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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

> When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.

China would be shooting themselves in the foot by invading, because it would equally fuck them. I've read in may places that as soon as China invades, Taiwan will blow up all the fabs and supporting supply lines. So even if China takes control of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry will be a smoldering pile of nothingness.

This article[1] does a great job in describing why this would be the case. Even if China prevents the destruction of those fabs and factories, there would still be tons of obstacles.

[1]: https://doxa.substack.com/p/why-a-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan

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We just have example of another country shooting itself in the foot and attacking Ukraine despite a wealth of widely known arguments against doing this. Unfortunately logic and common sense sometimes take back sit in politics.

Especially when it comes to despotic life-long leaders. After 2018, Xi no longer has to worry about the pretense of term limits. We can only hope the state of Russia after the Ukrainian conflict is a convincing enough lesson.

Invading Taiwan...the risks are substantial and the gain is legacy. Hardly a convincing for a nation, but potentially convincing for a man facing mortality.

> We can only hope the state of Russia after the Ukrainian conflict is a convincing enough lesson

We can also hope that the US refrains from creating another conflict to try to provoke China the same way they have been doing in Ukraine for the last 8 years. This "Pacific NATO" is the next thing. I am very pessimistic because the US is not going to allow China to overtake them in any way, and they have been behaving like that in their entire history.

I've heard the "TSMC self-destruct" story a lot, but I haven't found a source. All I can find are people repeating the claim. Is there a source anywhere?

It's been internet meme for few years when TSMC node lead was evident, and recently someone at US Army War College picked up on concept and wrote a paper suggesting TW should blow up their own fabs to deter PRC invasion when PRC had eyes on invading TW before semiconductors even existed. I guess TW media saw this as serious traction and pushed some articles basically saying "leave TSMC alone". The idea is flawed because preserving TSMC is the only barginning chip for TW, especially post war reconstruction. It's the difference between rebuilding from a advanced/developed economy to rebuilding from a agrarian one. Even with chip act and all the expansion on going, TW is projected to hold onto 90% of advanced node production for a while. It's not in TW/US interest to burn this. Nor PRC but direction of profits and reliant industry means it affects west more. Imagine being the TW leadership asking to be evacuated to US for protection after destroying supply chains of US companies worth trillions. Guessing in 5-10 years when PRC has semi sufficient domestic production, even if a few nodes behind, the meme will be PRC will preemptively destroy TSMC to make TW less desirable to protect.

>> China would be shooting themselves in the foot by invading, because it would equally fuck them. I've read in may places that as soon as China invades, Taiwan will blow up all the fabs and supporting supply lines. So even if China takes control of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry will be a smoldering pile of nothingness.

That sounds incredibly stupid. If China invading is shooting themselves in the foot, then Taiwan blowing up their (worlds most advanced) fabs would be suicide. Nobody ever won a conflict by doing that.

I talked to Chinese people about Taiwan. They are very emotional about it (anger and hate). Don’t expect China to act logical.

Please don't make such generalizations.

The average Chinese person is no more responsible for Chinese foreign policy than the average American is for American foreign policy.

The point was that China’s leaders are emotional about it too. They grew up with the same propaganda.

Beijing's interest in Taiwan is not emotional. It's as realist as it gets.

During the Opium Wars, foreign invaders occupied many of the mainland's ocean ports.

Taiwan, as part of the First Island Chain, represents a critical strategic asset for those wishing to control mainland China.

What!!! The average American's views absolutely have a huge impact on foreign policy... Why would you assume it's different in China?

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