[nomay]

I'm surprised to see a typical Chinese "self-media" article being shared here, coz I myself see these as nothing more than gossip blogs, so please take them with huge amount of salt or just avoid it.

At least in my experience these are highly refined entertainment product with little to no regard to what's fact, opinion and pure made-up bullshit, their only goal is to maximize click numbers, thus more often than not written by internet marketing gurus rather than ones with real and deep domain knowledge, influencer is a more apt name for them.

The owner of this self-media publicly pledging allegiance to Huawei coz he got scholarships from them also didn't help with it.

[yorwba]

I'm also surprised to see this shared here, but mostly because of the timing. Jeff Ding translated it in June 2020: https://chinai.substack.com/p/chinai-98-techlore-the-histori...

Note also that he chose to translate it because it has the entertainment value of a typical Chinese "self-media" article:

This week’s feature translation is a joint work with Joy Dantong Ma, who pitched this epic piece. My term for these types of pieces is “techlore:” longform pieces that read, at times, like epic poems in which the heroes (tech company leaders) wage battle over the commanding heights of the economy. “Development Bloggers” or the “Industrial Party,” usually people who have experience working in the tech industry and espouse techno-nationalist views, are emerging as a formidable force in Chinese media and the semiconductor industry is especially fertile ground for techlore.

You've probably scrolled past thousands of "self-media" articles and dismissed them instantly, but for many here, it's their first encounter with the genre, so it feels new and exciting. And don't forget that HN is a highly-refined entertainment product optimized for delivering new and exciting content to its users.

[rjzzleep]

How is Chinese "self-media" being gossip blogs needing salt different from all the jobs, elon musk, paul graham and other kind of hero worship this place is normally overflowing with?

Don't get me wrong, I'm generally against Hero worship in general, and I have my fair share of beefs with ALL these different hero worship things, but I grew up on Bill Gates hero worship only to later find out that he sold the whole thing before writing a single line of code thanks to his moms connections and that the garage sale was a lot of money when you account for inflation.

Why is one ok, and the other one is Chinese "self-media". How are all those "Steve Jobs was a godly human being I was once in a meeting with him" not all "self-media" and why do we suddenly need the Chinese prefix?

[nomay]

Coz Chinese people have been conditioned by a level censorship and media control unseen elsewhere, the resulting susceptibility to yummy and palatble disinformation is quite deep and prevalent, you may have read news about strong reaction about strange things from the west, you guessed it right there's alway legions of "self-media" behind it, it’s unfettered and state sanctioned algorithm-driven circlejerk machine, and the reason ByteDance's platforms make so much money.

Why do I need to point out it being "Chinese"? Coz these self-media platforms are the predominant way of getting information there, nobody but old people watch TVs and read newspapers, even stated-owned news orgs have to get on it to make money.

>The “Post-Truth” Publication Where Chinese Students in America Get Their News"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-post-trut...

[tehjoker]

Buddy, if you watch American news media with any level of knowledge about material reality you will be blown away by the level of deception, sensationalism, and servility to power. We all need to chill out when talking about foreign countries.

[nitrogen]

We all need to chill out when talking about foreign countries.

Alternatively, we all need to step up and say the same things about both home and abroad, and try to learn from and improve both.

[tehjoker]

True, but mischaracterization of an "official enemy" state is more than a simple mistake, it plays into official USG war propaganda and xenophobia.

[prewett]

I hear people saying these kinds of things all the time, but I've never gotten any concrete evidence except "they choose what things to report and leave out things we think are relevant". Ok, that's everyone, you only have so much time/space. I might agree with you for Fox TV, and news in general has had an element of sensationalism from the beginning (who wants to read/watch boring stuff?), but aside from that, what are some examples of deception and servility to power? Where would one go to determine if your accusations are true? And no right-wing / conspiracy sites, please.

Frankly, it seems to me that the only reason your comment is not be libel is simply because you didn't name any specific organization.

[tehjoker]

Take a look at any foreign policy story. The mainstream media is basically uniformly in favor of bombing and starving other countries. They have only tactical disagreements as to whether it is too costly rather than whether it is a fundamentally criminal act in violation of Article II of the UN charter.

Historically: see Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan. Today: Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba. There are many many examples. The new bugaboo is China as a part of the "pivot to Asia".

Example: https://mashable.com/2017/04/07/brian-williams-syria-missile...

[minhazm]

The difference is the access to information. In China the media you have access to is state-controlled so they control the narrative exactly how they want. You have very limited access to external news sources and media in general[1].

In the US at least you have a variety of different news channels that are everywhere from far left to far right. You can also access news sources from outside of the US that report on the US. Imagine if Fox News was the only news available in the US while Trump was president?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

[tehjoker]

The mainstream media in the US are all owned by capitalist corporations and are pro-capitalist. They represent a spectrum spanning from the far-right* (OANN) to the world right-of-center (MSNBC). The socialist and communist left nearly exclusively uses alternative distribution channels. Even centrist to social-democrats like Bernie Sanders are treated with scorn in US media.

US news is broadcast to the world as widely as possible to support the American empire's soft power projection. It also helps that they report on some news too.

* There are further right outlets in the world, but we're really getting up there these days. At least they're not outright monarchists (though supporting a presidential dictatorship by Donald Trump is getting close).

[monkeypizza]

1. China has prior restraint on everything associated with working in the media - purchase of materials required for publication of newspapers, licenses to publish media, licenses for journalists, all requiring heavy inspection of political views.

2. The US doesn't.

Your other points stand, but this core difference still matters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_restraint

[justicezyx]

This is a classic example of the self-imposed limitations.

Chinese are viewing Americans as lunatic as the opposite direction, and with the equal amount of sincerity and disdain. The same applies to almost any nations and people's group.

[1123581321]

Not all countries behave equally, morally. Western media is, all considered, more open, and China spends much more and enacts stricter laws to achieve the opposite reaction you speak of. Chinese people would not have that reaction without that strict shaping of information by the state.

[justicezyx]

Equally is a wrong word, one should say they do not behave samely.

Equally is meaningless for such a large object, I.e. nations. Of course Western is more open, os they are more radical. Like covid, propaganda results into Asian people get attacked or even close to be killed. The more controlled method in China results into more moderate reaction towards Americans.

[1123581321]

Appreciate the concession.

[eloff]

There no question that Bill Gates had a lot of luck. But if you had his luck could you have been as successful? I doubt it. Because here is also a skill, perseverance, and effort component that most people who spend time on HN probably lack, myself included.

I don't think "hero worship" is great, but I have tremendous respect for Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, etc who are better men than me in so many ways. I look up to them and wish to emulate their better features.

[est]

> How is Chinese "self-media" being gossip blogs needing salt different

OP meant the quotation mark should be placed on the word "Chinese"

[throwaway4good]

Why is that a problem? HN spends plenty time discussing blog entries and posts from people who are not professional media.

[chx]

Nonetheless , I was unaware of TSMC and ASML making a lithography breakthrough before EUV and so that at least is valuable information.

[velikhan]

That part of the story checks out too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_lithography

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn-Jeng_Lin

Myself, am amused how the translators did not consult English sources and also how the writers of the wikipedia article probably didn’t know about the analogy to immersion microscope objectives. This industry is curiously insular.

[MangoCoffee]

a lot people on hacker news believed if you throw enough money into something like China is doing with semi industry that somehow you can get your fab into a leading fab.

you can't just build something with off the shelves equipment. if that's the case then China big fund in 2014 (before trade war, China already pouring money into semi industry) already bearing fruits but SMIC have to poach TSMC engineers to get them into 14nm.

leading foundry like TSMC pour in a lot of money into R&D with their partners. TSMC's ecosystem along is unrivaled. there is also the trust issue. TSMC's main and only business is making chip for their customers unlike Samsung which is a Conglomerate.

what the author said about Apple is true(move away from Samsung's supply chain). that's why Apple is now a core customer of TSMC.

edit: i recall a interview with Morris Chang by a Chinese reporter. she bring up the question about the Chinese big fund. she say if Chinese govrt throw its weight behind the semi industry. it will over take TSMC. Chang said you can't buy "experiences" it will take time for Chinese fab to learn all the mistakes and gain the know-hows. there's a lot going into the production than simply buying semi equipment and somehow magically you can get to the yield level that'll be profitable. Intel's 10nm yield problem is the example of that. sorry, English is not my first language.

[totalZero]

The difference being that the US already has companies with experts and institutional knowledge. The fact that China lacks those things is a function of the pace at which it is trying to grow its semiconductor sector. The fact that China is able to collimate spending far better than the US is a function of how bad the US government is at sending money where it needs to go rather than to the Department of Defense.

[vkou]

Everything you are saying is true, but chip fab independence is a national-security priority for China, and national-security priorities aren't constrained by next-quarter-earnings market pressures. The strategy also does not just consist of buying off-the-shelf equipment, but also recruiting experts and specialists and designers.

It may not overtake TSMC next year, or in five years, but I'd be surprised if a Chinese firm does not reach parity in ten years.

[MangoCoffee]

China already throw in the big fund back in 2014. i believed they started the big fund II. we'll see how that goes.

>recruiting experts and specialists and designers

they already did that by poaching engineers from TSMC and else where.

>I'd be surprised if a Chinese firm does not reach parity in ten years

that's if the leading foundries just stand still. GlobalFoundries drop out of 7nm. i'll be surprised if the Chinese fabs can catch up in just 10 years.

[foobarian]

For what it's worth I found this comic in the footnotes very touching:

https://images.nvidia.com/content/APAC/blog/tw/jhh-mc-illust...