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It’s not easy to go back to working hard in an era of global competition. Chinese workers work far longer hours and make more product for each hour worked. Plus

It’s not easy to go back to working hard in an era of global competition. Chinese workers work far longer hours and make more product for each hour worked. Plus they are integrated into a massive supply chain and ecosystem. The wages that need to be paid to an American worker to assemble phones all day would be really really high. They’d rather just work at McDonald’s or play video games. Those high wages would give them enormous leverage (unions etc) upsetting the entire American economic system. The American system is a cyber punk reality where a country is just a container for the aspirations of a bunch of short term thinking warring AIs called corporations. The people being one of its inputs. Elections don’t change much. Anything that disrupts the AIs too much is taken care of one way or the other. Doesn’t matter if it’s Bernie or Trump. So I would say that China is safe because the last thing america will do give up any notions that their system is the best or needs to change. The west needs to realize that the momentum of a head start on industrialization and ill gotten gains from historical loot is running out. As everyone joins the industrial game the world inherently becomes multi polar. There’s no reason why only the west can have high living standards or that only the western system can sustain it. in a situation of having to manage Russia, China and Iran at once while greatly weakened , Multi lateralism is inevitable. Democracy cannot be delivered at the barrel of a gun. That only creates more messes. This week witnessed the amusing spectacle of Boris Johnson calling himself a Sinophile (give us a trade deal please). All this after running down the Chinese for months. The west can’t even decide what to do.

baybal2 6y ago
And the price for it is China being able to shut down a big chunk of your multi-trillion dollar economy with a few pen strokes. Look for example how SMIC sanctions effectively shut down the car industry, and few others. A murmur I heard is of US now backing off on SMIC because of the car industry, but that will send an even worse precedent. It will mean that nobody else will come and fill the SMIC niche, and it will still have a chokehold on a very well moneyed, and full of lobbyists industry. The next time, sanctions on SMIC may come not from US, but China itself.
- thewarrior 6y ago
  The sanctions on SMIC were imposed by the US which incentivized a stock piling and cut global supply. So it was US hobbling itself and not Chinas doing. Instead of this ham fisted approach it needs systemic solutions. For eg - make college free. Make corporations subservient to state planning of strategic priorities. It’s clear that China has the upper hand as long as US is a bunch of warring corporations that think of the next quarter. US corporations will eventually force a retreat to protect their Chinese profits. China just needs to offer them some returns. As the largest market in the world they now can.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > The sanctions on SMIC were imposed by the US which incentivized a stock piling and cut global supply. No... SMIC was making a great deal of 200mm business, possibly the biggest 200mm foundry. A lot of those decades old automotive ICs were fabbed there for the proximity to assembly lines, and tarriff avoidance.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Of course, but if it can't develop finer lithographies, it might as well give up and declare bankruptcy right now.
      - baybal2 6y ago
        > Of course, but if it can't develop finer lithographies, it might as well give up and declare bankruptcy right now. No, SMIC was in very good financial position. They work tax free, got a rather good niche of expensive old chips, and a status of the only first tier foundry in worlds biggest semiconductor market. 200mm is currently booked for years ahead, so they are not going anywhere for those years ahead at least. People on this forum know very little of how the economics for microchips work. I want people to learn up this industry to a level where they wouldn't embarrass themselves without at least having a glancing doubt about what they say first.
gurumeditations 6y ago
Clearly you have no appreciation for hard work when you equate someone working a job at a McDonald’s with laziness and playing video games.
- thewarrior 6y ago
  That wasn’t my intention. My point was that even jobs considered hard in the first world are much easier than a typical manufacturing job. And so people may forego them altogether.

baybal2 6y ago

And the price for it is China being able to shut down a big chunk of your multi-trillion dollar economy with a few pen strokes. Look for example how SMIC sanctions effectively shut down the car industry, and few others. A murmur I heard is of US now backing off on SMIC because of the car industry, but that will send an even worse precedent. It will mean that nobody else will come and fill the SMIC niche, and it will still have a chokehold on a very well moneyed, and full of lobbyists industry. The next time, sanctions on SMIC may come not from US, but China itself.

thewarrior 6y ago
The sanctions on SMIC were imposed by the US which incentivized a stock piling and cut global supply. So it was US hobbling itself and not Chinas doing. Instead of this ham fisted approach it needs systemic solutions. For eg - make college free. Make corporations subservient to state planning of strategic priorities. It’s clear that China has the upper hand as long as US is a bunch of warring corporations that think of the next quarter. US corporations will eventually force a retreat to protect their Chinese profits. China just needs to offer them some returns. As the largest market in the world they now can.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > The sanctions on SMIC were imposed by the US which incentivized a stock piling and cut global supply. No... SMIC was making a great deal of 200mm business, possibly the biggest 200mm foundry. A lot of those decades old automotive ICs were fabbed there for the proximity to assembly lines, and tarriff avoidance.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Of course, but if it can't develop finer lithographies, it might as well give up and declare bankruptcy right now.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      > Of course, but if it can't develop finer lithographies, it might as well give up and declare bankruptcy right now. No, SMIC was in very good financial position. They work tax free, got a rather good niche of expensive old chips, and a status of the only first tier foundry in worlds biggest semiconductor market. 200mm is currently booked for years ahead, so they are not going anywhere for those years ahead at least. People on this forum know very little of how the economics for microchips work. I want people to learn up this industry to a level where they wouldn't embarrass themselves without at least having a glancing doubt about what they say first.

gurumeditations 6y ago

Clearly you have no appreciation for hard work when you equate someone working a job at a McDonald’s with laziness and playing video games.

thewarrior 6y ago
That wasn’t my intention. My point was that even jobs considered hard in the first world are much easier than a typical manufacturing job. And so people may forego them altogether.