[Kaotique]

It is just a delaying tactic. ASML is 5-10 years ahead in their technology so it will take a while for China to catch up. Which will grant the USA some extra time to build its own chip industry and not be dependent on two or three other countries.

[SkyMarshal]

Yes, though it's not only about delaying China so the US can catch up in semiconductors, but also about trying to delay China so that they miss their window of opportunity to invade Taiwan.

Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s. The US is trying to deter that using a comprehensive deterrence strategy - military, diplomatic, economic. Hence new US bases in northern Philippines, US supporting Japan in changing its constitution to enable more military buildup, US increasing arms sales to Taiwan, US SSBN publicly docking in Korea, AUKUS, Quad, improved diplomatic relations with India, general derisking/decoupling and relocating of supply chains to Vietnam, Mexico, India, etc.

The ASML and Nvidia bans are just a part of an overall comprehensive delay and deterrence strategy, primarily aimed at thwarting Chinese ability to deploy advanced AI in the near term that could be useful in an attack on Taiwan and potential war vs the US & allies in the next few years.

Yes it does incentivize the Chinese to more quickly develop indigenous advanced chip manufacturing capabilities, but that was happening anyway and everyone including the US knows it can't be stopped at this point. But it's about throwing as many wrenches into Xi's invasion plans and 2020s timeline as possible, and this is just one of many.

[sofixa]

> Xi's aim is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland sometime in the 2020s

Do you have a source on that?

> AUKUS

The one that is supposed to result in submarines getting delivered sometime in the 2030s at the earliest? Hardly relevant for the 20s.

[SkyMarshal]

> Do you have a source on that?

Xi Jinping's own words. He continues to say publicly that China and Taiwan will be reunified, most recently at his meeting with Biden in SF and then again in his new years speech a few days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38828960

He has been saying that for a decade without equivocation or ambiguity. If we take him at his word, then the optimal time for Xi to do it is in the 2020s, 1) while the US Navy is at its weakest since the Cold War, 2) China has the demographics and economic strength for a war, 3) while Xi Jinping is young and fit enough to handle a war, and 4) the US president is either aging Biden, chaotic Trump, or incompetent Kamala.

Xi has instructed the PLA/N/AF to be fully modernized and mission capable by its 100yr anniversary in 2027, and they are on the largest fastest military buildup since Germany in the 1930s. They're also acting belligerent and aggressive toward Taiwan, other neighbors in the South China Sea, and vs India on their border. We've seen this behavior and mentality in dictatorships before and know where it leads.

> Hardly relevant for the 20s.

The announcement is diplomatically relevant now, even if not militarily relevant till the 2030s. It's part of a package of reassuring US allies in the region that the US is committed to defense of its democratic friends and allies there. Without such clear reassurance, some may conclude they have no choice but to pre-emptively concede and capitulate to the CCP on Taiwan, SCS militarization, CCP stealing SCS resources in other countries' exclusive economic zones, etc. This is part of a comprehensive diplomatic/economic/military strategy of preventing that.

[blackoil]

> Xi Jinping's own words. He continues to say publicly that China and Taiwan will be reunified.

China has been saying it for 50 years, so that is just status quo.

[SkyMarshal]

They've meant it for 50 years, they just didn't have the capability to do it until recently.

[hug]

AUKUS is about more than submarines -- that just happened to be the bit that hit the news.

There are specific provisions in AUKUS for AI & other technology partnerships.

[toss1]

>> Do you have a source on that?

Xi himself, as recently as just last week, centering reunification in his New Year's speech [0]

Delaying China is absolutely critical for democracies to remain globally viable. The fundamental principle is that any person or country who wants to remain self-determining must be better armed, prepared, and able to fight than the local bully or global authoritarian; if not, they'll take your lunch and democracy every time. With Russia, supported by China [1], we are already far past a new Cold War and into a Hot War with the autocracies.

The better defense capabilities of the democracies rely on the concept of "Defense Offset", which is basically maintaining a technological advantage so that a numerically much smaller military can prevail against a numerically superior military (e.g., US mil 2019 total size 1.388MM [2], vs China 2.535MM [3]).

This military advantage, since at least the late 1960s, has relied on advantage in microchip technology.

When the first Cold War ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Grand Experiment was tried. The idea was that free flow of economic benefits and information would inevitably lead to open and democratic societies. Sadly the generous experiment failed miserably — all it did was further empower the dictators. Now, Russia is attempting to regain all it's territory back to 1917, and China is continuing it's expansionist ways. This is because they now have significantly closed the technology gap to the point where even Iran is contributing significantly to Russia's war on Europe with the Shaheed drones, using a lot of off-the-shelf technology, and Ukraine is significantly bolstering it's defense with FPV drones.

So, even if China does eventually manage to catch up (which is unlikely considering how many insanely complex and globally-non-China-sourced technologies go into one $450MM ASML chip lithography machine), the key is to delay CCP sufficiently that we can extricate them from the democracies' supply chains and maintain a sufficient military offset to defend democracy around the world.

We are starting very late, so this is truly critical, unless we are OK with us and our descendants living under a regime like CCP or Putin.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67855477

[1] https://www.voiceofeurope.com/chinas-advanced-machine-tool-e...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/mili...

[3] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/military-arm...

[epolanski]

I really dislike this warmongering.

Looking at the last 150 years, or even the most recent decades, it's us having a history of invading countries or conducting military operations to support different parties.

Yet, we are so blind of that. China has been mostly on the receiving stick (by European countries as well), not the offending one. Even when it comes to Vietnam or Korea it has been us who meddled in those internal conflicts first by sending troops.

Even when it comes to Taiwan, it's still us who have settled on a policy of ambiguity and defense of a country we legally recognize as a government of the same unique Chinese country, after avoiding to even recognize the PRC for 3 decades.

Even though we keep meddling and deciding the policies of half the world, we still keep demonizing any potential geopolitical entity and we keep pushing everyone in a vassal-attitude due to the unmatched economic, cultural and military power of the US.

Yet countries like China, Russia, and many others, will just never play fiddle to that.

This hawkish paranoia does nothing but further push China to defend its own geopolitical interests and further poke their aggression.

And where we needed a more hawkish paranoia, as in case of Russia, we failed and still keep failing to do so, because Russia has never really been in the economic and financial position to threaten our geopolitical interests to the extent that China can.

The way I see it, western countries and US should take a clear stand about Taiwanese statehood, and Taiwan needs to do it first on their own in order for the rest of the world to take a stand, as they legally still lay claim on the entirety of China (and beyond).

[The_Colonel]

> The way I see it, western countries and US should take a clear stand about Taiwanese statehood, and Taiwan needs to do it first on their own in order for the rest of the world to take a stand, as they legally still lay claim on the entirety of China (and beyond).

Isn't it ironic that you're accusing others of warmongering, but then suggest an action which would almost certainly provoke a war? (China has been pretty explicit about declaration of sovereignty being their red line)

[epolanski]

This doesn't change the fact that the Taiwanese status is de jure unresolved and will constitute a never ending basis for conflict and tension.

This tension can only be relieved by de jure integrating Taiwan in Chinese statehood under very huge degrees of autonomy, which no one, let alone Taiwanese people ever trust or by unilateral statehood declaration (which has no support internationally, least of all in US since Taiwan not declaring independent statehood is the entire basis of the US-Taiwan relations act).

[The_Colonel]

> This tension can only be relieved by de jure integrating Taiwan in Chinese statehood under very huge degrees of autonomy

You mean like the huge degrees of autonomy Hong Kong enjoys? That seems like such a huge strategic blunder by Xi. Instead of making it a positive example for Taiwan to follow, they made it a strong deterrent to a peaceful integration.

> which has no support internationally

It has no support internationally, because to get that support, you first need to declare sovereignty.

[epolanski]

HK is a bit different. It was a land lease and the Britons negotiated for a 50 year transition period before HK was fully assimilated.

I fully agree with your conclusion and spirit though which is why I said that Taiwan has no reason for any kind of trust for a peaceful integration with the PRC.

[biotopia]

You can't be serious, China is actively supplying Russia's war against Ukraine and rest of Europe, with purchases and military supplies.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-Russia-trade-top...

https://www.politico.eu/article/china-firms-russia-body-armo...

[epolanski]

I don't want to abuse whataboutism, but you're aware that besides actively engaging in multiple wars and international military actions we also support Ukrainian war effort directly right?

You're suffering of the usual American exceptionalism, where US is allowed to overthrow governments at will, conduct military actions, decide to support whatever side (sometimes arming both), but other countries cannot.

Just to point out, I obviously condone the military actions in Ukraine (especially since I am a Pole of Ukrainian descent), but I obviously also condoned overthrowing Libyan government or the Iraqi military intervention too and many other despicable actions our governments have conducted in the last decades.

[The_Colonel]

> I obviously condone the military actions in Ukraine (especially since I am a Pole of Ukrainian descent)

I don't want to be too adversarial, but don't you feel a bit hypocritical by supporting Ukraine to preserve its sovereignty in face of a larger, strongly authoritarian neighbor, but arguing for Taiwanese to simply give up their own?

[epolanski]

I never argued for that:

> The way I see it, western countries and US should take a clear stand about Taiwanese statehood, and Taiwan needs to do it first on their own in order for the rest of the world to take a stand, as they legally still lay claim on the entirety of China (and beyond).

and this:

> This tension can only be relieved by de jure integrating Taiwan in Chinese statehood under very huge degrees of autonomy, which no one, let alone Taiwanese people ever trust or by unilateral statehood declaration.

I argue that at some point there is a need for a de jure resolution of the Taiwanese matter or this issue will come again and again.

And, the way I see it, it has been US starting from Bush but most importantly under the hawkish Trump presidency that has made the matter relevant again combined with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[SkyMarshal]

> I really dislike this warmongering.

I'm not warmongering. I'm not calling for war. I'm just observing reality and describing it.

> Looking at the last 150 years, or even the most recent decades, it's us having a history of invading countries or conducting military operations to support different parties.

I'm aware of much that, from Smedly Butler's "War is a Racket", to the CIA's disastrous interventions in Iran, Chile, and other countries, to the more recent endless wars of pre-emptive regime change against rogue states aspiring to become nuclear powers. But conversely, defending existing democracies against being overrun by authoritarian dictatorships is not that. One can be against the former and for the latter.

>The way I see it, western countries and US should take a clear stand about Taiwanese statehood, and Taiwan needs to do it first on their own in order for the rest of the world to take a stand, as they legally still lay claim on the entirety of China (and beyond).

Both conceding Taiwan to the CCP, and supporting a Taiwanese declaration of independence, would lead to bad outcomes from the US point of view. Conceding could embolden the CCP to push further, toward the other small countries in ASEAN, or Mongolia, etc. Appeasement of dictatorships has been known to lead to that outcome, especially ones already acting belligerent and hostile to their other neighbors. Conversely, formal independence for Taiwan is the CCP's red line and would certainly result in war.

What the US chose instead was to publicly support the "One China" policy so as not to embarrass the CCP or cause loss of face, which is important over there, while also supporting Taiwan's defacto independence (and, I suspect, privately communicating that an attack on Taiwan would not be acceptable). After formally switching recognition to the CCP in 1971, this was the only realistic policy position for the US to take. One could argue against formally switching recognition, but after that was done, ambiguity over Taiwan was the only option.

[holografix]

Have you heard of Tibet? Nice place to holiday.

Or would you like a 6 month all inclusive holiday in a Uyghur re-education camp?

Or would you prefer an island getaway? There’s a few brand new ones in South East Asia the Chinese are building on coral reefs in order to erect military bullying outposts and exert pressure on small SEA countries.

If you’re from a developing nation you can finance jyour corrupt infrastructure project with the Chinese and have some of your key infra under their control while you sink the country into unpayable debt.

[epolanski]

Not sure what is the point you're trying to make.

[FooBarWidget]

It's not -just- a delaying tactic. It's a trade.

Without these sanctions, China will likely soon develop chip design talent that's at the cutting edge, but they'll fab with TSMC (and thus use the entire Western-dependant supply chain). This means that China's chip manufacturing ecosystem will remain poor, unpopular and underdeveloped.

With these sanctions, China's chip design talent can't fab cutting edge chips. But China's manufacturing ecosystem suddenly gets the market incentive to develop. I don't think they will reach EUV any time soon, and that hurts. But dominating the mature chip manufacturing sector in the mid term is an achievable goal, and mature chips are still absolutely essential even if they're not "sexy". Whereas before sanctions, there was no way they could dominate in chip manufacturing (nobody wanted to fab with Chinese manufacturers or wanted to buy Chinese chip manufacturing equipment), only in chip design.

What these sanctions did was trading one thing (cutting-edge chip design) for the other (mature chip manufacturing). The short-term blow to China sounds sexy, but they've created a long-term problem. Is this trade worth it? I wonder whether policymakers even realize they're making this trade.

[gizmo]

China doesn’t need to replicate EUV in order to make competitive chips. China can already produce very advanced chips today and is maybe 2 years behind in the ways that actually matter.