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Comment by computerfriend | Hacker News Reader

In sentences like "The last thing the US wants to see is for China to close the technology gap on this stuff", China is referring to the PRC. In sentences like "you may not be aware of this, but tsmc is a chinese company", China is referring to Taiwan. It is disingenuous to conflate these.

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conflating them has been the official policy of both prc and taiwan since the prc was founded, as well as of the un, and it shows little sign of changing. in day-to-day life, there is an enormous flow of money, technical information, hardware, and skilled workers back and forth between taipei and shenzhen. taipei is a 20-minute flight away from fuzhou. the idea of maintaining a 'technology gap' between the prc and the roc is more wishful thinking, like the idea of maintaining a technology gap between california and washington, or between france and germany. i mean, at least france and germany speak different languages

Being ambiguous as to what "China" means is both vitally important for international relations and also generally unhelpful for the purpose of clear communication. Corporate (and other) espionage notwithstanding.

there was no ambiguity in my comment; i said 'chinese companies (in both prc and roc)' to ensure that i was communicating clearly

Deliberately conflating the two, especially in discussion of US strategic interests, is not just unhelpful but makes your entire argument nonsensical.

sigh

Consider not spewing bs instead of sighing.

disagreeing with you is not the same thing as spewing bs. in fifteen years you'll see i was right

looking at your comment history, the most likely explanation for the disagreement is that you're out of your depth discussing geopolitics, the history of innovation, and international trade, so you're limited to repeating the ideas you're surrounded by, and even the best-founded counterarguments to them appear to you as 'bullshit' because you aren't familiar with the background knowledge they're based on

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