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> 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 cons

> 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".

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
> allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies The sanctions have no real impact on industrial espionage and the like.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  You're saying the level of character is Chinese espionage is the same between a factory in the US and a factory in China mandated to have ccp personnel as emplyees?
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    No, but companies are not shipping their ASML machines to china. US firms are already aware of this and avoid sending the secret sauce to China, they use china for final assembly, production of lower value components, etc.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Yeah, but it is much easier to conduct industrial espionage when the company you are trying to steal tech from has a physical subsidiary on your territory, and when they are legally required to be under oversight from one of the party people officially assigned to "oversee" that subsidiary. I have no illusions that the industrial espionage will stop entirely as soon as the US pulls out of China. Even now, without pulling out, FBI and DOJ routinely catch their spies red-handed in their attempts to steal tech from within the US territory. I imagine that after the US pulls out, industrial espionage efforts of China from within the US territory will only increase, as their previous main avenue for that (aka the US subsidiaries located in China) ceases to exist. However, doing so makes things more difficult, risky, and expensive for them, thus slowing down the rate of gains from industrial espionage.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  This is downvoted, but really too mild. The idea of the chip curb is to force China to develop domestic replacements, which will cause industrial espionage to go up. When you declare economic war on a nation, you can expect them to ramp up spending on industrial espionage quite a bit. Not sure why this is so controversial.
  - mrcheesebreeze 4y ago
    furthermore they tend to push harder against sanctions when they happen. many of the most well known sanctioned nations (north korea, iran, turkiye, etc.) have just made their own stuff to varying degrees, based on how much they aren't allowed to buy. furthermore bigger nations like china can fire back hard if need be. we saw how europe's sanctions against russia were met with gas denial. all in all, sanctions usually don't do much outside of wartime other than piss off the target of said sanctions, and actually push them to rely on you less.
    - lovich 4y ago
      Why is the fact they spend more hand waved away as not an affect? Forcing them to spend more in one area lowers their ability to spend in other areas, warfare since the industrial era has been about logistics and who can put produce the other side
      - rsj_hn 4y ago
        Two issues: 1. In the case of china, we are forcing them to spend more on very high tech, strategic investments, effectively accelerating their march up the value chain. 2. It's true that there is a cost in the extra R&D spending, but there is also a cost in the lost revenue of western chip makers. NVIDIA is going to take a bath -- that will cut into their R&D budget, etc. So we are also imposing costs on our own R&D spending while accelerating the R&D spending of our adversary - and let's just admit that China is an adversary. This is a very strange departure from how these types of trade wars have been historically waged. Normally if you want to hurt some countries' industry and help your own, you put a tariff on their stuff and you subsidize your stuff. E.g. make it harder for China to sell their cars here and easier to sell your cars there. You encourage more exports and discourage imports. What we are doing now is making it harder to sell our stuff there, but no tariff on the importation of Chinese chips into the U.S. So we are discouraging exports without blocking imports. And this policy is supposed to hurt China and help the US, which I find completely baffling. This is, unfortunately, par for the course with sanctions mania, where the only policy lever we appear to have with anyone is sanctions. These sanctions are economically disastrous for the US and for Western nations generally. The only thing I can think of is that because we don't see the impact when we sanction small nations such as Cuba, we think there will still be no impact when we sanction big economies. But there is an impact, and future economic historians will look on this period of sanctions as being far more economically suicidal than the mania on trade barriers. Because a sanction is just a one way trade barrier -- directed only at yourself and your own industry.
- Alupis 4y ago
  They absolutely do. Companies won't be able to operate facilities within Chinese territory for the Chinese government to steal tech from. That will curb the overwhelming majority of the "espionage" taking place today... and will force the Chinese government to seek alternative ways to gain the technology (such as spies on US soil, which falls under the FBI's purview). I can't reference this story[1] enough. The Chinese government literally stole ARM China right out from underneath ARM's nose. This sort of brazen technology heist won't be possible given sanctions. [1] https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th...
JPKab 4y ago
You're exactly right in this comment. A lot of the commenters in this thread appear to be completely unaware of how massive of a shift has occurred with the dictatorship of Xi Jinping. Xi is not Hu Jintao (whom he had marched out of the CCP Congress in public view for maximum humiliation). He is not only a dictator, but also deeply insecure. This isn't another highly competent "engineer turned leader" like his predecessors. Xi is a thoroughly mediocre, lifelong political creature. He has consolidated power to the greatest degree since Chairman Mao, and has turned the CCP into a cult of personality. He is running the Chinese economy off a cliff, meaning that China's ability to develop the tech domestically is cratering. It's hard to emphasize how different China is than before 2012. If a leader like Hu Jintao was running China, they would be able to develop this tech relatively quickly. But Xi? Everything he micromanages turns to shit.
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  For anyone interested in a more detailed account - check out the podcast “The Prince” by The Economist.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Hu is old, he needs help to walk. He was helped in and out and even returned later. Likely he needed a loo. If you believed such a ridiculous notion, what else do you believe that is false?
m000 4y ago
> by allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies What tech would that be? Btw, China has already surpassed USA in scientific output [1]. Putting their research in applied use is just around the corner, and believing that they can't do it is just wishful thinking. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_scientific_and_technical_journal_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
- mostlysimilar 4y ago
  How much does the quantity matter compared to the quality, and is there a way to assess the relative quality?
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    The journal Nature tries to measure overall scientific output of institutions and countries, based on numbers of articles published in high-quality journals. China has passed the US for the first time in the last few months: [0]. It's not a perfect measure, but it gives you an idea of how rapidly things have changed. Another indicator you can look at is R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP. China hasn't caught up with the US yet, but it has been steadily ramping up: [1]. 0. https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/generate/All/global https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/generate... 1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locations=CN-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locat...
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  Sure, then why worry about sanctions?
- ericmay 4y ago
  This doesn't measure impact of these scientific papers though, neglects US corporate and private research that doesn't get published and cited through the same means, and we have no measure of the relationship between publishing of scientific papers and "whatever we think that will accomplish". Also there's no information from that link on who is citing these papers. Maybe it's circular citations. Seems like a poor measure without further information.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

> allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies The sanctions have no real impact on industrial espionage and the like.

thatguy0900 4y ago
You're saying the level of character is Chinese espionage is the same between a factory in the US and a factory in China mandated to have ccp personnel as emplyees?
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  No, but companies are not shipping their ASML machines to china. US firms are already aware of this and avoid sending the secret sauce to China, they use china for final assembly, production of lower value components, etc.
filoleg 4y ago
Yeah, but it is much easier to conduct industrial espionage when the company you are trying to steal tech from has a physical subsidiary on your territory, and when they are legally required to be under oversight from one of the party people officially assigned to "oversee" that subsidiary. I have no illusions that the industrial espionage will stop entirely as soon as the US pulls out of China. Even now, without pulling out, FBI and DOJ routinely catch their spies red-handed in their attempts to steal tech from within the US territory. I imagine that after the US pulls out, industrial espionage efforts of China from within the US territory will only increase, as their previous main avenue for that (aka the US subsidiaries located in China) ceases to exist. However, doing so makes things more difficult, risky, and expensive for them, thus slowing down the rate of gains from industrial espionage.
rsj_hn 4y ago
This is downvoted, but really too mild. The idea of the chip curb is to force China to develop domestic replacements, which will cause industrial espionage to go up. When you declare economic war on a nation, you can expect them to ramp up spending on industrial espionage quite a bit. Not sure why this is so controversial.
- mrcheesebreeze 4y ago
  furthermore they tend to push harder against sanctions when they happen. many of the most well known sanctioned nations (north korea, iran, turkiye, etc.) have just made their own stuff to varying degrees, based on how much they aren't allowed to buy. furthermore bigger nations like china can fire back hard if need be. we saw how europe's sanctions against russia were met with gas denial. all in all, sanctions usually don't do much outside of wartime other than piss off the target of said sanctions, and actually push them to rely on you less.
  - lovich 4y ago
    Why is the fact they spend more hand waved away as not an affect? Forcing them to spend more in one area lowers their ability to spend in other areas, warfare since the industrial era has been about logistics and who can put produce the other side
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      Two issues: 1. In the case of china, we are forcing them to spend more on very high tech, strategic investments, effectively accelerating their march up the value chain. 2. It's true that there is a cost in the extra R&D spending, but there is also a cost in the lost revenue of western chip makers. NVIDIA is going to take a bath -- that will cut into their R&D budget, etc. So we are also imposing costs on our own R&D spending while accelerating the R&D spending of our adversary - and let's just admit that China is an adversary. This is a very strange departure from how these types of trade wars have been historically waged. Normally if you want to hurt some countries' industry and help your own, you put a tariff on their stuff and you subsidize your stuff. E.g. make it harder for China to sell their cars here and easier to sell your cars there. You encourage more exports and discourage imports. What we are doing now is making it harder to sell our stuff there, but no tariff on the importation of Chinese chips into the U.S. So we are discouraging exports without blocking imports. And this policy is supposed to hurt China and help the US, which I find completely baffling. This is, unfortunately, par for the course with sanctions mania, where the only policy lever we appear to have with anyone is sanctions. These sanctions are economically disastrous for the US and for Western nations generally. The only thing I can think of is that because we don't see the impact when we sanction small nations such as Cuba, we think there will still be no impact when we sanction big economies. But there is an impact, and future economic historians will look on this period of sanctions as being far more economically suicidal than the mania on trade barriers. Because a sanction is just a one way trade barrier -- directed only at yourself and your own industry.
Alupis 4y ago
They absolutely do. Companies won't be able to operate facilities within Chinese territory for the Chinese government to steal tech from. That will curb the overwhelming majority of the "espionage" taking place today... and will force the Chinese government to seek alternative ways to gain the technology (such as spies on US soil, which falls under the FBI's purview). I can't reference this story[1] enough. The Chinese government literally stole ARM China right out from underneath ARM's nose. This sort of brazen technology heist won't be possible given sanctions. [1] https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th...

JPKab 4y ago

You're exactly right in this comment. A lot of the commenters in this thread appear to be completely unaware of how massive of a shift has occurred with the dictatorship of Xi Jinping. Xi is not Hu Jintao (whom he had marched out of the CCP Congress in public view for maximum humiliation). He is not only a dictator, but also deeply insecure. This isn't another highly competent "engineer turned leader" like his predecessors. Xi is a thoroughly mediocre, lifelong political creature. He has consolidated power to the greatest degree since Chairman Mao, and has turned the CCP into a cult of personality. He is running the Chinese economy off a cliff, meaning that China's ability to develop the tech domestically is cratering. It's hard to emphasize how different China is than before 2012. If a leader like Hu Jintao was running China, they would be able to develop this tech relatively quickly. But Xi? Everything he micromanages turns to shit.

8ytecoder 4y ago
For anyone interested in a more detailed account - check out the podcast “The Prince” by The Economist.
dontlaugh 4y ago
Hu is old, he needs help to walk. He was helped in and out and even returned later. Likely he needed a loo. If you believed such a ridiculous notion, what else do you believe that is false?

m000 4y ago

> by allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies What tech would that be? Btw, China has already surpassed USA in scientific output [1]. Putting their research in applied use is just around the corner, and believing that they can't do it is just wishful thinking. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_scientific_and_technical_journal_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

mostlysimilar 4y ago
How much does the quantity matter compared to the quality, and is there a way to assess the relative quality?
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  The journal Nature tries to measure overall scientific output of institutions and countries, based on numbers of articles published in high-quality journals. China has passed the US for the first time in the last few months: [0]. It's not a perfect measure, but it gives you an idea of how rapidly things have changed. Another indicator you can look at is R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP. China hasn't caught up with the US yet, but it has been steadily ramping up: [1]. 0. https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/generate/All/global https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/generate... 1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locations=CN-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locat...
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
Sure, then why worry about sanctions?
ericmay 4y ago
This doesn't measure impact of these scientific papers though, neglects US corporate and private research that doesn't get published and cited through the same means, and we have no measure of the relationship between publishing of scientific papers and "whatever we think that will accomplish". Also there's no information from that link on who is citing these papers. Maybe it's circular citations. Seems like a poor measure without further information.