[HN Gopher] Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into globa...
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Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub
Author : 1659447091
Score : 277 points
Date : 2025-11-24 03:07 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| voidfunc wrote:
| Is Hokkaido defensible? Once China solves the Taiwan problem
| they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.
| TheThirdNuke wrote:
| The Soviets trivially took the Kuril Islands and they can
| trivially defeat Japan if they so desire. China's also really
| interested in Okinawa independence. Both countries have
| appealed to arguments on liberating indigenous populations to
| hint at future military action against Japan.
|
| It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that
| their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| Can you clarify this for me: the Soviets don't exist, so how
| can they possibly take the whole of Japan - in some future?
|
| If you mean Russia, then no.
| TheThirdNuke wrote:
| Ukraine has a proper army and the support of Europe, albeit
| with dated weapons. Japan has neither and it's dubious
| whether the United States would step in. Hokkaido has
| always been under threat from Russia and the Soviets
| quickly took the Kuril Islands, which wasn't even
| originally theirs.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Japan is a turn key nuclear state, that is all...
| laughing_man wrote:
| No. The only way the Russians could prevail is to break
| out the nukes, and that would always run the risk of a
| nuclear response from the US. Japan's navy is more
| powerful than the Russian pacific fleet in a conventional
| conflict. Any attempt to land on Hokkaido would be
| stillborn.
|
| Even if they managed to land they would probably be
| pushed off pretty quickly. Japan's military is more
| powerful than that of Ukraine, and the Russians are
| already having trouble supporting troops just across the
| border. There's no way they would be able to support an
| invasion force over water. I'm skeptical the Russians
| could pull that off without opposition, something they
| would certainly have in spades.
| axiolite wrote:
| > Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United
| States would step in.
|
| There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense
| of Japan against any aggressive party.
|
| The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+
| military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year
| to support the US military presence there. Japan is also
| a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US
| trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the
| US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US
| allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
| For over 60 years the United States-Japan Alliance has
| served as the cornerstone of peace, stability, and
| freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment
| to Japan's defense under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty
| of 1960 is unwavering. https://www.state.gov/u-s-
| security-cooperation-with-japan/
| danielscrubs wrote:
| The Budapest Memorandum (1994) gave assurances, that the
| U.S. would militarily intervene or defend Ukraine under
| attack like an alliance-treaty.
|
| Ukraine surrendered the sharpest tool in its arsenal for
| those assurances, its inherited nuclear arsenal, the
| world's third-largest at the time. But the loss was
| broader than warheads; it was the surrender of a
| strategic future.
|
| America first means America first. All politicians will
| say one thing and do another, always check the
| incentives...
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| The Budapest Memorandum did no such thing. It is
| completely and totally incomparable to the US-Japan
| alliance. At most, it calls for a weaselly "security
| council action to provide assistance".
| >Seek immediate Security Council action to provide
| assistance to the signatory if they "should become a
| victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat
| of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
| pjc50 wrote:
| If the Okinawan Americans aren't going to do something
| useful for Japan, Japan would be very happy to kick them
| out and stop them harassing the locals.
|
| A land invasion of mainland Japan is so unrealistic that
| even the US in WW2 didn't attempt it.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| The Russians lost control of the Black Sea to a country
| that doesn't have a navy. Its naval incompetence is
| legendary. There is zero chance of them conducting an
| amphibious invasion against anyone any time this century.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The United States defends Japan. The United States has
| nuclear weapons.
|
| Knowing those two facts, we can conclude that Russia will
| not be invading Japan as long as it is protected by the
| United States. The calculus is very simple when nuclear
| weapons are involved.
|
| Also, keep in mind that D-Day was the largest amphibious
| assault in history and all they had to do was cross the
| English Channel. Russia invading Hokkaido would be
| _suicide_ , the US nuked Japan rather than try invading
| the homeland to end WW2 and we controlled every island
| surrounding Japan at the time.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Japan defeated the Russian navy in 1905. I guess that means
| that the Empire of Japan can trivially defeat the Russian
| Empire if such political entities cared to exist anymore and
| if the result of a past confrontation was a true benchmark of
| the current capabilities of the respective armies and
| economies.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| > Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn
| their sights on Korea and Japan.
|
| China will not annex Japan or South Korea. As a Chinese person,
| I can assure you that this is not how our mindset works at all.
| Most of the Western media hype about this is deliberately
| designed to muddy the waters around the Taiwan issue. Taiwan is
| different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically
| Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity. But
| historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han
| peoples. Every non-Chinese group has always been viewed as a
| net burden. Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied
| it and gained a warm-water port, the price would be having to
| assimilate tens of millions of Burmese people. That cost is
| simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it. The Chinese
| way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully
| Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered
| "one of us." So with South Korea and Japan, the real goal is to
| surpass them industrially and economically, to leave them in
| the dust on the factory floor and in the lab. When it comes to
| Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts
| is for Japan to start a war first--so China can finally settle
| the historical score once and for all. But even in that
| scenario, turning Japan into "part of China" is not on the
| table. No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized
| Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless
| headache, not a prize.
| voidfunc wrote:
| > Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are
| ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute
| necessity.
|
| Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to
| surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the
| legitimate democratic ROC government then.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| yeah its a civil war, lets see who will won.
|
| (Thank you for acknowledging that this is a civil war --
| that's something you rarely see on Western forums.)
| Larrikin wrote:
| Chiang Kai-shek is a standard part of the world history
| course in the US in high school. We know why China wants
| Taiwan at the personal level, much of the world is just
| interested in that not happening.
|
| It's a civil war like the American revolution was a civil
| war and France helped out.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| This is the first time I've ever seen a non-Chinese
| person say it this way on Reddit, X, or this platform. I
| must have scrolled through way too much Reddit.
| buu700 wrote:
| Yep, it's 100% common knowledge. I distinctly remember
| Mr. Eyerly making a point to explain why Chiang Kai-shek
| and Jiang Jieshi were both valid transliterations in my
| 10th grade world history class.
|
| No one in America with a high school education believes
| that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly
| decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map.
| Chinese history from antiquity to modern
| European/Japanese colonialism and war crimes to the
| unresolved civil war and KMT's retreat from the mainland
| are standard course material; the history and politics
| around reunification aren't some big mystery.
|
| Don't get me wrong. The history is _interesting_ , but
| from an American perspective interesting history doesn't
| translate into justification for violent incursion on an
| established nation's sovereignty. We largely don't even
| support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less
| invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal
| democracies that we have long-standing friendly
| relationships with. The American lesson from our history
| isn't "we screwed up in Iraq and Vietnam, so other
| countries should get a pass to behave similarly"; it's
| "let's work to prevent such tragedies from repeating".
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| so the war in Venezuela...
| buu700 wrote:
| Yep, any war of aggression would be wildly unpopular
| today. Limited actions may be somewhat tolerated inasmuch
| as they're seen as being at the behest of the legitimate
| Venezuelan government in exile, but no one wants a land
| invasion or to see American missiles killing civilians.
|
| I'm not saying it could never happen, but the party in
| power would be burning a ridiculous amount of political
| capital, to put it mildly. A big part of the reason
| President Trump even exists is the perception that Bush
| lied to get us into Iraq and Obama kept us there. Trump
| consistently ran as the "anti-war" candidate, and Biden
| was also known for his dovish politics.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| I don't understand why you think an invasion or
| widespread airstrikes would be unlikely.
|
| - Trump has been building up our military presence in the
| area over the last few months[1]
|
| -He's already striking boats that he claims have weapons
| of mass destruct... I mean drugs in them
|
| - Trump said "I don't think we're going to necessarily
| ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to
| kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?
| We're going to kill them," [1]
|
| - He declared the cartels terrorist groups [2]
|
| I believe he's going to link Marudo to the cartels and
| use it to justify a war to force him out of power.
|
| Republicans, will support him. He'll lie, like he always
| does, and they'll believe it either due to stupidity or
| tribalism. The further they follow him the more painful
| admitting they are wrong will be.
|
| [1]https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-won-t-
| congress-ove...
|
| [2]https://www.state.gov/designation-of-international-
| cartels
| buu700 wrote:
| I haven't commented one way or another on the likelihood
| of an invasion. My claim is that an escalation from
| limited airstrikes to full-scale invasion would be wildly
| unpopular, which I stand by.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Blaming Bush is justified because he lied about WoD.
| Obama pulled out in 2011, the date Bush agreed to in
| 2008.
|
| Are you referring to 2014s invasion because of ISIS?
| buu700 wrote:
| I'm not referring to any specific actions or commenting
| on who did what. I summarized what I've observed to be
| the common perception, which is that Iraq and Afghanistan
| were "forever wars" conducted against the informed
| consent of the American public, and a spectacular failure
| of our institutions and both party establishments.
|
| If that sounds lacking in nuance, well, I never claimed
| to believe American political discourse was particularly
| nuanced -\\_(tsu)_/-
| pjc50 wrote:
| .. would be an illegal American war, yes. Like most of
| the American incursions into South America and violations
| of sovereignty of South American countries.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| > We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked
| invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable
| and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-
| standing friendly relationships with.
|
| Of course you don't support invasions of your puppet
| nation that only exists because of your intervention. But
| let's flip this around. Suppose that there was a second
| American civil war, one side lost and retreated to
| California. PRC funds the losers, stations troops there,
| signs a treaty guaranteeing to defend their independence.
| Do you think the US would ever, in a million years,
| accept that? Even after 75 years, it's obvious the US is
| going to state that California still belongs to it, and
| would try to reclaim it whenever possible.
|
| If you looked at this objectively, rather than from your
| perspective as the defender of the puppet state, it would
| be clear that PRC's claim is justified. All the more so
| because not only was the territory rightfully theirs, but
| now they have a hostile power from halfway across the
| world threatening to use it as a staging point against
| them.
|
| Your American lesson, also, does not disbar any country
| from having any claim to any land. America is by far the
| most egregious actor in the world stage because it
| routinely does, in fact, invade lands that are halfway
| across the world. It can be true that invading a country
| on the other side of the planet is wrong, and that
| seeking to re-unify your partitioned country is not so
| wrong.
|
| That said, I don't particularly expect it to ever come to
| war, anyways. I think it's much more realistic that PRC
| will exercise political influence and economic pressure
| to achieve re-unification rather than invasion.
| buu700 wrote:
| I'm sure that's subjectively clear to you, maybe not so
| much to the people actually living in Taiwan or the
| hypothetical independent California.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I agree that, in principle, the people of every territory
| should have the right to peaceful self-determination
| regardless of validity of other people's claims to
| territory. In practice, virtually nobody acknowledges
| that right, even though it's ostensibly the first article
| of the UN charter. The Irish had to make life hell for
| the English to get any concessions, Catalonia had its
| independence movement dismantled, Kurds are oppressed by
| every state they live in. The US itself is guilty of
| this; there was no particular reason the union of two
| completely opposite cultures had to be enforced, and in
| another timeline perhaps there was a peaceful national
| divorce. The hypothetical independent California was
| actually, in reality, an independent Confederacy of
| several states, and their independence movement was
| crushed. To that extent, I could agree China is in the
| wrong, but only insomuch as any other country is, and it
| should not be singled out as a particularly aggressive
| nation when it's playing by the same international norms
| as the rest of the world. That it wants to reclaim Taiwan
| is in no way indicative that it has any intention to
| invade Korea or Japan, as supposed upthread.
| buu700 wrote:
| It sounds like we have some common ground, but I think
| you may have a misunderstanding of the present American
| worldview and politics.
|
| We're 79 years removed from Philippine independence, and
| you would have to try very hard to find a single American
| who wants them back. The US military would have been
| fully capable of annexing Iraq and Afghanistan with
| violent repression of dissent and zero concern for
| civilian casualties, had that been the will of the
| people. After 75 years of peaceful coexistence with a
| hypothetical independent California, I would be very
| surprised to see any political will for annexation.
|
| The "same international norms as the rest of the world"
| you refer to are anachronistic. The post-WWII norms, to a
| large extent defined and upheld by the US, aren't based
| around maximal balkanization or unconditional support for
| separatism, but rather opposition to transfer of
| territory by force. If that sounds like ladder-pulling,
| maybe it is, but China has no standing to complain;
| Western conquests have been largely disbanded, while
| China remains as the third-largest nation in the world
| (ahead of the US).
|
| I'm not claiming that the US has never done anything
| wrong. I asserted the opposite of that. I'm arguing that
| pointing out someone else's crime isn't a justification
| for someone to go commit a crime of their own. If you
| shoot someone from a rival gang, your lawyer isn't going
| to argue in court that it's okay because someone else
| from that gang shot someone else a decade ago. There's
| actually a word for that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.
|
| But if we both agree that wars of aggression are bad
| regardless of whether they're started by the US, China,
| Russia, or anyone else, then we're basically on the same
| page.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I think that the American worldview is heavily
| propagandised and doesn't particularly reflect reality.
| The post WWII-norms are not at all a story of peaceful
| self-determination. The decolonisation of the Phillipines
| was an anomaly and an outlier. At the same time that the
| US was letting go of the Phillipines, it was gearing up
| for war in Korea on behalf of its puppet military
| dictatorship that was, at the time, even more repressive
| than the North Korean one. The Dutch fought a war in an
| attempt to keep control of Indonesia. France fought a war
| for its colonial possessions, which the US joined in on.
| Portugal fought wars for its colonial possessions. The UK
| let India go only because it was utterly ravaged by WWII,
| and they recognised they would not likely be able to keep
| it by force.
|
| Moreover, the US specifically simply adopted a different
| model: puppet governance. As did the USSR. You would
| hardly find an American who would say that the USSR was
| benevolent, despite the fact that they believe themselves
| to be benevolent while doing the same things. Invading a
| country to install a regime loyal to yours is not
| meaningfully different from annexing the country
| outright. But it allows the populace at home to believe
| that they are doing the right thing. Why, their form of
| governance is the best governance in the world, so
| they're doing other nations a favor by invading them and
| replacing their governments!
|
| Americans will make all kinds of fuss over China doing
| meaningless posturing in territorial waters, meanwhile
| their government is currently launching missiles in
| Venezulean waters, actually killing people. They violated
| the sovereignity of Iranian airspace, dropping bunker
| busters on government buildings. They assassinated
| another nation's top general. These are all acts of war.
| Nothing has changed. America continues to operate as it
| always has, under the principle of "might makes right",
| while dressing its operations up in pretty rhetoric.
|
| Pointing out hypocrisy in ongoing international norms is
| not whataboutism. In a world where nobody is ever
| punished for shooting a rival gang member, then you
| either shoot or get shot; that is simply the natural way
| of things. And moreover, the prosecutor bringing charges
| against the Red Gang is a member of the Blue Gang that
| shot theirs first. Why would the Red Gang entertain, for
| a moment, the charges of aggression from the Blue Gang
| which did already intervene in its civil war and
| effectively seized territory from it? For the Blue Gang
| to possibly be convincing to the Red Gang, it would first
| need to make amends and to stop actively committing 10x
| worse crimes than the crime it accuses the Red Gang of.
| If we want a peaceful world, I'd argue the onus is on the
| US to live up to its self-proclaimed "rules based
| international order" first, because it is the one
| violating those rules the most, and other nations will
| not simply lie down and agree to be bound by rules that
| are openly being violated to their detriment.
| thsajsadkj wrote:
| Reddit is the dumbest forum on the web, so id say yes!
| achierius wrote:
| > that's something you rarely see on Western forums.
|
| No, it's quite common.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| My personal experience tells me that people are happy to
| praise China's achievements in technology and poverty
| alleviation, but when it comes to the territorial issues
| of Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, a completely uniform
| narrative has already formed. Every single day on Reddit
| I see a new map of China being Balkanized.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think a lot of us recognize it _was_ a civil war. The
| idea that it _is_ a civil war, conducted in the present
| tense, is the weird and dangerous one. When was the last
| actual fighting, WW2?
|
| There are a number of frozen conflicts around the world,
| like North/South Korea and Cyprus. Both of those could be
| regarded as "civil war with external support", like
| Vietnam. What would be better is if those involved could
| recognize the situation as it actually is on the ground,
| and withdraw their claims and intents of actually
| resuming armed conflict.
|
| Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts
| over ancient grudges, from the Hundred Years War to the
| Balkans. The post-WW2 world order was an attempt to
| finally draw a hard line underneath that.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| > Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts
| over ancient grudges
|
| most of the conflicts today is created by Europe(+US).
| for example, the china-taiwan issue didn't resovled
| before is because USA Intervene. The tragedy of the
| Rwandan genocide originated from the artificial division
| of the same ethnic group during the colonial period; the
| India-Pakistan conflict was a deliberately left-over
| dispute by the colonial powers upon their withdrawal(UK);
| the border issues between Cambodia and Thailand(France),
| as well as the ongoing turmoil in the Palestinian
| region(UK USA), are all closely linked to historical
| interference by external forces(Europe).
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| Korea is also permanently partitioned thanks to being
| played as pawns between the Former Europeans and Vodka
| Europeans. Europeans really managed to get their fingers
| in everything.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a
| bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting
| that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory.
| It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be
| "liberated" from Japan.
|
| Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying
| "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd
| never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take
| eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in
| taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with
| Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as
| "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has
| fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands
| periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further
| and further if they think they can get away with it.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| And they will never become part of China again, ever. They
| once were, and after World War II they were supposed to be
| handed over to the Republic of China (Nationalist
| government), but the Nationalists stupidly refused. Then
| the United States gave them to Japan as a reward. This
| completely violated the post-WWII United Nations
| agreements. So if the UN still wants to claim any
| legitimacy or relevance, these places should not belong to
| Japan, but they will never belong to China either.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Okinawa was as much a part of China as Botswana and
| Argentina were. Going back centuries, they've always
| spoken a japonic language so your government propaganda
| is a strange approach for seeding justification for
| invasion in the future.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| I never said they speak Chinese or anything like that. in
| ancient times they were part of China's tributary system.
| The Chinese tributary system explicitly allowed different
| places to keep their own culture and language. It was
| Japan that annexed them and then systematically destroyed
| the local culture. The post-WWII agreements (Cairo
| Declaration, Potsdam Proclamation, San Francisco Peace
| Treaty framework) all stated that these places was to be
| stripped from Japan. China is only using this historical
| fact now to pressure Japan on the propaganda and
| diplomatic level. No Chinese person actually believes
| China should (or will) annex them.
|
| All Chinese media are emphasizing that these places do
| not belong to Japan, not that they belong to China.
| That's the essential difference.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Tributary networks were a system of trade and diplomacy.
| It'd be like saying the Philippines belongs to Indonesia
| because they're in ASEAN. And saying Okinawa doesn't
| belong to Japan is the exact, 100% identical argument
| Russia used and continues to use to justify its brutal
| invasions of Georgia, Ukraine, and more and more
| countries. It's kind of bizarre how anyone who speaks
| English could assume this propaganda works, though I am
| making the giant leap in assuming I'm not talking to
| Deepseek right now.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| What I've always wanted to emphasize is the post-World
| War II agreements. That should be the real focus, right?
| At least according to those treaties and agreements,
| these territories (Okinawa/Ryukyu, etc.) explicitly do
| not belong to Japan.
|
| No, i'm the lates Kimi model
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Okinawa has been part of Japan since before the Qing
| Dynasty even existed. Government operatives claim a lot
| of things, but thinking WW2 negates 400+ year old borders
| is truly wild and something no human not on a government
| payroll would make.
| rand17 wrote:
| I respect China (in fact, in this stupid timeline more
| than the U.S.) but China is already huge. The whole world
| would be a much better place if China just chilled the
| fuck out and would just stop harassing border countries
| (I know, I know, this is true for at least two quarters
| of planet Earth). Let them have Taiwan if that would make
| them shut up, but it won't. Tributary system? Allowed to
| keep? Pressure Japan? How much more do you want and how
| long will you go back in history to justify your greed
| for power and territory? China is trying to look nice and
| they succeed in many places, they are very close to
| something of a heavenly kingdom in my book, but this
| behavior always makes me ask which face is real. The
| power hungry bully, or the wise emperor?
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| I think you've nailed it perfectly. China definitely has
| its imperialist side, but the way it operates is
| completely different from the US style. I often feel
| China's foreign policy is kinda "dumb" in execution, but
| that's just our national character at work. Take Myanmar
| as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple -
| send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But
| we're not America, and we can't do that without the
| entire Western media tearing us apart. So China's
| approach is: "You guys fight it out yourselves, whoever
| wins, I'll do business with them. Just don't touch the
| projects and interests I already have." This naturally
| makes ordinary people in those countries dislike China -
| they genuinely believe China is the root cause of many of
| their problems, and they think importing Western systems
| will let them solve everything and stand on their own. In
| reality, that probably won't happen most of the time. But
| there's no helping it; I don't know what a "better"
| Chinese foreign policy would even look like. All I can
| say is China has been really lucky - thank Trump, thank
| Sanae Takaichi - they've helped us way more than people
| realize.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would
| be simple - send in troops, install a pro-China regime,
| done. But we're not America, and we can't do that without
| the entire Western media tearing us apart.
|
| The way to do it, is to propose a UN coalition invasion.
| Or to quietly provide arms to the side you like more
| (which never backfires).
| OneMorePerson wrote:
| I'm a bit confused, would love to learn. The Potsdam
| agreement said that Japan controls is main islands (the
| ones right by the mainland) and the other minor islands
| (anything not right next to the main island) would be
| determine by the Allies later. This was signed by China
| and obviously has been followed.
|
| Then the Treaty of San Francisco (which didn't involve
| China signing or agreement or anything) said that the
| Allies would revert control of Okinawa to Japan, which
| was the Allies choice at that point given that they were
| in control as stipulated by the Potsdam agreement.
|
| What's the gap between what was said and what happened?
| You could argue that the WW2 agreements were unfair and
| didn't follow historical ownership but I'm not sure which
| part of the agreements themselves was directly violated.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The Okinawans are a branch of Japanese, but the Ryukyu
| kingdom was tributary to the Chinese empire before being
| annexed by Japan in the second half of the 19th century.
|
| Before being annexed by Japan one century and a half ago,
| the culture of Okinawa was much more strongly influenced
| by China than by Japan, which is why during the first few
| decades after being occupied by Japan there still were
| many in Okinawa who would have preferred to become a part
| of China instead of a part of Japan, but the new Japanese
| authorities have eventually succeeded to suppress any
| opposition.
|
| I believe that there is no doubt that Okinawa should
| belong to Japan and not to China, but historically this
| was not so clear cut. If the Okinawans could have voted
| in the 19th century to whom they should belong, instead
| of being occupied by force, it is unknown which would
| have been their decision.
|
| Therefore any comparisons with Botswana or Argentina are
| completely inappropriate for a kingdom that had strong
| ties with China for many centuries and which recognized
| the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor.
|
| While for me as a foreigner, the similarities between the
| Ryukyuan languages and mainland Japanese are obvious and
| many features of shared cultural heritage with ancient
| Japan (Yamato) are also obvious, these were not at all
| obvious for the Japanese themselves, who, after occupying
| Okinawa tended to consider the Okinawans as foreign
| barbarians, so for a long time they were heavily
| discriminated in Japan.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| This completely ignores a lot of history. Okinawa went
| from being a tributary (trade partner) of China to vassal
| state (occupied and controlled) by Japan in 1609. [1]
| What would be modern day Afghanistan and Thailand paid
| tribute to China as well, but for some reason, those are
| ignored with the Chinese claim to territory. It's simply
| "well the Republic of China's victory in WW2 means we get
| land from countries we traded with in the 1600s!", which
| is bizarre view of history. Frankly, it's nothing more
| than trying to seed the ground for opportunism, because
| it's a guarantee those same arguments will be used to say
| Vietnam, Thailand, and Afghanistan aren't independent if
| those become valuable lands in the future and they seem
| as easily seizable as small Okinawan islands.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Ryukyu
| adrian_b wrote:
| After the war from 1609, Ryukyu remained officially a
| vassal of China, not of Japan, even if it became secretly
| also a vassal of the Satsuma domain from Japan (not of
| the Japanese state).
|
| This dual allegiance of Ryukyu, openly to China and
| secretly to Satsuma allowed Ryukyu to be an intermediary
| in some commerce between China and Japan, which
| officially was forbidden.
|
| The official occupation of Ryukyu by Japan happened only
| in 1872, after the Meiji Restoration.
|
| After 1609, there was no occupation of Ryukyu by
| Japanese. There was only a permanent threat of military
| intervention from Satsuma if the Ryukyuan king would have
| dared to act against the demands of Satsuma, which
| included a tribute and unfavorable commercial
| relationships.
| curseofcasandra wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with the history, Taiwan's (ROC) own
| constitution says it is part of China. Its dispute is with
| the CCP, not China itself.
|
| Conflating the PRC vs ROC conflict with a China vs Japan
| conflict is just ignorant.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| That is, the constitution written by the KMT dictatorship
| that was awarded the island as spoils of war after the
| Japanese surrendered to the Allies in WW2.
|
| In the present day, neither the Taiwanese government nor
| Taiwanese people are in some kind of dispute with the CCP
| over who owns Gansu province or whatever, they just would
| like recognition of their already-existing sovereignty.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's a little misrepresenting history... Taiwan was
| part of the Qing Empire and Japan took it in 1895
| following China's defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War.
| China got it _back_ after WWII.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Sure, and before the Qing armies invaded it was declared
| an independent kingdom by a Ming loyalist who was born in
| Japan to a Japanese mother, and before that there were a
| couple of European outposts and scattered settlers from
| Fujian, and before that there were indigenous peoples who
| themselves are part of an ethnic group that can now be
| found everywhere from Madagascar to New Zealand.
|
| The point I was responding to was the misleading comment
| that the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in
| some kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is
| entirely a CCP framing of the issue. Few if any people in
| modern-day Taiwan believe that they are the true
| inheritors of the Chinese mainland. The pretense has to
| be upheld in order to preserve the status quo, but in
| practice there is no serious movement staking a claim to
| any part of China.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in some
| kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is entirely
| a CCP framing of the issue._
|
| This is broadly true, not just "CCP framing". Obviously
| because of history and external influence there is _also_
| an "independentist" faction.
|
| I don't see why this should be hard to accept unless the
| aim is indeed a "reframing" to push the independentist
| narrative, which does not really need it as the status
| quo mean de facto independence. So perhaps the aim is
| actually more along the lines of an anti-China narrative.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| This is so stupid. It doesn't mean anything. History is
| history. What exists now is that Taiwan is an independent
| country with its own currency and military, and Taiwanese
| pay no taxes to China.
|
| If you want to use history as some kind of justification,
| why don't we go all the way back to when the human race
| originated in Africa?
| loeg wrote:
| The ROC claims it _is_ China, not a part of China.
|
| But sibling comment is correct that today the PRC and ROC
| are functionally two separate nations, and neither wants
| unification by submitting completely to the other. So the
| only way it's happening is with force.
| BoxedEmpathy wrote:
| "We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has
| lunged at us, without a moment's hesitation. Are you
| ready?"
|
| - Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, addressing
| Japan
| swordsmith wrote:
| > No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese
| inside the country; that would be seen as an endless
| headache, not a prize.
|
| I don't think what you claim the people want matters (if even
| true). Look at Tibet and Xinjiang
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| Xinjiang and Tibet have been part of China for many periods
| throughout history; Japan never was. At most, Korea was
| merely part of the tributary system. There is a fundamental
| difference here.
| indigo945 wrote:
| Tibet, too, was only part of the tributary system. Even
| during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese imperial state had
| no effective control over central Tibet - all local
| rulers and judges were Tibetan, and they employed
| Tibetan, not Chinese, law. Outside of diplomatic circles,
| Tibetans at the time weren't paying any attention to
| Chinese culture and politics.
|
| Claims to the contrary are largely historical
| revisionism. (As are the various claims that Tibet was
| culturally influenced by China - the story of Princess
| Wencheng bringing agricultural technologies to uncultured
| Tibet, as it is often taught in Chinese schools and
| portrayed in period dramas, is a myth that only came to
| popularity during the Chinese Civil War.)
|
| Remember also that until 1951, Tibet occupied Chinese
| territories more often than vice versa - although given
| the case of Manchuria, China might actually see this as
| an argument in favor of Tibet being Chinese.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese,
| but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an
| ancient part of China.
|
| Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an
| immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a
| few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by
| Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power
| from the native Chinese.
|
| So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only
| during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it
| with mainland China is not something that can reassure
| China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion
| will stop.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| During the American Civil War, the majority of the
| population in the Deep South states were actually Black
| slaves
| loeg wrote:
| Are you arguing by metaphor that the Han Chinese on
| Taiwan are slaves to the native Taiwanese, or what? Or
| that slaves weren't Americans? I have no idea what your
| comment is trying to say.
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > not something that can reassure China's neighbors that
| this is where its desire of expansion will stop
|
| May I ask if you actually live in one of these neighbouring
| countries? I do -- in fact I have lived in more than one --
| and I can assure you that many/most people living in these
| areas outside of the Western media bubble absolutely do not
| share your view.
|
| From the CCP's (and many Chinese people's) perspective:
|
| 1) the U.S. repeatedly interfered in the CCP's/KMT's
| attempts to resolve the civil war -- see e.g. the First and
| Second Taiwan Strait Crises (during which the PRC shelled
| Taiwan), Project National Glory (the ROC's plan to
| reconquer the mainland) -- preventing the mainland and
| Taiwan from reunification;
|
| 2) the Taiwanese government has lost the civil war, and the
| loser doesn't get to set the terms.
|
| Pretending that the PRC's interest in Taiwan isn't special
| is to ignore extremely crucial historical circumstances
| that are core to understanding the situation today.
| Regardless of what you think of the PRC's stance on
| reunification, their desire to reunify doesn't exist in a
| vacuum, and it takes ahistorical leaps of reasoning to
| suggest that the PRC might want to annex South Korea,
| Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. next.
|
| > only during the last few centuries
|
| This is way more than enough time to drastically transform
| the culture of a society. Taiwan today is culturally _much_
| more similar to the PRC than it is to the West. In some
| aspects it is also similar to Japan, despite the fact that
| Japan colonised it for "only" 50 years.
| corimaith wrote:
| >Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC
| than it is to the West
|
| The cultural distance between Taiwan and Japan, Korea and
| Hong Kong is less than the distance from mainland China.
| Aka Asian liberal democracies (or at least with strong
| political plurality and civil society). You're mistaking
| a regional difference with a commonality with the PRC,
| when in reality the PRC's epistemic worldview is highly
| distorted in comparison to virtually every other actor in
| the region. They don't speak for the region.
| mafribe wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Taiwan has spent the approx 120 years on a very different
| political, economic, cultural track from the mainland.
| Taiwan diverged from the other subject of the Qing dynasty
| before Han nationalists began their century long project to
| forge a united Chinese nation. In particular, Taiwan did
| not go through decades of communist terror, but did
| experience the fruit of democracy.
| inkyoto wrote:
| > Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it [...]
|
| Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for
| China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) -
| China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a
| defeat to Myanmar in each instance.
|
| [0] Or one war with four invasions - depending on the point
| of view.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| so i guess the Mayanmar people shouldn't blame china now..
| they should build some thing like the Vietness people: we
| fight the chinese and we always win, lets be proud of it.
| macleginn wrote:
| > But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-
| Han peoples.
|
| "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55
| official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial
| expansion, so arguably it can be done.
|
| > The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has
| been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they
| be considered "one of us."
|
| Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that
| China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures
| of assimilation more than anything.
|
| Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty:
| Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea
| was effectively ruled from China as well.
|
| In other words, China has a long and not very remote history
| of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state
| imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong
| cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with
| other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history
| of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| > "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have
| 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of
| imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
|
| Don't forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and
| Qing Dynasty - none of them were products of "Han Chinese
| imperialism."
| macleginn wrote:
| Qing Dynasty annexed Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia,
| as well as large chunks of Central Asia, and fought with
| Sikhs over Kashmir. Looks like a good case of imperial
| expansion to me.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| basiclly every big country...
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| The person you replied to wrote: _none of them were
| products of "Han Chinese imperialism."_
|
| This is correct, since the Qing Dynasty was led by the
| Manchus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty), not
| by the Han Chinese.
| macleginn wrote:
| It was not the Manchus who reconquered Tibet in the
| 1950s, after it had been an independent country for
| several decades.
|
| And the general argument is not about whether there is
| something inherently imperialistc in the Han -- it is
| about whether the Han are so isolationist that this
| should somehow prevent China as a political entity from
| expanding. Well it has not prevented this before (cf.
| also the Tang period expansion, if we want to talk about
| more distant history), so I see no reason why it should
| prevent it now. Unless, say, the CCP cedes control to an
| openly Han-nationalist party, but then the last one was
| imperialist alright
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)).
| NalNezumi wrote:
| While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as
| of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the
| dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown):
| Nationalistic fervor.
|
| From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to
| be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is
| getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such
| as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our
| right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right
| now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK
| seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her
| every time she meets a Chinese person.
|
| And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get
| hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a
| very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and
| I'd belive it will only accelerate.
|
| And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever
| "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a
| decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something
| along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated
| during the time
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| Sure, nationalism definitely serves that purpose. But
| please consider: in the most recent conflicts/flare-ups,
| the initiator has actually been Japan, not China. Their new
| female prime minister is an extreme-right-wing politician
| who is not only provoking China, but also picking fights
| with South Korea and Russia at the same time, while pushing
| aggressively anti-immigrant and exclusionary policies. Her
| approval ratings are also unusually high. It feels pretty
| strange that Japan gets zero criticism for this while all
| the focus stays on China.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Not strange at all. China is powerful, thus scary.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| sounds fair. but i doubt the normal japan people know
| that...
| jeeeb wrote:
| Ummm no... This is total fantasy.
|
| Takaichi is a slightly right of centre nationalist.
| Pushing a mild tightening of some immigration rules to
| maintain the social contract around immigration, and fend
| off the right wing populists. Her policies amount to
| things like tightening foreign land ownership rules and
| refusing visa renewals for people not paying their health
| insurance or pension (which is mandatory by law for all
| residents).
|
| She's had friendly relations with SK so far and recently
| met with the SK President and bowed in respect to the
| Korean flag.
|
| Her "provocation" of China was to state, when asked in
| parliament, that an armed invasion of Taiwan by China
| would be a case of a potential existential threat to
| Japan.
|
| Which frankly is utterly obvious to anyone, including of
| course China. Japan hosts American military bases. If
| China attacked Taiwan, triggering an American repose then
| there would at the least be Chinese missiles aiming for
| Tokyo (Yokosuka) and Okinawa.
| ivell wrote:
| > That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay
| it
|
| China was happy to invade Tibet and assimilate it's
| population.
|
| Hard to believe that a government who claims all of South
| China sea, large parts of India (Arunachal Pradesh) does not
| want to expand.
|
| Or do you think people of Arunachal Pradesh are also Chinese?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Arunachal Pradesh is a historic part of Tibet and was part
| of the Qing Empire before the Chinese revolution of 1912.
|
| When Tibet then broke away from China the Brits got what is
| now Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet.
|
| Hence the ongoing Chinese claim but the days of any
| military actions are long gone.
| ivell wrote:
| If historical claims are valid, then Mongols would be
| very happy to claim large swaths of land. Or if more
| recent claims are to be taken, then the Brits have claims
| over quite a large amount of countries.
|
| Historical claims are meaningless and are just an excuse
| for expansion.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| if its not valid maybe we should return Califonia to
| mexico?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I did not comment on the "validity" of the claim, just
| explained its rationale and history.
|
| Chinese territorial claims in general are not "an excuse
| for expansion", they are rooted in territorial losses at
| the end of the 19th century and during the revolution of
| 1912 with the formal aim of recovering them. They also
| predate the PRC as you'll find that the ROC/Taiwan has
| the same claims for the same reason. This does not mean
| that China is going to go to war over them, certainly it
| won't go to war with India.
|
| No need for drama or hysteria over those claims.
| ivell wrote:
| > This does not mean that China is going to go to war
| over them, certainly it won't go to war with India.
|
| Then why make a claim? Claims are made to prepare the
| domestic audience so that when war comes there is home
| support for the action. It is not made lightly.
|
| The Chinese are definitely taking action in the South
| China Sea. It is not just words.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _Claims are made to prepare the domestic audience so
| that when war comes there is home support for the action.
| It is not made lightly._
|
| That's your opinion, not reality.
| ivell wrote:
| What is in your view the need to make a claim?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Tibet is not (and was not) defended by a nuclear
| superpower. South Korea and Japan both have United States
| military bases and troops stationed there.
|
| I am willing to bet all of the money I will ever make in my
| lifetime that China will not invade either one as long as
| they remain under the US nuclear umbrella.
| kalaksi wrote:
| > Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are
| ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute
| necessity.
|
| How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to
| decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading
| neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim
| that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to
| get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants
| to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
|
| (Or maybe it could happen through some longer and slower
| political process. And the country as a whole should agree,
| with a lot more than 50% agreeing, to a unification.)
|
| > The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has
| been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they
| be considered "one of us."
|
| Like above, I hope you're not implying that a culturally
| similar people in another country #2 somehow gives country #1
| power over it's sovereignity.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| > It's not for China to decide?
|
| do your homework, taiwan also claims its china. maybe you
| mean its not for them to decide?
| kalaksi wrote:
| I don't claim to know the Taiwan situation well. I'm just
| saying that culture or ethnicity of people isn't a
| sufficient argument in general.
| sofixa wrote:
| > How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China
| to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading
| neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and
| claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and
| want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If
| someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
|
| The difference is that Taiwan only exists because the
| losers of the Chinese Civil war ran away to it, and the
| winners (CCP) were not allowed by the US to finish the job.
| So for the CCP, Taiwan has _always_ been a problem still
| left to resolve, an American thorn in their side. It was
| along the main reasons for them joining the Korean war,
| because the monumentally dumb McArthur publicly praised and
| supported Chiang (the leader of the losers of the civil
| war, the KMT), which led to CCP fears the US will use the
| Korean peninsula as a sprinboard to attack them and install
| Chiang back to power.
|
| So while self-determination trumps those concerns for my
| personal view, I can totally see where China (CCP) is
| coming from. Especially with a very aggressive American
| stance against them, why would they want to keep a very
| friendly to the US runaway province out there?
|
| For Americans, imagine the Confederates ran away to Puerto
| Rico, force assimilated the locals, and became very
| friendly with Russia. For the French, that a Bonaparte was
| ruling Corsica while being friendly with the big bad wolf
| (depending on the age, Brits or Russians maybe). And on and
| on.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Thanks for the context. I don't really know the Taiwan
| situation well.
|
| My main gripe was mostly around the perceived reasoning
| that ethnicity or culture of some people would make it
| more okay to try to annex, or invade, anything.
|
| > When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest
| desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war
| first--so China can finally settle the historical score
| once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning
| Japan into "part of China" is not on the table.
|
| From GP. That is also a bit worrying to me. Who decides
| what's the fair "historical score"? But mostly, people
| shouldn't desire for war or use past wars as a reason for
| new wars. This is more complicated than ethnicity or
| culture, but it's dangerous and people should just learn
| to let go or it never stops.
|
| False flag attacks are a thing and have been used many
| times as a pretext for an attack. Russia has done it.
| Russia also often uses history as an excuse for new wars.
| I'm sure it's always possible to dig out some
| rationalization. The result is mostly more suffering of
| innocent (who might not have even been born during the
| cited conflict).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and
| gained a warm-water port
|
| What, does the Pearl River freeze over in winter?
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| we also would like to have Vladivostok back
| codedokode wrote:
| And what was the original, Chinese name of the city, may
| I ask?
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| The CCP has demonstrated that it's not above killing tens of
| millions of its own citizens to achieve its political aims. I
| doubt they'd see 'pacifying' an occupied population as much
| of an issue.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| you sounds dispointed. but i believe the future will tell
| you the truth and i'm telling the facts.
| corimaith wrote:
| Invasion is one thing, unfavorable trade deals,
| deindustrialization, and political coercion is more realistic
| outcome yet all the more undesirable. Imperialism after all
| often didn't spread spread by outright conquest.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| yeah like the tariffs.
| corimaith wrote:
| Well no actually, it would be more like forcefully
| removing tariffs. The right to export to foreign markets
| is ultimately a privilege after all.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade
| everything anytime soon? How many wars has China started?
|
| In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia
| having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics
| doesn't go its way and it's not China.
| laughing_man wrote:
| China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty
| years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's
| Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of
| Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't
| pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.
| rfoo wrote:
| China maintain the view that Tibet _is_ part of China since
| the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit.
| Same for their border disputes with India. China never
| admitted that they believe it 's not theirs. Mea while
| China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of
| China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea
| from collapsing despite it being super annoying).
|
| So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim
| lands?
| krior wrote:
| They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their
| territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people
| and China holds regular military exercises around that
| island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.
| boringg wrote:
| It may not be far fetched but it would absolutely be a
| self inflicted wound to the PRC. Galvanizing global
| concern towards china.
| krior wrote:
| That did not stop russia.
| exe34 wrote:
| isn't that the same clever argument that Comrade Vladimir
| uses in Ukraine?
| sebmellen wrote:
| Bingo
| laughing_man wrote:
| It's literally the same argument that every king,
| dictator, or president used to justify invasions in
| Europe (and presumably most of the world) since the end
| of feudalism. Even the Austrian moustache man justified
| his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people
| having held that land in the distant past.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion
| of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that
| land in the distant past.
|
| Interestingly enough, there's a recent theory putting the
| location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| > there's a recent theory putting the location of the
| proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
|
| There is no credible theory to that effect. Either you
| have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously,
| or you are misunderstanding the consensus. Namely, Proto-
| Germanic speakers did visit the eastern Baltic coast for
| trading and raiding, and so there are Germanic loanwords
| into Finnic languages of Proto-Germanic date, but the
| agreed location where Proto-Germanic formed is in
| Scandinavia, not Finland.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken
| seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus.
|
| I'm not sure you have a good grasp on the meaning of the
| word "recent". A recent theory, by definition, must
| differ from the consensus.
|
| > There is no credible theory to that effect.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.13.584607
| v2
|
| Granted, they don't say "Finland". They say "the
| northeast along the Baltic coastline".
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Yes, I'm afraid that you are still misunderstanding the
| research. Your linked article speaks about gene flow
| associated with the movement of pre-Proto-Germanic
| speakers to Scandinavia, but later Proto-Germanic formed
| in southern Scandinavia according to the longstanding
| consensus. This is clearly spelled out in the abstract:
| "Following the disintegration of Proto-Germanic, we find
| by 1650 BP a southward push from Southern Scandinavia."
|
| There's no new theory here at all, just some nice
| archaeogenetic evidence to support a quite traditional
| view. FWIW, I work in a closely related field and am
| constantly reading Germanic-Finnic and Baltic-Finnic
| contact literature, and I can assure you this is old-hat
| stuff.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| > Perhaps there are not many instances in history where
| one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and
| cooperative with the government and people of another
| country and to plead their cause in the councils of the
| world, and then that country returns evil for good
|
| Jawaharlal Nehru (India's Prime Minister), on the day
| that China launched an unprovoked surprise war against
| India in 1962. It was a crushing victory for China, and
| they grabbed all their territory they wanted. More can
| always be said but here's a 2 minute video that explains
| the war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek
|
| You know how Mao said diplomacy flows from the barrel of
| a gun? That wasn't a metaphor. That is PRC policy since
| 1949.
| dmurray wrote:
| Don't most people maintain the view that Tibet is part of
| PRC China? They might think further autonomy or
| independence for it would be a good thing, like the
| Basque Country, but the control isn't really disputed
| right now. And nobody really seems to think it should be
| part of India.
|
| In contrast to Taiwan, where the governments in both
| Beijing and Taipei officially maintain that those places
| are part of the same country, and the international
| community sometimes pretends the same and only recognises
| one government, but de facto everyone trades with both
| countries and deals with both governments.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| North Korea is a buffer zone. _That 's_ the reason.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Same for their border disputes with India. China never
| admitted that they believe it's not theirs.
|
| Not an issue I follow, but I did read something that said
| China had proposed swapping claimed territory for zones
| of actual control, and India turned them down.
| SUKEIRAA wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Islands that were stolen from China during the Imperial
| Japanese occupation?
| rfoo wrote:
| Okay it belongs to Taiwan, and they actually claim it,
| period.
| kamaal wrote:
| Speaking as an Indian. Most of these are just diplomatic
| flexing of muscles which mostly reduce to literally
| nothing.
|
| There is not going to a be a war in the modern context.
|
| Secondly, only one war has happened between China and
| India, in which arguably we Indians kind of started it-
| Read here-
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_policy_(Sino-
| Indian_co...
|
| """ The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of
| strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively
| forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian
| government claimed. _The doctrine was based on a theory
| that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India
| began to occupy territory that China considered to be its
| own_. India 's thinking was partly based on the fact that
| China had many external problems in early 1962, especially
| with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. _Also, Chinese
| leaders had insisted they did not wish a war._ [18]
|
| """
| gsky wrote:
| Nonsense. China occupied big chunch of Indian land. They
| will be a big war sooner or later. It's just how the
| world works
| kamaal wrote:
| You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We
| stubbornly refuse to.
|
| Both countries, have now have growing economies with
| stable politics, and social direction. Things can only
| get better from here, and will.
|
| Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a
| few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok.
| Because way bigger good things await these both nations.
| And we want them.
|
| Either way there is no theatre. The Himalayas make a
| large wall and ensure no big border conflict can even
| happen. Even through missiles. The remainder is
| irrelevant, and both parties are more than happy to just
| keep talking until some agreement is in place, which even
| without isn't much of an issue with regards to economy,
| resources or anything.
|
| Much ado about nothing!
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| As someone who has been living in Asia for decades
| (including in several of China's neighbouring countries),
| thank you for this even-handed take. It aligns very well
| with my own experience of how people living in these
| regions outside of the Western media bubble generally
| think about China.
| corimaith wrote:
| No it doesn't.
| rixed wrote:
| Thank you for voicing a different tone than the seemingly
| prevalent obscene warmongering. I believe people of good
| will are generally less comfortable speaking out and are
| therefore underrepresented, including here on HN.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We
| stubbornly refuse to.
|
| Americans love sending other people into meat grinders
| for bankers' profit.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > And then there's Tibet.
|
| I suspect they only care about Tibet in as much as it's
| crucial for freshwater supply across significant parts of
| Asia, which is precisely why there are border clashes with
| Indian forces.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats
| IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its
| territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It
| hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other
| countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than
| more aggressively defending themselves.
|
| There's a reason why so many countries in that region are
| very happy to partner with the US for military drills or
| support.
| csomar wrote:
| Wait till you find out Taiwan has the same claims.
| exe34 wrote:
| yep, and the industrial output/military to back up its
| claim to the mainland! no wait....
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Taiwan has been illegally building tiny military outposts
| throughout the sea to try and enforce its claims, like
| the PRC's doing? Because that's what I was talking about.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Who decides which military posts are legal and illegal?
|
| Then if it's decided it's illegal, who enforces that
| decision?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| "Why's everyone scaremongering about China?"
|
| *reasons given for China being an actual threat*
|
| "Ah, but who's to say anything's _illegal_ really, am I
| right?? "
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> reasons given for China being an actual threat_
|
| I never said they weren't a threat, I said they haven't
| done anything illegal. But with the reasons you gave,
| then the US is an even bigger threat to my country.
|
| _> "Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I
| right??"_
|
| You still haven't answered my question and are beating it
| around the bush with silly jokes.
|
| And you know the answer, you just don't like to say it
| because it's not politically correct. Here, I'll remove
| your burden and say the uncomfortable truth for you: In
| war, whatever you can get away with, is legal. Similar to
| all the warmongering and meddling the US has done in the
| Middle East, Asia and LATNM. If nobody can hold you
| accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal. Same
| with China's actions. When you're too big and too
| powerful to be held accountable for your actions, nothing
| that you do can be illegal because legality is an
| artificial man made construct where the strong enforce
| their will on the weak, not an irrefutable fact of
| nature. This has been the US's MO and soon China's.
|
| You might not like that it's like this, but IT IS like
| this. And you're not doing yourself nor anyone any favors
| by pretending it isn't like this.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the
| past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah
| yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.
|
| I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me,
| despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I
| think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their
| former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have
| actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).
|
| What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with
| them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)?
| Bombing them in the name of peace?
| mcny wrote:
| The best defense is to have a military strong enough they
| won't dare attack.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Which is what China is doing because the US is a
| liability to everyone not in their sphere of influence.
| But that's bad apparently.
| gampleman wrote:
| "Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of
| death."
|
| Otto von Bismarck
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| The _South China Morning Post_ itself recently wrote on
| speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo's
| control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to
| Taiwan.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3333468
| /ch...
| SenHeng wrote:
| About a decade ago, some Chinese propagandists were
| encouraging calling Okinawa the Ryukyu kingdom and trying
| to ferment an independence campaign. It didn't get too far.
| laughing_man wrote:
| Not "ferment". "Foment".
| forinti wrote:
| Nice analogy though.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Ryukyu _was_ an independent kingdom with its own ruling
| court, language, culture etc until 1872, when it was
| annexed by Japan. Quite a few Okinawans would rather like
| to return to the previous state of affairs, although
| probably not if it involves exchanging the Japanese yoke
| for the Chinese one. (Ryukyu was a Qing tributary, but
| the Qing had bigger problems on their hands than worrying
| about a bunch of small islands.)
| ferguess_k wrote:
| This is to counter the claim of the Japanese PM that Japan
| _might_ join in the war if China goes for Taiwan.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| > How many wars has China started?
|
| In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India
| completely unprovoked over some border territory. China's
| aggression continues unabated even into present day - they've
| been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure
| on India. That has been China's way of negotiating all their
| borders - through violence first. More can always be said but
| here's a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war -
| https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.
|
| Here you are defending China when I bet you'd be hard pressed
| to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken's Neck on a
| map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously
| claiming you don't know of the Nine Dash line and the
| violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime
| claims?
| danielscrubs wrote:
| US needs China to have something for us to rally against,
| otherwise focus might be on the asset owners vs workers,
| which would cripple us.
|
| We need to win the AI race! The implication being that there
| can not be more than one winner...
| riffraff wrote:
| since WW2: Annexation of Tibet, Taiwan Strait Crisis, Sino-
| Indian War, Sino-Vietnamese War.
| BoxedEmpathy wrote:
| Also Korean War, 1959 Tibetan Uprising, Nathu La and Cho La
| clashes, Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, Paracel Islands
| conflict, Sino-Vietnam border clashes, Johnson South Reef
| Skirmish, China-India border clashes (Galwan), South China
| Sea standoffs.
| gverrilla wrote:
| There's heavy investment in spreading lies about China.
| HackerNews consumes that shit just like american teenagers
| consume tiktok.
|
| For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
| keepamovin wrote:
| That's a fair point if you only start the clock in 1949, but
| it's not scaremongering. It's pattern recognition over 3,000
| years.
|
| The territory we now call "China" is the product of
| relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner
| Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were
| historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own
| justification is usually "they were Chinese all along"
| (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute).
| That's the same logic every empire has ever used.
|
| Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and
| other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most
| successful conquest dynasty in human history.
|
| For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the
| center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on
| every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger
| and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another
| 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not
| because it lacked capability or ambition.
|
| Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the
| "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as
| restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is
| "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the
| classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven"
| belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose
| "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).
|
| So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually
| mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is
| straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook.
| Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even
| starts.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.
|
| Now do the same for the USA, UK, Japan, Italy, Turkey, etc.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Right. There's no clan that's blameless. All our current
| progress stands on a mountain of blood and death.
| Humanity is drenched in war. Is that all we can ever be?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Probably at some point there will be only one country?
| keepamovin wrote:
| What will it be called?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Humanity
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Let's wait for some aliens. And then human apes can
| finally stop squabbling among themselves because they
| then realize how insignificant they are.
|
| How about a fake alien reveal?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges
|
| These do not have a non-hostile invasion purpose. China could
| have used these peacefully as some sort of "Look at how
| peaceful we are" PR in getting aid into Palestine, like the
| US's floating piers, and likely had better results, but they
| didn't, because these are _war machines_ for invading Taiwan.
|
| Almost all other military buildup China has done can be
| validly called protecting itself from a US blockade and
| maintain an ability to protect shipping, but these barges
| cannot be considered anything else.
|
| >What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna
| invade everything anytime soon?
|
| China has publicly declared their intentions to take back
| Taiwan, and publicly declared their intent to be militarily
| competitive with the United States, and publicly bitches and
| moans whenever anyone treats Taiwan as the independent
| country it is.
|
| Stop squeezing your eyes shut.
| laughing_man wrote:
| "Once China solves the Taiwan problem"? Then I suppose Japan
| has nothing to worry about.
| BoxedEmpathy wrote:
| "We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has
| lunged at us, without a moment's hesitation. Are you ready?"
|
| - Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, in reference to
| Japan
| macleginn wrote:
| Japan has a big army/"self-defence force", impenetrable terrain
| over most of its territory, and 45 tonnes of plutonium. Even if
| the defence treaty with the US vanishes, the probability of a
| foreign invasion is rather low.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| If we aren't already in a world war from China solving Taiwan
| as you say, we would be in one from China taking Korea or
| Japan.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Taiwan just the last remnant that the losing faction of the
| China civil war still holds. I don't think that China wants
| to conquer korea or japan. Having a vassal is usually cheaper
| than outright conquest and occupation. They just want the US
| vassals to switch to being China's
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I don't know. China is pretty successful so far in "solving
| Ukraine" by propping up the moth infested bear pelt USSR
| animatronic that is Russia.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Traditional threat to Hokkaido is Soviet tank battalions, not
| Chinese. It's roughly due east to Vladivostok and to south of
| Sakhalin island. Unless Russian Federation actually falls and
| these regions change hands into hostile entities, it should be
| okay. And there will be more important things to worry than
| continuing economical chip production if that happens.
| BoxedEmpathy wrote:
| "We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has
| lunged at us, without a moment's hesitation. Are you ready?"
| -Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, directed at Japan
|
| Is that not a threat?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Japan's also like, long as the distance between Warsaw to
| Barcelona. Or to Gibraltar if you include islands south to
| Okinawa. And Hokkaido is an "island" that's about as big as
| the entire Czech Republic. Is investment in a French chip
| factory considered risky because it's practically right in
| front of Russia... not really no?
|
| The Chinese threat is also being handled by rapid
| rearmament. JSDF has been like, dual-fast-tracking lots of
| things including MRBMs for operational capabilities in
| 2026-27 timeframes.
| dragonelite wrote:
| It depends what japan and korea will do to piss of China just
| to please their far away masters.
| boringg wrote:
| What kind of line is "once china solves the taiwan problem"?
| You assume that they will take Taiwan. Have you not been privy
| to the utter embarrassment of a continental power trying to
| take Ukraine right now? China is very aware of the isolated
| situation Russia is now in. They have desire to be in that
| situation.
|
| Noone is letting China "solve the taiwan problem" like you
| said.
|
| Such inflammatory language.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The Ukraine invasion is the biggest boost to China's Taiwan
| invasion plan ever.
|
| If the world reacts to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan the way
| we have reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, China will
| consider that a great victory, and might be able to take
| Taiwan.
|
| If the US, Japan, and Korea do not commit fully to naval
| interdiction and blockading China from attacking Taiwan,
| Taiwan is likely to fall eventually.
|
| China is not Russia. Xi somehow is not as utterly isolated
| from reality as Putin is. Putin didn't even know that Ukraine
| would resist, and was entirely convinced that Ukrainians
| would welcome them. China can build new equipment, and new
| _modern_ equipment at that. Russia can barely manage to bring
| ancient tank hulls up to 2000s level and send them to the
| front line. They are also running out of old hulls to do that
| with.
|
| China has a sizeable and meaningful air force, modern
| battlespace management that was shown effective by Pakistan's
| use in their recent conflict.
|
| Is the current US admin actually competent enough to protect
| Taiwan even if they want to?
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Yes. But I will entertain the idea that Hokkaido is not
| defensible. Now, with Hokkaido not being defensible, please
| explain why it has been an Japanese territory since the 15th
| century?
| moogleii wrote:
| Somewhat related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44828559
| agentifysh wrote:
| isn't it risky to build this in a seismically active region?
| wouldn't somewhere that has almost no history of earthquakes like
| korea be better?
| loeg wrote:
| Japan doesn't have the option of building in Korea? Not if it
| wants to retain sovereign control.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It would be darkly amusing if all chips come from either
| politically unstable Taiwan or seismically unstable Hokkaido.
|
| But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other
| delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built
| out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.
| noduerme wrote:
| That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which
| would go offline first.
|
| Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism
| for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a
| totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was
| gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| I don't think China wants to destroy Taiwan. They want it
| to be a part of China.
| SllX wrote:
| Right now there is no non-violent path to achieving that
| because Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist
| if it comes to that. Probably with the aid of America,
| although I'm a lot less certain of that than 5 year ago,
| and it's looking like it's a lot more likely to be with
| the aid of Japan as well.
|
| Also a success by the PRC would still result in the
| political destruction of the Republic of China and the
| subjugation of its people.
| noduerme wrote:
| It should be noted that even if Taiwan's military
| resistance were negligible (or on the order of Tibet's),
| which it's not, that would not validate invading them and
| taking away their autonomy. For all intents and purposes,
| Taiwan is a self-governing nation, distinct from China
| precisely because it does not wish to be part of China.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Taiwan is not distinct from China. Both the ROC and the
| PRC view Taiwan as part of China (ironically, at the cost
| of the mass slaughter of taiwanese to in service of the
| chinese).
| decimalenough wrote:
| "One China" is a political fig leaf that allows both
| sides to pretend the other country doesn't exist.
|
| Back in reality, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is fully
| independent from the People's Republic of China and
| fulfills every criteria of nationhood.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Ok, nothing you said contradicts anything I said
| noduerme wrote:
| From that perspective, the ROC is the legitimate
| government of Beijing.
|
| Facts on the ground appear otherwise, but facts on the
| ground also imply that Taiwan is not part of the PRC's
| version of China.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > From that perspective, the ROC is the legitimate
| government of Beijing.
|
| No. I don't understand how you came to this conclusion.
| Both governments claim legitimacy and only one has actual
| sovereignty.
| SllX wrote:
| In practice, they are both sovereign over separate
| territories.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| With respect to Beijing, only one does.
| SllX wrote:
| There is no respect due to Beijing or the Chairman Winnie
| the Pooh regime on this issue.
|
| Taiwan _is_ an independent country.
| SllX wrote:
| Agreed.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it
| comes to that
|
| I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I
| sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to
| invade _my_ country; just the opposite. If anything I
| wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today
| 's climate
| n4r9 wrote:
| > I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree
| ... I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table
|
| One of the benefits of a free democratic society is that
| you can ask; and people vote according to their
| preferences. A recent study suggests ~13% of the public
| support unification with China: https://www.tpof.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/02/20250214-TPO... . Taiwan's
| politics are dominated by the KMT and DPP parties, both
| of which oppose unification.
|
| > I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china
| tried to invade my country
|
| Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
| noduerme wrote:
| >> Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
|
| That or a remarkably flexible sense of morality, coupled
| with a supine nature and a total lack of balls.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Let's not pretend it's ever moral to support the state
| you live under. You should support yourself and bide
| whatever state imposes itself on you.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It is usually morally correct to fight off literal
| tyrannical invasion, what are you on about?
|
| Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't moral for the
| French to fight the Nazis or the people of Afghanistan to
| fight off the Soviets and Americans?
|
| >You should support yourself and bide whatever state
| imposes itself on you.
|
| Pathetic. Might as well go back to feudalism with that
| attitude.
|
| It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that you
| have influence over, that's _democracy_.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Ok, so why do people not violently rise up against the us
| government? They clearly have never represented our
| values, and they use the pretense of sovereignty to act
| as if their behavior reflects our interest.
|
| > It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that
| you have influence over, that's democracy.
|
| So what's our excuse? Do we not have a democracy, or are
| we simply a contemptible people?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
|
| I live in the US. I think it's pretty obvious the PRC is
| more competent in every way than our own government is.
|
| And from what I've seen of the ROC parliament, it is also
| an embarrassment to their own people
| haspok wrote:
| > I live in the US. I think it's pretty obvious the PRC
| is more competent in every way than our own government
| is.
|
| Yes, and you wouldn't be able to express your political
| opinion (like you do here on HN or anywhere else) if you
| were living in China. People living in the US tend to
| overlook that minute detail.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > you wouldn't be able to express your political opinion
| (like you do here on HN or anywhere else) if you were
| living in China
|
| Being able to express our opinion doesn't mean much if
| nothing ever changes or improves
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I'm willing to concede that the CCP may be more competent
| than the US government, but the Taiwanese government
| (despite their antics in parliament) ranks alongside
| Singapore and Norway in my top three most competent
| governments in the world. That's purely my own subjective
| opinion of course but I see no reason for the Taiwanese
| people to be embarrassed.
| n4r9 wrote:
| If you live in the US, supporting a Chinese invasion is
| _definitely_ unusual.
|
| > the PRC is more competent in every way
|
| I guess it depends what you mean by competent.
| Dictatorships can be frightfully competent at certain
| things, but that doesn't make them a good place to be.
| We're talking about a country that is genociding its own
| Uyghur ethnic group, represses Tibetan culture,
| disappears its own elite athletes, and has a horrific
| LGBTI record. The US is far from perfect, but has nothing
| on China in terms of nastiness.
|
| That's not even touching the biggest problem of
| dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader
| takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of
| leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace
| when he goes.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > The US is far from perfect, but has nothing on China in
| terms of nastiness.
|
| I think you have this reversed, friend. Our culture is
| based on violence and death. Theirs is based on stability
| and prosperity.
|
| > That's not even touching the biggest problem of
| dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader
| takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of
| leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace
| when he goes.
|
| I pray he liberates us before he passes. I agree it's not
| likely but.... one must maintain hope in this world
| breve wrote:
| Cool! Make sure you let China know you're ready to
| surrender. China loves a quisling.
| breve wrote:
| What is your country? China is always looking for more
| territory. If you've got water and mineral resources, all
| the better.
| fragmede wrote:
| Fascinating! Why not? Why would you just lay down and let
| someone else rule over you?
| noduerme wrote:
| In terms of survival strategies, letting someone else
| rule over you was sort of the OG Christian thing before
| they got control of the Roman Empire. It's kind of the
| default in most places. Declaring independence and
| actually succeeding at it and governing yourself is
| remarkably rare. The question isn't what you think is
| wise, or what you would do (because no one knows until
| they're in that situation). It's whether you feel you
| have anything worth preserving when you are conquered.
| Some people don't, evidently. Other people do.
| dmpk2k wrote:
| > Some people don't, evidently. Other people do.
|
| I like how this can be interpreted two ways, depending on
| whether you place loved ones above governance, or vice
| versa.
| thworp wrote:
| You simply cannot compare the experience of being
| conquered in a pre-modern society to being conquered by
| the PRC.
|
| Premodern States simply couldn't afford the level of
| oppression and exploitation that is possible today. They
| usually just replaced the upper layers of the old
| hierarchy, put some small garrisons in a few places and
| left most local elites in charge, often with their local
| armies. If there was an organized rebellion, there would
| usually be a a few skirmishes and then a re-negotiation
| of the terms.
|
| Today even Morocco could afford to turn Western Sahara
| into a territory with total surveillance, checkpoints
| everywhere and an impenetrable wall in the desert while
| slowly ethnically cleansing the native population.
| noduerme wrote:
| Unification, in this case, means surrendering all rights
| to privacy, all rights to free expression, everything.
|
| The fact that you wouldn't fight being occupied and
| forced to be a slave doesn't speak highly of you, but I
| must admit it's an honest statement, and it's true that a
| lot of people might feel the same way. A majority of
| people everywhere are cowards, collaborators and
| sycophants. But they're _along for the ride_.
|
| Now, if your country is Burma, I don't blame you.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > rights to privacy, all rights to free expression,
| everything.
|
| Surely rights to more substantial things like healthcare
| make this quite an easy decision. Freedom to criticize a
| government doesn't matter if you can't force the
| government to actually give a shit about anything
| deltaburnt wrote:
| Does Taiwan not have healthcare? Verbatim from Wikipedia:
|
| > According to the Numbeo Health Care Index in 2025,
| Taiwan has the best healthcare system in the world,
| scoring 86.5 out of 100,[6] a slight increase from 86 the
| previous year.[7] This marked the seventh consecutive
| year that Taiwan has ranked first in the Numbeo Health
| Care Index.[8]
| Lio wrote:
| > _I sure as hell wouldn 't put up much fight if china
| tried to invade my country; just the opposite._
|
| Realy? What is your country and why would you prefer to
| live under a dictatorship?
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Just my sense as an outsider, but a lot of interest in
| voluntary reunification got chilled after seeing China's
| actions in Hong Kong. A lot of it stems from lack of
| trust for the CCP to honor it's idea of a one county two
| systems form of governence.
|
| I don't know how much the Taiwanese would be willing to
| fight and die in a military invasion though.
| aurareturn wrote:
| because Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist
| if it comes to that
|
| I doubt Taiwan truly wants to do this. It has more to do
| with the US wanting to use Taiwan as a pawn to contain
| China's power.
| noduerme wrote:
| If you lived in a country with local political
| representation and free elections, would you want your
| children to grow up in slavery to a dictatorship across
| the sea? Ask the Irish.
| aurareturn wrote:
| China has already said they'd allow one country two
| systems.
| brigandish wrote:
| How's that going in Hong Kong?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| LOL. is this a joke? Hong Kong?
| rockskon wrote:
| By force. Because Taiwan doesn't want to be a part of
| Beijing's China.
| atwrk wrote:
| Both points are not really true.
|
| For the China part: Yes, the "by force" part certainly
| exists as a position, in competition to the peaceful
| unification approach. It's important to keep in mind,
| though, that the confrontative position of the first
| Trump administration and afterwards the Biden
| administration significantly _helped_ the "by force"
| faction. There was an interesting piece in Foreign Policy
| about that, a social scientist from the US was
| questioning Chinese students at an elite university on
| this very topic and thus had the chance to do a time
| series observing the attitude change following US
| actions.
|
| Secondly, in Taiwanese politics, Unification is actually
| a big topic and even has its own party, the New Party,
| advocating for it (plus the fringe CUPP). Not popular
| right now, but certainly existing - and evidently
| falsifying the notion that the all of "Taiwan doesn't
| want to be part of Beijing's China".
| rockskon wrote:
| So according to your logic, it only counts if it's
| unanimous inside Taiwan to not be taken over by Beijing
| but it doesn't need to be unanimous for those who want
| reunification with China?
| atwrk wrote:
| No. I pointed out that both the "by force" statement for
| China and the "Taiwan doesn't want" statement are _so_
| oversimplified that they became factually incorrect. The
| "logic" is your inference and neither stated nor implied
| by me.
| rockskon wrote:
| How is it not factually correct?
|
| The existance of a faction within Taiwan that wants
| Taiwan to reunify with Beijing's China isn't materially
| relevant if they don't have any path forward to
| accomplish their goal.
| noduerme wrote:
| >> the confrontative position of the first Trump
| administration and afterwards the Biden administration
| significantly helped the "by force" faction
|
| This is the argument that you hit your wife because
| someone on the telephone made you angry.
| atwrk wrote:
| This is about international relations. You won't get
| _any_ insight into it if you reduce any point you don 't
| like to argumentative metaphors.
|
| Even within the framework of (structural) realism so
| popular in contemporary US politics there's this well-
| known problem that the buildup of defense capabilities of
| party A looks like aggression to party B - and vice
| versa. See the seminal work _Perception and Misperception
| in International Politics_. Or the relations of Britain
| and Germany before WW1 and WW2.
|
| The FP article I mentioned, "Trump's Trade War May Make
| Elite Young Chinese More Nationalistic" [1], illustrates
| the argument. You have actual empirical data, changing
| over time, after exposure to the "treatment". So at least
| a hint of causality.
|
| [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/21/trump-tariffs-
| china-tra...
| fankt wrote:
| Become a part of a country with no freedom of speech?
| Yep, that's destruction.
| noduerme wrote:
| Come here, chicken. I don't want to hurt you, I just want
| to eat you!
| n4r9 wrote:
| China wants to destory Taiwan's democracy, as OP said
| quite correctly.
| elefanten wrote:
| Spot on. And the mistake of considering appeasement of said
| totalitarian superpower by "letting them have it" would be
| just as enormous.
| jabron wrote:
| Comparing Nazi Germany and the PRC in any way is
| certainly an interesting choice, considering they're the
| one major power in the world that actually doesn't have a
| recent history of invading sovereign nations.
| noduerme wrote:
| Come again? Tibet was absolutely a sovereign nation. I
| guess it depends what you mean by "recent", but the
| colonization is still underway, daily.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_Chin
| a
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
| Lio wrote:
| Yeah they do. Even right now they're trying to take
| territory from the Philippines.
|
| China just has a history of denying what they're doing as
| they're doing it.
|
| There are so many examples online. My favourite is of a
| Chinese warship ramming into its own coast guard vessel
| as they fail to intimidate the Philippines Coast Guard.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev22n0lm1xo
| matkoniecz wrote:
| This is a lie. China has an ongoing invasion of Bhutan.
|
| China built a road and villages and military outposts in
| Bhutan, over China-Bhutan border.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| does the Sino-Vietnamese War not count as recent?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| As a Czech who absolutely hates the Protectorate era, I can
| still see a good case to use somewhat neutral expressions
| like "politically unstable" if you want to discuss
| technical topics like supply chains without delving into
| the underlying politics.
|
| Declaring "I am a friend of democracies threatened by
| totalitarian countries" before every economic utterance
| looks as performative and ultimately counterproductive to
| me as all the "land acknowledgments" that infected the US
| academia. (Not coincidentally, those don't help actual
| Amerindians at all.)
|
| Yeah, Central Europe in the 1930s was politically unstable,
| no way around it. And it wasn't just question of
| Czechoslovakia vs. Germany either. Most countries had
| irredentist movements and/or land demands on their
| neighbours.
| noduerme wrote:
| So, let's say the TSMC is the modern equivalent in
| "supply chain" terms as Czech guns made in Plzen, like
| the Skoda 75mm cannon - wait, let's rewind. I'm not
| saying Czechoslovakia was politically stable in 1939. I'm
| saying that when your neighbor claims they need to rescue
| you from instability - like when America says they need
| to rescue a Latin American or Middle Eastern country from
| "political instability" when that country elects someone
| who doesn't want the country's resources owned and run by
| companies with imperialist backing - that is code for a
| green light to conquer them and take their resources. The
| same as it was for the Germans. The same as it _is_ for
| China re: Taiwan and Russia re: all the former Soviet
| republics. Declaring your neighbor "politically
| unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the
| clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without
| any casus belli. I'm sure you wouldn't like your country
| to be invaded again if the powers around it decide you
| can't manage your own affairs.
|
| [edit] I also spent about a year living in Prague and I
| love your country, Czechs are the best, and their sense
| of freedom is an immense relief from let's say other
| countries in the EU, so, I think it's amazing that you
| have maintained your independence from the enormous
| forces surrounding you and pulling in all directions. I
| think part of this is something I observed, that Czechs
| act like they are part of one small family.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Again, context matters and we are likely not talking in a
| "let us decide whom to invade" context.
|
| BTW "Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and
| presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in
| the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli"
| is not really true, sometimes this happened, but wars
| have been declared for all sorts of putative reasons,
| like "our particular minority is being oppressed" or "the
| neighbouring government plotted against the life of our
| sovereign" or "they are infidels, go get them".
|
| Anyway I don't really see what you propose. Binning
| expressions because someone someday used them in bad
| faith, in the belief that this will stop future invasions
| from happening?
|
| This seems to be somewhat futile to me. Invasions aren't
| fundamentally caused by words. Words only work as a cloak
| and one cloak can be easily substituted by another, and
| it will, depending on the current state of politics in
| the invader and invadee country.
|
| Note that the Russians explained their invasion into
| Ukraine by calling them "fascists". Should the Western
| civilization drop the word forever because of that?
| noduerme wrote:
| The cloak of words has always been needed, for some
| reason, to convince a population to make the sacrifices
| necessary to go to war.
|
| Yes, there have been other spoken reasons for invading a
| peaceful sovereign country. This does not change the fact
| that Russia is the belligerent party against Ukraine, or
| that China is the belligerent against a completely
| harmless and peaceful Taiwan.
|
| Taiwan's situation right now is very similar to
| Czechoslovakia's in 1938. There is no international
| treaty with teeth to protect it. There is every reason
| for China to create a rationale for invading it. The
| people there have a decent life and don't want to live
| under occupation. And the reasons for invasion look
| similar; taking over industrial capacity under the guise
| of saving people from their confused political state.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is indeed somewhat similar (though the sea is a better
| barrier + they don't have a major fifth column on their
| territory). And I would smell rat if it was a Chinese CCP
| official uttering the words about "political
| instability", but that would exactly be the change of
| context necessary.
|
| If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability",
| they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what
| will happen in context of their own jobs.
| noduerme wrote:
| Ahhahah. For SWEs I think the phrase is "undefined
| behavior".
|
| FWIW, my friend, I'm a Jew and I spent 5 years in France,
| Spain and Germany before coming to Prague. Czechia was
| the one place I felt welcome and safe in the EU. The
| noble history of the Czechs played a big role in that,
| but you could feel it every day in the way people treated
| each other. There is something incredible there about the
| people, the family, the place and the intelligence of
| Czechia. It is about keeping a small land for your family
| and people. I would say it's similar in many ways to
| Israel.
|
| Now someone will come and shoot me, heheh.
|
| But - there was a point. This is also why I defend Taiwan
| and I think everyone should. People should be free to get
| together to decide that they want to be part of
| something, not swallowed up by neighbors who despise
| their way of life.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Czechia is the most Jewish-friendly country in the EU,
| and will likely stay so. Our Jewish community used to be
| very vibrant and it is sorely missed.
|
| We should indeed defend Taiwan, but we (as "the entire
| EU") seem to be lukewarm even about defending Ukraine
| which is much closer to us and in a hot war. Some people
| just prefer sticking their head in the sand.
|
| Maybe the Jewish people are better at discerning
| building-up danger, because of their long history of
| persecution.
| noduerme wrote:
| I hope it remains so. I felt an affinity from even before
| I stepped off the train from Munich. It's a funny story -
| my passport was examined by German police in the bar car
| of the train. My passport was not in order and they were
| radio calling to see whether to haul me back to Munich
| and detain me. I played for time as the border
| approached. The bartender was Czech, and he watched all
| this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on
| the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice
| trip, and he took me into the store room on the train,
| opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette
| for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking
| Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!" And
| immediately I fell in love with the country. I would say,
| God bless that bartender on the train but almost everyone
| I met in the next year in Prague was equally kind and
| wonderful.
|
| I can't speak for all Jewish people, but yes we are
| raised reading history to understand the way that threats
| can build up over time, and the multiple masks that
| threats can wear. For me, personally, I see this as an
| affinity to all small, powerless but free people...
| Kurds, Taiwanese, Ukrainians, Tibetans, Yazidis...
| particularly those who don't evangelize but simply want
| to be left alone to prosper and live in peace with their
| own people. Czechs are similar to that as the most
| "western-facing Slavic people" and I grew up in America
| enthralled by Vaclav Havel as a beacon for individuals
| and every small nation wanting freedom.
|
| You are of course right that this history of persecution
| raises one's antennae and evokes horror at anything that
| seems to favor totalitarian modes of thinking. But the
| Czechs level of paranoia made me laugh sometimes, maybe
| because it was so similar.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this
| quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the
| border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice
| trip, and he took me into the store room on the train,
| opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette
| for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking
| Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!""
|
| I can almost hear him. That is basically the essence of
| Czechdom :)
|
| It is interesting how some aspects of culture are
| essentially the same and others diverge wildly once you
| cross the border. When it comes to Bier and Schnitzel and
| snowy Christmas, Czechs are almost indistinguishable from
| Bavarians. But in other aspects it is just as you saw it,
| two worlds apart.
| Ray20 wrote:
| > The cloak of words has always been needed, for some
| reason
|
| Needed? Probably not. There is just no reason not to use
| that cloak of words.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| It's been in vogue since the American invasion of Vietnam
| noduerme wrote:
| right, another reason China shouldn't invoke it to invade
| a free country.
| brabel wrote:
| China doesn't want to destroy Taiwan , it wants to reunite
| with it like it did with other territories that had been
| taken by foreign powers, like happened to Hong Kong and
| Macau. Taiwan was occupied by Japan and then never went
| back to being China after the Japanese were defeated
| because the Chinese Party that was defeated in the
| Revolution fled to the Island and never accepted the PRC as
| legit government in China. Some of the more nationalist
| Taiwanese even consider themselves to be the legit
| government in exile of all China. You seem to not
| understand any of that when you compare China with Nazi
| Germany, really embarrassing.
| phantasmish wrote:
| There's definitely something embarrassing going on, and
| it starts but does not end with confusing destruction of
| a state with destruction of... I'm not even sure what you
| had in mind. The land? The infrastructure?
|
| Taiwan's democracy is absolutely threatened with
| destruction by a totalitarian superpower, that wasn't in
| any way incorrect or misleading, and that's how the GP
| post phrased it. Its _state_ is threatened with
| destruction. That's entirely accurate.
| brabel wrote:
| Where are you from? Did you know Taiwan is not recognized
| as a state independent of China by Europe, the USA, Japan
| and nearly every other country with the exception of 12
| small countries?
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/countries...
|
| You want it to be a state but your own country says it's
| not one most likely. Stop embarrassing yourself.
| phantasmish wrote:
| The concept of "political fiction" exists and is
| important, yes, but we need not confuse it for reality.
|
| [edit] I think I've used the wrong term here but I think
| I get the idea across. There are diplomatic lies
| maintained in many situations where everyone largely
| operates like it's not true, and the situation with
| Taiwan is so quintessentially one of these that's it's a
| common first example to illustrate the point. In my
| defense it's been a loooong time since my last
| international relations class.
| oblio wrote:
| What happens is Taiwan opposes the union? You know,
| through a democratic vote?
|
| The standard authoritarian playbook would require moving
| to step two, which we saw in action a few years ago on
| the other side of Eurasia:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/star
| k-b...
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Isn't Taiwan also seismically active? They are reports of
| earthquakes affecting TSMC fabs in january 2025 and april
| 2024.
|
| Apparently these were not huge blows to their fabs, otherwise
| we would be talking about that day-in-day-out, but there's
| always a risk of that happening.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Seems even more active, at least according to number of
| magnitude 6+ earthquakes since 1900 in the region https://e
| arthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=12.72608...
| ehnto wrote:
| Seems silly to be talking about this as if this is some
| kind of global consortium effort.
|
| Japan is building Japan at semi conductor industry, for the
| benefit of itself, of course it is located in Japan.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Sure, Japan and Taiwan have no choice. They have to build
| on their seismically active islands or give up, which is
| not an option.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I guess it depends on what sort of monetary damage the
| typical Hokkaido earthquake would have on a fab - just result
| in a bad batch of chips perhaps, or also damage equipment?
| Obviously it's known that the region is very seismically
| active (159 earthquakes in Hokkaido so far this year!), but
| Japan are used to having to build to minimize earthquake
| damage.
|
| https://earthquaketrack.com/p/japan/hokkaido/recent
| SllX wrote:
| Given Korea hasn't been a Japanese colony since the War, and
| they want to build in their territory, options are limited.
| rkachowski wrote:
| you have silicon valley right by the San Andreas fault line..
| Panoramix wrote:
| TSMC is in a seismically active region
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Japan is quite adept at building structures resistant to
| earthquakes and tsunami. I'd be very surprised if the designers
| and architects of this endeavor are unaware of the issues.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I believe Koreans would find being colonized again to be at
| least a little bit objectionable.
|
| Hokkaido is significantly safer compared to Honshu. It does
| still experience quakes, but it is at least not directly on
| major fault lines.
| basisword wrote:
| Why would the Japanese government back a company to build
| chips...in Korea?
| constantcrying wrote:
| As a European I have to say I am extremely jealous of a
| government with the willingness of doing something as radical as
| this.
|
| Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply
| chain. Neither the EU nor any member states seems willing to do
| anything about this though.
|
| Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control
| 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent. But
| besides meaning posturing there is nothing being done.
| mono442 wrote:
| At least European countries excel at introducing new
| regulations and taxes.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Yeah. Who wants to be a military superpower or a
| manufacturing superpower, when they could be a regulatory
| superpower.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| One of our problems (EU citizen here too) is the delusion
| that because everyone in the world wants access to European
| markets, everyone will bend their knees to our regulations
| and we can effectively dictate the world's standards.
|
| Given that our market share on the global economy is
| dropping steadily, this won't hold forever. By 2040 or so
| it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just
| avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.
|
| Already this year we had a showdown with Qatar over some
| ESG reporting and we lost handily, because we needed their
| gas more than they needed our money.
| riffraff wrote:
| > By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian
| producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space
| altogether.
|
| in favour of what? Every other large market (China,
| India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| At least in case of India, it is in their interest to
| lower their trade barriers against Thailand, Viet Nam,
| Philippines, Indonesia etc.
|
| This region with 500 million people in it will oscillate
| between Chinese and Indian influence. The Chinese are
| more powerful and richer, so the only way in which India
| can compete for influence is being more friendly.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| India is too busy fighting on their own sphere of
| influence (south asian)
|
| china keep them in check via pakistan
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Now, but we're talking 2040, and the situation may look a
| lot different.
|
| India has been doing some incredible things lately. They
| just electrified their entire rail network in some five
| years. That is actually impressive - you need a lot of
| qualified people and coordination for that.
|
| If they keep up, they will become a strategic adversary
| of China in Indochina (see the name?) quite soon.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| India's rail network is not fully electrified, this is
| false. Even the most popular broad gauge network is not
| fully electrified. Diesel trains are still very common.
| Remember also that the Indian government is very skilled
| at manipulating data without actually delivering results.
| Just look at the lies they spewed during the pandemic
| about deaths.
|
| India's promised ascendance to power and influence remain
| perpetually a few decades away. Meanwhile, the poor
| continue to lose purchasing power, the rich exploit the
| entire country, and India's total economic exports are
| comparable to those of the Netherlands.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > > By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian
| producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space
| altogether.
|
| > in favour of what? Every other large market (China,
| India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.
|
| The EU has higher tariffs than the US overall, especially
| for agriculture and cars. Policy is structured and
| uniform.
|
| The IS has lower tariffs than the EU overall, but often
| used as political/economic weapon on specific countries
| and sectors.
|
| The current administration's tactics notwithstanding.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Exactly. For the past decades much of the world was
| entirely dependent on European products. This gave the EU
| and European countries enormous leverage in setting
| standards and enforcing their own regulations across the
| world. This is very clearly changing, in many areas
| European companies are depending on Chinese technology
| (e.g. EV batteries).
|
| I am sure that some part of the EU establishment is aware
| of this, but the measure taken are practically laughable
| compared to the magnitude of the problem. At some future
| point in time dealing with the EU will just not be worth
| it, as competitive companies outside the EU, not weighed
| down by EU regulations, will fill the gaps and entering
| the EU market will be seen as too toxic.
| sofixa wrote:
| You're saying that like the two are at odds. France is a
| military superpower with almost entirely France, worst case
| scenario western EU, based supply chain. Italy, Spain, to a
| lesser extent Germany are too. Manufacturing is also pretty
| strong across (most) of the EU. Automotive is struggling in
| Germany, but booming in France (Renault are killing it).
| Leading in Aeronautics too. It's just mostly high value
| manufacturing. In the EU, 25% of the economy is in
| manufacturing. Compare with 10% in the US.
|
| And those regulations are, more often than not, for
| everyone's benefit - at least EU, but often the Brussels
| effect applies so a lot of the rest of the world benefits
| too.
| constantcrying wrote:
| What you are saying is just not true. Frances car
| industry is dying. Renault is a small company, not even
| in the top 10 and Stellantis is doing extremely poorly,
| also affecting Italy's car industry. Within a decade or
| so COMAC will have a competitive passenger plane,
| seriously threatening Airbus market share.
|
| Germany's _entire_ industry is currently dying since it
| is impossible to have a cost competitive manufacturing
| industry while having some of the highest energy prices
| in the world.
|
| Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not
| at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which
| awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the
| market by Chinese competition.
|
| Do you think Germany or France will continue to have a
| car industry, when China makes cars or the same quality
| for 70% of the price? Because that is currently the
| reality.
| mono442 wrote:
| High energy prices are a self-imposed problem. The price
| of electricity is heavily dependent on the price of the
| most expensive energy source. Electricity from fossil
| fuels is expensive in European Union due to emissions
| trading system. A coal-fired power plant pays around 2x
| more for the emissions than for the coal itself. I don't
| know how the maths work for a natural gas plant but gas
| is more expensive in Europe anyway compared to the US.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Renault is a small company, not even in the top 10
|
| How exactly is that even remotely relevant? They only
| sell in select markets, and are killing it in them (best
| selling EV in the EU, Renault 5). What, if it's not a
| global behemoth dominating the world, it doesn't count as
| manufacturing? What exactly is your argument here?
|
| > Within a decade or so COMAC will have a competitive
| passenger plane, seriously threatening Airbus market
| share.
|
| Nope. Their own goal is to have, within a decade or so, a
| fully Chinese plane (their current C919 heavily relies on
| engines and other critical components from European and
| American suppliers). Specifically for the engines,
| they're looking at a comparable to the Leap 1C they were
| sold by CFM (American General Electric+French Safran
| joint venture). Those engines are around a generation
| behind the current best ones (Leap 1A, Pratt&Whitney
| GTF). In a decade, CFM and Rolls-Royce will have a new
| generation out, both having new models being tested right
| now.
|
| So, in around a decade, the Chinese engines will be two
| generations behind. Efficiency is critical in aviation.
| And that's just the engines, in a decade Airbus will have
| a new A320 series replacement out, and Boeing will have
| one on the way too. And this is just for short to medium
| haul planes. And both the C919 and the C909 show that
| it's taking years for production to ramp up to any
| relevant numbers. Airbus recently opened a second final
| assembly line in Tianjin for the local market, they
| wouldn't have done that without being sure they have a
| market there for at least a decade or more.
|
| > Your entire comment looks at the current status quo,
| not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which
| awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the
| market by Chinese competition.
|
| This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be
| allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already
| know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in
| tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is
| similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
| Macha wrote:
| Does China need something competitive to an a320neo^2 or
| is something competitive with a 737ng enough given they
| can pressure domestic airlines into buying it and
| undercut their way into more sticker price sensitive
| markets? That's already a big loss for the duopoly, and I
| mean there are 717s and similar still flying
| sofixa wrote:
| > or is something competitive with a 737ng enough given
| they can pressure domestic airlines into buying it and
| undercut their way into more sticker price sensitive
| markets
|
| Potentially, but previous attempts (like the Xian MA60
| and MA600, which are derivatives of the designed in the
| 1960s An-24) have been very unsuccessful. It made some
| sales in Southeast Asia and Africa, but a few of those
| have had accompanying corruption/bribery allegations and
| investigations, and most have been grounded after serious
| incidents and troubles keeping them operating at
| reasonable costs.
|
| But my overall point is, it's going to take them more
| than a decade, probably around two, to be able to churn
| out fully Chinese passenger jets in any relevant numbers.
| The Chinese airplane market is _massive_ , so even then
| they probably won't be able to deliver enough. There also
| aren't any plans to get the C919, existing or future
| fully Chinese version, certified by EASA or FAA or
| anywhere else, so legally the jet can't even fly anywhere
| else other than China for now.
|
| So we have _at least_ 2 decades more of COMAC being very
| behind and churning planes at a slow rate, at best. And
| honestly, anyone who thinks they can predict the aviation
| market 2 decades ahead is out of their mind. We could
| have hydrogen powered flying wings by then!
| constantcrying wrote:
| >are killing it in them (best selling EV in the EU,
| Renault 5). What, if it's not a global behemoth
| dominating the world, it doesn't count as manufacturing?
| What exactly is your argument here?
|
| My argument is that China is producing EVs of the same
| quality for 70% of the cost. European wealth comes from
| _exports_.
|
| >This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be
| allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already
| know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in
| tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is
| similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
|
| Exactly. The European car industry only exists because
| China is not allowed to compete, this is my point. There
| is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore.
| Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be
| buying a better car for the same price or the same
| quality car for a lower price.
|
| The car market for these companies will shrink from _the
| entire world_ to Europe, surely you can see that this is
| an existential threat to European manufacturing.
|
| >And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly
| priced to a low cost BYD EV.
|
| Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. A BYD EV with 27%
| tariffs applied is cost competitive to the lowest end
| Renault Platform. In other words, the only reason Dacia
| is selling any cars is because BYD is not allowed to
| compete.
|
| On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have
| mastered almost every technology the west has, it is
| delusional to think that they will never make competitive
| aircraft engines. You are correct, COMAC will take more
| than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the
| current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will
| catch up.
| sofixa wrote:
| > European wealth comes from exports
|
| That's certainly a claim. The EU market is pretty big,
| and has multiple avenues for growth (the whole of the
| Balkans is either in the EU but catching up, or outside
| the EU begging to be let in). It's not axiomatic that the
| EU _needs_ to export to the whole rest of the world. And
| even if it is, there are plenty of countries that have an
| appetite for European goods for a variety of reasons (be
| it luxury or just quality associations, or innate hatred
| of China, like in India or South Korea).
|
| > Exactly. The European car industry only exists because
| China is not allowed to compete, this is my point
|
| Alternatively, because Chinese dumping is not allowed to
| destroy the European car industry, if we're only talking
| in economic terms. But the reality is that cars aren't
| that simple, as a market. For many cars are a status
| symbol, or otherwise everyone would be driving Dacias and
| Skodas and nobody would be buying Porsches vs VWs.
|
| > There is no German/French/Italian car export industry
| anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he
| could be buying a better car for the same price or the
| same quality car for a lower price.
|
| Of course there is. Stellantis, Renault, VW Group are
| selling well in their local markets, across Europe and
| various other markets (e.g. the US for Stellantis).
|
| > On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have
| mastered almost every technology the west has, it is
| delusional to think that they will never make competitive
| aircraft engines
|
| Never said never, said their own timeline is a decade,
| for something competitive to the previous gen, while in a
| decade we'll be two generations ahead. Considering
| Chinese aerospace engineering has been struggling with
| engines forever, and Russia never managed to get close,
| ever, I wouldn't bet on China suddenly being able to
| leapfrog their own timeline.
|
| > You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to
| compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it
| is practically inevitable they will catch up.
|
| They will catch up to ~previous generation (A320ceo), by
| then Airbus will already have the replacement to the
| current gen (A320neo, future gen not named yet). So China
| will still be ~2 decades behind, in a decade-ish. Yes,
| they will definitely catch up by some point in the
| ~2050s, so what? Airbus caught up to Boeing, and there is
| enough market to go around for both. Embraer is in the
| process of catching up too. There being one more new
| entrant on the (again, only short to medium haul)
| passenger jet market, _in a decade_ , really isn't the
| end of the world you're making it out to be.
| constantcrying wrote:
| You are still arguing the status quo. By export I meant
| export to countries outside the EU, where Chinese and
| European EVs compete fairly.
|
| To believe that the European car industry will survive
| purely on brand recognition is foolish and all current
| trends indicate otherwise. The Chinese are cars at the
| same quality for 70% if the price. That is obviously not
| sustainable and no amount of brand loyalty will overcome
| this.
|
| None of your arguments seem convincing at all. Making
| worse cars at higher prices can not work. It is not a
| feasible long term strategy in any way.
|
| Also, Stellantis is not selling well, they have huge
| problems with underutilized factories. Porsche is also
| currently in _serious_ trouble.
| sofixa wrote:
| > status quo
|
| Yes, we're talking about the current reality and trends
| about the future. Which is it, are EU manufacturers at
| large on the decline, or am I too focused on the current
| reality that they're doing okay, with exceptions?
|
| > Making worse cars at higher prices can not work.
|
| Who is talking about worse cars or brand loyalty?
|
| A Renault 5 or Renault 4 are objectively good cars that
| sell well based on their performance and looks. Cars
| aren't bought only on the basis on cost, which is why
| premium or even just any other brand other than the
| lowest cost Skoda or Dacia exist in the first place.
|
| > None of your arguments seem convincing at all.
|
| It's not very convincing to say that manufacturing in the
| EU is on a death bed when its double the % of GDP as in
| the US, and has multiple domains where there are good
| performances. And then get extremely hung up that EU
| manufacturers _must_ export, and that somehow cost is the
| only metric by which people buy stuff. And then get
| extremely hung up on car manufacturing in particular. But
| also somehow that EU manufacturing is worse quality,
| which you don 't even attempt to prove. Yeah, when you
| put down the wrong conditions, you're going to get the
| wrong conclusions. And repeating them again and again
| doesn't make them more convincing.
|
| Most best selling EV models in the EU are Tesla, from
| Renault or VW Group. Practically all of them are
| manufactured in the EU. This is not a declining trend.
|
| And of course you're completely ignoring the reality that
| tariffs against Chinese dumping are a reality and here to
| stay in many markets. Manufacturers that relied a lot on
| e.g. the Chinese car market, like VW, will suffer. Others
| that didn't, like Renault, are doing just fine.
| constantcrying wrote:
| In the end I think outlet disagreement is this:
|
| I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold
| for 70% of the price of a European made car, will
| outperform the European car in every market, where those
| cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for
| reasons unfathomable to me.
|
| I believe that the European export economy is vital for
| its prosperity. 45% of Germany's 1 trillion+ exports are
| to countries outside of the EU. You believe that loosing
| that economy can be made up in other ways, again for
| reasons which are unfathomable to me.
|
| I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could
| convince you otherwise. That you are lying about what I
| said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for
| cars or that European products are of lower quality)
| makes me not want to talk to you at all.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold
| for 70% of the price of a European made car, will
| outperform the European car in every market, where those
| cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for
| reasons unfathomable to me
|
| I disagree with that for pretty obvious reasons. The fact
| that companies like GM and Ford still exist, and not
| everyone has been buying the cheapest car that fits their
| needs, unquestionably proves that buying cars is more
| than just price. Quality is hard to directly compare, but
| you also have maintenance needs/availability, brand
| recognition, design.
|
| But anyways, you're talking about manufacturing more
| widely, and we spent too much time talking about cars.
| 20% of the EU GDP that are in manufacturing really aren't
| all about cars.
|
| > I do not think any evidence I could provide to you
| could convince you otherwise
|
| That's an almost smart way of getting out of having to
| provide any.
|
| > That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is
| the only thing that matters for cars
|
| How else would I interpret your incessant attempts to try
| to convince me that a Chinese car at 70% the cost of an
| European one would always win? The fact that you're
| completely ignoring the presence of brand or the
| importances of marketing and design on car buying choices
| clearly indicates you only think of cars as their cost to
| buy. Which is really not what most people's first
| consideration is, otherwise, again, we wouldn't have
| Tesla, VW, Audi, Porsche, GM, Ford, Lexus, etc etc
| existing.
| tw04 wrote:
| Imagine a government that considers its people more than
| tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit! So
| many regulations meant to protect the plebes!
|
| Universal healthcare? Vacation time you can actually use?
| Data privacy laws?
|
| What a bunch of losers! Next you'll tell me they actually
| give parents time off to raise their kids instead of dumping
| them into daycare after a month of drudgery and try to call
| it bonding !
| mono442 wrote:
| I wouldn't call European governments considering its
| people. Basically all of European countries suffer from
| housing crisis and nothing is being done to actually
| address it.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >Imagine a government that considers its people more than
| tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit!
|
| Most European governments are for a long time now pushing
| migration hard overtly or subversively(since it's
| unpopular) arguing as if they're importing tools for the
| economy.
| gsf_emergency_6 wrote:
| Some of the regulations make sense, like PFAS (correlated
| with chip manufacturing because HF is needed to etch Silicon
| and so fluoro-organics make great complements) And they seem
| to be sincere about it.
|
| https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-
| america/chemi...
|
| As for the Japanese professional classes, environmental
| issues are _always_ an afterthought. Don 't let the
| "harmonious" design philosophy of the fab fool you..that's
| tatemae. (Remember Jobs and pancreatic cancer? There's the
| price to pay for the shiny toys)
|
| I wont be eating from Hokkaido if this pans out (their milk
| is overrated imho, but the seafood is top)
|
| Maybe I'll get to eat more Austrian millet in the near
| future..
| AdamN wrote:
| They would have to include the UK and it would actually be a
| good European project (not just EU) to maybe bring them back
| into the fold.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is a good initiative from Japan's government. On the other
| side, their bet on hydrogen is probably a very expensive blind
| alley.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could
| control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent.
|
| That's not possible. There are just too many different parts
| going into semiconductor production and they're scattered
| around the world.
|
| Case in point: the source of the best semiconductor-grade
| quartz is located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina and while
| there exist alternatives, for cost-competetiveness you want
| that.
|
| Hilariously enough it belongs to Sibelco, which is a Belgian
| company, but it's still US territory, so subject to local
| politics.
| constantcrying wrote:
| While it may be true that cost advantages are in that
| specific quartz, it is not some irreplaceable product. It
| absolutely would be possible to use other quartz, which would
| require more processing and increase costs.
|
| Do you have any actual examples of things which _could not_
| be in sourced into Europe? I am very aware that for many
| reasons, among them costs, semiconductor fabrication is
| spread globally. But is there an actual reason why it would
| be impossible to have every single one of these pieces in
| some capacity in Europe?
|
| Europe is continually moving further apart politically from
| both the US and China. Relying on the US for supplies and
| betting on Chinese, Taiwanese peace seems increasingly
| foolish. How can Europe secure itself in such an environment,
| without its own semiconductor supply chain?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| A better example is the EUV lithography light sources used
| by ASML. They are manufactured in the US by a US company
| ASML acquired with technology licensed from US government
| labs. That critical part of the business is American in all
| but name.
|
| It is possible that the EU could develop their own state-
| of-the-art lithography light sources but for now ASML is
| dependent on the US for it.
| Findecanor wrote:
| Silicon for solar cell production is currently being mined
| and refined in Sweden. What would it take to adapt that
| production line for semiconductor-grade silicon, I wonder.
| duped wrote:
| Small point worth bringing up, that quartz doesn't go into
| the ingots that get sliced into wafers (and then doped and
| diced into chips). It's used to make the crucibles that the
| ingots are grown in.
| noselasd wrote:
| They are doing _something_ according to https://digital-
| strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-c... . It'd be good
| for someone with more knowledge to summarise what this act
| means though.
| constantcrying wrote:
| This is so grim. What a stark difference to Japan. On one
| side there is a government setting up a new company, with the
| aim of competing at the highest end of the most complex
| technological process in existence. Meanwhile the EU is
| setting up bureaucrat managed funds to keep the remaining
| companies, currently suffering from the decline of the German
| auto industry, alive. Oh and they also paid TSMC to set up a
| factory, how pathetic.
| p2detar wrote:
| > Meanwhile the EU
|
| What do you think the EU is? It's not a country, not a
| federative union. These things need a lot of discussions
| and synchronization among member countries, it does not
| work otherwise, so it takes time. I also hold the opinion
| that time is a resource the EU does not have, so it badly
| needs to reform itself - its framework no longer works for
| this "new age".
| eldaisfish wrote:
| the #1 problem with the EU's administrative structure is
| that its power comes from below, i.e. from the member
| states. Any of them could pull a Brexit and the entire
| union could be in jeopardy.
|
| The #2 problem is language. Despite what many on HN
| think, European borders very much exist. They exist via
| language and bureaucracy.
|
| These two combine to create many problems the EU and
| Europe in general has. The lack of vision, the
| excruciatingly slow bureaucracy, both are symptoms of the
| same underlying problems.
| oblio wrote:
| The EU can't really do anything. The EU is a loose
| confederation of countries that delegate responsibilities
| to this united body.
|
| Japan is a single country with a single government that can
| unilaterally decide what it wants to do.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| But single countries in Europe can do something. If they
| choose to.
| oblio wrote:
| Most of them have 0 IT tradition. Even the big ones.
| laughing_man wrote:
| Isn't Europe the source of almost all the tooling that goes
| into brand new fabs?
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Nah, according to Hacker News Europe does nothing except
| exist and make up rules by 'bureaucrats'.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Laptop sticker "This machine feeds bureaucrats". /s
| tdeck wrote:
| It's the lack of 996 grindset holding Europe back.
| RhysabOweyn wrote:
| If only European bureaucrats mortgaged their entire
| economy on 500 AI scam companies that never produce any
| profit and sold off their entire manufacturing base to
| their main adversary. This is how real superpowers roll.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| I think chinnese already made their own "ASML"
| anonzzzies wrote:
| With very bad results. I was walking a fab in China a few
| years ago: all machines are German, Japanese and Dutch. I
| asked why they don't have Chinese ones: the cto said they
| exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break
| much faster so it is not worth it and the asml machines are
| not there at all in any type of competitive form. It will
| happen, just not yet I guess.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese
| machines but they break much faster_
|
| Japanese cars would also break down much faster than US
| made cars in the 1950s, but eventually they figured out
| reliability and overtook US competition. What are the
| odds Chinese companies can repat this playbook?
|
| They're also a critical player in supplying small drone
| parts to both sides in Russia Ukraine war. Maybe not the
| most reliable parts, but the scale is insane.
| froh42 wrote:
| btw, "Made in Germany" was introduced in 1887 as a
| warning label so British consumers could distinguish
| cheap German knockoffs from British products.
|
| We quickly improved product quality, and suddenly "Made
| in Germany" was a sign of quality. The same happened with
| Japanese products, with Korean products and the same will
| happen with China.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| And the bits that go into those machines are themselves
| globally distributed.
| calaphos wrote:
| It's the one exception in the semiconductor supply chain
| where Europe is still leading. For all other parts of the
| value creation Europe is either a niche player at best or
| completely absent, well into the actual application layer.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| European countries are willing to make big bets. The issue is
| with incompetent leadership. For example they made very big
| bets on quantum computing and particle accelerators for HEP,
| both of which have close to zero ROI. Meanwhile, up till very
| recently AI was sneered at as not "scientific" enough. This is
| a problem with leadership. The issue is mostly that we put
| people in leadership positions, who are experts in past
| technologies but those instincts do not translate well to
| present technologies.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| non sense
|
| Google deepmind headquarter is located in Europe, US tech
| dominance just that good to attract talent all of europe
|
| You can see list of AI researcher that comes from europe+asia
| anonzzzies wrote:
| That is incompeten5 leadership no? If your talent wants to
| move...
| octaane wrote:
| Notably though, Deepmind is based in London, UK - not the
| EU.
| fastasucan wrote:
| London is inside England, which is an european country.
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Hah... europe will become king of the world! We'll tax and
| regulate ourselves to enormous wealth! No... jokes aside,
| europe is a failed union, and will slowly collapse or decompose
| in a decade or two.
|
| Then we can again focus on trade, lowering taxs and creating
| value. The only thing that is happening now is that the
| political class has become enormously rich through bribes and
| by having managed to phase out democracy and enriching
| themselves.
| watwut wrote:
| You mean, like America is doing right now while
| simultaneously destroying its international position and
| quality of life?
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "simultaneously destroying its international position"
|
| US has been doing the same thing for last 200 years and you
| act like its been different ???
|
| oh, is that because you dnt get benefit as opposed to
| instability that US cause like middle east, south america,
| africa and asia ????
| watwut wrote:
| US was not destroying its own international position for
| 200 years. Their international position went all the way
| up in that period. It was also not destroying its own
| quality of life for 200 years.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| there is nothing to be destroyed if there is no "good
| reputation" in the first place
|
| You are seeing from European perspective but I can assure
| you that there is people that seeing western country is a
| "bad guys" from these region because Western power always
| trying exert their influence via trade deal, regime
| change, fund armed group etc
| watwut wrote:
| And America is loosing their ability to exert their
| influence.
|
| You are claiming it has no position while similtaneously
| using its past position as argument.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| learn geopolitics first before spouting non-sense
| mrweasel wrote:
| Right now, sitting in Europe, wishing that Brussels was
| just ever so slightly more functional, you look out into
| the world and see how everyone else is doing, and you're
| reminded that things isn't actually that bad.
| amunozo wrote:
| There are issues with Europe, no doubt. But this kind of
| comment is ridiculous.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor
| supply chain.
|
| To be fair, Europe does have ASML which has something like 2/3
| market share in DUV and almost monoplistic in EUV.
|
| The moat is enormous, so they are unlikely to face any serious
| competition for at least a decade if not more.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| China is already catching up. They have a desktop-sized 14nm
| EUV machine, and Xiami is setting up a 3nm manufacturing
| line, both entirely with local tech. Thanks USA for the
| export ban.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Xiami have designed a 3nm chip, however I am not convinced
| SMIC have a process for them to build the chip at any scale
| yet. Let's see - eventually China will obviously have a
| process comparable to TSMC but I think currently they are
| at least 18 months behind. They were 5 years behind before
| the sanctions so they are catching up fast.
| speed_spread wrote:
| They would be catching up anyway. At least now there will
| be a second source for the tech. ASML does fantastic work
| but they may not have all the answers.
| ecshafer wrote:
| China has been dumping massive amounts of resources in this
| for at least 20 years, this (Making chips domestically with
| local tech) has been a long term goal for a very long time.
| The chip ban is relatively recent. IF it had an effect it
| was merely expediting a process that was going to happen
| regardless. China was NEVER going to be content importing
| Western chips or western machines to make chips
| indefinitely.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The EUV ban is not recent.
| ecshafer wrote:
| 2019 is pretty recent. But it doesn't matter if the ban
| is 2000 or 2025. China was going to try and get the
| machines through subterfuge, industrial espionage,
| reverse engineering or novel engineering. They were
| always going to get a domestic chip production industry,
| its a matter of national security.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > China is already catching up.
|
| Sure of course, just like COMAC vs Airbus/Boeing, BYD vs
| Western EVs etc.
|
| But this is a bit different IMHO.
|
| First there's still a lot of catching-up to do.
|
| And second are they going to be able to gain sufficient
| marketshare in the Western market ? I am thinking here,
| both in terms of displacing ASML and in terms of Western
| companies being willing to depend on Chinese tech for such
| critical activities.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| > They have a desktop-sized 14nm EUV
|
| Who falls for this crap? An ASML EUV machine costs over
| $100 million and is delivered in dozens of shipping
| containers, taking up 2 floors in a fab.
|
| You're going to need really extraordinary evidence that the
| PRC has a "desktop sized EUV machine" if you want us to
| believe you.
| Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote:
| We spent the last 30 years showing deference to good old Uncle
| Sam, sometimes back-stabbing other member states in the
| process. How would we ever have the nerves to do something of
| this scale with all the cooperation, supply chain logistics and
| engineering complexity that this would involve ?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Let's be real, it's not America's fault that the EU is
| dysfunctional in these regards. I'm sure that America does
| little to actually _help_ , but the biggest problem the EU
| faces comes from their own internal corruption. Nothing gets
| done in Europe unless it can be restructured by their corrupt
| bureaucrats to pay all their friends and relatives, and the
| process of negotiating how to spread the graft around is
| highly political and takes many years. This is why the ESA is
| so dysfunctional despite Arianespace starting from a position
| of almost commercial launch market dominance at the end of
| the millennium. They're locked into Ariane 5 development even
| though it was obsolete on arrival and it will probably take
| them 20 years to negotiate the corrupt deals that will allow
| them to design and build something new. This cultural and
| political dysfunction in European society is entirely the
| fault of Europeans. India will send people to space before
| Europe.
| Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote:
| Haven't said otherwise, it's our elites "impotent"
| mentality that is to blame (excuse my french)
| zer0tonin wrote:
| The Netherlands has its own semi supply chain, from
| photolithographs to chip design to printing the actual chips.
| yourusername wrote:
| I don't think that's right. They make one of the many
| machines you need for semiconductor manufacturing. The NXP
| fab in Nijmegen makes simple components on a outdated 140nm+
| process with 200mm wafers. Unless there is another fab that
| is making actual modern chips?
| sehansen wrote:
| ST Microelectronics makes 18 nm chips and 6 out of their 7
| fabs are in Europe:
| https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/manufacturing-
| at-...
| justin66 wrote:
| > They make one of the many machines you need for
| semiconductor manufacturing.
|
| That's an especially obtuse way of minimizing the
| significance of their manufacture of the most complex
| machine ever made.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Intel was supposed to build something in Germany some years
| ago, didn't really work out because of reasons which seems to
| have been outside of Germany's control. So it's not that they
| are unwilling, but it just didn't succeed yet.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Maybe we should stop selecting islands next to China to be global
| critical supply chain hubs. I mean, even if the Chinese were non-
| expansionist and benevolent, it's still kind of tempting them a
| little too much.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Who is "we"? Japan doesn't have much choice, they either do
| things even though they are next to China, or ..what?
|
| Maybe its time for people to stop being paralyzed by fear and
| invest in their future. If China is such a severe threat to
| Japan, then invest more in the JSDF. Yes, China is powerful and
| has an aggressive stance, but that's no reason to give up
| without a fight. Japan and South Korea together can very nearly
| match China's shipbuilding tonnage per year, and besides that
| Japan collaborates with America to develop advanced naval
| missiles like the SM-3 Block IIA. Effective deterrence of China
| w.r.t. Japan should be achievable if people stop overdosing on
| blackpills.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is more of a humorous take. We already have trouble with
| one chip nexus is right next to China, and now we build
| another one? "ha ha". We is humanity. The collective we
| probably doesn't want a lever of the future controlled by a
| totalitarian communist ehnostate.
|
| But yes, I agree Japan, Indonesia (as was intended), etc
| should wise up.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| _" We already have trouble with one chip nexus is right
| next to China, and now we build another one? "ha ha". We is
| humanity."_
|
| Your _" whole humanity 'We'"_ isn't who's investing in chip
| industry in Hokkaido. It's Japan.
| keepamovin wrote:
| But these things are done based on global supply chains.
| It's about more than just Japan, isn't it?
|
| Same time, Japan clearly wants freedom to do things its
| own way. Good. It has the freedom. It just has to take
| it. Do it.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| They already are investing in the JSDF. The JS Chokai is in
| San Diego right now being equipped with Tomahawk cruise
| missles, but AFAIK the plan is to equipped all 8 Kongo class
| destroyers with those missles.
|
| And that's just one part of the expansion. But the short
| version is that the JSDF isn't staying a defensive only
| institution.
| codedokode wrote:
| Nowadays, are large ships well protected from small
| unmanned underwater ships? Are they worth building?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The large ships are well-protected. A "small unmanned
| underwater ship" has been a primary threat model for a
| century e.g. heavy torpedoes. These already have very
| long range and sophisticated sensors that allow them to
| hunt targets autonomously.
|
| The other side of this is that modern large military
| ships are almost literally unsinkable. It is very
| difficult to get enough explosive on target due to their
| extreme damage resistance.
|
| When the military does live fire exercises where they
| attack obsolete military vessels with no active defenses
| using torpedos, missiles, bombs, etc, they usually don't
| manage to sink it. They have to send a specialized
| demolition crew afterward to actually scuttle the damaged
| ship and turn it into an artificial reef.
|
| An operational large military vessel will have layers of
| substantial active defenses that make this even more
| difficult.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Yes to being worth building.
|
| The whole point of the navy is to be able to control
| waterways. The whole point of being able to control
| waterways is to be able to economically ship large
| amounts of material and people; in the case of warfare,
| soldiers, bullets, food, water, fuel, etc.
|
| An unmanned fast attack sub is going to be useless for
| defending your logistics fleet from strike fighters and
| anti ship missles. Even a dingy that has a guy in it with
| a rocket propelled grenade can send a cargo ship to it's
| grave. You have to have a surface ships with powerful
| defenses to protect them.
| zawaideh wrote:
| How many bases does china have around the world? How many does
| the US?
| tdeck wrote:
| Imagine if China built one base in Mexico or the Caribbean.
| People would be treating it like a declaration of war.
| Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries
| surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as
| bellicose in any way.
| keepamovin wrote:
| That's because the US was founded on a unique constitution
| to empower individuals against tyranny, then defeated (with
| Russia, mind) the Nazis in world war II, bootstrapped the
| UN, went to the moon, and ushered in an era of global
| leadership and peace, along with unmatched soft power
| (films, news, etc). Camelot, shining city on the hill.
| China had a bloody communist revolution, then got rich (in
| part by breaking deals and ripping off IP) - also through
| hard work. America is porous, "Shortbus", "anyone can make
| it", American dream. China is ethnonationalist, and has a
| sense of ethnic and cultural supremacy that is not
| inclusive of "outsiders". That's why it's a problem, and,
| rightly, seen/intuitied to be a problem, more so than the
| US (despite US' many failings/misteps, etc).
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| > Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in
| countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be
| seen as bellicose in any way.
|
| Shouldn't you take WWII history into the account?
|
| 1. South Korea - Korean war happened and majority of South
| Korean want US military base there 'cause you know North
| Korea with its nukes point at Seoul.
|
| 2. Japan - well, everyone know what happened and the treaty
| were signed thus military base in Japan.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| This is Japan selecting itself to develop a critical industry.
|
| Being deeply embedded in global supply chains and your allies'
| economies makes it a lot more difficult for them to justify
| abandoning you to your enemies.
| yourusername wrote:
| This is 750 km from China (going through Russia) and a 2600km
| trip from China's nearest port. If this isn't safe enough is
| all of Asia off limits then?
| pezezin wrote:
| Hokkaido is not close to China... it is close to Russia, I
| don't know what is worse xD
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Meanwhile in Europe...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Meanwhile what? Europe already have chip manufacturing but
| focused on industrial and embedded usage, while others seems
| oriented towards consumer stuff.
| mrweasel wrote:
| https://www.esmc.eu/ it's not 3 or 5nm, but 12nm FinFet isn't
| bad.
| tdeck wrote:
| Why are all the comments here so weird? It's like people saw (but
| didn't read) an article entitled "Man Opens a Taqueria in his
| Hometown" and the only responses are
|
| 1) Why didn't he open it in _my_ hometown? This location isn 't
| convenient for me.
|
| 2) Wouldn't it be better for someone else to open a taqueria
| instead? My cousin is looking for work. Shouldn't we be putting
| resources into helping him open a restaurant instead?
|
| It's like people hear "X in Asian country" and all they can think
| about is their own geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US
| state department. Obviously Japan is going to want to develop
| lucrative manufacturing... within Japan.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Usually around now (6am PST), HN tends to be dominated by
| Western (and some Eastern) European commentators. I've noticed
| they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist sentiment along
| with a "Europe should be able to do this too" sentiment (though
| in a lot of cases, this is moreso sentiment than reality).
| gsf_emergency_6 wrote:
| Let me contribute my Europeanist sentiment by pointing out
| that the harmonious design of the fab is pure tatemae.
|
| The Japanese professional class care fuckall about PFAS and
| environmental issues have always been low on the list of
| priorities. Sorry. I love the Hokkaido produce.
|
| https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-
| america/chemi...
| tdeck wrote:
| It's certainly something to be concerned about. Even the
| building where MOS Technology made the 6502 (in Norristown
| PA) is still a contaminated EPA superfund site. It's an
| industry with very nasty chemicals and a long history of
| leaking them.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> I've noticed they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist
| sentiment along with a "Europe should be able to do this
| too"._
|
| Is it wrong for people in Europe to wish for more cutting-
| edge/high-margin opportunities in their back yard, especially
| given the currently atrocious state of the job market?
|
| Like you read news how TSMC's cutting edge chips are made in
| Taiwan and US fabs, then you looks at European fabs and the
| most cutting edge are 16/12nm.
|
| People are seeing the lag with their own eyes and wish for
| some change.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard on
| developing such capabilities and _assuming_ European
| nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so
| jarring.
|
| Nothing stopped European nations like Belgium, Germany,
| Netherlands, France, Italy, etc from continuing to invest
| in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is
| now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian
| subsidiaries or JVs.
|
| Just becuase Europe was historically the richest and most
| powerful continent doesn't mean it will be forever.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard
| on developing such capabilities and assuming European
| nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so
| jarring._
|
| Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, as there was no
| disrespecting anyone there with my comment, and I
| basically agree with your point.
|
| That doesn't change that people here want those cutting
| edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They
| don't want to be stuck competition with China in
| commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm
| microcontrollers.
|
| There's a limited market for ASML machines, Siemens gas
| turbines, and Airbus planes which can't support economic
| growth of the entire block.
|
| _> Nothing stopped European nations like from continuing
| to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of
| their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other
| Asian subsidiaries or JVs._
|
| They're developed outside of Belgium, Germany, France,
| Italy, etc since private businesses care most about
| prioritizing shareholder returns, not national
| sovereignty. And with Western EUs high labor costs, high
| taxes, high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies
| slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do
| business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor
| protections, etc. Everyone with basic business know-how
| could have seen this coming but people still thought they
| could have their cake and eat it too in the globally
| cutthroat "free market" economy.
|
| Case in point, Nokia just announced it is closing
| Infinera's Munich office and moving all operations to the
| US.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > That doesn't change that people here want those cutting
| edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They
| don't want to be stuck competition with China in
| commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm
| microcontrollers
|
| You can't build an ecosystem for bleeding edge work
| without an even larger pipeline of non-bleeding edge and
| even legacy workflow. For example, it's 14nm that pays
| the bills for TSMC - not 5nm/7nm.
|
| And much of the entire Taiwanese electronics industry is
| largely coalesced around legacy nodes and low value work
| as well.
|
| > There's a limited market for ASML machines
|
| Made in American using American IP by a US DoE JV.
|
| > high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies
| slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do
| business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor
| protections, etc
|
| Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering remains
| competitive despite having similar issues as a similar
| capex heavy industry with a significant IP component.
| It's really just an institutional issue.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering
| remains competitive despite having similar issues as a
| similar capex heavy industry with a significant IP
| component. It's really just an institutional issue._
|
| Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like
| "free market" competition. It's a crazy patent minefield,
| massive regulatory moat, massive state subsidies and
| government protectionism plus sometimes backroom deals
| between pharma and politicians. Nothing remotely similar
| to commodities like consumer software and hardware.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Nothing remotely similar to commodities like software
| and hardware
|
| First, what I should have done earlier in this
| conversation because I keep forgetting how broad and
| complex of an industry this is:
|
| What do _you_ mean by the semiconductor industry? No
| country other than the US has an end-to-end domestic
| pipeline from design to fabrication to packaging to
| developing EDAs.
|
| For this thread, I have limited my conversation to
| fabrication and package. These industries have largely
| coalesed around the US and Korea/Japan/Taiwan/China/ASEAN
| for decades because of industrial policies and
| educational programs.
|
| For chip design, this industry is largely limited to the
| US, Israel, India, China, and Taiwan for decades due to a
| number of key hires at Intel back in the 1990s.
|
| The strategy needed to develop a domestic chip design
| ecosystem is completely distinct from that for developing
| a domestic fabrication or packaging ecosystem.
|
| > Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like
| "free market" competition
|
| It very much is depending on the type of compound, just
| like it is depending on the type of semiconductor (or
| downstream components).
|
| > It's all about patents, massive regulatory moats,
| massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus
| backroom deals between pharma and politicians
|
| Hate to break your cherry, but that's _all_ industries. I
| remember our lawyers spending months working with the
| trade promotion ministry of a certain CEE state along
| with KPMG in order to get a sweet heart deal to open a
| dev hub in an IT park that was associated with a
| politically connected oligarch. The economics of
| biopharma really aren 't that different from
| semiconductors:
|
| 1. You have an entirely separate design phase that is
| completely independent of synthesis/fabrication
|
| 2. You have entire sub-segments of the industry devoted
| just to synthesis/fabrication along with testing
|
| 3. Both are high capex/low margins industries, as Asian
| players in both China and India have largely disrupted
| the generics market while higher margin IP tends to be
| owned by the American subsidiaries of European Biopharma
| companies
|
| 4. It doesn't necessarily make sense to synthesize low
| margins APIs when you will inevitably be undercut by
| American, Chinese, or Indian players so the best solution
| is to specialize in design because that at least allows
| you to own IP.
|
| ------
|
| This is a question for each individual European nation,
| because this is something that the European Union
| _cannot_ solve - do EU nations _actually_ care about
| developing industrial policies intended to develop
| domestic capacity or not in specific industries.
|
| If so, does each European nation actually have the state-
| level capacity and the human capital capacity to start
| making a case for investment.
|
| Additionally, can any European state give the 50%-150%
| capital subsidy grants or 0-1% interest rate loans that
| countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, the US,
| and India along with their state-level components?
|
| After chatting with my friends who work on these types of
| questions in Bruxelles as well as a couple larger
| European capitals, the answer was no, simply because the
| fiscal leeway just doesn't exist and the demand really
| doesn't exist either. If Volkswagen AG or Groupe Renault
| is pushed into a corner, they will just shift
| manufacturing _out_ of Europe and towards China or India
| respectively.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Hate to break your cherry, but that's all industries.
| _
|
| It's not binary where it either it is or it isn't but
| there's various levels to it and Pharma gets special
| privilege over industries like cars, phones or
| semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives.
|
| _> as Asian players in both China and India have largely
| disrupted the generics_
|
| Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made
| paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever
| took from the pharmacy ware locally made? Meanwhile I
| can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's
| all Asian made goods.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made
| paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever
| took from the pharmacy ware locally made
|
| Because it was synthesized using Chinese and Indian
| sourced "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (APIs) [0],
| both of whom synthesize around 80% of all APIs required
| by European pharma manufacturers.
|
| The EU is trying to rectify this, especially after COVID
| when India decided to stop all exports of APIs and
| pharmaceuticals to Europe in order to prioritize domestic
| production [1], but it still takes time (they started in
| 2021, and it'll probably take another 5-7 years to build
| the critical mass needed to rebuild a domestic
| ecosystem).
|
| > Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop,
| smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods
|
| Becuase, as I have kept elucidating on multiple occasions
| on this thread, the entire ecosystem for these goods
| simply does not exist in Europe, and no European member
| state is interested in opening their pocketbooks to
| subsidize manufacturers to move to Europe in order to
| begin manufacturing the intermediate parts needed.
|
| Countries like those across ASEAN, South Korea, Japan,
| Taiwan, China, the US, and India offer millions to
| billions of dollars in hard cash, land, tax subsidizes,
| or a mix of all 3 in order to attract or retain
| manufacturers. EU member states simply does not do the
| same for electronics. Some of them absolutely do so for
| biopharma (such as Denmark), but by and large they tend
| to be exceptions of the rule.
|
| > Pharma gets special privilege over industries like
| cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with
| people's lives
|
| Ime, Pharma PLIs and incentives are fairly comparable to
| those that would be provided to electronic industries as
| well. The same tax sops India gave to attract Apple to TN
| were similar to those that India gave Novartis and Bayer
| decades ago, and China has been using the same subsidy
| program it used to attract electronics manufacturing to
| attract and become a major player in the biopharma space.
|
| [0] - https://pharmacia.pensoft.net/article/172383/
|
| [1] - https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/05/india-vaccine-
| heist-shod...
| catigula wrote:
| "Everyone except for me is an -ist. I'm an enlightened non-
| ist."
| mapt wrote:
| Of course. On just one avenue - The Japanese auto industry is
| huge, and practically everything in a car has some kind of chip
| in it. The chip industry isn't just CPUs and GPUs, cars use
| numerous fairly small, primitive chips you could make using
| 20-year-old process nodes. The "Comparative Advantage" of
| global trade specialization has its limits. During COVID,
| international ports shut down frequently and challenged JIT
| process inventory levels. Raising inventory levels the next
| time is one way to deal with that, but so is encouraging some
| minimum level of domestic production.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| The Japanese population trend is unsustainable with long term
| growth. Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the
| labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration. So unless
| they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going
| to be hard.
|
| In general, I think the US is looking for alternatives outside
| of Taiwan to build and operate fabs. Yes, there is a push to
| get them in the US as well.
|
| I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about
| this. No one is asking them not to create the programs to setup
| fabs. In fact the US may be thrilled that more allies are
| putting effort towards creating a supply chain not dependent on
| China (and Taiwan).
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about
| this
|
| This is a top-level issue within Europe as well.
|
| When the Biden admin began the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS ACT,
| France, Germany, and the entire EU began a massive lobbying
| campaign that verged into a trade war [0][1][2].
|
| I went to school with a number of people who became senior EU
| and EU member state civil servants and leaders, and my
| college always hosted European dignitaries on a daily basis
| (along with a yearly gala/bash where all the major EU and EU
| member state dignitaries would attend with students and
| professors [3]), and what I saw was the best and brightest
| remained in the US, and those who climbed the ladder the
| fastest in EU and EU member state governments tended to have
| some familial background or network they heavily leveraged.
| Or they lucked out and joined the right student union during
| the right election cycle. There is a chronic lack of vision,
| and more critically - a chronic disinterest to take hard
| decisions, because the incentive structures are completely
| misaligned, with MPs essentially overriding careerist
| technocrats all for the sake of electoral needs, and unlike
| Asia, businesses are kept at arms length aside from those
| that are quasi-state owned like Volkswagen, EDF, or Leonardo
| SPA.
|
| It's almost as if the worst aspects of private sector
| capitalism morphed with the worst aspects of state capitalism
| into a legalistic quagmire.
|
| [0] - https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/real-
| reason...
|
| [1] - https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/en/schadet-der-us-
| inflation...
|
| [2] - https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/how-europe-should-
| answe...
|
| [3] - https://euroconf.eu/
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Engineering pay in the EU is bad. If that can be rectified
| then top talent would not move to the US. Also, US
| companies actively harness senior individual contributors.
| I don't think traditional EU companies have that.
|
| I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a
| side show. Yes, there could be slightly looser labor laws.
| But when it comes down to it - money matters and Europe
| just doesn't pay. The same for Canada. Their universities
| plodded through AI all through the "AI Winter" and now all
| their best AI talent works for US companies. There is no
| single Canadian AI company that's at the level of what
| their US counterparts are doing.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Engineering pay in the EU is bad
|
| Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia -
| especially peer developed countries like Japan, South
| Korea, and Taiwan.
|
| The issues that have lead to laggard innovation in the EU
| outside of niches like Biopharma are institutional in
| nature.
|
| > I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc.
| are a side show...
|
| I disagree about this as someone who has first hand
| experience about this w/ regards to the American
| semiconductor industry. Having a single window to manage
| disputes, get answers within days instead of months, and
| tax subsidizes should decisions not be guaranteed in a
| timely manner help reduce risk for massive capex
| investments.
|
| This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for
| the biopharma industry, and a similar template could have
| been used for semiconductors. The issue is, the talent
| density for large swathes of electronics and computer
| engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
|
| It can be fixed, but egos need to be set aside and
| individual European states will have to adopt industrial
| policy strategies similar to those that developing
| countries adopted to build their own domestic industries.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia
| - especially peer developed countries like Japan, South
| Korea, and Taiwan.
|
| _
|
| Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the
| top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power. While if you're
| an engineer in UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, etc you're
| not that wealthy by local standards, you're just average
| like most other white collar workers, unless you work for
| a US FANG.
|
| _> This is what EU member states like Denmark provide
| for the biopharma industry_
|
| Not just Denmark, but bio/pharma is a protected and state
| sponsored industry in most EU countries, unlike software,
| electronics and electrical engineering which has been
| treated as a race to the bottom industry.
|
| _> The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of
| electronics and computer engineering just doesn 't exist
| in the EU anymore._
|
| "Oh no, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions".
| This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you
| outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of
| shareholder returns with no thought of the future.
|
| Munich is still a strong tech hub for electronics with
| Apple, Rhode & Schwarz and others developing RF and
| semiconductors there, but it can't hold a candle to the
| sci-fi work being done in SV or even Israel.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the
| top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power
|
| Nope. You legitimately are not. The top 5-10% of salaries
| in both SK/JP/TW and Western Europe are primarily the
| managerial class.
|
| And CoL is the same in SK and Japan with much of Western
| Europe.
|
| > you're just average like most other white collar
| workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
|
| Same in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. There's a reason
| immigration to Western Europe still remains somewhat
| attractive to Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese nationals
| to this day - similar salaries, but a better work culture
| and a stronger social safety net than in much of Asia.
|
| > This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you
| outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of
| shareholder returns with no thought of the future
|
| Europe hasn't been at the forefront of this industry
| since the 2000s.
|
| Yes Infineon, ASML, IMEC, and STMicro are supposedly
| European domiciled, but they were heavily dependent on
| defense R&D due to semiconductor's dual use implications
| and all of them largely subsumed American subsidiaries
| whose leadership became their leadership. As such, these
| companies haven't been "European" for decades.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| How much human labor is needed to run a semiconductor fab?
| This isn't exactly a new shipyard being announced. It seems
| like the perfect investment for an aging society, and might
| pay dividends in helping to support the automation of other
| industries.
|
| Japan also already supplies a lot of critical materials for
| semiconductor fabrication, and has a lot of experience in the
| sector. They also have a well-developed domestic mechatronics
| supply chain. It seems like a fairly straightforward thing.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It takes a fair amount of people. You have techs that keep
| the floor level stuff running, process engineers,
| maintenance techs and engineers, facilities, IT &
| automation people, logistics, quality assurance,
| management, admins. I bet you're talking more than a
| thousand people for a big facility.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| I'll try and add something positive: Hokkaido seems like a
| great place to relocate and start a life for young aspiring
| workers. Homes are larger and quality of life has some
| advantages over the more densely populated parts of Japan. It's
| also very unique in terms of climate and geography: very heavy
| snows and mountains means there's limitless adventure for
| skiers and snowboarders. Yet, despite the snowy winters the
| winter isn't as brutally cold as you might think and its not so
| long as what you see in a place like Canada. Spring comes
| quickly and the summers are long, warm and pleasant so there's
| plenty of time to take advantage of the beaches and beautiful
| forests. And about those forests, one other unique thing about
| Hokkaido is that it's the only place in the world that can
| rival (or exceed) New England in terms of its brilliance of
| fall colors.
|
| Anyways, just seems like a great place for Japanese workers to
| relocate and start a family. I guess the only thing missing
| were the jobs so hopefully these chip fabs fix that.
| echelon wrote:
| > Hokkaido seems like a great place to relocate and start a
| life for young aspiring workers.
|
| I taught English in Tokachi (Obihiro, Makubetsu-cho,
| Satsunai, Ikeda) a few decades ago and it was absolutely a
| dream.
|
| It's pristine farmland and country filled with crystal clear
| rivers and surrounded on all sides by snowcapped mountains.
| Fields that stretch forever. Hot springs. The freshest food.
| Fishing. Low cost of living.
|
| You could look up at night and not only see all the stars,
| but watch dozens of meteors by the minute during showers.
|
| Just Google for photos of Tokachi. It's gorgeous.
|
| Everything is so relaxed, it's almost the complete opposite
| of Tokyo. It's very easy to meet friends. People work hard,
| but they take time to enjoy life and nature.
|
| There are matsuri (festivals) almost twice a month. There are
| carts with whistles that beckon you to buy hot yellow sweet
| potatoes. There are fireworks and bonfires and sports and
| hiking and climbing. You can make an hour long trip to the
| ocean and see black pebble beaches that look like an alien
| world.
|
| There are more parks than you can imagine. A park on every
| block. And some of them are huge and feature giant art
| installations you can climb on. 500-ft working clocks,
| rolling hills of recycled rubber you can bounce on, tall
| dinosaurs you can climb. And don't let that lead you to
| believe there aren't an incredible amount of plants and
| flora. It's an ecological paradise and was without question
| the inspiration for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.
|
| Everyone is so friendly. The store owners know you by name
| and call to you. The children all want to get their photo
| taken with a white guy. They're adorable and they want to
| talk English to you. The old ladies will smile and wave.
|
| One time I was at a lake nestled in the mountains, and a guy
| in his late 40's or early 50's overheard that I lamented not
| having a camera (pre-smartphone era). He not only spent an
| hour taking pictures, portraits, etc. for me with his Nikon,
| but he printed them and sent them to me with a postcard.
|
| The teachers at Kohryo High School (which was sadly shut
| down) even gave me lucky money.
|
| Hokkaido is a magical place.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Your description makes me wonder how Southern Sachalin
| would look like today if it didn't fall to the Soviets in
| 1945.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| I really find it disappointing that Sakhalin didn't end
| up under the control of Japan as it's a natural extension
| of the archipelago and I feel like the Japanese could
| have done some cool things with it.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This is some good copy. I feel like you're selling me a
| timeshare or something.
| wrp wrote:
| I was in Hokkaido many years ago for work and loved it.
| Compared to the rest of Japan, indoor/outdoor spaces are
| wider, food is better, and people are friendlier. I never
| could swing another work visit, so I dream about spending
| time there in retirement.
|
| I could imagine, though, that companies might have trouble
| attracting quality talent to Hokkaido, because people see
| more opportunities in the big cities down south. I suppose
| it's like if you were trying to build a tech hub in Montana.
| ghaff wrote:
| The same could probably be said of many areas of the US (or
| other countries). Good outdoor recreation opportunities,
| some good local food options, but not a huge number of
| (local) employment opportunities or the nearby options that
| density brings.
|
| As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine but
| it's a different situation from working in a hub of
| whatever your specialty is.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine
| but it's a different situation from working in a hub of
| whatever your specialty is.
|
| The question is: is that actually a problem with Japanese
| work culture? That would be a large problem in US work
| culture because there's no loyalty from your employer, so
| you have to be prepared to find a new job at any moment.
| But it certainly _used_ to be the case that if you worked
| for BigCorp, you could reasonably expect to work there
| for the rest of your life if you wanted. And under those
| conditions, it doesn 't matter if the area is a hub for
| your job specialty.
|
| I know Japan at least used to have a work culture where
| companies would be loyal to their employees, based on
| patio11's excellent blog post on how Japanese business
| culture differs from that of the US. But that was many
| years ago now, so I don't know if the culture in Japan is
| still like that or if it has changed.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, many of those BigCorps simply went out of business
| over the years. Kodak in Rochester was a pretty good bet
| until it wasn't. Not so much culture as business
| realities.
|
| Japan has been more stable in that regard. More stability
| but probably also fewer real opportunities.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| It's not landlocked and less isolated than Montana. Montana
| is beautiful in select parts but it's also a little bleak.
| Hokkaido is still a lush island and Sapporo is a proper
| city. I'd say it's more like getting companies to move from
| SF or LA to Seattle.
| barrenko wrote:
| If you're a talent manager in AI space and looking for an
| engineer (EU) to relocate to Hokkaido, kindly contact me.
| hearsathought wrote:
| > all they can think about is their own geopolitical narrative
| fed to them by the US state department.
|
| It's almost like there is a propaganda campaign run all over
| social meda. Try a fun game, "What's it got to do with china?".
| Someone or something always tries to tie it to china.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| Because commenters outside Japan may end up buying products
| containing chips made in Japan. If it was built in let's say
| France people would be thinking less about potential invasions.
| Just as "obviously Japan is going to want to develop lucrative
| manufacturing within Japan," obviously people outside of Japan
| are going to want manufacturing that is not liable to be shut
| down or taken over in some way. Not that I think Japan and
| China will actually go to war any time soon myself.
|
| >geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department
|
| Just this week Japan and China have been getting into a fight
| over the current PM's comments over Taiwan. China has canceled
| some flights to Japan and complained to the UN, announcing it
| will defend itself from Japan.[0][1] I'm not sure what point
| you are trying to make here. Are you saying major disputes
| between China and Japan don't exist and are invented by the US
| state department? Or that thinking about it in this context is
| the result of the commenters being fed by the US state
| department?
|
| [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3333992/china-
| blasts...
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-takes-spat-with-
| ja...
| pyrale wrote:
| Imagine HN was Japanese and everyone was talking about how
| the US was threatening to invade Greenland on a topic about a
| new plant in Montana.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| More like a new plant in Iceland, after the PM of Iceland
| said any attack on Greenland would be a survival-
| threatening situation for Iceland.
|
| To be clear I think the comments about "geopolitical
| stability" or whatever term we use are not as interesting
| as new chip plants itself. Or at least they are a bit tired
| by now. I also wish Japan the best and I think they are
| fully capable of building such a factory and I hope they do
| so. But to claim that the geopolitical considerations are
| invented is wrong. And in fact one of the reasons the
| Japanese government is investing in local fabs to begin
| with is due to national security, as mentioned in the
| article:
|
| >Securing control over chip manufacturing is being seen as
| a national security priority, both in Japan and elsewhere,
| as recent trade frictions and geopolitical tensions between
| China and Taiwan raise concerns around the risks of relying
| on foreign suppliers.
|
| So yes, viewing the entire story through a geopolitical
| lens is understandable.
| SllX wrote:
| The PRC and Japan is not a remotely comparable situation to
| the PRC and Taiwan.
|
| The most the PRC could do is potentially sabotage production
| in Hokkaido, but if they can sabotage production in Hokkaido,
| they can sabotage it in Arizona.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Fun fact, there's more precedent to Russia successfully
| invading Paris than Japan. Although to be fair, they had
| help.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Sixth_Coalition
| carabiner wrote:
| Only 11 top level comments right now, and 354 total comments.
| To see just 3% of comments be top level is something.
| wjsdj2009 wrote:
| Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Good choice with a proven track record. S. R. Hadden built an
| impressive machine there in the late 90's.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| "Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
| pbrum wrote:
| I resolutely approve of this comment. Bravo.
| rdl wrote:
| Hokkaido is by a wide margin my favorite place in the world. If I
| could easily HQ a tech company there (for global sales; Japan
| domestic market is stagnant), I would.
| octaane wrote:
| This, on the surface, makes logistical sense. Chitose (the
| proposed location) is the international airport for and largest
| airport in Hokkaido (New Chitose Airport). Setting up a fab and
| related facilities right next to this location would seem to have
| obvious benefits.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Japan tends to be a favorite for most enterprise SaaS companies
| when opening an APJ sales foothold - no other Asian economy is
| of a similar size and open to Western firms.
|
| Additionally, a Tokyo HQ often manages your South Korea and
| Taiwan operations as well because of legacy business ties from
| the colonial era as well as the flying geese era. That said,
| Sapporo does remain a bit of a niche area like Seattle or
| Portland before semiconductors because of how dominant Tokyo,
| Osaka, and Nagoya are.
|
| Knock on wood the Rapidus helps spark a Japanese Beaverton.
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