Pretty dramatic stuff but unsure how this will benefit the US since obviously to have this much western talent and IP the Chinese weee investing heavily. Remains to be seen if the west is going to do likewise.
It's more an act of the cold war, and less an attempt to help US industry profit more.
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that, if anything, the US underestimated the advantage of western weapon systems. That has little to do with the steel and mechanical engineering and much to do with chips and software.
The US has to take China’s threats seriously. They are boasting about Hong Kong. They feel emboldened by it. I don’t think the rhetoric is empty about Taiwan. And if they take the island it will only embolden China further.
If China takes Taiwan it changes the entire global power dynamic. If they try and fail it is probably the beginning of the end of the Chinese government as we know it.
As well as to make companies finally decouple from China.
Everybody saw China shake down Apple and should have taken the hint to start moving operations. Yet none of the C-suite in the US were willing to risk their bonuses by being the first company who pulls out of China while their competitors don't.
This puts the boot into the short-term capitalist thinking and forces the issue.
It’s like when universities pushed state governments to implement COVID pandemic policies because they know they all need to but they also know the first one to do it alone will take it in the shorts.
Yes, but companies where never expected to or supposed to implement these policies. It will be worthwhile to use chinese factories until the moment they are cut off.
Usually, when you prepare for a war, you set up alternative supply chains, build up your capabilities, set up your independent energy/natural resource supply chain and then cut off what you consider your enemy. How is Europe to build up their military for a confrontation if they can't even power their own factories?
I thought Trump was bad at making these kinds of strategic decisions, but this administration takes the cake. Completely haphazard, ill conceived, badly planned decisions that only make sense if you turn back the clock to 1990.
If I was really generous and speculative I'd say that the plan is to make everyone divest to Taiwan in the hopes that Taiwan is then more important to everyone. But can nobody read a map? You have China 100km across the strait and the US 7000 km away. Last time they tried to upgrade the F16s they had to have an emergency landing in Hawaii. We had missile tests on this island which had to be stopped because the missiles had launch failures. This is local Taiwan news. Cut off China completely and move everything to Taiwan. What does China have to lose from invading and embargoing Taiwan at that point?
If there is one lesson from the Ukraine conflict its not to turn Taiwan into another Ukraine. It's to start some kind of dialogue, and try to involve parties such as India in that dialogue.
EDIT: since the person below had to come up with this "don't talk to terrorists" nonsense, i have to respond.
This isn't some bank raid or a high school fight. These are conflicts with the biggest nuclear power that exports 1/3rd of earths natural resources and the biggest manufacturing and military manpower on the planet.
You ABSOLUTELY talk to them. Estonia made statements like that as well. You ABSOLUTELY talk to a neighbour that has 377 your surface area in land and the worlds biggest nuclear arsenal. What's wrong with these people?
Let's say they are terrorists for the sake of the argument. All the more reason to find a solution. Or if you really want a military confrontation, prepare for it silently and then show your cards when you're ready.
Nobody says don’t talk to them. Talking doesn’t mean having to trade.
Europe as an island, as presently configured, is strategically screwed. Europe within NATO, buttressed by AUKUS and the American Pacific alliance, is incredibly strong.
Imo the purpose of these sanctions is to ensure that Chinese supply chains remain reliant on Taiwanese chips. If they invade, they will lose access. The export value of Chinese products made with Taiwanese silicon is massive, it would be a huge economic blow to lose this access.
I understand what you're saying, but what do you expect countries that want to be left alone to say when the president of that huge country goes on TV and talks about going back to old borders? How do you talk with a country that is influenced by people that say your country, your language, your culture, etc, shouldn't exist?
These countries still have a memory of what it was to be under Russia's rule. They know what happened to them after the Soviets and the Nazis made their deal. For many it's a "if we're going down, then let's go down fighting kind of thing". The bully may win the fight, but they'll go home with a black eye.
I think a key to understanding their thinking is that they believe that the US is winning wrt. Ukraine. And having solidified European allies, now is the time to use that momentum and full-on confront China.
So you would end up with a broken Russia, a humiliated China, and another unipolar American moment like the 90es.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/12/biden-china-semiconduct...
Biden Is Now All-In on Taking Out China
The U.S. president has committed to rapid decoupling, whatever the consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/opinion/china-semiconduct...
We Are Suddenly Taking On China and Russia at the Same Time
A battle over computer chips could have more long-term global impact than the Ukraine war.
It all sounds a bit like Treaty of Versailles like clamp down from the US.
The West pretty universally believed in what the Germans called 'Wandel durch Handel', or change through trade, and the idea that China would become both wealthier and more liberal by becoming an ever more important player in global trade, and give up revanchist imperial ambitions like wanting to take over Taiwan. That has been shown to have been a false belief, as rather than moderating China became stronger and more authoritarian.
It rather more feels like a policy stemming from ideological preference from Biden and US policy makers.
Also has US expended all possible efforts to diffuse tensions and attempt rapprochment, because this policy seems like a one way steet.
This present measures do seem a unilateral targeted hostile measure from the US, not even considering the interests of the allies of US.
Atleast some of the other Asian nations wouldn't see things in such a black and white manner. Would South Korea, Singapore, even Japan think on the same stark lines as US on this?
From that and China’s own statements about its intentions you can determine why it’s seen as hostile by the US and Europe. For instance, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is absolutely a huge threat toward US and European interests, and would cause them substantial economic harm. Moreover if China were successful in it there’s also not much that would stop it from using military force to take over other countries in the region, because the justification would be as legally flimsy.
The post-war consensus against the use of force to conquer, annex, and swallow other countries has been extremely effective in preserving a level of global peace and allowed for a level of trade that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. It’s also arguably necessary in an age of nuclear weapons, where wars between major powers become unthinkable dangerous.
What Russia and to a much lesser extent China are doing, with regard to Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, is tearing up that post-war global order, returning the world to a might makes right system without much care given to international law, and therefore destabilising the world. I’d say those are reasons for Europe and the US to begin treating them as hostile and disengaging.
To be clear, none of this means the US or European countries are entirely blameless or saintly either. The US’s invasion of Iraq was wrong, possibly illegal, and cost them a huge amount of moral authority.
More than the cold war, US-China relationship is now looking more like US-Japan relations in years prior to world war 2. A wary US clamped down on access to resources to Japan, including oil, which denials could be seen as one of the reasons used to justify Japanese expansionism which lead to the war in Pacific which was extremely costly and tragic to all involved. Have US policy makers learnt the lessons of that conflict?
Is Taiwan a major concern for the US?. The status quo on Taiwan is also the result of US policy too, Taiwanese sovereignty is not something US has really stuck out their neck for.
Something else that’s being lost is that China has long had similar export restrictions on high technology items of strategic importance, including many items in biotech, AI, materials science, and medicine.
The comparison to US-Japan relations before WWII is not a good one. Relations soured after Japan invaded Manchuria and infamously massacred civilians in Nanjing. That was followed by Japan becoming part of the Tripartite Alliance, aka the Axis, with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist Italy in 1940 Even then, the US continued to supply oil while cutting back on some other goods.
It wasn’t until Japan invaded French Indochina in 1941, done partially as a way to prevent the US from continuing to support China, that the US embargoed oil exports to Japan. Notably, the Imperial Japanese Navy began seriously working on the plan to attack Pearl Harbor in January 1941, long before the oil embargo was in place. Japan was going to war whether that happened or not.
This chip technology embargo isn’t going to cause the same devastating impact for China as the 1941 oil embargo was for Japan.
And yes, Taiwan is a major concern for the US and for much of the rest of the world, because it houses so much of the world’s high technology semiconductor manufacturing. A war over the island would be devastating for global supply chains and the global economy as a result.
They’re threats to the status quo. A threat to the status quo is a threat to US hegemonic power.
It’s important to be clear here that this administration isn’t creating a two-front “war” or conflict with Russia and China but responding to egregious activities by both parties.
It should also be noted that all of these moves have wide bipartisan support. Something like 99-1 senate votes and the like. Trump, a Republican, campaigned on being tough on China after the Obama administration and enacted punitive trade tariffs and the like. Republicans and Democrats campaign in states like Ohio where manufacturing was hollowed out that they’ll “be tough on China”.
Western countries (Germany - Russia, U.S. - China) spent decades trying to open markets and provided peaceful dialog between countries while managing sore spots without conflict. Russia chose to invade Ukraine and disrupt emergent markets. China chose to become a dictatorship and engage in hard-line international policies.
It’s important to remember this less as the US and western allies decoupling and more so responding to a decoupling that already occurred lead by both Putin and Jinping. You can know that this is the case because both leaders tell you that this is the case in their “rejection of the international order” or “American lead order” or similar rhetoric.
Biden is doing what is necessary, like Trump was doing before. Being too closely tied with a foreign adversary leads to bad outcomes, as we are now seeing with Russia/Europe over Ukraine. If Biden doesn't act swiftly and draw that line China will think Taiwan is there for the taking. Simply can't happen.
> Usually, when you prepare for a war, you set up alternative supply chains, build up your capabilities, set up your independent energy/natural resource supply chain and then cut off what you consider your enemy. How is Europe to build up their military for a confrontation if they can't even power their own factories?
Again, you can't just flip a switch. The war in Ukraine was a surprise in that timescale. We are preparing for war now. And that means hard, fast decisions that won't be easy.
It's not like the US was pumping out aircraft carriers before 1941.
There is really no masking the incompetence of these administrations. Pretending that they couldn't have acted more strategic even after decades of firesale exporting US manufacturing to China is just wilfully misleading. Exporting your entire manufacturing for short term profit isn't "integrating economies", it was just pure greed.
Comments like the one above are also not helpful. To improve upon a dire situation you have to first acknowledge that there is a problem. But somehow the democrats are pointing at Trump saying he was a foreign agent and the Republicans are pointing at the democrats saying Biden is a foreign agent but the course is the same, full steam ahead.
One of the first things Biden did was remove most of the Trump imposed tariffs only to impose something even more chaotic a bit later. The current administration is now claiming they will move Missile Defence from Saudi Arabia to Ukraine. It's like watching a toddler throw tantrums and wanting his toys back. As if these things are just plug and play systems you can pull off here and put back there.
[1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/10/11/a...
Is there any crime you could commit in the US that is do bad it would result in loss of citizenship?
No other country would behave this way, but I guess we should expect that from one of only two countries that taxes all it citizens worldwide, even if they've never even visited the US.
Given that US citizenship is difficult and ludicrously expensive to get rid of(presumably as some kind of punishment for wanting to do so) possibly some of these people might actually be happy about if they are dual citizens.
I'm sure a LOT of countries have laws like these in one form or the other. I'd imagine that the inside baseball on this is the US is effectively declaring China an enemy, and so therefore can make this threat. The only question is how actionable it is.
Only if the treason was committed with the confirmed intent of loosing a citizenship. Otherwise the citizenship stays.
[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-us-citizens-can...
>"It's strange to me Biden would do this"
I might have skipped it but where / when did Biden specifically threaten stripping citizenship. The search does not confirm such threats have been made.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/14/american_tech_workers...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/us/politics/biden-china-t...
By forcing Chinese-Americans in particular (as in Chinese, who also hold American citizenship) to choose between their work or their citizenship he is defacto threatening to strip their US citizenship. Dual citizens have basically been handed a choice: give up your US citizenship to continue working in your field or find work in the US.
Although the UN treaty signed on this isn't binding for the U.S., it would certainly break a taboo and give justification for other countries to reduce their citizens to statelessness while they're in the U.S., thus blocking the possibility of repatriating them back to their home country.
Removing dependence on China for things, increasing China’s dependence on an independent and functional Taiwan, and just generally establishing pecking order is probably a really strong geopolitical move.
I would expect that China is further shy of making serious retaliations at the moment due to dependence for food and fear of manufacturing moving to India.
It was an US unilateral move after CHIPS4 couldn't agree on export controls that basically killed 1/3 of their semi revenue, i.e. it seems more like US desperation after being unable to get East Asian semi on board after realizing merely "sprint" strategy wasn't enough to stay ahead of PRC, but must sprint and hobble. To me it looks like essential admission that PRC will make it sooner than later, and now US is trying to buy time at all cost despite lack of cooperation from allies who will most likely start de-americanizing supply chains for that 400B PRC semi pot.
>dependence on TW >shy of making serious retaliations
The opposite is happening, US trying to cut PRC Off TW semi that US is 90% dependant in. So PRC now has more incentive to meddle with fabs on the island to disrupt US high tech at little cost to her own industry. I expect we're trending towards developments that will end in PRC disrupting TW fabs in the coming years to destablize US supply chains. Otherwise PRC leverage is still the same, she still has calorie food sufficiency, with now guaranteed long term supplies (grains + fertilizer) from RU. Managable real real estate crisis still being managed. Meanwhile PRC still has controls over most of supply chains and rare earth production, F35 made from PRC metals just got waiver. The reality is, PRC hasn't made serious retaliations so far because it didn't want more high tech decoupling, but once decouple past certain point, PRC hands will become freer to retaliate. We'll have to see TSMC/Samsung and other if waivers stop next year.