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Comment by dragonelite | Hacker News Reader

Taking over Taiwan will not give China cutting edge node fabs. TSMC is working on a western equipment plus chemical stack. So it will give China absolutely nothing, China is rich enough to make Taiwanese talent offers they can't resist. So much so that Taiwan had to shut down Chinese recruitment bureaus and certain Taiwanese talent are not allowed travel or exit the country.

China can just bide its time they will be the biggest economy at the end of the decade that will psychologically change the world so much regarding the West and Asia. You can already see a disconnect between western and Asian elites/diplomats view on China and the Region. Why Western ASEAN anti-china recruitment the last few years failed really hard.

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> China can just bide its time they will be the biggest economy at the end of the decade that will psychologically change the world so much regarding the West and Asia.

Does this take into account China's demographics? Will be to able to 'grow rich before it grows old'?

I'm not a demographer, so only time will tell how big of a problem it will become. The Chinese government is worried about it, already was couple of years ago. But I don't see it becoming a roadblock that will prevent China from becoming the biggest economy in the world, hell I wouldn't be surprised that the Chinese market will be twice that of the combined western market.

China can always play the Asian immigration card. To soften the blow of a graying demographic.

China has been pushed towards being a monoculture for the past 70 years or so. I don't think Asian immigration would be an easy option at all.

For certain definitions of "monoculture". Even Han culture between different regions can be very different.

Sure, China is not as homogeneous as what it could be. Yet is it preserving diversity? Through its enforcement of standards and nationalism, the CCP has been clear that it has no interest in making China more multicultural.

That isn't the reality I see on the ground. Take a look at for example this Tibet documentary: https://youtu.be/zkYhSsQqRhI This Tibetan woman has 3 husbands. Look inside her house: full of Tibetan and religious artifacts. And this is just a normal Tibetan household, after we've been told for decades that Tibetans are being culturally genocided.

It looks to me that Tibetan scripts and languages, Mongolian scripts and languages, etc are better preserved than over the border in India and Mongolia.

Yes there are also plenty of examples where they tear down a cultural site. Yet I think there is a fundamental difference between western and Chinese interpretations of such acts. Western societies have developed a sort of mythical worshipping of traditional ethnic culture. To the Chinese, to whom development and modernization have come late, development and modernization is number 1: there is no pride in living a traditional, ethnic life if that means being in the middle of poverty. Some sites are torn in the name of development. See this discussion from 1999, back when the China topic wasn't so politicized: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/02/tibet-t...

> It looks to me that Tibetan scripts and languages, Mongolian scripts and languages, etc are better preserved than over the border in India and Mongolia.

You've been drinking the koolaid. Tibetan as only been preserved through a heroic effort to smuggle books over the border to Nepal and India for preservation and duplication.

Seeing Tibetan and Mongolian scripts in videos of Tibetan and Mongolian locations is "drinking koolaid" now? Are you saying those videos are completely doctored and the signs put up only for the purpose of making those videos? Are you saying they don't actually teach Tibetan and Mongolian language in schools in China? Are you saying that woman in the video is an actor? What exact facts are you disputing?

In the mean time, a large part of the Tibetan separatist diaspora in India have lost the ability to read, write and speak Tibetan; and outer Mongolia has only recently begun their efforts to restore traditional Mongolian script, after decades of using Cyrillic.

Sure, but immigrants would be non-Han.

It's not just the demographics: https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/78138 .

Not just Taiwanese talent -- China has also been recruiting South Korean semiconductor talent.

At the current rate, China won’t become the biggest economy in nominal GDP for a few more decades, and that assumes growth continue at the current rate

China might become number one in GDP (PPP) in a decade, but that also assumes continued growth at the current rate. China is overdue for a recession, as they need massive restructuring of the economy to shift away from an export driven economy and to pop its housing bubble (which does drive GDP growth now but not in a way that actually makes the country wealthier)

Why do you think Xi Jinping is doing such massive reforms right now? And clamping down harder on dissent and access to information and culture that’s not in line with CCPs agenda? He knows what’s coming, and to an extent he’s accelerating it with new lending restrictions and such. He knows it’s necessary.

China already has the largest GDP (PPP) in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

It was kind of a shocker too me when I discovered that in the PPP metric China has surpassed the US back in 2014. Also a thing i heard today was that Mercedes for examples sold 770k plus cars in China compared to only 220k and 260k in the US and Germany. And people still expect western companies to decouple.

> So it will give China absolutely nothing

It essentially gives them tremendous power over the world. All they have to do is threaten to shut it down, or ban exports to the west, or put very high tariffs on them. In addition to gaining all IP from customers. What do you think that will do to all companies that rely on cutting edge TSMC nodes such as Apple? Tesla? Nvidia? These new plants won't likely be putting out M1 chips, etc., the cutting edge fabrication is held physically in Taiwan. It would be a great way to collapse the economies of the world as you are rising, if one were aiming at doing such a thing.

And why would they do that? They themselves also need advanced chips, which they can't get when the west boycotts supplies. In the end, such actions are doubled-edged swords, nobody benefits.

I find all this decoupling rhetoric/fear very weird and contradictory. On the one hand people say we should decouple from China, on the other hand we fear decoupling from China and we get furious when they initiate decoupling (see Australian trade). In the mean time actual Chinese officials keep saying that a trade war benefits nobody and keep calling for rational decision making.

Trade war benefits nobody, but if you can gain slight advantages by manipulating currency, stealing IP, etc, you can get ahead while 'saying the right thing.'

China depends on global commerce as much as the US or Europe. It is not on their best interests to create a global tech crash.

China must obviously gain cutting edge node fabs or associated knowledge and processes from seizing Taiwan given the claims you've made about Taiwanese being prevented from being hired by the Chinese Government.

China is already domestically on 14nm pushing for 7nm at SMIC. They went from a decade behind to like 3~5 years behind in like 18 months.

Time is on China's hand, Taiwan and south Korea should be worried about their so called ally the US stealing their tech. Because without TSMC what is Taiwan for the west a annoying island that we need to backstab some time in the future like the western backed regime in Afghanistan. At the end of the day its just business.

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