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Well EUV alone cost many billions of dollars to develop. It's also not clear that China is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look a

Well EUV alone cost many billions of dollars to develop. It's also not clear that China is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
They don’t have to lead though, just fast follow. Many companies were hit by digital trade secret theft that was sent to China, so they are more than capable of bypassing the billions of R&D by getting access to the designs and going from there with government backing.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Many companies sent their blueprints to China and asked them to find a cheaper way to build it, and so they did. The exclusivity guarantees must have been lost in translation.
  - fvv 5y ago
    Many ? Like who ? A secret stolen that way with company permission to stole and not just to a temporary permission to use the blueprint IMHO never happened and if happened has been a micro tiny fraction of stolen secrets ie by acquisitions, price dumping , expats coming back after having worked years in key jobs and then going in china to do a job where they can use what they learned without the restrictions of westerns laws
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      I didn't mean clandestinely, I meant that western companies choose to have their product produced in China, and are surprised when the product is sold without their label attached to it. I guess it is the media pirate in me quibbling over the definition of "stole", yes, as far as intellectual property goes, the Chinese have 'stolen' the goods, but I can only speculate that the vast majority of the time they did not have to sneak into an office in the middle of the night, instead the IP was handed to them with a "please don't make copies outside of this commission, or I'll tell the US government you stole." Without enforcement, there's no such thing as private property. Western companies should have kept their secrets secret.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  That's true. And things will shift somewhat in that China will be less dependent on other countries for silicon for their economic and military security (most of which don't require cutting edge process). It's not going to happen by spending "millions" though, that will happen by continuing to aggressively follow.
manicdee 5y ago
China is very good at copying others’ homework though, thus the plethora of BEVs coming to the world market soon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chinese semi industry highly focussed on silicon carbide for automotive power electronics, with EUV being a skunkworks project taking place in Europe.
Sevaris 5y ago
It takes time to catch up. There's no reason they won't be able to though given enough time and money though.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  There are reasons they might not, and that is that the rest of the world also has time and money. China is not infinite. Catching up is definitely a lot easier and yes it does take time, but it's not a given. They've been trying to catch up with jet engines for almost as long as the west or Russia have been working on them, certainly would have out-spent the Russians by a wide margin on the effort. So far unable to match western or even Russian designs. Although maybe in just the past few months they might have finally got something which is at least good enough, just spending a lot of money for a long time doesn't guarantee results.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    The Chinese have been seriously trying to catch up in turbofan engines only since 1986. They are now far enough ahead as to be very comparable to the Russians. They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in military technology. The Chinese, on the other hand, acrually aren't incesting as much money on these technologies as one would think. The only company (SOE) that has any stake in jet engines is Shenyang, and despite also making whole aircraft, drones and so on, they have 15 000 employees for the whole operation. Comparatively, Pratt and Whitney, which does only engines and nothing else, and is one of four companies capable of making modern turbofan engines, has more than twice the employees as Shenyang, which designs and manufactures multiple different aircraft. Boeing has ten times as many employees as Shenyang. As far as outinvesting the Russians, we can compare again the number of employees. The most advanced Russian engines are produced by UEC Saturn, which only makes engines, and by itself has 21 000 employees. That's again more than Shenyang, which doesn't only make engines. So no, it's patently false that the Chinese are deploying more resources with less results.
    - 5y ago
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US" That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. I'm not. > Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo. Also no.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    In that case, Chinese innovation and efficiency in manufacturing alone rivals most other kinds in the world - it's truly a marvel for a country to be able to pay it's factory worker a higher wage than the average wage of several EU countries while actually doing the manufacturing at an integer fraction of the cost. That takes a massive amount of innovation that no country in the world is able to match. The value of this invention is arguably larger than the sum total of all innovation of the USA since the year 2000 in the amount of wealth it has generated.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      Sure. I didn't say China has done nothing impressive (although it's emissions intensity of manufacturing and other environmental and labor rights records are horrible, which takes a some of the shine off its manufacturing for me, but that blame is equally on western governments and corporations who conspired to circumvent the environmental and labor standards demanded by their populations by farming them out to totalitarian dictatorships but that's a different story). But it's bite does not match its bark when it comes to developing and inventing new ideas and technology.
kragen 5y ago
This smear could not be further from the truth. China has singlehandedly (to the extent that a billion people can be considered a "single hand") dropped the cost of solar energy from five times as expensive as fossil fuels to half as expensive as fossil fuels in only ten years, an innovation that will probably stop global warming and usher in an unprecedented age of energy abundance starting about eight years from now. And it's not just solar; Chinese-designed nuclear reactors are also starting to be exported around the world. JLCPCB has automated custom circuit-board assembly to the point where you can get prototypes in your hands for US$10, two orders of magnitude cheaper than previously. When covid hit China, before PCR tests and antibody tests, they haled people caught with fever into walk-in fever clinics where they got chest-only CT scans, and by July they had developed a vaccine and were vaccinating people who had to travel abroad, five months before any vaccines were approved in most other countries, including the US, Germany, the UK, and Russia. And obviously every electronic device you own is mostly made in China unless it's an antique. Can you imagine an Englishman in World War II saying, "It's also not clear that the US is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the pounds and shillings, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the UK. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight."?
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  China has done a lot to reduce cost and increase efficiency of solar cells, not alone though. And I didn't say they make no innovations, clearly they do.
- chx 5y ago
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    (not the OP) Do you want to point to anything that is only half true? I similarly choose to defend China against lazy characterizations that they can only steal what westerners design for them, and it's not because I want the communist party to succeed, I don't. Why are you so sure what you've read about China reflects the situation better? I have visited factories in Shenzhen and Shanghai, I am impressed by what they have accomplished, and I believe the people in this thread do themselves a disservice by having such a tainted picture of their fellow human beings.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

They don’t have to lead though, just fast follow. Many companies were hit by digital trade secret theft that was sent to China, so they are more than capable of bypassing the billions of R&D by getting access to the designs and going from there with government backing.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
Many companies sent their blueprints to China and asked them to find a cheaper way to build it, and so they did. The exclusivity guarantees must have been lost in translation.
- fvv 5y ago
  Many ? Like who ? A secret stolen that way with company permission to stole and not just to a temporary permission to use the blueprint IMHO never happened and if happened has been a micro tiny fraction of stolen secrets ie by acquisitions, price dumping , expats coming back after having worked years in key jobs and then going in china to do a job where they can use what they learned without the restrictions of westerns laws
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I didn't mean clandestinely, I meant that western companies choose to have their product produced in China, and are surprised when the product is sold without their label attached to it. I guess it is the media pirate in me quibbling over the definition of "stole", yes, as far as intellectual property goes, the Chinese have 'stolen' the goods, but I can only speculate that the vast majority of the time they did not have to sneak into an office in the middle of the night, instead the IP was handed to them with a "please don't make copies outside of this commission, or I'll tell the US government you stole." Without enforcement, there's no such thing as private property. Western companies should have kept their secrets secret.
throwawaylinux 5y ago
That's true. And things will shift somewhat in that China will be less dependent on other countries for silicon for their economic and military security (most of which don't require cutting edge process). It's not going to happen by spending "millions" though, that will happen by continuing to aggressively follow.

manicdee 5y ago

China is very good at copying others’ homework though, thus the plethora of BEVs coming to the world market soon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chinese semi industry highly focussed on silicon carbide for automotive power electronics, with EUV being a skunkworks project taking place in Europe.

Sevaris 5y ago

It takes time to catch up. There's no reason they won't be able to though given enough time and money though.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
There are reasons they might not, and that is that the rest of the world also has time and money. China is not infinite. Catching up is definitely a lot easier and yes it does take time, but it's not a given. They've been trying to catch up with jet engines for almost as long as the west or Russia have been working on them, certainly would have out-spent the Russians by a wide margin on the effort. So far unable to match western or even Russian designs. Although maybe in just the past few months they might have finally got something which is at least good enough, just spending a lot of money for a long time doesn't guarantee results.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The Chinese have been seriously trying to catch up in turbofan engines only since 1986. They are now far enough ahead as to be very comparable to the Russians. They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in military technology. The Chinese, on the other hand, acrually aren't incesting as much money on these technologies as one would think. The only company (SOE) that has any stake in jet engines is Shenyang, and despite also making whole aircraft, drones and so on, they have 15 000 employees for the whole operation. Comparatively, Pratt and Whitney, which does only engines and nothing else, and is one of four companies capable of making modern turbofan engines, has more than twice the employees as Shenyang, which designs and manufactures multiple different aircraft. Boeing has ten times as many employees as Shenyang. As far as outinvesting the Russians, we can compare again the number of employees. The most advanced Russian engines are produced by UEC Saturn, which only makes engines, and by itself has 21 000 employees. That's again more than Shenyang, which doesn't only make engines. So no, it's patently false that the Chinese are deploying more resources with less results.
  - 5y ago

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"If you just look at the dollars and cents, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the US" That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawaylinux 5y ago
> That's very debatable. Maybe you are taking all the improvements China has made in construction, manufacturing and nuclear industry, and assigning them an 'innovation value' of zero. I'm not. > Maybe you are assigning non-zero innovation to exploiters of gig economy like Deliveroo. Also no.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  In that case, Chinese innovation and efficiency in manufacturing alone rivals most other kinds in the world - it's truly a marvel for a country to be able to pay it's factory worker a higher wage than the average wage of several EU countries while actually doing the manufacturing at an integer fraction of the cost. That takes a massive amount of innovation that no country in the world is able to match. The value of this invention is arguably larger than the sum total of all innovation of the USA since the year 2000 in the amount of wealth it has generated.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    Sure. I didn't say China has done nothing impressive (although it's emissions intensity of manufacturing and other environmental and labor rights records are horrible, which takes a some of the shine off its manufacturing for me, but that blame is equally on western governments and corporations who conspired to circumvent the environmental and labor standards demanded by their populations by farming them out to totalitarian dictatorships but that's a different story). But it's bite does not match its bark when it comes to developing and inventing new ideas and technology.

kragen 5y ago

This smear could not be further from the truth. China has singlehandedly (to the extent that a billion people can be considered a "single hand") dropped the cost of solar energy from five times as expensive as fossil fuels to half as expensive as fossil fuels in only ten years, an innovation that will probably stop global warming and usher in an unprecedented age of energy abundance starting about eight years from now. And it's not just solar; Chinese-designed nuclear reactors are also starting to be exported around the world. JLCPCB has automated custom circuit-board assembly to the point where you can get prototypes in your hands for US$10, two orders of magnitude cheaper than previously. When covid hit China, before PCR tests and antibody tests, they haled people caught with fever into walk-in fever clinics where they got chest-only CT scans, and by July they had developed a vaccine and were vaccinating people who had to travel abroad, five months before any vaccines were approved in most other countries, including the US, Germany, the UK, and Russia. And obviously every electronic device you own is mostly made in China unless it's an antique. Can you imagine an Englishman in World War II saying, "It's also not clear that the US is particularly good at leading high tech innovation. If you just look at the pounds and shillings, they should be inventing new technology at a similar rate as the UK. Doesn't seem like they're pulling their weight."?

throwawaylinux 5y ago
China has done a lot to reduce cost and increase efficiency of solar cells, not alone though. And I didn't say they make no innovations, clearly they do.
chx 5y ago
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  (not the OP) Do you want to point to anything that is only half true? I similarly choose to defend China against lazy characterizations that they can only steal what westerners design for them, and it's not because I want the communist party to succeed, I don't. Why are you so sure what you've read about China reflects the situation better? I have visited factories in Shenzhen and Shanghai, I am impressed by what they have accomplished, and I believe the people in this thread do themselves a disservice by having such a tainted picture of their fellow human beings.