China made a big mistake in being too reliant on TSMC, etc. or maybe it did not have the capacity to go after too many targets. Or maybe it simply did not think it could be a problem.
They are quick to learn and adapt, though, not least when the Chinese state throws its whole weight behind something, so I'm thinking that after this initial shock, in a few years the result will be a decline of the relative importance of the Taiwanese semi industry because mainland China will have its own, with all the potential strategic consequences that this might mean.
I don't think it's a mistake. It's more that they don't have a choice. There are very few (maybe even only one?) foundries in the world with advanced processes. Building a foundry is not trivial. For how long has Intel stuck with 14nm now? The Dutch ASML lithography machine is one of the most advanced machines in the world, and it's pretty much the only one of its kind. China has been investing heavily in domestic foundries for years now, but it takes time.
This is reason US needs to ensure that a US company can make the latest and greatest technology. You never know what geopolitical issue might cut your supply off.
I think it's just greed and poor risk management. Up until recently, china couldn't even manufacture ball point pens (which I think only 2 companies in the world produced). There's no money to be made at the bottom of the inverted tech pyramid. They rather put their energy in buying ball point pens and using those pens to write stuff that will in the short term make them more money on to of a foundation of sand. Similarly all of the investment from giants like Alibaba etc went into developing e-commerce on top of a tech foundation of sand
Well for one, giving TSMC the ultimatum that either they stop doing business with Huawei, or stop doing business with the entirety of the US. This happened just a few months ago.
And here I thought US would like to recognize Taiwan as an independent country. But then it goes ahead and tells a Taiwanese company that they can't make their own decisions on who to do business with?
This is super naive. China has a huge military, is much closer to RoC, and has absolute popular support that RoC is already a province of China. Whereas the US can barely muster popular support for wearing masks.
It is obvious that the US would have a problem if the mainland took over Taiwan. But short of that happening they don't because Taiwan is reliant on them.
What support that Taiwan is part of China outside China? Everyone I’ve ever talked to about it considers Taiwan independence and under threat from China.
US military presence is sort of a paradox for Taiwan. It both protects Taiwan, as well threatens it, in the sense that China feels threatened by the US military and thus is incentivized to militarize out of self-defense.
Taiwan's geography makes it a natural fortress, and even Taiwan's own military can defend the island pretty well entirely on its own. A mainland invasion will be very, very expensive, so it won't happen that easily.
Economically, Taiwan is in decline. China basically doesn't need Taiwan for economic reasons. So the only reason to invade Taiwan, would be to appeal to the nationalist sentiment of reunification. But the chances of that happening is less than what many think, both because of the military cost, and because the CCP are actually moderates; there are many Chinese people who are far more radical, and if it's up to them then they would have launched an invasion a decade ago.
This probably sounds unbelievable, or even propagandistic, to many people here on HN. You don't have to take my word for it. See Kishore Mahbubani, ex-Singapore diplomat & ex-head of UN Security Council, who wrote a book on China.
This is obviously false on its face. China would have invaded Taiwan from the get for if not for the US. And blaming china’s self defense fears on their building up the military is just communist apologist nonsense
Based on what sources do you make your claims, and what makes you so sure Mahbubani is wrong?
Also, regarding "communist"... they're not really communist, haven't been for a long time now. 80% of the businesses in China are privately owned, and people have private property. Though socialist elements still exist; my wife's grandparents recently received new houses from the government, as reimbursement for tearing down their old houses (which were in much worse shape than the new ones) for redeveloping the land. As Mahbubani says, the CCP is more accurately described as the Chinese Civilization Party.
The larger ones do. Smaller ones don't. And for sure, houses are not owned by the government. The land is, although that is not a uniquely communist thing: in Amsterdam, all land is owned by the city government.
But that really has got nothing to do with ownership. It has got to do with national security, and ensuring that the company does not conflict with public interests. Whether you agree with such reasons is another matter: the point is that it's not about ownership.
A distinction without a difference. Party affiliation is a requirement before a business can even become large. Perhaps you can call them private in the nominal sense. It is reminiscent of the National Socialist's command economy.
Private individuals may own a company on paper, but the party will dictate what is done with it. Look at the case of Jack Ma.
> Also, regarding "communist"... they're not really communist, haven't been for a long time now.
Right, but communism has never been communism where it has been tried, that's the paradox of communism. trying to continually redefine the term to fit your narrative to that it's still pure is a boring exercise in bike-shedding.
I don't know where you got the idea from that I'm 'redefining' communism. Communism refers to an economic system, where one of the properties is that everything is state owned. And that is no longer true. Communism also refers to the Soviet model, and China is no longer using that. If I say that today's China's mostly capitalist system is a new form of communism, then you would be right than I am redefining it. So I am very confused by what you mean when you accuse me of redefining communism.
It seems more like that you are redefining communism to mean whatever system China is using today.
Chinese Civilization Party might be over-doing it a bit, don't you think? Unless you use a circular definition that Chinese civilization is whatever the CCP says it is. Normally the meaning of civilization is defined by the people in it, rather than via edict.
The notion of state ownership vs private property is indeed more capitalist, as long as it's actually meaningful. For private property to mean something, it must mean that the government can't or won't override your choices about how that property is to be used. In China there's a lot of private businesses and private property, but the government is still very willing to control the details of how that property is used, for example, by insisting that party members are installed in powerful positions when the company becomes important, or restrictive capital controls, or requiring a wide variety of licenses to do business. The control is still there, it's just done via different bureaucratic means than "state ownership". For instance a company won't remain your private property for long if you criticise the government, or allow other people to criticise the government. It's a rather weak notion of private property.
Kishore coined the term as a way to clear up people’s misunderstanding of what the CCP is. His point is that people misread the CCP’s goal as advancing communism world wide, whereas in actuality its goal is to advance the interests of the Chinese nation. This misread results in nonsensical China policy, which is why he promotes the term, to help people deal with China as it is and not what people think China is.
As for control of private property: interventions are possible, for sure. But I am not sure whether the existence of interventions is a meaningful point in this discussion. Here in the Netherlands there are a ton of interventions too. I can’t even park a bike on my own parking lot without getting into trouble! Yet nobody will argue that private property in the Netherlands is weak. The fact is that for the most part, property in China really is private. That large companies have to cede some control is an exception to the rule, because most companies are not large.
“Taiwan’s ‘silicon shield’ makes it the 51st [US] state,” FT quoted Dan Hutcheson, a chip analyst and chairman of VLSI research, as saying. He stressed the need for the U.S. to protect Taiwan, saying “it can’t afford to lose it to China.”
When you have a billion people + unlimited funds + some industrial espionage I am sure china will get their chip manufacturing industry built up quickly.
For very technical things, having the information is not the same as having the ability to manufacture. Some industries don't lend themselves to catching up rapidly, you have to go through all the mistakes yourself. I think semiconductors is one of those industries.
An example (unrelated to semiconductors) is China's failure to manufacture a decent jet engine even though they've been trying for 30 years. It turns out that the metallurgy required for a jet engine is more complicated than what is needed for household appliances. They aren't even dealing with incomplete stolen information, they have a license from Russia and the full technical information and still can't do it (although Russia isn't sharing their most modern designs, but China still struggles to make an engine with 1980's tech).
I'd love to hear more elaboration on that, or a link to an article. As someone way out of my depth it seems almost silly that they wouldn't be able to figure that out through a combination of throwing expertise and money at it and spycraft.
It really bothers me, how many (I assume) PRC loyalists are on here. This BBC article is valid, and on topic to this thread, and elaborates on how "just making stuff" isn't simple.
Why else would this be a vote down, other than puppets of the PRC?
Don't accuse people of being puppets of the PRC. That poisons the discussion and is almost certainly wrong.
I posted this link because it's an interesting case of how something that is seemingly simple can be exceedingly difficult to manufacture. Like jet engines, ballpoint pens require advanced metallurgy to produce.
Yes, I know why you posted this, I stated as much.
You may note that I added "(I assume)", and then asked "Why else". If people flagging your post as off topic, when it isn't, want to respond? Well, they can.
In terms of poisoning? Please. Have you looked at the rest of this discussion?
From my side of things, I prefer to keep things non-political. To simply state technical fact, and info. Yet when I see a significant divergence from that behaviour, a response is required.
That was true about 5 years ago. I think the last couple of years have brought some breakthroughs in China on this front after about 30 years of trying. Not for commercial aircraft but definitely for military jets.
I think the more worrying thing is what happens to the West if, when it has built it's own fab capacity (which is much easier said than done, but China will throw enormous resource at it because it has to), China decides to destabilise Taiwan's semiconductor industry.
Western nations would be smart to try and decentralise some of that production capacity (also easier said than done) before that could come to be, but does anyone think the Western nations current or foreseeable leadership really have the strategic foresight to do so?
Yes, that's what I meant by 'strategic consequences', including in case of a cross-straight conflict.
At the moment it is in everyone's interest that Taiwan's foundries stay up and running. But in the future, in case of a hypothetical conflict it might even be in the mainland's interest to bomb them and create havoc for Western companies.
> Western nations would be smart to try and decentralise some of that production capacity (also easier said than done) before that could come to be, but does anyone think the Western nations current or foreseeable leadership really have the strategic foresight to do so?
Only time will tell whether that shop is valuable. The only reason they started doing that was because the US pressured them into it — it wasn't for economic reasons.
It was for economic reasons on both sides. Political pressure from the US often has economic consequences. The two things are rarely not connected, especially when you're the size of Taiwan and dealing with the US (your sole protector on the planet, the only thing standing between you and getting Hong Kong'd).
The US getting cut off from TSMC supply by a China move was unacceptable economically and politically. On the other side, the political relationship with the US has all sorts of economic ties for TSMC and Taiwan.
So you can plainly see, the economics of it are connected all up and down the context. They cannot be separated.
the point is that the plant would not happen without US pressure, so it is primarily motivated by geopolitical concerns. If you buy that, it's not much of a stretch to question how much effort TSMC will put into the Arizona plant, given the mess of conflicting incentives
The West has been unwilling to use its economic levers to preserve competition and a healthy market. China has no problem using state control and doesn't care much for fair competition either. The West isn't doomed but we're not in a very defensible position either.
I don't have enough knowledge of chip's logistics so my less informed 2 cents would be, thinking from a business perspective, if eventual dominance of chip supply-chain was in cards, Chinese businesses would have had done it regardless of ban existed or not.
So, this ban gives Taiwan and US businesses some breathing space to keep that lead. How its leveraged, is upto the governments and business's .
I'm sure they were given a decent financial incentive to go along with this ban. Taiwan is an ally after all, if you annoy their companies with far overreaching targeted international rules, and don't compensate them, there are going to be political costs.
I would guess the new TSMC facility in the US is part of this compensation - they'll probably be receiving very favourable tax treatment for everything manufactured there.
Well the reason TSMC gave up Huawei so easily was because they knew they would have no trouble filling orders from AMD, NVIDIA, Xilinx and now Intel apparently.
Look up Fujian Jinhua plant 2018. Truth is US has been sanctioning and using CFIUS to undermine Chinese IC for a while now. Many blocked acquisitions under Obama. Relationship was just less acrimonious and less public. I suspect even Nvidia's ARM ambitions is part of plan to undermine Chinese IC efforts. Like how William Barr floated idea to get CISCO to buy controlling share in SE or Nokia to rival Huawei 5G.
That said, TSMC is too successful for it's own good. Once their Arizona plant opens on US tax dime, Taiwan will loose security guarantor. I suspect they'll delay for as long as they can. SMIC is basically sufficient to make IC for Chinese military use in any case. The main, and huge problem, is being commercially competitive.
Interesting theory re Arizona meaning Taiwan loses its advantage. Although no one can ascribe too much (or really any) foresight to the current US admin, I have to imagine there's a domino theory w.r.t. to Taiwan and the SCS region. Ceding China's control (military, economic, or otherwise) of Taiwan would panic every other independent nation in the region into striking a good deal with China to hopefully maintain their autonomy.
Ugh. The West has had the tail wagging the dog for so long. Arrogant transnational corporations and the rich think they can control China like everything else. It's the same arrogance on display with coronavirus: they play by very different rules and don't care who you are.
At least with semi there's continuity. And some of the China-hawks in the admin, though cray cray and warmongering, are also pragmatic. i.e. I think Trump banned TikTok out of spite, but probably Pompeo banned WeChat... as if Trump knows what WeChat is. And probably other hawks pushed for TikTok acquisition, and Trump poison pilled with with extortion to US treasury. A lot of the escalations are... unprecedented, kind of insane, but also calibrated enough that China can tit-for-tat. Whereas Trump would just be insane.
By all accounts TSMC didn't want to open plant in US. They were denying it for months / weeks / days before. And TSMC has invested so much capex in new Taiwan plants that it makes no fiscal sense for them to open low capacity plant in US unless heavily subsidized, and US wouldn't subsidize unless it was for MIC. As for Taiwan's future, really depends on how election goes. I'm skeptical China will allow TSMC / Taiwan to cooperate with US unfettered in semi. Right now there's mediatek buffering Huawei. And other Chinese brands can still sell phones with qualcomm. But if US manage to coerce all Taiwanese semi from working with China... well glitter bombs are going to blow up in Taiwanese fabs before real bombs. I think it's semi is a much more dangerous situation than most people realize. If Trumps over November, there's a few years before Arizonal TSMC comes online to form a useful Chinese semi containment strategy. Or TSMC will delay the play until after Trump term 2. Otherwise, stock up on graphics cards now.
The chinese govt is indeed throwing their weight behind developing a local semiconductor industry capable of rivaling TSMC. They are making heavy investment in SMIC for example.
However, at the same time, unfortunately the Chinese government doesn't play fair, and they are ramping up state sponsored industry espionage and hacking of American and Taiwanese semi-conductor firms to speed up the process.
This best describes China's perspective towards "technology acquisition"
“They want technology by hook or by crook. They want it now. The spy game has always been a gentleman’s game, but China has taken the gloves off,” said John Bennett, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office, which battles economic spies targeting Silicon Valley. “They don’t care if they get caught or if people go to jail. As long as it justifies their ends, they are not going to stop.”
+1 to this, China has never made anything real themselves. It is all stolen property from countries who actually play fair.
Until the general U.S population realizes that china's end goal is to eat them alive and unanimously supports putting china in its place, nothing will change and by then I fear it will be to late.
The assumption that any country, especially the successful ones, plays “fair” is ludicrous. IIRC the CIA (or was it NSA?) was giving state-gathered intel to American arms And aerospace manufacturers in the 1980s so that they could outbid European rivals.
The Chinese might be playing by different rules than those “established” over the last few decades by the west; but no one is playing “fair”.
"In 1994, Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia after the NSA, acting as a whistleblower, reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials.."
Huawei will replace Kirin with other chips manufactured in TSMC fabs (MediaTek for example). Huawei is forbidden using their own chip designs if there is come US based IP components, not from buying TSMC manufactured chips.
That was already China's stated goal in their "Made in China 2025" initiative.
> The initiative encourages production of high value products and services, like aerospace and semiconductors, to help achieve independence from foreign suppliers.[1]
Chinas success in doing this can in large part be traced to the unwillingness of the U.S and the west to challenge and stop the pure theft of IP from basically all advanced industries and unfair trade practices. This has enabled an immense transfer of IP which gives China an amazing foundation to build upon. Now China has to do the final push to become self reliant, but it's much more feasible than it was say 10-20 years ago.
As far as i am aware no country except for different eras of communism(specifically Soviet) have operated somewhat effectively on production output plans on the scale of entire economy.
Feasible in 10-25 years, IF there is no political turmoils, persistent calamities and foreign invasions. Recent 3 decades of positive progression doesn't really extrapolate well when it comes to China historically. Take a look at it's 5,000 years of civilization. Usually when into any succession dynasty, she frequently stagnate. If there are major calamities AND foreign invasions, the internal political struggles will initiate a dynastic change and balkanization. China frequently unite (now) and then breakup repetitively throughout the history.
China balkanized repeatedly during its 5000 year civilization because it was a premodern empire. Premodern empires don't have the same tools as modern states to enforce control down to the local level, so they run by co-opting local elites to do their work for them. However, co-opting local elites means that when the center weakens, these elites start raising militia and become independent states. In modern times, no local militia has the firepower to overcome a centralized military. Therefore, you don't get balkanization as long as the political leadership is united and willing to put down uprisings. Balkanization only happens when, in the case of the USSR, the central leadership loses faith and tells the army to stand aside and let it happen. The CCP has studied what happened in the USSR and they've been careful to make sure nobody in the government gets any funny ideas to let balkanization happen.
I would be cautious about using history prior to the industrial revolution in any predictive capacity because the industrial revolution was a major shift in technology, economics, and societal organization. Yes, humans are still motivated by the same wants and fears, but many of the mechanisms that drove premodern events no longer exist today.
> Chinas success in doing this can in large part be traced to the unwillingness of the U.S and the west to challenge and stop the pure theft of IP from basically all advanced industries
I don't know if that had such a large impact. How much quality innovation is either secret or patented? How many patents are simply low quality, low effort trash[1]? Seems like most groundbreaking research is published relatively quickly.
That'll probably happen in the long term. In the short term, China might answer by completely banning US companies from the Chinese market.
I don't see anything to win here. Probably every large company, including those from the US, have some kind of production facilities, storage or supplies in China. China applying similar restrictions would probably be a worse hit for the US than the current situation is for China.
I doubt the Chinese will take any rash, knee-jerk reaction here. They are very predictable and will stick to what is in their best interest. Since there is no democratic government either, these decisions are not at risk of changing - unless XiJinping loses a coop, which at this point is an impossibility.
if you think about it, we have reached a time in which we are all benefiting from china having a cool head about them and patience. it's really highlighting the power vaccuum that's happening.
I think the die has been cast. A lot of people in fact most americans I would argue not only would be ok with that but want that. Theres two options here. China flourishes and the world is in different start, or it doesn't and the worlds fine. But the current relationship is wholly untenable
That was always the outcome. It's the road China has been traveling down intentionally. Before the ability to use it against China runs out, the US is using it while they have it to use. China does it everywhere they compete out of a sense of hyper nationalism, necessity to become a superpower and independence (the ability to pursue its national objectives without concerns for sanctions or outside opinion). Russia would love to have the competence to do the same thing (so far all Russia has managed, mostly, is de-dollarization; China can't de-dollarize at this stage due to its exports and tight link with the global economy). China has known for two decades or more what they had to do. Mostly the only difference will be China will pull forward their plans, if and where they can.
They always planned to build up their own semiconductor industry and become heavily independent of foreign semiconductors.
They always planned to build up their own software industry and become heavily independent of foreign software.
They always planned to build up their own jet industry and become heavily independent of Boeing and Airbus.
They always planned to build up their military tech and become heavily independent of Russia.
I think the more you must guard your words, the things you say, watch how you act, and the more you grow up with this as a child?
The more restrictive your thoughts may be as an adult. The less 'free wheeling', and therefore, more locked into tight, controlled paths.
Further to that, even if the above is not significantly true, there is still the entire "does the work I want to do, the research, threaten PRC dogma in any way?"
And worse...
"Will the work I do, threaten PRC dogma in the future."
On top of all of that, a reduction of international collaboration with others in the field, and so on.
Of course, I could be entirely wrong. But I do think that "restrictive environment" leads to "less creative output", at least in visible output.
Bingo. That’s exactly why I don’t see China surpassing the US or the west anytime soon. They can clone Tesla or Apple as much as they want - but nothing truly groundbreaking will happen, since they have been “inspired” by the west for so long.
TikTok's For You algorithm is pretty clearly based on YouTube and Netflix's published recommendation platforms, but I'm not sure why you're framing this so narrowly. The entire product is a Vine clone and they regularly steal content for marketing purposes (c.f. https://twitter.com/xTempex/status/1182185566999318529).
We don't really see this level of abuse from American or European firms who have ethnically Chinese executives. It's not really a matter of race; it's a corporate culture that is more common in highly-competitive markets with weak IP protections. Trying to frame it as racist isn't really productive, especially since the parent comment wasn't specifically talking about Han Chinese, but about the nation.
There is nothing wrong with being culturalist, to be so is absolutely not racist. A black, white, etc orphan child raised in communist China, would grow up in the same culture, with the same beliefs.
Those that decry 'racist', when one complains about China are indeed the true racists, for they think culture and race = the same thing.
They take it a step further by conflating the CCP with Chinese people, Chinese culture and the Chinese nation. This is a tactic I frequently see where proponents of the CCP seek to call any criticism or skepticism racist.
> TikTok's For You algorithm is pretty clearly based on YouTube and Netflix's published recommendation platforms
This is true of virtually any recommendation system implemented anywhere and YouTube and Netflix most certainly did not invent any of the basic concepts involved. In fact the core algorithms for recommendations are very classic and the newest techniques can be credited to Microsoft research and Geoff Hinton.
I think the parent comment was talking about innovation in the sense of Peter Thiel's idea of Zero-to-One innovations, not step-by-step improvements of existing technology. In this sense I agree because chinese culture is indeed seeking harmony and unity a lot and thereby seems prone to groupthink and to the detriment of new and different ideas. (Heresy and novelty, anyone?).
Please don't be pedantic, We do not have votes on whether the president should sneeze into a tissue or a paper towel, but yes, the president that decided to go to war was voted in by the majority of the population.
Please do not try to push the CCP's propaganda by knocking the United States, it only ends one way, and that is all of us being slaves to winnie the pooh
> the president that decided to go to war was voted in by the majority of the population.
“A majority of the electoral college, representing a second-place minority of the eligible individuals casting ballots for Presidential electors”, if you want to be accurate, but certainly not a “majority of the population” or even “a majority of voters in the general election”, and not even “a plurality of voters in the general election”.
*a majority of the electoral college, representing a second-place minority of eligible individuals casting ballots for Presidential electors, selected one of the two candidates put forwards by the private corporations that decide every four years of a different process to select either of the two candidates, and that are not legally required to hold or respect the results of primaries
You don't see any possibility that informed criticism of USA policy of undeclared and unprovoked war might lead to better policy? American pacifists shouldn't argue for peace? Shouldn't vote for peace? If that is your position, don't be surprised when we put an end to the Union... all of humanity will benefit, but 3.5% of humanity will be sad for a moment.
I'm hardly of the opinion that the US is comparable to China, but it seems to me that a democracy that commits a sin is somehow worse than an autocracy that does so.
After all, if 150 million and one believe that killing a million civilians is acceptable and is able to support carrying out that activity that means that society is corrupt.
If 1 man believes that killing a million civilians is acceptable and is able to carry out that activity that means that society is merely incapable of enforcing moral will.
In fact George Bush was selected by the Supreme Court 5-4 because voting and reporting irregularities in Florida made the contentious result too close to call.
It was subsequently found that a full state recount would have given the result to Al Gore. Less debatably, a Gore win would have been the certain result if there had been no racial bias in disallowed votes, and also if the voting machines had simply worked properly.
IMO a Gore win would have prevented 9/11, avoided the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, set the scene for a less adversarial relationship with China, and pushed the global economy towards sustainability with time to spare - and possibly also avoided the economic bubble that eventually caused the recession in 2008.
Overwhelming majorities in both parties voted to authorize the war in Iraq. In fact, every democrat presidential nominee other than Obama since 2004 voted for Iraq.
The US is not a true democracy. The voting system is such that there can never be more than two parties that have any chance of winning at all. Meanwhile, both of the two parties are legally private corporations that are allowed to select candidates any way they choose.
As a consequence, if those in control of both parties want something (which was the case for the Iraq War), there is absolutely no way for the people to vote against it.
This is without even talking about how consent is manufactured.
You act as if the US doesn't do this. But it has the highest incarceration rates in the world, often for petty crimes like smoking weed. And it also puts prisoners to work.
Eh, I do think the US is probably slightly better than China in this regard. The camps for uighur muslims in China sound absolutely awful. But the US system is anything but fair. There have been hundreds of stories from Black Americans in the last few months about how unfairly they're treated.
>why does that matter if the outcomes are comparably despicable
How are they comparable? The black incarceration rate in the US is around 2.3%[1], meanwhile the incarceration rate for Uyghurs is estimated to be around 10%-15%[2][3].
USA has 4% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We are the worst on earth, in the history of earth. No wonder we invented "whataboutism".
Yeah, if your metric is "percentage of people imprisoned", then yeah, we are the worst. I'm not sure how it's relevant to my reply or this comment chain, which is discussing the treatment of dissidents and ethnic minorities. You and the person I was initially replying to are trying to derail/move move the goalposts to incarceration rate.
Funny you mention whataboutism, because there's a distinct lack of it here. No one here is justifying America's incarceration rates by saying "the other side" does the same.
I agree that the US prison industrial complex should be reformed. However it is in no way equivalent to locking people up for political reasons. Political reeducation camps and forced harvesting of organs from prisoners cannot be compared to work release programs or paid prison labor.
Why are so many comments seeking to establish equivalence?
I really doubt it. China has its own fabs, they're just a few generations behind (14nm). That "only" means their chips are not competitive in certain contexts (heat, power), not that they can't have chips at all. They're investing heavily in research and development. It's just a matter of time before they catch up. There's no need to do something risky and expensive, like starting a war over Taiwan.
And taking over Taiwan will cripple TSMC's ability to provide to anyone. The moment they invade Taiwan, 100% of its population becomes anti-China (right now a portion of Taiwanese are still sympathetic to the idea of reunification). TSMC employees will revolt and the island will turn into a perpetual guerilla war zone. How do you produce chips in such an environment?
I still think WWIII could plausibly happen, just not because of TSMC.
Agreed, but only to a point. Chinese foreign policy generally avoids taking sides in war in order to keep markets available, which has enabled them to remain out of major conflicts while the rest of the world throws money, resources, and lives away on endless wars. However, looking at the belt and road initiative that runs through Uighur peoples, they are showing they are willing to commit genocide to reach their long term expansionist goal. Combine that with their militarization of the south china sea, development of carrier technology, theft of stealth technology, and success of the thousand talents program and you have a power growing that only lacks the decision to resort to force. That said, don't discount the capacity for war over their long term goals of making China the sole superpower.
Not to mention that Taiwan will trigger the explosive devices that they have embedded into infrastructure and manufacturing plants. China may coerce Taiwanese scientists, but won’t find a functioning chip fab to use.
If you expect a map with locations marked X, well good luck. This is just a long-standing rumor, as these things are obviously kept secret, but the fact that both west-germany and switzerland did this (we actually have hard evidence) to stop advancing soviet forces in the event of war makes this very credible.
That makes blowing up TSMC remotely by hacking a better proposition - leaves all the players at a level playing field while maintaining plausible deniability.
Seizing another territory for their knowledge / expertise /manufacturing capabilities would demonstrate weakness. I am pretty sure Beijing would rather avoid that.
More importantly, it's not even possible. In any war over Taiwan TSMC's fabs will be rigged with explosives and destroyed. Not to mention key personnel needed to run the fabs getting caught up in the crossfire.
i doubt it, TSMC still needs lithography machines from ASML (a Dutch company) to manufacture their chips.
US has repeatedly prevented ASML from shipping latest EUV lithography machines to China, I can't imagine the US wouldn't cut off supplies to TSMC if Taiwan was invaded.
When rereading the article with this in mind, Yu only announced the end of "Kirin high end chips", not of the complete Kirin line. So I assume those are still alive?
Maybe the Chinese government can fix this with using some extra slave labour or else steal and extortion it from some small countries? Can't they just invade Taiwan or Korea and just grab it? As a last resort they could become a democracy, without slavery, without stealing and play by the rules, but hey what a weired idea if you can be a thug as well!
the US's goal was never to stop selling to Huawei altogether, it's to prevent Huawei from moving up the value chain, i.e designing their own SOC.
It's the same reason why other Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Oppo are not included in the entity list. You can bet once they starts to develop their own CPU, or their own OS, they would be immediately placed on the entity list because of "national security" reasons.
Kirin's probably source something from U.S. designs right? Hence it's production run must end. I am guessing this means Huawei needs to switch to a design that is wholly originating from China (with possible input from Japan and Korea) but right now they are not up to the level of the Kirins.
This may really just mean Xiaomi or Oppo gains an advantage over Huawei and takes the top crown.
Huawei can still buy SoC with US technology in it if it's designed and manufactured by others.
US restrictions are all about Huawei’s ability to use U.S. technology and software to design and manufacture semiconductors abroad. BIS made targeted rule "to impose a new control over certain foreign-produced items, when there is knowledge that such items are destined to a designated entity on the Entity List."
> (i) Items, such as semiconductor designs, when produced by Huawei and its affiliates on the Entity List (e.g., HiSilicon), that are the direct product of certain U.S. Commerce Control List (CCL) software and technology; and
> (ii) Items, such as chipsets, when produced from the design specifications of Huawei or an affiliate on the Entity List (e.g., HiSilicon), that are the direct product of certain CCL semiconductor manufacturing equipment located outside the United States. Such foreign-produced items will only require a license when there is knowledge that they are destined for reexport, export from abroad, or transfer (in-country) to Huawei or any of its affiliates on the Entity List.
>Huawei can still buy SoC with US technology in it if it's designed and manufactured by others.
I don't get it, if the U.S. wants to cripple Huawei why would they let you buy SoC that way? The whole point I thought was that any company dealing with Huawei that used some material proportion of U.S. originated technology to deliver goods to Huawei had to stop. Which means in order for Huawei to build chips it needs a supply chain that is almost completely independent of the U.S.
The closets analogy I can think of is like building nuclear submarines. They are notoriously hard because its not possible to globalize the supply chain, everything in its design must be sourced within the country thus requires a specialized supply chain.
Chip design involves a lot of upfront investment cost that's recuperated by selling at volume. If the US allowed Huawei to make its own chips, Huawei's chips eat into the global sales volume, profits, and future R&D funds of Qualcomm. If the US simply banned Huawei from buying Qualcomm chips, Qualcomm still takes a hit on its sales volume and profitability and nothing has changed on the US side of the books. But if the US bars Huawei from getting its chips manufactured and gives it no choice but to buy from Qualcomm, Qualcomm's sales volumes stay elevated and it is able to recoup its R&D investments.
Ultimately, a big part of the US/China tech war is due to the structure of high tech R&D, which is to sink a massive amount of capital at the beginning in hopes of getting a global monopoly and being able to sell to everyone in the world to recoup that initial cost. While China was a consumer and assembler of US technology, the US could rest easy knowing that it had a captive global market for high tech products to fuel its future R&D costs and stay ahead. But when China starts developing and selling alternatives, there's not enough buyers and sales volume to support both Chinese and US cutting edge tech companies, and some of them will go under in the decades following. We saw this happen with Taiwan's TSMC becoming the only real vendor of the latest semiconductor process nodes after decades of US fabs falling out of the race. But Taiwan is under US military influence, China isn't. Ultimately, this is about keeping China on a leash as a consumer instead of a producer of technology as much as possible because there isn't enough customers and capital in the world for two high-tech R&D superpowers to siphon at the same time.
Lot of talk about TSMC building a plant in Wisconsin but as far as I could dig up its basically the same as what they already have in Nanjing. A play meant to make them appear like a neutral party.
What they're not saying is that the Chinese will have to completely shut down many of their silicon foundries because of a lack of specialized chemicals only available from the USA and Japan.
Until now it hasn’t been cost effective to develop internal sources for these supplies.
Now the US has provided an (essentially infinite) price support for domestic production and all the infrastructure and supply chain that go along with it.
For the record, I predict that the CCP will invade the island of Taiwan in a Blitzkrieg fashion, achieve victory in 72 hours, and nationalize TSMC, steal all the IP.
Then the CCP will be hated even more throughout the world.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 303 ms ] threadThey are quick to learn and adapt, though, not least when the Chinese state throws its whole weight behind something, so I'm thinking that after this initial shock, in a few years the result will be a decline of the relative importance of the Taiwanese semi industry because mainland China will have its own, with all the potential strategic consequences that this might mean.
And here I thought US would like to recognize Taiwan as an independent country. But then it goes ahead and tells a Taiwanese company that they can't make their own decisions on who to do business with?
You can have all the will in the world, but that is not necessarily going to win out every time.
"Oops, looks like there's a bad fire in that Taiwanese fab. Pity about that. They'll be out of production for years."
By then of course, that fab would have been so obsolete that it's really not worth fixing.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/06/china-deploys-am...
It is obvious that the US would have a problem if the mainland took over Taiwan. But short of that happening they don't because Taiwan is reliant on them.
Taiwan's geography makes it a natural fortress, and even Taiwan's own military can defend the island pretty well entirely on its own. A mainland invasion will be very, very expensive, so it won't happen that easily.
Economically, Taiwan is in decline. China basically doesn't need Taiwan for economic reasons. So the only reason to invade Taiwan, would be to appeal to the nationalist sentiment of reunification. But the chances of that happening is less than what many think, both because of the military cost, and because the CCP are actually moderates; there are many Chinese people who are far more radical, and if it's up to them then they would have launched an invasion a decade ago.
This probably sounds unbelievable, or even propagandistic, to many people here on HN. You don't have to take my word for it. See Kishore Mahbubani, ex-Singapore diplomat & ex-head of UN Security Council, who wrote a book on China.
Also, regarding "communist"... they're not really communist, haven't been for a long time now. 80% of the businesses in China are privately owned, and people have private property. Though socialist elements still exist; my wife's grandparents recently received new houses from the government, as reimbursement for tearing down their old houses (which were in much worse shape than the new ones) for redeveloping the land. As Mahbubani says, the CCP is more accurately described as the Chinese Civilization Party.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies/...
But that really has got nothing to do with ownership. It has got to do with national security, and ensuring that the company does not conflict with public interests. Whether you agree with such reasons is another matter: the point is that it's not about ownership.
Private individuals may own a company on paper, but the party will dictate what is done with it. Look at the case of Jack Ma.
Right, but communism has never been communism where it has been tried, that's the paradox of communism. trying to continually redefine the term to fit your narrative to that it's still pure is a boring exercise in bike-shedding.
It seems more like that you are redefining communism to mean whatever system China is using today.
Chinese Civilization Party might be over-doing it a bit, don't you think? Unless you use a circular definition that Chinese civilization is whatever the CCP says it is. Normally the meaning of civilization is defined by the people in it, rather than via edict.
The notion of state ownership vs private property is indeed more capitalist, as long as it's actually meaningful. For private property to mean something, it must mean that the government can't or won't override your choices about how that property is to be used. In China there's a lot of private businesses and private property, but the government is still very willing to control the details of how that property is used, for example, by insisting that party members are installed in powerful positions when the company becomes important, or restrictive capital controls, or requiring a wide variety of licenses to do business. The control is still there, it's just done via different bureaucratic means than "state ownership". For instance a company won't remain your private property for long if you criticise the government, or allow other people to criticise the government. It's a rather weak notion of private property.
Kishore coined the term as a way to clear up people’s misunderstanding of what the CCP is. His point is that people misread the CCP’s goal as advancing communism world wide, whereas in actuality its goal is to advance the interests of the Chinese nation. This misread results in nonsensical China policy, which is why he promotes the term, to help people deal with China as it is and not what people think China is.
As for control of private property: interventions are possible, for sure. But I am not sure whether the existence of interventions is a meaningful point in this discussion. Here in the Netherlands there are a ton of interventions too. I can’t even park a bike on my own parking lot without getting into trouble! Yet nobody will argue that private property in the Netherlands is weak. The fact is that for the most part, property in China really is private. That large companies have to cede some control is an exception to the rule, because most companies are not large.
“Taiwan’s ‘silicon shield’ makes it the 51st [US] state,” FT quoted Dan Hutcheson, a chip analyst and chairman of VLSI research, as saying. He stressed the need for the U.S. to protect Taiwan, saying “it can’t afford to lose it to China.”
An example (unrelated to semiconductors) is China's failure to manufacture a decent jet engine even though they've been trying for 30 years. It turns out that the metallurgy required for a jet engine is more complicated than what is needed for household appliances. They aren't even dealing with incomplete stolen information, they have a license from Russia and the full technical information and still can't do it (although Russia isn't sharing their most modern designs, but China still struggles to make an engine with 1980's tech).
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114
Why else would this be a vote down, other than puppets of the PRC?
I posted this link because it's an interesting case of how something that is seemingly simple can be exceedingly difficult to manufacture. Like jet engines, ballpoint pens require advanced metallurgy to produce.
You may note that I added "(I assume)", and then asked "Why else". If people flagging your post as off topic, when it isn't, want to respond? Well, they can.
In terms of poisoning? Please. Have you looked at the rest of this discussion?
From my side of things, I prefer to keep things non-political. To simply state technical fact, and info. Yet when I see a significant divergence from that behaviour, a response is required.
For plenty of explanation, see
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
Western nations would be smart to try and decentralise some of that production capacity (also easier said than done) before that could come to be, but does anyone think the Western nations current or foreseeable leadership really have the strategic foresight to do so?
At the moment it is in everyone's interest that Taiwan's foundries stay up and running. But in the future, in case of a hypothetical conflict it might even be in the mainland's interest to bomb them and create havoc for Western companies.
TSMC actually plans to set up shop in Arizona: https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsArchivesAction....
The US getting cut off from TSMC supply by a China move was unacceptable economically and politically. On the other side, the political relationship with the US has all sorts of economic ties for TSMC and Taiwan.
So you can plainly see, the economics of it are connected all up and down the context. They cannot be separated.
So, this ban gives Taiwan and US businesses some breathing space to keep that lead. How its leveraged, is upto the governments and business's .
I would guess the new TSMC facility in the US is part of this compensation - they'll probably be receiving very favourable tax treatment for everything manufactured there.
That said, TSMC is too successful for it's own good. Once their Arizona plant opens on US tax dime, Taiwan will loose security guarantor. I suspect they'll delay for as long as they can. SMIC is basically sufficient to make IC for Chinese military use in any case. The main, and huge problem, is being commercially competitive.
Ugh. The West has had the tail wagging the dog for so long. Arrogant transnational corporations and the rich think they can control China like everything else. It's the same arrogance on display with coronavirus: they play by very different rules and don't care who you are.
By all accounts TSMC didn't want to open plant in US. They were denying it for months / weeks / days before. And TSMC has invested so much capex in new Taiwan plants that it makes no fiscal sense for them to open low capacity plant in US unless heavily subsidized, and US wouldn't subsidize unless it was for MIC. As for Taiwan's future, really depends on how election goes. I'm skeptical China will allow TSMC / Taiwan to cooperate with US unfettered in semi. Right now there's mediatek buffering Huawei. And other Chinese brands can still sell phones with qualcomm. But if US manage to coerce all Taiwanese semi from working with China... well glitter bombs are going to blow up in Taiwanese fabs before real bombs. I think it's semi is a much more dangerous situation than most people realize. If Trumps over November, there's a few years before Arizonal TSMC comes online to form a useful Chinese semi containment strategy. Or TSMC will delay the play until after Trump term 2. Otherwise, stock up on graphics cards now.
However, at the same time, unfortunately the Chinese government doesn't play fair, and they are ramping up state sponsored industry espionage and hacking of American and Taiwanese semi-conductor firms to speed up the process.
This best describes China's perspective towards "technology acquisition"
“They want technology by hook or by crook. They want it now. The spy game has always been a gentleman’s game, but China has taken the gloves off,” said John Bennett, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office, which battles economic spies targeting Silicon Valley. “They don’t care if they get caught or if people go to jail. As long as it justifies their ends, they are not going to stop.”
See:
https://www.wired.com/story/chinese-hackers-taiwan-semicondu...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-basf-espionage/basf-worke...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-technology-secrets-come...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/inside-...
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-china-economic-es...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/prc-state-owned-company-taiwa...
Until the general U.S population realizes that china's end goal is to eat them alive and unanimously supports putting china in its place, nothing will change and by then I fear it will be to late.
The Chinese might be playing by different rules than those “established” over the last few decades by the west; but no one is playing “fair”.
"In 1994, Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia after the NSA, acting as a whistleblower, reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials.."
> The initiative encourages production of high value products and services, like aerospace and semiconductors, to help achieve independence from foreign suppliers.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
As far as i am aware no country except for different eras of communism(specifically Soviet) have operated somewhat effectively on production output plans on the scale of entire economy.
I would be cautious about using history prior to the industrial revolution in any predictive capacity because the industrial revolution was a major shift in technology, economics, and societal organization. Yes, humans are still motivated by the same wants and fears, but many of the mechanisms that drove premodern events no longer exist today.
I don't know if that had such a large impact. How much quality innovation is either secret or patented? How many patents are simply low quality, low effort trash[1]? Seems like most groundbreaking research is published relatively quickly.
[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-patent-month
I don't see anything to win here. Probably every large company, including those from the US, have some kind of production facilities, storage or supplies in China. China applying similar restrictions would probably be a worse hit for the US than the current situation is for China.
They always planned to build up their own semiconductor industry and become heavily independent of foreign semiconductors.
They always planned to build up their own software industry and become heavily independent of foreign software.
They always planned to build up their own jet industry and become heavily independent of Boeing and Airbus.
They always planned to build up their military tech and become heavily independent of Russia.
Insert any given prominent technology here.
The more restrictive your thoughts may be as an adult. The less 'free wheeling', and therefore, more locked into tight, controlled paths.
Further to that, even if the above is not significantly true, there is still the entire "does the work I want to do, the research, threaten PRC dogma in any way?"
And worse...
"Will the work I do, threaten PRC dogma in the future."
On top of all of that, a reduction of international collaboration with others in the field, and so on.
Of course, I could be entirely wrong. But I do think that "restrictive environment" leads to "less creative output", at least in visible output.
TikTok's For You algorithm is pretty clearly based on YouTube and Netflix's published recommendation platforms, but I'm not sure why you're framing this so narrowly. The entire product is a Vine clone and they regularly steal content for marketing purposes (c.f. https://twitter.com/xTempex/status/1182185566999318529).
We don't really see this level of abuse from American or European firms who have ethnically Chinese executives. It's not really a matter of race; it's a corporate culture that is more common in highly-competitive markets with weak IP protections. Trying to frame it as racist isn't really productive, especially since the parent comment wasn't specifically talking about Han Chinese, but about the nation.
Those that decry 'racist', when one complains about China are indeed the true racists, for they think culture and race = the same thing.
This is true of virtually any recommendation system implemented anywhere and YouTube and Netflix most certainly did not invent any of the basic concepts involved. In fact the core algorithms for recommendations are very classic and the newest techniques can be credited to Microsoft research and Geoff Hinton.
From a competitive landscape, yes it sucks. But Huawei / China needs to be punished for its blatant IP theft, I think this is a great place to start.
China is despicable but I think that the moral ground of the US regarding this kind of issue is quite shaky.
China on the other hand if you don't support putting muslims in concentration camps, you end up there yourself
Yes China is quite flawed, but this attempt at maintaining the status quo really only serves to halt progress.
Please do not try to push the CCP's propaganda by knocking the United States, it only ends one way, and that is all of us being slaves to winnie the pooh
Not actually true since Bush lost the popular vote in the 2000 election.
“A majority of the electoral college, representing a second-place minority of the eligible individuals casting ballots for Presidential electors”, if you want to be accurate, but certainly not a “majority of the population” or even “a majority of voters in the general election”, and not even “a plurality of voters in the general election”.
You don't see any possibility that informed criticism of USA policy of undeclared and unprovoked war might lead to better policy? American pacifists shouldn't argue for peace? Shouldn't vote for peace? If that is your position, don't be surprised when we put an end to the Union... all of humanity will benefit, but 3.5% of humanity will be sad for a moment.
After all, if 150 million and one believe that killing a million civilians is acceptable and is able to support carrying out that activity that means that society is corrupt.
If 1 man believes that killing a million civilians is acceptable and is able to carry out that activity that means that society is merely incapable of enforcing moral will.
Isn't that what design-by-committee is? Or upper management hiring consulting firms to "validate" a plan they already had in mind?
It was subsequently found that a full state recount would have given the result to Al Gore. Less debatably, a Gore win would have been the certain result if there had been no racial bias in disallowed votes, and also if the voting machines had simply worked properly.
IMO a Gore win would have prevented 9/11, avoided the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, set the scene for a less adversarial relationship with China, and pushed the global economy towards sustainability with time to spare - and possibly also avoided the economic bubble that eventually caused the recession in 2008.
As a consequence, if those in control of both parties want something (which was the case for the Iraq War), there is absolutely no way for the people to vote against it.
This is without even talking about how consent is manufactured.
How are they comparable? The black incarceration rate in the US is around 2.3%[1], meanwhile the incarceration rate for Uyghurs is estimated to be around 10%-15%[2][3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China
Funny you mention whataboutism, because there's a distinct lack of it here. No one here is justifying America's incarceration rates by saying "the other side" does the same.
I agree that the US prison industrial complex should be reformed. However it is in no way equivalent to locking people up for political reasons. Political reeducation camps and forced harvesting of organs from prisoners cannot be compared to work release programs or paid prison labor.
Why are so many comments seeking to establish equivalence?
There's also Apple doing high performance ARM, but only for their own stuff.
And taking over Taiwan will cripple TSMC's ability to provide to anyone. The moment they invade Taiwan, 100% of its population becomes anti-China (right now a portion of Taiwanese are still sympathetic to the idea of reunification). TSMC employees will revolt and the island will turn into a perpetual guerilla war zone. How do you produce chips in such an environment?
I still think WWIII could plausibly happen, just not because of TSMC.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1187993.shtml
Here is the same story from Gizmo China:
https://www.gizmochina.com/2020/08/07/huawei-mate40-last-fla...
Huawei still needs license from BIS to use Snapdragons but it should be easier to get.
Also: https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-neighbors-in-the-indo-p...
This may really just mean Xiaomi or Oppo gains an advantage over Huawei and takes the top crown.
US restrictions are all about Huawei’s ability to use U.S. technology and software to design and manufacture semiconductors abroad. BIS made targeted rule "to impose a new control over certain foreign-produced items, when there is knowledge that such items are destined to a designated entity on the Entity List."
> (i) Items, such as semiconductor designs, when produced by Huawei and its affiliates on the Entity List (e.g., HiSilicon), that are the direct product of certain U.S. Commerce Control List (CCL) software and technology; and
> (ii) Items, such as chipsets, when produced from the design specifications of Huawei or an affiliate on the Entity List (e.g., HiSilicon), that are the direct product of certain CCL semiconductor manufacturing equipment located outside the United States. Such foreign-produced items will only require a license when there is knowledge that they are destined for reexport, export from abroad, or transfer (in-country) to Huawei or any of its affiliates on the Entity List.
https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/05/commerc...
I don't get it, if the U.S. wants to cripple Huawei why would they let you buy SoC that way? The whole point I thought was that any company dealing with Huawei that used some material proportion of U.S. originated technology to deliver goods to Huawei had to stop. Which means in order for Huawei to build chips it needs a supply chain that is almost completely independent of the U.S.
The closets analogy I can think of is like building nuclear submarines. They are notoriously hard because its not possible to globalize the supply chain, everything in its design must be sourced within the country thus requires a specialized supply chain.
Even in close to lawless Trump era there WTO exists and sanctions can be challenged and ignored by other countries if they are excessive.
Ultimately, a big part of the US/China tech war is due to the structure of high tech R&D, which is to sink a massive amount of capital at the beginning in hopes of getting a global monopoly and being able to sell to everyone in the world to recoup that initial cost. While China was a consumer and assembler of US technology, the US could rest easy knowing that it had a captive global market for high tech products to fuel its future R&D costs and stay ahead. But when China starts developing and selling alternatives, there's not enough buyers and sales volume to support both Chinese and US cutting edge tech companies, and some of them will go under in the decades following. We saw this happen with Taiwan's TSMC becoming the only real vendor of the latest semiconductor process nodes after decades of US fabs falling out of the race. But Taiwan is under US military influence, China isn't. Ultimately, this is about keeping China on a leash as a consumer instead of a producer of technology as much as possible because there isn't enough customers and capital in the world for two high-tech R&D superpowers to siphon at the same time.
also what are they gonna use for smart watches, TV and their other products which are powered by kirin chips? you can't replace those that easy
Now the US has provided an (essentially infinite) price support for domestic production and all the infrastructure and supply chain that go along with it.
Then the CCP will be hated even more throughout the world.