[chrgy]

Lots of companies are cutting ties with China, Apple is obligated to do so. But the more companies cutting ties with China, make it easier for both China and US to have Military conflict on Taiwan. Replicating TSMC is in the making by intel but It will take Years, and would have been nice if APPLE, AMD and Nvidia would Start a Fab Together in the US as a part of the Chips ACT.

[manv1]

The whole point of bringing countries like China into the world economic system is to make sure that they realize that aggressive action is counterproductive and they refrain from doing so.

Unfortunately that hasn't really worked with China, which is why the world is starting to decouple from China; the CPP still prioritizes its institutional needs over "The People", which is ironic since they're supposed to be working for "The People."

That's probably why the CPP is scared of the people and tries to control them.

[thrashh]

The world is really decoupling with China because it is so unpredictable. Xi made himself forever leader only 10 years ago and it's been a unpredictable rollercoaster of policy since then.

Stability is the foundation of every working relationship. Everyone wants to latch onto you when you are stable. You can even work with an adversary as long as they are stable. China had it for a while before Xi.

Most countries have yet to achieve long-term stability. Stability is super difficult to achieve.

[zorrotorro]

The world is decoupling from China because US sees China as a main global challenger and has asked / forced the hand of everybody else to decouple.

China is actually quite predictable and with a stable (forever) leader it's even more predictable.

US poking China creates instability.

[thrashh]

Authoritative leaders inherently cannot be predictable because one person has a lot of power and can easily make sweeping changes.

Even though any organization led by a large committee is absolutely terrible at making long-term, coherent decisions, it also means that everything moves at a snail's place and any outsider can react faster than the committee can, and decisions also never stray too far from a certain point because there are too many cooks in the kitchen. America in a nutshell.

Plus the forever leader thing only happened ~10 years ago. That's too recent. I would only ever call a country politically stable if it hasn't changed in like 100 years. The US, for better and worse, politically has barely changed in 250 years. Sucks for Americans (but not entirely) but great for the world. When Xi declared himself forever leader, that basically reset the clock back to 0 years. Plus once Xi goes out of power, that basically resets the clock again because new leader, new policy.

At the end of the day, when you have a lot of something you want to keep safe (like your business), you want to put it with the person whose situation hasn't changed in the longest time. You don't even care necessarily whether that person is good. You just want that stability.

[dehrmann]

I guess that's the motivation, but China likely reads it as the west trying to keep it down or the west preparing for war.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the more companies cutting ties with China, make it easier for both China and US to have Military conflict on Taiwan

The coefficient of trade and belligerence is about 0.2, i.e. "a doubling of trade on average leads to a 20% diminution of belligerence" [1]. And trade with China continues to grow [2]. I wouldn't read the semiconductor re-shoring as materially changing the odds of a war per se.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Solomon-Polachek/public...

[2] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[Workaccount2]

I listened to an interview with the former CEO (and now chairman) of Microchip the other day. Microchip actually turned down money beyond $150MM from the chips act because it had too many strings attached to make building a fab with it worthwhile.

[bsder]

We call them Microcheap for a reason ...

And it's kind of stupid because Microchip is still having 52+ week delivery issues. ST has gained three customers that I know of becuase of this.

[himinlomax]

If ST gains customer because of their better lead times ... that means Microchip must really, really sucks.

Fun fact: ST management panicked at the start of the pandemic, started immediately downsizing, afaik they still haven't been able to catch up to demand.

[m-ee]

We use both at my job, sustaining products with microchip and pre production with ST, it’s about even for terrible lead times. At least with ST I don’t have terrible debug hardware on top of my terrible lead times. I don’t know why anyone would use microchip for a new product, maybe bought in to the Atmel ARM chips already?

[ksec]

>Lots of companies are cutting ties with China, Apple is obligated to do so.

Not only is Apple not obligated to do so, they literally double down their investment as recently as 2021. In 2022 their total Chinese Suppliers were still rising. And that is excluding some suppliers slotted into other countries via different HQ strategy.

To see how many people believe Apple is doing the right thing just shows another master piece of Apple's PR.

[xwowsersx]

Why is Apple obligated to do so?

[smoldesu]

Presumably because they care so much about privacy being a human right, and every day This Page[0] exists it breaks their heart. Breaking ties with China would be a great way to start getting tough on autocratic privacy overreach.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351

[xwowsersx]

Oh ok, that I understand completely. I see why there are compelling reasons for them to do so, but I didn't understand the language of "obligated" to do so. That made it sound like there's some formal obligation, legal or otherwise.

[local_crmdgeon]

you have cause and effect backwards here.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/decoupling-is-just-going-to-ha...

[WhyNotHugo]

As a third party, it's kinda sad that the US is so invested in going to war and seeking even more conflict.

All this energy could be invested in cooperating and building together. Instead, it's being wasted in preparing for yet another pointless armed conflict. It's not like we don't have enough problems already.

[DontchaKnowit]

I mean you can stick your fingers into all your various sensory orifices and ignore the growing turmoil between Taiwan and China all you want, but the reality is that there is nothing the US can or will do that will prevent China from doing what they please with regards to Taiwan.

[WhyNotHugo]

I'm aware of the politics of China (I have acquaintances in both mainland and Taiwan).

But a foreign country having internal issues isn't an excuse for the US to suddenly decide it's a good time to invade it (or to threaten to invade it and destroy its factories).

[DontchaKnowit]

What? Since when are we doing that? And also my comment says nothing aboht that.

[another2another]

If that was the case China would already have done it (like they happily gobbled up Hong Kong), but they haven't.

What stayed their hand?

[DontchaKnowit]

China has legal right to hong kong, not to taiwan. Completely different situation.

[KptMarchewa]

One word: carriers.

[Tostino]

Just wondering what your thoughts are on China's self determination in deciding to invade or not? Why are you acting like the US is the one invading another nation?

[fundad]

I think these posts equating decoupling and war are from CPP troll farms.

[WhyNotHugo]

China has made no threats or given any indications of planning to invade the US. Any claims of this sound like cheap propaganda.

[Tostino]

I didn't say, or intend to imply they had any invasion plans of the US. I was saying that they seem to be gearing up to invade Taiwan.

[mistermann]

If you examine military actions over the last several decades, it's not that difficult to form an opinion that the United States is the most aggressive military on the global geopolitical stage.

Perhaps this impression is wrong, I would be happy to read any statistics that demonstrate that this is not actually true.

[theandrewbailey]

> As a third party, it's kinda sad that China is so invested in going to war and seeking even more conflict.

FTFY. China is the actively belligerent party when it comes to Taiwan. The US doesn't want to invade either one. Don't forget the ongoing Uighur genocide in Xinjiang.

[borissk]

Complete nonsense. Cooperating with Putin lead to the invasion of Ukraine. Cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party can only lead to the invasion of Taiwan.

[pphysch]

> Lots of companies are cutting ties with China

Do you have anything to back this up, preferably not cherry-picking pandemic data?

Last I checked Apple had 90% of their manufacturing done in China and lost an Indian supplier this week.

Bing apparently just became the #1 search engine in China among desktop users (whatever that means).

China just came out of nowhere as the #1 car exporter.

The idea that the world will isolate China on behalf of Washington is a unipolar pipe dream.

[threeseed]

> The idea that the world will isolate China on behalf of Washington

Countries are doing it because of economic coercion.

China has banned Australian products from import (in violation of WTO rules) because of its position on Taiwan, Quad, Chinese foreign investment etc. Similarly for Sweden.

Which is one reason why EU has not been keen on a comprehensive FTA with China.

[pphysch]

It's a stretch to call it "coercion" when it is directly in response to offenses committed against China [1] and primarily driven by Washington. Framing every negative action as coercion, regardless of causality, drains that word of meaning.

The bottom line is China wants to do business, but Washington wants China to be contained.

[1] - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/12/1/australia-china-...

[JumpCrisscross]

> China wants to do business, but Washington wants China to be contained

China expelling diplomats and cutting economic ties because an Australian college student said something mean or Baltic nation didn't agree with the party line on Taiwan is not wanting to do business.

[pphysch]

In virtually every case these are explicit tit-for-tat actions.

[JumpCrisscross]

> virtually every case these are explicit tit-for-tat actions

Zig versus zag. The point is economic repercussions for diplomatic faux pas means you aren’t just looking to do business, you’re leveraging business as a political tool. That’s a novel risk environment compared to before Xi.

[threeseed]

You weren't clear what offences Australia has committed to China or why you are making this about US.

Banning Huawei over national security concerns or asking for an independent inquiry into the source of COVID is hardly offensive. And they are not excuses for refusing to abide by WTO rules and inventing reasons to prevent free and fair trade.

What is offensive is China providing a list of 14 grievances that Australia must address (e.g. supporting China's take over of Taiwan) in order to maintain a normal economic relationship.

[pphysch]

> You weren't clear what offences Australia has committed to China or why you are making this about US.

I cited it, you just didn't bother to read it.

[tatrajim]

In East Asia, China-South Korea relations have turned rocky over the past ten years, due to frustration on the part of China over South Korea's continued military alliance with the U.S. (e.g. the THAAD radar issue in 2017 that ended by ruining the burgeoning Korean Lotte network of shopping centers across China). Samsung used to be huge in China, but now it's largely domestic brands Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo et al. Samsung had a massive phone assembly plant in Tianjin, but moved to northern Vietnam.

From a Korea perspective, the proprietorial attitude of many Chinese ("Korea used be part of China" Xi Jinping told Donald Trump), and the penumbra of nationalism in the PRC have resulted in a major shift in public opinion from 2000. Now some 80% of South Korean youth view China unfavorably, and that seems unlikely to improve in the near future.