As an American this constant China fear-mongering feels so out of place; it's like trying to plug the Titanic with your fingers. Historically China has been one of the most important financial centers in the world; this is just a regression to the mean. Why are we trying to stop it when the Chinese clearly want to collaborate with us.
The train's leaving the station without us. There's a political, multipolar, realignment between the Global South, i.e. the non 'golden billion', and Eurasia - and we're not playing a leading role when we should be.
Unipolarity is a unique abnormality throughout history; why do we think the current status quo of the U.S. hegemon is the default for the future?
Where is the evidence that China wants to collaborate with "us"? It seems like their standard playbook is to entice or force others to open their markets to them, but then refuse to reciprocate.
They are an isolationist authoritarian nation, with already-large and still-growing influence over world politics and economic matters. Perhaps what the West is doing right now to attempt to curb this is the wrong move, but I don't think the "fear-mongering" is unwarranted at all.
It is important to understand that "the western world is conspiring against us" is a major tenet of state propaganda in Russia, China, Iranian and other totalitarian countries.
>we're not playing a leading role when we should be.
if the success of the Tiangong space station is any indication, we're not playing a role at all. the Tiangong analysis on HN alone should serve as a sobering wake up call that things like the wolf amendment have basically neutered the US ability to engage with what is by many standards a parity player thats met or exceeded most western technological touchstones.
this chipmaking technology, its not magic or really even exclusive no matter how badly the west wishes it were. its predicated on the fundamentals of well funded STEM education, well funded research and development, intellectual curiosity and a collective motivation and morale to succeed. this country invented Artemisinin, Non-invasive prenatal diagnostic testing for Down Syndrome, synthetic insulin, and even discovered things like Chens prime and finite element methodology.
The last time the US shunned them from a space station they built one that was in many ways better than the ISS. I for one am excited to see what new chip technology emerges in the next few years.
"Why are we trying to stop it when the Chinese clearly want to collaborate with us."
Who is "we"?
Not snark. A deep question.
Answering that will reveal a lot.
I'd love to leave it there as an exercise for the reader, but I can see it would be misinterpreted, or at least potentially so (this isn't about any particular characteristics of our leadership today, either hypothetical or real, my point is much more generic and world-historic than that), so I will expand with this bit: The leadership of the US has for the past several decades essentially been the most powerful leadership in the world. China challenges that now, as does Russia. Of course the leadership wants to stop that. You or I may not care in the slightest, because just because China is a peer force on the world stage or not may not impact our lives greatly, it's not like the only nice place to live in the world is exactly and precisely the most powerful one.But the leadership can care a lot more than the people they lead. This always happens when control and power fades. You can see many instances in history of such leadership of all forms and sources lashing out in rather predictable manners in ways that are oblivious to or even actively negative for the people they lead.
I think the citizenry of the US would generally be better off with a controlled welcome and some space given to these other up-and-coming powers, rather than fighting a war to hold on to power that they can't retain anyhow. I personally think even our military position would be better off, because it's better to retain your force projection ability and not fight, than to expend it uselessly and potentially enter into a situation where you have nothing at all. But a dumbass war on behalf of our leadership at the active expense of our citizenry is likely what we'll get even so.
>As an American this constant China fear-mongering feels so out of place
ask Chinese, they will tell you there is constant US fear mongering in their media. Every year they have a blockbuster where US are the bad guys and China has to fight them. Chinese media is 100% party controlled. They are grooming population for accepting eventual conflict, most likely over Taiwan invasion.
It is beyond me why would people try to even consider an idea of defending China or arguing from devil's advocate PoV. It is in the best interest of literally everyone in the civilized world to curb the current regime in China with Xi continued power centralization and breakneck pace at catching up with North Korea in terms of how the country is ruled.
I seriously think HN comments get brigaded by Chinese infowarriors, so often and reliably. There's a tone that's pretty consistent with the official party line: hold up a strawman of "free markets" and "rules-based order" as necessarily absolutist, and then attack the US for being hypocrites when not absolutist. Paint China as a victim, who like Rome, is attempting to conquer their neighbors in self-defense.
The US and the (relatively small) global democratic order (of which Japan and Taiwan are a part), is deeply flawed in many ways, but thus far it seems a better system than what China is selling, which is outright and unveiled autocracy and totalitarianism. Complicit in everything wrong with North Korea. It's easy to envy the efficiency of totalitarian regimes like XJ's but none of us would trade citizenship with someone living in it.
China as a geographic area was dominated by superpowers for eons, but they were relatively isolated from half the planet for most of it, separated by mountains, deserts, and oceans as they are. Their history is replete with a changing nature of what "China" was, e.g. the Kara-Khanids were not the Han, though they were an empire. It's a bit intellectually lazy or a function of over-generalization to think of China as being a continuous empire, but it's quite useful rhetorically. Chinese culture is longer-lived than any system of government it's had.
I think it's also a logical fallacy to assume that the status of being an empire is indelible. England was nothing for eons until it became arguably the greatest planet-scale empire for a relatively short time, and then it wasn't anymore. "China" has never been a planet-scale empire. Nobody is expecting the Persians to ever be a shadow of what that empire once was. I'm not sure China has a "rightful-place" more than anyone else. To presume it does also assumes that China will not balkanize over time, and that it survives intact despite its own belligerent and weaselly policies on the global stage.
This such a short-sighted move. It might curb China today, but tomorrow they will have developed their own domestic technology and the US will no longer have anything to sanction. It also stops Western companies' ability to grow.
> It might curb China today, but tomorrow they will have developed their own domestic technology.
You believe it is a short-sighted move, because you only considered those two options, without considering the third one (which is much closer to the current reality than those two).
As others have pointed out, it isn't a choice between "let China develop their own domestic tech on their own by making the US pull out" and "let the US companies grow by developing their stuff in China".
It is a choice between "let China develop their own domestic tech on their own by making the US pull out" and "let China develop their own domestic tech even faster and with a higher chance of success, by allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies, all while with China kneecapping and maintaining the de facto power over those US subsidiaries located in China".
Western companies don't grow in China. At best they get tenuous access while their IP is blatantly stolen to favor a domestic successor. The idea that western companies have anything to gain operating in China is naive IMO.
The lure of access to the Chinese market has been used and western leaders now realize it's a lie. The one sided cooperation with China is wisely being ended, if the Chinese government wants any technology or resource going forward it will have to be completely grown from within. But here's the kicker, why would any Chinese citizen go and start a company? All it means is you have a massive target on your back for one of the political elite to swoop in and take what you've built. Why would you work towards building a massive company like Jack Ma did when the reward is being tortured and disappeared when you step slightly out of line?
So the best and most ambitious minds in China will go into politics or leave the country.
Throw in the coming demographic collapse I think China's peak is behind us.
if basic security doesn't work, why do people bother with passwords or basic cybersecurity measures? Most crimes are done on soft targets, even making things slightly difficult is enough
Common sense says that making espionage even slightly harder has fantastic results, look at how restrictions on nuclear technology have been successful at preventing proliferation for decades. North Korea only got their nukes after the US lifted sanctions under Clinton for a few years and China helped them
Also does the move going to negatively impact US businesses and possibly US consumers. Ultimately these measures are restrictions on what US companies can do. These restrictions are going to affect their existing/potential revenues.
So what the US companies get in the bargain with the US Government to offset their lost revenues due to this measure seems unclear.
This feels like bait and I'm surprised it is at the top. Here's why it feels like bait:
- Who is ranting about the free market. Republicans? Really just a select few and only in specific contexts. But they haven't ever voted in that interest so I'm not sure this is anything new.
- It feels like it is implying China has the moral upper hand. The same country who takes US invented products and sells them 10x cheaper under a different brand, violating international intellectual property laws. Buy Spot for $75k or Weilan's Alpha Dog or Unitree's Go for $2.5k?
- China complains about US taking their technology and talent while taking US technology and talent. Is this not hypocritical, double-standard protectionism, or even economic warfare?
- The comment implies that one side is morally right and the other isn't. Instead it is quite possible that the two have been engaged in soft economic warfare for decades and that neither is morally "right" (who has the high ground is arguable, but they definitely both are in the mud).
- This comment is boiling the situation down and decades of (complex) context into a singular point of time and singular action. It discourages looking at the events that led to this event and why the choices involved were made. This is bad faith.
So I want to encourage discussion on the topic, but I don't understand how this comment is anything but bait. It is reactionary and promoting reactionary comments. I suggest others don't take the bait.
If I'm wrong in my analysis I'm open to it. But I needed to explain why I don't think this comment is engaging in good faith nor promoting a healthy and fruitful discussion.
This is implying that China is providing a "Free Market". For example it is impossible for American companies to even open a chip plant in China without first going through a Chinese company.
The "free market" is just a tool, nothing more. The second it starts to interfere with the livelihood or your country or the health and welbeing of its citizens, governments are well within their bounds to step in and interrupt this "free market".
The wisdom and second order effects of those policies is a secondary discussion.
Because "free markets" are not a goal, they are a tool. Markets should be exactly as free as they need to be in order to provide reasonable allocation of scarce goods with elastic demand, and no freer. Markets exist in service of society, not in service of themselves.
Well I guess the US could force all Chinese companies to work through local majority-owned US subsidiaries and then maybe entirely ban all Chinese media organizations as well as ban many of Chinese websites and internet corporations etc.
Would that make you feel better? It would be some steps in the directions of ending hypocrisy and double-standards anyway.
When a major country is threatening to invade our allied countries, such as the threats to the country of Taiwan, your concerns take a back see national security issues.
Similarly shouldn't weapons to Russia either, and it would be silly to complained about the free market when they are literally killing people right now.
The internet in general is incapable of admitting that the US does some things right.
I'm thankful every day that I live in the world the US created and shaped, and not the world that was created and shaped by China (or the Soviet Union, or the British Empire)
Oh dont worry germany wants access to china’s car market and so it will push for china friendly policies in the eu. Germany is heading towards stagnation and thats likely the only market that can drive growth. Same reason they dont mind uighur slave labour, much like they ignored russias human rights abuses - yet quickly sanctioning allies for even the slightest disagreement. I hope the us manages to push this through so more high tech manufacturing returns to the us and free europe.
US must coerce allies into accepting anti-China strategy - sieges do not work unless it is complete. Depriving China of the ability to advance technologically, economically and militarily will ensure supremacy and the maintenance of the rule based order
Always the promotion of abstraction over concrete identification of interests and power. Who is in charge? "The rules, the rules are in charge". No, it is US world domination and hegemony, plain and simple.
Which is fine, but it's always couched in layers of bs because it allows for the propaganda of "liberal democracy" values of US to obscure good old power and dominance and maintain moral superiority.
US routinely target and kill people inside other sovereign nations borders during peacetime, with scant regards for any "rules-based-order".
Not to mention not being a signatory to major treaties and conventions that are are part of that "rules based order", like UNCLoS, ICJ, ICC and also hasn't ratified significant components of the Geneva Convention.
US like to talk about "rule-based order" but ignores those rules when it's not convenient. United Nations Security Council voted against invasions of Yugoslavia and Iraq.
It would have worked if China didn't have deep pool of engineers and fundings to backup multi decade R&D projects. We are going to look back at this and realize it's a strategic mistake.
The US realized it can't win in a globalized world, so now they work to partition the world and call themselves "the good guys" and hope other countries will join and remain dependent and obedient.
I think you're partially correct but the framing is a bit off. A country's interests and security comes first. We have seen China's values and goals obviously clash with western values so why would the west let them have their way?
Voluntary CHIPS4 a bust so down to unilateral "pushing". Weaken Yen = more demand from PRC and incentive to de-americanize supply chains while increasingly expensive for JP to procure US defense. US can coerce with big sticks but at some point the logic/draw of carrots may be overwhelming.
I'd rather my country not follow the US off yet another cliff. We still remember the US lying about weapons of mass destruction to justify yet another unnecessary war (only necessary to feed the American war machine)
[+] [-] ram4jesus|3 years ago|reply
The train's leaving the station without us. There's a political, multipolar, realignment between the Global South, i.e. the non 'golden billion', and Eurasia - and we're not playing a leading role when we should be.
Unipolarity is a unique abnormality throughout history; why do we think the current status quo of the U.S. hegemon is the default for the future?
[+] [-] kelnos|3 years ago|reply
They are an isolationist authoritarian nation, with already-large and still-growing influence over world politics and economic matters. Perhaps what the West is doing right now to attempt to curb this is the wrong move, but I don't think the "fear-mongering" is unwarranted at all.
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|3 years ago|reply
Moves like this only serve to confirm it.
[+] [-] nimbius|3 years ago|reply
if the success of the Tiangong space station is any indication, we're not playing a role at all. the Tiangong analysis on HN alone should serve as a sobering wake up call that things like the wolf amendment have basically neutered the US ability to engage with what is by many standards a parity player thats met or exceeded most western technological touchstones.
this chipmaking technology, its not magic or really even exclusive no matter how badly the west wishes it were. its predicated on the fundamentals of well funded STEM education, well funded research and development, intellectual curiosity and a collective motivation and morale to succeed. this country invented Artemisinin, Non-invasive prenatal diagnostic testing for Down Syndrome, synthetic insulin, and even discovered things like Chens prime and finite element methodology.
The last time the US shunned them from a space station they built one that was in many ways better than the ISS. I for one am excited to see what new chip technology emerges in the next few years.
[+] [-] jerf|3 years ago|reply
Who is "we"?
Not snark. A deep question.
Answering that will reveal a lot.
I'd love to leave it there as an exercise for the reader, but I can see it would be misinterpreted, or at least potentially so (this isn't about any particular characteristics of our leadership today, either hypothetical or real, my point is much more generic and world-historic than that), so I will expand with this bit: The leadership of the US has for the past several decades essentially been the most powerful leadership in the world. China challenges that now, as does Russia. Of course the leadership wants to stop that. You or I may not care in the slightest, because just because China is a peer force on the world stage or not may not impact our lives greatly, it's not like the only nice place to live in the world is exactly and precisely the most powerful one.But the leadership can care a lot more than the people they lead. This always happens when control and power fades. You can see many instances in history of such leadership of all forms and sources lashing out in rather predictable manners in ways that are oblivious to or even actively negative for the people they lead.
I think the citizenry of the US would generally be better off with a controlled welcome and some space given to these other up-and-coming powers, rather than fighting a war to hold on to power that they can't retain anyhow. I personally think even our military position would be better off, because it's better to retain your force projection ability and not fight, than to expend it uselessly and potentially enter into a situation where you have nothing at all. But a dumbass war on behalf of our leadership at the active expense of our citizenry is likely what we'll get even so.
[+] [-] rasz|3 years ago|reply
ask Chinese, they will tell you there is constant US fear mongering in their media. Every year they have a blockbuster where US are the bad guys and China has to fight them. Chinese media is 100% party controlled. They are grooming population for accepting eventual conflict, most likely over Taiwan invasion.
[+] [-] neonsunset|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aksss|3 years ago|reply
The US and the (relatively small) global democratic order (of which Japan and Taiwan are a part), is deeply flawed in many ways, but thus far it seems a better system than what China is selling, which is outright and unveiled autocracy and totalitarianism. Complicit in everything wrong with North Korea. It's easy to envy the efficiency of totalitarian regimes like XJ's but none of us would trade citizenship with someone living in it.
China as a geographic area was dominated by superpowers for eons, but they were relatively isolated from half the planet for most of it, separated by mountains, deserts, and oceans as they are. Their history is replete with a changing nature of what "China" was, e.g. the Kara-Khanids were not the Han, though they were an empire. It's a bit intellectually lazy or a function of over-generalization to think of China as being a continuous empire, but it's quite useful rhetorically. Chinese culture is longer-lived than any system of government it's had.
I think it's also a logical fallacy to assume that the status of being an empire is indelible. England was nothing for eons until it became arguably the greatest planet-scale empire for a relatively short time, and then it wasn't anymore. "China" has never been a planet-scale empire. Nobody is expecting the Persians to ever be a shadow of what that empire once was. I'm not sure China has a "rightful-place" more than anyone else. To presume it does also assumes that China will not balkanize over time, and that it survives intact despite its own belligerent and weaselly policies on the global stage.
[+] [-] d0mine|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|3 years ago|reply
Also, Tokyo will likely push for concessions in exchange from Washington regarding military basing and other hot button issues.
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filoleg|3 years ago|reply
You believe it is a short-sighted move, because you only considered those two options, without considering the third one (which is much closer to the current reality than those two).
As others have pointed out, it isn't a choice between "let China develop their own domestic tech on their own by making the US pull out" and "let the US companies grow by developing their stuff in China".
It is a choice between "let China develop their own domestic tech on their own by making the US pull out" and "let China develop their own domestic tech even faster and with a higher chance of success, by allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies, all while with China kneecapping and maintaining the de facto power over those US subsidiaries located in China".
[+] [-] djohnston|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] friedman23|3 years ago|reply
So the best and most ambitious minds in China will go into politics or leave the country.
Throw in the coming demographic collapse I think China's peak is behind us.
[+] [-] melling|3 years ago|reply
The same will happen for AI (machine learning).
The United States wouldn’t have gone to the moon in the 1960’s if it weren’t for The Soviet Union.
[+] [-] ren_engineer|3 years ago|reply
Common sense says that making espionage even slightly harder has fantastic results, look at how restrictions on nuclear technology have been successful at preventing proliferation for decades. North Korea only got their nukes after the US lifted sanctions under Clinton for a few years and China helped them
[+] [-] publicola1990|3 years ago|reply
So what the US companies get in the bargain with the US Government to offset their lost revenues due to this measure seems unclear.
[+] [-] gort19|3 years ago|reply
This move is not short sighted. It is simply about not giving China the IP they want to copy. China will get there anyway, just a little slower.
[+] [-] throwaway6734|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unity1001|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godelski|3 years ago|reply
- Who is ranting about the free market. Republicans? Really just a select few and only in specific contexts. But they haven't ever voted in that interest so I'm not sure this is anything new.
- It feels like it is implying China has the moral upper hand. The same country who takes US invented products and sells them 10x cheaper under a different brand, violating international intellectual property laws. Buy Spot for $75k or Weilan's Alpha Dog or Unitree's Go for $2.5k?
- China complains about US taking their technology and talent while taking US technology and talent. Is this not hypocritical, double-standard protectionism, or even economic warfare?
- The comment implies that one side is morally right and the other isn't. Instead it is quite possible that the two have been engaged in soft economic warfare for decades and that neither is morally "right" (who has the high ground is arguable, but they definitely both are in the mud).
- This comment is boiling the situation down and decades of (complex) context into a singular point of time and singular action. It discourages looking at the events that led to this event and why the choices involved were made. This is bad faith.
So I want to encourage discussion on the topic, but I don't understand how this comment is anything but bait. It is reactionary and promoting reactionary comments. I suggest others don't take the bait.
If I'm wrong in my analysis I'm open to it. But I needed to explain why I don't think this comment is engaging in good faith nor promoting a healthy and fruitful discussion.
[+] [-] wnevets|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remarkEon|3 years ago|reply
The wisdom and second order effects of those policies is a secondary discussion.
[+] [-] kibwen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barkingcat|3 years ago|reply
China has been in a state of economic warfare since the 1920's.
[+] [-] CogitoCogito|3 years ago|reply
Would that make you feel better? It would be some steps in the directions of ending hypocrisy and double-standards anyway.
[+] [-] nerbert|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lesuorac|3 years ago|reply
Like there's nothing new about this. Also the market was never free ...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
[+] [-] spaced-out|3 years ago|reply
Not sure who you're talking about, the Biden administration has definitely not been "ranting about 'free market'".
[+] [-] stale2002|3 years ago|reply
Similarly shouldn't weapons to Russia either, and it would be silly to complained about the free market when they are literally killing people right now.
[+] [-] rntn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HyperSane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boc|3 years ago|reply
I'm thankful every day that I live in the world the US created and shaped, and not the world that was created and shaped by China (or the Soviet Union, or the British Empire)
[+] [-] yrgulation|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hunglee2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PKop|3 years ago|reply
Which is fine, but it's always couched in layers of bs because it allows for the propaganda of "liberal democracy" values of US to obscure good old power and dominance and maintain moral superiority.
[+] [-] publicola1990|3 years ago|reply
Not to mention not being a signatory to major treaties and conventions that are are part of that "rules based order", like UNCLoS, ICJ, ICC and also hasn't ratified significant components of the Geneva Convention.
[+] [-] loandbehold|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peppertree|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nivenkos|3 years ago|reply
The US is pushing Europe into complete destitution. it's the furthest from an ally imaginable, just by subtle economic warfare.
[+] [-] oa335|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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