to grab as much power, territory, and influence as possible and try to solidify it before that economic base melts away.
China is the only major economy that is projected to grow this year. And Corona-virus crisis is under control there whereas in eg. India it is still escalating.
But given how 2020 has unfolded. If I were a business owner and I had the option of building a factory in say India or China; then China surely has proven more stable.
Of course could I place the factory in Spain or Japan for the same cost, I would do so. But that has always been the case.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/tpp-free-trade-globalizatio...
The US is trying to build up an alliance against China, but I guess a lot of countries will want to stay neutral in that conflict. The Chinese government is doing horrible atrocities, but the US also isn’t the paragon it portrays itself to be.
That said, there a lot of countries that have their own issues with authoritarianism, persecution of minorities, privacy violations, etc and they have a partner in China that is willing to look the other way for profit. It's going to be difficult for an increasingly weak US to force those countries to isolate a cheap source of goods to placate their masses.
America being the good and leading the fight against evil was always just a story told to the masses. In reality you were gaining a lot from aligning to one of the blocs in the Cold War and a lot of countries had common enemies with the US. All this is missing now. Already with the Iraq war unanimous support by allied countries was not there anymore and with the Trump administration the US stopped to be a reliable partner.
I don’t think you can easily say that other countries abandon their willing to try to change China. They just keep on the diplomatic way.
But one does reap what one sows.
Denial of reality and downvoting the comments won't change anything.
China does have faster growth. Only time will tell if that continues.