[ardy42]

> Please read the rest of the article. It discusses how China could force TSMC to stop producing chips. It even covers the US foundry, and why it won't make a difference.

But all of realistic options listed entail the fatal political defeat of Taiwan, mostly through military action. Existential political threats usually end up as military conflicts, one way or another.

The only option that doesn't involve military action is the disinformation campaign, but that's pretty far fetched.

[riku_iki]

Trade war looks most promising: Taiwan has 150B trade with China comparing to 100B trade with US.

[bwanab]

How much of that 150B trade with China is for parts that are in turn sold in US? It’s very hard to winnow out real meaning from raw trade numbers.

[blackrock]

What will happen to Taiwan, if China stops trading with Taiwan.

Like, a full on boycott.

Maybe Taiwan can sell their 150B in products to Americans?

[throwanem]

Sure. Just like farms can switch over from supplying restaurants to supplying grocery stores.

[m-ee]

What would happen to China? Foxconn alone employs hundreds of thousands of people

[cltsang]

We share the same direction of thinking.

I think China's greatest threat comes from within. And the brinkmanship is at supply-side structural reform VS unemployment.

The risk has never been this high, given

1. belt and road initiative is already half-busted

2. drastic drop of foreign demand due to pandemic

3. cry for decoupling from all wealthy nations

And see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q8oQGBcFdo

My point is: the Chinese government has been trying to tell people that they don't need to work in the city. They could work in a rural farm and lead a simple life, albeit earning close to nothing.

[ladyanita22]

In the end that's how dictatorships die.

[blackrock]

The Foxconn employees are not doing anything really productive for China.

They’re in low value jobs that keeps themselves busy, but doesn’t bring in much profit for China, except for Foxconn and Apple.

Apple benefits from cheap Chinese labor, while selling their iWares at inflated prices.

What China can do instead, is to retarget these factory workers to work in software development, or AI grunt work.

Currently, AI requires a lot of manual human data labeling, in order to identify objects.

China can utilize this already cheap and organized factory labor, to build up an object inference database. That way, the AI systems of today, can cross reference against this inference database, to identify the object.

This inference database literally becomes, the new oil of the AI age.

And through a lot of sweat equity, China can possibly dominate this key area for the AI future.

Maybe this is why 5G is so important? The lower latency of 5G would usher in the AI age.

The western world is so focused on Foxconn, and its “supposed benefits” to China. But the benefits are meager. The biggest beneficiary is Apple itself.

China should let Foxconn and other low value industries go, in order to free themselves to work on higher value pursuits.

[m-ee]

It doesn’t matter if you think they’re doing something productive for China Apple or anyone else, and the idea that they could suddenly repurpose them to do “AI” is incredibly far fetched. My point is hundreds of thousands if not millions of workers would be suddenly unemployed in such a trade war which would be an economic catastrophe, there’d be unavoidable civil unrest.

[blackrock]

This is true. The key is to retarget these factory employees to do something else before that happens.

The other side of the coin is what will happen to Apple and the American economic system?

They will have to pick up and relocate to other third world countries, for their cheap labor. Vietnam, India, Mexico? Sure. But a lot of other mid level goods come from China.

If the supply chain is stopped, then everyone is impacted. The whole thing stops.

Apple’s stock price will crater. Supposedly. But the Fed is so busy juicing the market, and Apple can just repurchase their shares, that they can financially engineer themselves out of this stock meltdown scenario.

[garmaine]

That number seems extremely low. Is it offset by purchases of American military equipment?