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US strategy towards China as of late seems so defensive and even feels a bit desperate. Banning companies from US markets or their ability to purchase things to

US strategy towards China as of late seems so defensive and even feels a bit desperate. Banning companies from US markets or their ability to purchase things to applying sweeping tariffs. What’s the endgame here? Trying to keep China contained from eclipsing the west perpetually? What about India? I’m not a fan of the shenanigans China pulls but I legitimately don’t understand what the point is trying to play whack-a-mole against all these Chinese companies

kylebenzle 2y ago
You are right on the money, its like a dying empire's last gasp, or when kids are playing hide-and-seek and one kids is found and says, "I wasn't playing anyway!" China (Tiawan) is doing fine in chip manufacturing, pretending to cut them off just hastens the US downfall.
- jameslk 2y ago
  Yes it seems weak, but to be fair, I don’t anticipate a US downfall (which I suppose can be interpreted many ways) given its immense size, military, US dollar everywhere. Not without taking down the rest of the world with it. Historically China and India were economic powerhouses for the past thousand years prior to the industrial age. The trend seems to be that they will return to that position given their gains over the past couple of decades. That seems impossible for the US to stop without waging a complete Cold War or worse. Maybe that’s the direction we’re headed
viccis 2y ago
When a vision for a better future is foreclosed, so the option of rising to meet a challenge is off the table, the only thing you can do is stop yourself from looking like a loser is to eliminate the challenge altogether.
boruto 2y ago
India is like a century or more behind. What is there to contain.
- jameslk 2y ago
  Century behind by what measure? Not from a GDP growth perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_historical_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_h... They’ve been climbing each year, ranked 4th right behind Japan They’ve also been climbing substantially in energy use: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42295 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42295 Historically a proxy for economic growth
- crote 2y ago
  That sounds like the "China can only produce cheap knockoffs, they can't produce anything new" from the early 2000s, or the "Japan is never going to catch up with American chipmakers" of the 1960s-1970s. Indian people aren't stupid. There's literally a billion of them, and we've spend the last twenty years outsourcing an awful lot of work to them. If you don't see them as a potential future threat, you have already lost.
  - boruto 2y ago
    I am an Indian who live in India after a decade of living in the west. I know what I see around me everyday.
    - Daishiman 2y ago
      And you can't see how far ahead things are compared to 20 years ago in India? And you don't see how a lot of things in the US are still going well but beginning to stagnate in many ways?
maxglute 2y ago
Buy time for AGI hailmary I suppose. Scifi hypothetical is the ~5-10 years it would take for PRC to potentially reach parity with western semi that AI would grant US strategic take off where gap can't be closed - a fight for the entire light cone. Except if PRC keeps a second mover advantage to a few years they still have massively robust supply chains to apply software AI to transform physical atoms because unlikely US AGI will suddenly build decades worth of industrial supply chains unless US AGI goes straight for grey goo. Nevermind PRC still in US telcoms and likely infiltrated every strategic AI company that matters, and if existential AGI ever on the horizon, they can smash red button to cut off 90% of advanced semi from TW. India still in the containable window, they'll get there eventually but IMO both US + PRC will take opportunity to undermine.
Barrin92 2y ago
> US strategy towards China as of late seems so defensive and even feels a bit desperate One funny reading that's been gaining traction among Chinese netizens over the last few years has been likening the US to the Trisolarians in Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem, trying to undermine science while becoming increasingly chaotic and agressive at home. I really hope apps like RedNote gain a bit of traction so there's more cultural exchange and people get a bit of an idea of how all of this is being perceived in China. There was also this whole meme last year of Trump as "建国同志", basically "Comrade Nation Builder", the joke being that the nation he's building is China because he's doing more to unify their efforts than the government ever could. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/25/comrade-nation-builder-how-china-views-donald-trumps-indictments-in-us https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/25/comrade-nation-buil...
keiferski 2y ago
It seems irrational because your framing is wrong here. The reason these measures seem random and poorly thought through is because it’s only in the last ~10 years that the US has even started paying attention to the supposed competition from China. If it was actually being taken seriously, the level of government and industry action would look similar to the Cold War. We aren’t even at 1% of that yet, and so the actions now are largely disorganized, unhurried, and “whack a mole.”

kylebenzle 2y ago

You are right on the money, its like a dying empire's last gasp, or when kids are playing hide-and-seek and one kids is found and says, "I wasn't playing anyway!" China (Tiawan) is doing fine in chip manufacturing, pretending to cut them off just hastens the US downfall.

jameslk 2y ago
Yes it seems weak, but to be fair, I don’t anticipate a US downfall (which I suppose can be interpreted many ways) given its immense size, military, US dollar everywhere. Not without taking down the rest of the world with it. Historically China and India were economic powerhouses for the past thousand years prior to the industrial age. The trend seems to be that they will return to that position given their gains over the past couple of decades. That seems impossible for the US to stop without waging a complete Cold War or worse. Maybe that’s the direction we’re headed

viccis 2y ago

When a vision for a better future is foreclosed, so the option of rising to meet a challenge is off the table, the only thing you can do is stop yourself from looking like a loser is to eliminate the challenge altogether.

boruto 2y ago

India is like a century or more behind. What is there to contain.

jameslk 2y ago
Century behind by what measure? Not from a GDP growth perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_historical_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_h... They’ve been climbing each year, ranked 4th right behind Japan They’ve also been climbing substantially in energy use: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42295 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42295 Historically a proxy for economic growth
crote 2y ago
That sounds like the "China can only produce cheap knockoffs, they can't produce anything new" from the early 2000s, or the "Japan is never going to catch up with American chipmakers" of the 1960s-1970s. Indian people aren't stupid. There's literally a billion of them, and we've spend the last twenty years outsourcing an awful lot of work to them. If you don't see them as a potential future threat, you have already lost.
- boruto 2y ago
  I am an Indian who live in India after a decade of living in the west. I know what I see around me everyday.
  - Daishiman 2y ago
    And you can't see how far ahead things are compared to 20 years ago in India? And you don't see how a lot of things in the US are still going well but beginning to stagnate in many ways?

maxglute 2y ago

Buy time for AGI hailmary I suppose. Scifi hypothetical is the ~5-10 years it would take for PRC to potentially reach parity with western semi that AI would grant US strategic take off where gap can't be closed - a fight for the entire light cone. Except if PRC keeps a second mover advantage to a few years they still have massively robust supply chains to apply software AI to transform physical atoms because unlikely US AGI will suddenly build decades worth of industrial supply chains unless US AGI goes straight for grey goo. Nevermind PRC still in US telcoms and likely infiltrated every strategic AI company that matters, and if existential AGI ever on the horizon, they can smash red button to cut off 90% of advanced semi from TW. India still in the containable window, they'll get there eventually but IMO both US + PRC will take opportunity to undermine.

Barrin92 2y ago

> US strategy towards China as of late seems so defensive and even feels a bit desperate One funny reading that's been gaining traction among Chinese netizens over the last few years has been likening the US to the Trisolarians in Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem, trying to undermine science while becoming increasingly chaotic and agressive at home. I really hope apps like RedNote gain a bit of traction so there's more cultural exchange and people get a bit of an idea of how all of this is being perceived in China. There was also this whole meme last year of Trump as "建国同志", basically "Comrade Nation Builder", the joke being that the nation he's building is China because he's doing more to unify their efforts than the government ever could. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/25/comrade-nation-builder-how-china-views-donald-trumps-indictments-in-us https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/25/comrade-nation-buil...

keiferski 2y ago

It seems irrational because your framing is wrong here. The reason these measures seem random and poorly thought through is because it’s only in the last ~10 years that the US has even started paying attention to the supposed competition from China. If it was actually being taken seriously, the level of government and industry action would look similar to the Cold War. We aren’t even at 1% of that yet, and so the actions now are largely disorganized, unhurried, and “whack a mole.”