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U.S. aims to hobble China's chip industry with sweeping new export rules

4 points| notacat | 3 years ago |reuters.com

2 comments

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simonblack|3 years ago

Short-term thinking which will lead to the death of the US semiconductor manufacturers when China is forced to build a chip industry from scratch and become an overwhelming competitor for those US manufacturers.

Short-term thinking to kill off the semiconductor geese which are laying golden eggs.

Nomentatus|3 years ago

This of course, the Chinese are already doing, and have been for some time. They didn't need any US incentives. The point is to keep China behind the curve; China's intellectual and industrial resources aren't infinite weighed against North America plus Europe, etc. Given Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and renewed promises of war against Taiwan, support for Russia's invasion, and their declared intention to greatly expand their nuclear forces and military power, limiting tech transfer to them is just prudent on the part of the US and Europe, however unfortunate. This logic is obvious whether you like the US and Europe or not.

After WWII the Brits gave (or licensed) jet engine technology to the Soviets, but regretted it soon enough. IBM lent support to the NAZI regime before (and to some extent during IIRC), which in retrospect probably wasn't wise.

I suspect that if Deng Xiaoping were alive, he would say that it's Xi who stopped thinking about the long run, and got much too excited about China's mixed progress, provoking a backlash long before it was strictly necessary; and well before China had really caught up with the West. To quote the I Ching: "Fox gets its tail in the water." Which refers to the animal crossing a stream with tail up, but dropping the tail when its front paws hit land - too soon!