Hacker News Reader

Comment by writepub | Hacker News Reader

Typically, India is 10-15 years behind China. India is currently undergoing the same software boom that China went through 15 years ago (with Baidu, Tencent, ...). Hardware manufacturing is now moving to India, and India already has a competent (though currently behind US, China) chip design. It is only a matter of time that India also starts making it's own [chips, hardware, software, services, devices]. And I bet a repeat of the exact same reactions from the west.

View on HN

It has started happening already.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/16/trade-war-in...

India has the advantage over China that it has a much friendlier relationship with the US and other Western countries than China has. There is a lot of national security concern about Chinese companies like Huawei having market share in sensitive sectors such as telecommunications infrastructure. An Indian equivalent to Huawei would be unlikely to face the same sort of concerns.

> An Indian equivalent to Huawei would be unlikely to face the same sort of concerns.

Learn history. When Japan's semiconductor industry did extremely well back in the 80s, it forced US to take actions under the name of national security [1]. Do you seriously believe that india's relationship with the west is better than the one enjoyed by Japan back in the 80s?

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3014531/le...

Japan was an economic competitor to the United States, but not an ideological or military competitor. China is all three. Even at the height of US-Japan economic competition, they remained military allies, and Japan and the US both had democratic political systems. China and the US view each other as military competitors, and China's state ideology (that democracy is unnecessary for economic development, maybe even an obstacle to it) is diametrically opposed to that of the US.

By contrast, while India may in the future become a serious economic competitor to the United States, it shows no signs of being (or becoming) an ideological or military competitor. While the US and India don't have a formal military alliance like the US and Japan have, the US is very much interested in selling military equipment to India [1]. Unlike China, India is a democracy like the US, and while the US and India do sometimes have ideological disagreements (especially with BJP governments on the issue of religious freedom), those ideological disagreements are minor compared to those between the US and China.

[1] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-09/news-briefs/us-eleva...

> Japan was an economic competitor to the United States, but not an ideological or military competitor.

That is my exact point - As one of the closest allies of the US, when Japan challenged the US with its rising semiconductor sector, US responded heavily under the name of national security.

> By contrast, while India may in the future become a serious economic competitor to the United States, it shows no signs of being (or becoming) an ideological or military competitor.

So you are trying to convince me that US is going to hand over its dominance of the world to another democracy.

> So you are trying to convince me that US is going to hand over its dominance of the world to another democracy.

No, what I'm saying is that no matter how big a threat to the US economy Japan was, or India may become, the US is always going to take a harder line against China than against either Japan or India, because China is perceived by the US to be a strategic threat, not just in an economic capacity, but also in an ideological and military capacity, whereas neither Japan nor India are seen as strategic threats in an ideological or military sense

> because China is perceived by the US to be a strategic threat

for the exact same logic, I am 100% sure that Mongolia and Kazakhstan are never perceived by the US to be a strategic threat, they undisputedly lack such ideological and military capacity. is that suddenly an advantage?

I think the main reason why the US doesn't perceive Mongolia or Kazakhstan as being a strategic threat, is their small population – Mongolia's is only 3.25 million, and Kazakhstan's is only 18.4 million. They lack the necessary population to be an economic or military great power (unlike China, India and Japan).

(The only way the US could ever perceive Mongolia or Kazakhstan as a significant threat, would be if they started building nuclear weapons or funding international terrorism; neither country has demonstrated any interest in doing that.)

> I think the main reason why the US doesn't perceive Mongolia or Kazakhstan as being a strategic threat, is their small population

It has nothing to do with the population itself. Back in the 80s, when China had >1 billion population at the time, US didn't consider China as a strategic threat, it even offered to sell China all kinds of techs & military hardware. It all happened when China was far less open to the world and far more focused on its communist ideology stuff.

Back in time India tried making an atomic bombs but US used every trick in the book to prevent it from doing so. Where is the good relationship you talk about?

America has been supporting Pakistan untill last few years.

Few days ago they cancelled preferential trade agreement resulting in retaliation from India and imposing counter tariff on American goods.

As India gets more powerful, it will only make enemy with China or US and that's a guaranteed event.

Here I am waiting for the US to impose tariff on Indian software exports and this will make India change its way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com