China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech | Hacker News Reader

China plans to ban exports of rare earth magnet tech

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

342 pointsmoose_man588 comments

In a way this is good news. The more China overplays its hand in this undeclared economic war the more likely that Western countries will realize that they are making the exact same mistake with China that they have made with Russia. You can't play nice with dictatorships in the hope that your long term economic interests will be aligned to the point that the other party will be forced to continue to play nice. China has been playing the long game successfully so far, these kind of mistakes are good indicators of what's really going on underneath all that.

Just for a moment consider what it would mean if China arbitrarily stopped exporting consumer electronics or any other category of product and what the effect on the West would be. We really should pull back some of that manufacturing and deal with the resulting pollution closer to where the goods are consumed. And while we're at it we may be able to improve the quality a bit as well.

I am less convinced that China is really good at playing the long game, and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles that we see in the US. It’s just so easy to tap into our fears of China that we want to believe that they’re this smart and ruthless. We look for evidence to validate our feelings.

There are deposits of these rare earth minerals elsewhere. There are always more deposits, it’s just that they’re untapped until we deplete our cheaper sources. If China withholds its minerals, we will use more expensive sources, but we will still get the minerals.

You don't need to be afraid of China to realize that outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to a single non-democratic country doesn't serve our interests in the long run.

It lead to the longest era of peace and prosperity in the history of the world.

I think it's safer to say it /concurred with/ the longest era of peace and prosperity in the history of the world.

Yes. The long peace in my view was more so caused by the invention of nuclear weapons which drastically lowered the incentive for war, forward-thinking decision makers who constructed a reasonably stable alliance between great powers, and mass communications technologies allowing for greater control and integration of populations.

This sums it up nicely. Many wars have been fought that might have been avoided with better communication.

Nuclear weapons created an era with highly concentrated destruction. Major wars are much less frequent, but the next world war will be cataclysmic. Up until the next world war one should expect unprecedented peace and prosperity. Hopefully we can avoid undoing all of those gains and more in the blink of an eye.

Creating economic prosperity and economic incentives not to fight was what led to peace and prosperity. This is absolutely causal.

Or, maybe, it'll lead to the end of it.

True, but we do have to let go of our fear of China if we want to have any hope of figuring out what our own actions should be.

Fear of China may be the only thing capable of pulling us out of the mess that we’ve reached.

> non-democratic country

Just because a country is a democracy does not mean it will be a reliable trading partner. Democracies can easily swing from free market to protectionist trade policies -- and back. Outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to any single country is an incredibly risky idea.

A non democratic country has fewer checks and balances on these things than the ones that do. But you are right, that's not a guarantee at all. Just a matter of degree.

In the US both tariffs and sanctions can be (and are) unilaterally imposed by the president.

Sanctions are crystal clear thanks to the IEEPA [1]. The president needs only declare an emergency, which is typically done in the exact same executive order imposing the sanctions. We're currently under at least 42 different national "emergencies", of which 34 are to impose sanctions. [2] The legal basis for tariffs is less clear, but in effect no different. Trump's tariffs [3] were all passed unilaterally, appealing to all sorts of acts that grant the president conditional tariff powers, but where the condition is framed in a broad enough way to include nearly any rationale.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs

But also consider that an act of Congress could modify IEEPA or repeal a specific tariff or sanction that the US president enacts. Perhaps that's a rare event, but those checks and balances are in place.

In China, Xi can decide to impose tariffs or sanctions, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I think this issue is what really cuts to the matter. China, on paper, has a similar system in place. Their system is based on tiered elections. You elect a local representative (who has significant power), who then elects (alongside other elected representatives) their representative. And this continues on up to the top where you have the ~3000 members of the National People's Congress who ultimately elect the president. The... NPC.

The NPC has immense power. They can override anything Xi Jinping does, and even have the power to completely recall him, or amend the constitution. But of course this won't happen. They have a one-party system with relatively minimal internal conflict. So even though the NPC is genuinely powerful and has every check and balance imaginable, they will not be using them.

Democracies aren’t beholden to the ego of an authoritarian. Free trade for free countries, and a tyrant tax for authoritarian regimes should be the norm if we want human centered capitalism. https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2023

"Not beholden", like say, unilaterally waging war on another country without congressional approval?

Unfortunately congress did vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...

They didn't declare war, which is unfortunate but congress did approve.

This came after the fact, which is not supposed to be how it works.

Free Trade for Free Countries is a decent slogan! I’ve long been disappointed that this isn’t the mainstream position. Anything else feels very hypocritical (for the US).

Eh, economic engagement with unfree countries got us south korea, Taiwan, probably more in eastern Europe: Albania comes to mind. Afaict disengagement only worked with south Africa.

There’s roughly three levels free vs unfree:

1. Democratic countries that mostly abide by international law and the rules-based order.

2. Non-democratic countries that also mostly abide by international law and the rules-based order, because they benefit from it more than not doing so.

3. Non-democratic countries that reject international law and the rules-based order.

The US trades with #1 and #2, and was hoping to make China into #2. But unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, China is in the grey area between #2 and #3 and probably trending toward #3.

Beautifully said.

2 works for small countries, if countries are large enough they can afford themselves to be a 3, which otherwise is reserved for failed states and outright dictatorships.

My goal wouldn’t be to get them to change. We just shouldn’t get involved.

What good is free trade is China's navy gets to countrol shipping routes? That's one card they are playing. The other one is controlling Russia in exchange for Taiwan.

They understood that building cheap and in great numbers is the key to success. They did this with the J-7 and now the J-10.

It serves the interests of those who run this country, they've made themselves very rich via this strategy.

Unfortunately the US consumer simply cannot afford to pay more for products no produced in non-democratic nations with impossibly cheap labor. They are already being pushed to the brink.

As long as many companies continue to make year-on-year record profits, I reject that prices are a product solely of non-Democratic countries' impossibly cheap labor.

In addition to that, a large portion of necessary spending is unaffected by outsourcing. A person can their spending on clothes or electronics quite low if needed; but housing, food, and energy costs are largely driven by domestic circumstances.

Yes but overwhelmingly it’s the unnecessary spending that brings joy to people’s lives.

Centralization promotes efficiency, until a problem happens.

I can't seem to find anything in news headlines, probably because the event I remember hearing about likely happened before Google's founding (I think it was the 1990s or 1980s?); but at a point in time the plastic used for either all or a lot of ICs was manufactured in one single facility. That plant happened to catch fire and it was a major supply issue. Even if that event was really a hypothetical recounted by a professor years later just to educate the class, it does serve as a good example.

Markets are more stable with more than one single manufacturing site, more than one supplier. Economics will still push towards as much consolidation as possible, so for the good of countries and consumers, regulators must press on the scales and ensure _competition_ remains. Ideally every big country can at least pivot manufacturing centers to be entirely self sufficient if they need. Maybe superpowers have multiple facilities even for small items. Maybe groups of countries (E.G. the EU, NATO, etc) pool their resources and distribute manufacturing accordingly.

Shipping also isn't free and externalities like pollution should not be allowed; they should be part of the cost to ensure that smart decisions about production happen.

You're probably thinking of the 1993 explosion at Sumitomo Chemical Company's plant that made epoxy resin for semiconductors:

"Semiconductor Industry Faces Problems After Resin Plant Explosion"

https://apnews.com/article/8fe2925b68d34d33f19a53e4892c74a2

It caused a significant spike in DRAM prices:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-08-06-930806...

Today's low personal computer prices, particularly those on machines made by smaller companies, are likely soon to shoot up more than $100 per machine because of a panic in the world memory-chip market.

Prices already have doubled for computer owners who want to expand the capacity of their machines to handle memory-hungry new programs based on Macintosh System 7 or on Microsoft Windows or the OS/2 operating system for IBM compatibles, industry officials said.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-08-06-930806...

That's close enough that it's probably the event. It might have been slightly oversimplified or 2 decades of neuron decay since I heard about it Nth hand yielding the same effect.

> regulators must press on the scales and ensure _competition_ remains

An expectation of surge pricing may also work here. Figuring out some standard contract wording that quickly pushes the price spike all the way down the supply chain to the consumer and publishing it might help.

> Shipping also isn't free and externalities like pollution should not be allowed

Hard to regulate that without a world government.

> outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to a single non-democratic country doesn't serve our interests in the long run

You do realise that a sizeable chunk of the world's oil and gas are sourced from "non-democratic" countries in the Middle East, yet somehow we leave them alone to openly torture, abuse and murder their citizens? And on top of that they're left alone to operate a cartel (OPEC) that holds the world to ransom when they decide one day to cut production and push up prices. Feels like there's a whole load of double standards on display here.

yet somehow we leave them alone to openly torture, abuse and murder their citizens

Huh, like maybe "a sizeable chunk of the world's oil and gas are sourced from "non-democratic" countries in the Middle East" is the problem, and the reason those countries get a pass? So like we shouldn't be outsourcing manufacturing, we shouldn't be outsourcing energy production to terrible countries.

If by we you mean the US then we don’t. The US has effectively zero direct dependence on middle eastern oil due to domestic production and transportation costs. Canada is much closer and has a lot of oil.

Where it matters is they can impact the global prices and thus what people pay at the pump. Though the actual profits from such spikes in American gas prices end up going to suppliers in America or Canada.

> The US has effectively zero direct dependence on middle eastern oil due to domestic production and transportation costs

For now and whilst those extraction costs are cheaper domestically. The US needs the Saudis as a backstop and for infill of the types of crude oils the North American continent doesn't have access to or is in limited supply.

They're also a handy client state to do the US's dirty work in the Middle East, see Yemen for example. The US also needs the Saudi's and their non-democratic allies to keep buying weapon systems to prop up Lockheed, Boeing et al. You need to look at the bigger picture.

> You need to look at the bigger picture.

The big picture is that the US needs middle east countries to price their oil in USD. Everything else is just a bonus.

The world's USD-settled oil trade is a tiny fraction of overall USD-settled trade.

The petrodollar is an interesting theory, but it doesn't really hold up to very much scrutiny.

Imagine you created a new currency in the US: FidoBucks. Not even a crypto but a regular currency you can print at your whim. Obviously nobody's really going to want your currency and it will have zero value. But now imagine, after some backdoor deals, you make it such that FidoBucks are literally the only currency accepted at gas stations. And not only that both those gas stations agree to spend any extra profits they make buying in FidoBuck denominated treasuries. Now not only are people going to want your currency, but they will literally need it.

And since FidoBucks are now directly tied to access of a critical commodity, it will have also have a guaranteed minimum "value" that's tied to the cost of oil. So people can feel pretty comfortable holding and trading Fidobucks. In fact the new stability of your currency means you'd likely see people starting to trade it for far more than oil, to the point that gas becomes just a fraction of its trade.

This is essentially what the petrodollar did, but it of course started from a far higher point than zero of course. Once we ended the fixed convertibility of the USD to gold in 1971 [1], demand in the dollar started rapidly declining, and its relative value began decreasing. After the petrodollar this all reversed, hard. It's to assign a specific value to any of these changes, because it's all dynamic - just like in our simplified FidoBucks example so much would depend on the dynamic scarcity of gas, how many FidoBucks you print, the total value of outside trade, and a million other variables. What is safe to say is that it dramatically strengthened the position of the currency, and is a large reason that until extremely recently, if China and Russia were trading - they'd settle that trade in USD. Now they're trying to create the next FidoBuck backed by a combination of land, gold, and other finite resources.

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Total worldwide production of oil is only ~90 million barrels/day and middle eastern production is a fraction of that. That’s not very significant compared to the total value of all USD in circulation. All FidoBucks in circulation might only be worth ~50 Billion in your example and depending on the velocity of money could actually be significantly less. People might start using it for other things, but it’s just as likely to be an odd quark of the oil market.

What actually props up the USD is the US taxes being paid in USD. Even transactions like selling burgers for Bitcoins suddenly force someone to not only get dollars to pay their taxes on that sale but set it aside for significant periods. This is the basic mechanism which forces all fiat money to have value, which then causes it to be used for loans and whatnot which further increases value.

First, the vast majority of all oil is traded in USD, not just the Mideast. As one example of the impact, take Canada. Their exchange rate against the USD is driven almost entirely by crude oil prices (of which they are a large exporter). The reason for this is that when oil prices are high they end up with a large supply of USD. And so the price of the Canadian dollar increases because, compared to the dollar, it's now in relatively lower supply. You can see how extreme this correlation is here. [1]

Beyond that, this is all about international issues. Those gas stations are oil producing countries, and the people buying from them are countries. Being the person who can "print" the world reserve currency gives you immense geopolitical power, and an inability to economically fail regardless of how hard you try. When foreign currencies are no longer so closely tied to the USD, and demand for the USD declines, its international value will likely start to sharply decline, exactly as it did in 1971. But this time I don't really see anything we'll be able to cling onto.

[1] - https://www.dailyfx.com/usd-cad/link-between-canadian-dollar...

Even if you assuming 100% of all oil is traded in USD that’s still only ~8 billion dollars a day.

As to US Canada currency that relationship would be mathematically identical if oil was traded in Canadian dollars rather than USD with the exact same changes to each currency as oil’s value spiked. It’s a result of the balance of trade not the specific commodity being exchanged let alone the currency the transaction was valued in.

Oil happens to have high price volatility and significant value, but wood or maple syrup has similar effects though on a smaller individual scale.

The average gross trade of just raw oil products is somewhere in the $1 trillion ballpark, total trade overall several times that. It doesn't really matter much either way, as it's the "value" of oil that matters, not the price. When you are able to lock a door that everybody wants in, your key is priceless. The value of oil doesn't spike, its price does - primarily due to OPEC manipulation or yet another US Mideast invasion.

You're absolutely right that balance of trade plays a part in this, but not in the assumption that the currency is irrelevant. If countries were paying Canada in CAD instead of USD, then Canada's reserves of CAD would be constantly increasing while the rest of the world's would be decreasing. The CAD would become extremely strong, extremely quickly. The realistic scenario is that countries would simply stop buying oil from Canada because of this, but if they couldn't (for instance if Canada somehow convinced oil seller's to sell only in CAD...) then the result would be a never-ending and effectively uncapped appreciation of the CAD, subject only to the discretion of Canada itself.

This is literally exactly what happened with the ruble. Russia used to sell their oil in the USD. After we did our sanctions stuff trying to tank their economy, they started selling oil only in the ruble. And the value of their currency not only immediately reversed all of the sanctions inflected weakening, but rapidly became even stronger than before they invaded. It led them to the bizarre scenario of having to actually have to try to weaken their currency, while facing 'nuclear' sanctions, to make sure they didn't (as above) price themselves out of the oil market, by having too strong a currency.

Annual numbers are irrelevant due to the concept of velocity of money.

You can use the same physical 20$ dollar bill to buy a soda several times over a year. You hand it to the 7-11 on Monday, they take it to the bank on Tuesday, the bank puts it into their ATM on Wednesday, you get out of the ATM on Thursday, and then take it back to that same 7-11 on Friday.

Digital currency can cycle the same way just faster. Mexico Joe trades peso’s for OilBucks from Dubai Bank at 9:00AM, use them to buy oil from someone in Bolivia at 9:01. At 9:02 Frank in France trades Euros to Bolivia Co at 9:02 to get those same Oil Bucks for a trade at 9:03 with someone in Saudi Arabia…

PS: The nonsense included in the second half ignores the feedback loops from the balance of trade.

Anytime your pet economic theory results in some asset spiraling to infinite value it’s inevitably wrong. There’s always a point where people say no and do something else because they simply can’t spend infinite money on anything. Instead there’s always some factor not included in your model that moderates the impact you simply aren’t including it.

No, it doesn't. I'll stop being subtle to make this more clear. When I spoke of the issue being up to "Canada's discretion" what I mean is that Canada, in our hypothetical scenario, obviously cannot let their currency appreciate endlessly. They would take actions to prevent that, because it's obviously self defeating otherwise. This is precisely what has happened in the US. The artificial power the petrodollar granted our currency gave us not only the power but the necessity to start doing things like endlessly printing money, sending much of it abroad, spending trillions of dollars on pointless wars, and more.

Until recent times, keeping inflation up was difficult in spite of all of this - which is why we've had 0 interest rates desperately trying to devalue the currency. The big inflection point was 1971. That was the end of the USD being 'hard backed' (fixed exchange rate) by gold. The 'soft backing' (unfixed exchange rate) of oil would begin in 1974, organized by no less than Kissinger. You can see many of the measures we took here [1]. A critical table [2] that site is missing is the trade deficit.

Ultimately the test for all of this will come imminently. BRICS has been developing a new backed (presumably 'hard backed') currency, set to be announced as early as August of this year. And IMO, BRICS as a whole is making their move at this exact moment precisely because the USD is in a situation where this will have maximum impact. Something to keep your eyes on if you're at all genuinely interested in these things!

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

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

The USA needs the Saudis to supply Europe and Asia, otherwise demand goes up and pumps up prices in the states. But as we and our allies move to EVs, we really won’t need as much oil anymore, so the end of the dependence is near.

US has no real interests in Yemen.

That's a local Saudi/Iranian conflict.

We get ~12% of our oil from the middle east which is consequential but not what I meant.

You'll note that after Biden called Saudi Arabia a Pariah state, he was forced to reverse course and head over, hat in hand, and beg for more production. Not because of the 12% (or 10% or 8%), we directly consume, but because of the impact on inflation and the world economy.

So yes, we are beholden to middle east oil, not because we directly consume it, but because of the impact on energy prices and inflation. If we were maximizing our own energy production, not just for domestic consumption but for export, we could lessen that impact and the influence they have.

It’s 2.6% not 12%.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

“About 9% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 9% of U.S. crude oil imports were from Persian Gulf countries in 2021.” However the US produces 20 Billion barrels of oil vs 8 Billion barrels of imports. So that 9% is really 9% * (8B / (8B + 20B)) = 2.6% of the US’s total oil supply.

Further that 8 Billion barrels of imports almost exactly equals our 8 Billion barrels of exports. There are many reasons to imports and export oil over the course of a year for example seasonal demand varies, but if it goes to 0 we can also stop our exports.

“About 8% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 9% of U.S. crude oil imports were from Persian Gulf countries in 2021.”

Accidentally mangled the quote while cutting and pasting.

Yeah we should quit doing that too, I don't think anyone but the political elite are in favor of being dependent on middle eastern countries

Will you complain when inflation is 500% by quitting Middle East oil and China's manufacturing?

Why would slowly increasing renewables and EVs while diversifying and automating manufacturing cause 500% inflation?

Fracking and nuclear are here-and-now options. Wind/solar/batteries are long-term options... especially with lots of HVDC.

We are causing a lot of trouble by shoveling money at bad countries run by bad people -- the Ukraine war wouldn't have happened if large (and important) parts of Europe 1) hadn't bought so much Russian gas and 2) made itself so dependent on the ability to keep buying it. This provided Putin with 1) the ability to wage war and 2) the feeling, bordering on certainty, that it was safe to do so.

If only there were a country in North America that had vast oil reserves, larger than Saudi Arabia’s, just there for the taking if politics and lawfare got out of the way…

Do you mean the us or canada? The oil tar sands in Canada are supposed to be expensive to convert to usable petroleum, also use a lot of water, and are supposed to be worse for co2 production. The us has lots of oil, we can get it out if we need it, more frakking, etc. Mexico is happy to sell us all their oil.

I was talking about the US.

Classic whataboutism.

There are many such issues worthy of attention, perhaps they are indeed being opined about... on other threads?

The human mind functions better when focusing on a single problem at any given moment.

>and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles

Who's going to vote their government out or jam things up with filibuster? For better or worse their government just 'does'. You cannot seriously compare a system like this to US/UK democracy paralyzation during things like COVID.

I do not think their system is better or worse, it's just not subject to any kind of politics internally that would get in the way of whatever the hell their national intentions of the now are.

> I do not think their system is better or worse, it's just not subject to any kind of politics internally that would get in the way of whatever the hell their national intentions of the now are.

If you are arguing that the Communist Party of China is not subject to internal politics, I don’t think that argument will withstand much scrutiny. Think about how much internal politics there are within the Democratic party or the Republican party of the US. Having a one-party state does not inoculate a country from internal politics.

I think the distinction the parent is trying to make is that China's system is not subject to checks and balances (aka 'politics') that intentionally slow down the operations of government. Of course, any human organization will deal with organizational politics such as backstabbing and ladder-climbers. But in terms of national politics to decide policy, it's really just under full control of Xi.

There are pros and cons to each approach. The US system is certainly slower and more infuriating but is also less prone to shooting itself in the foot. China's system works well when it works, but it more easily produces giant missteps like the Great Leap Forward or zero covid.

> Who's going to vote their government out or jam things up with filibuster?

Losing an election in the US just means you are out of a job - and lose all its perks.

Losing power in an authoritarian government could mean you are arrested for “corruption” and sentenced to death.

The paranoia (and occasional country sabotaging acts) of CCP critters are justified as it’s a no holds barred fight for power and survival.

https://archive.is/d9OsU

Look what happened to Hu Jintao at the last party congress. However, China is pretty mellow about this: presidents/party leaders are allowed to retire gracefully since Deng Xiaoping set that precedent. I don't see even Xi or his successor breaking that contract.

If you make it to the very top, perhaps, but plenty of people at the pinnacle of power have been jailed. Here's the guy who lost the power struggle to Xi:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Xilai

Bo Xilai had it coming to him by having that British guy murdered. Even though they pinned in on his wife, he had to have known. That wasn't so much of a lost power struggle as it was "you crossed a line even high officials cannot cross."

But if you give them enough rope and fall out of favor, ya, you will be made an example of. It is difficult to make it very high without creating lots of rope, however.

> Losing power in an authoritarian government could mean you are arrested for “corruption” and sentenced to death.

The US is nearly there.

I would love to hear which US politicians you think narrowly evaded a death sentence simply from losing an election.

We just had one indicted for "corruption". Half of the predicate is true, hence "nearly there".

Agreed. Everyone wants a bogeyman. It’s great for Nationalism and Politicians who can blame someone else.

Strong economic ties are the only way to align interests and prevent destructive wars.

That worked so well for Russia and the West.

it kind of did. Europe saved roughly 1% gdp for 30 years at the cost of 1 invasion that will almost certainly cost less that 30% of a year's gdp to repel.

It took almost two decades of continued effort of toe-stepping and pinching various pain points to get where we are now, so quite well enough actually.

Even now all parties are restrained and make deals: Ukraine still pumps Russian gas to Europe, receiving payments from Russia.

What checks and balances are there in the Chinese government?

"In the draft, manufacturing technologies for high-performance magnets using such rare earth elements as neodymium and samarium cobalt were added to the export ban."

It didn't mention restriction on export of mineral or magnets themselves. Pretty sure US would restrict similar technology export to China.

BTW I don't think China ever exported such manufacturing technology. Formalization is likely due to the desire to show some ability to retaliate against western SME export ban.

> I am less convinced that China is really good at playing the long game, and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles that we see in the US.

It's more the classic leader-for-life problem. China's problem right now is Xi Jinping. He's been in power too long. He changed the rules to give himself a third term, as Putin did. He's centralized power around himself. He's created a cult of personality around himself. His decisions are much worse than they used to be. A decade ago he was seen as doing a good job. Not any more.

Whether china is good at the long game is the wrong question. They are obviously playing that game, they have even planned out the whole thing in "the 100 year marathon". The right question is if any of their democratic competitors are even in the game at all given their regular planned regime changes (elections) and multiple competing political parties. Even if china sucks at it, they win by default if there is no one else playing the game.

If China holds the minerals and the west finds another way then China would have to sell it Cheaper to non-western emerging nations like india and brazil even cheaper, improving their relations in the long term with those nations.

You can be an incompetent fool and lead a western nation so long as you can smoothtalk. But cleverness and competency are not optional if you want t o politically wrestle your way to be the leader of the CCP and almost half the planet's population.

I think it’s very important to point out here that historically speaking, no autocracy has ever outperformed the democratic West on any economic or military measure over the long term. There have been periods where it seemed like managed economies were on the rise (see even the USSR during the 1950s and 60s) but this growth tailed off due to, in many cases, serious unforced errors that the autocratic political system couldn’t address. There are a lot of possible explanations for this, but the obvious one is that democracies can course-correct. We get plenty of bad leaders as well, but in the long term we replace them. Autocratic nations can have great leadership sometimes, but they can also get stuck with Mao for decades. All evidence seems to indicate that China is reverting away from a period of dynamic leadership and moving back to a period where party officials are chosen based on loyalty to one aging man, rather than their competence. Speaks to bad things ahead for China, maybe for all of us too.

I don't disagree but 20th century didn't have the internet like it is today that helps centrally managed countries be more efficient. Also, China has had the same type of government since late 1940s and unlike russia and many other autocracies it has not just survived but is doing well economically. It is also incorrect to say China is an autocracy because as powerful as Xi is, if China's economy does not fare well then he still has to answer to the communist party congress. It's not like in north korea where they have fake elections or junta regimes with no elections. His party has no plans to replace him anytime soon but only because he is performing well enough. The CCP idolizes Xi but they are not beyond replacing him if he is unable to perform his duties. My point being, it may take longer but they can course correct.

>There are deposits of these rare earth minerals elsewhere. There are always more deposits, it’s just that they’re untapped until we deplete our cheaper sources. If China withholds its minerals, we will use more expensive sources, but we will still get the minerals.

Same thing if you with-hold semiconductors. Somebody for sure is willing to sell general purpose chips to China second hand at a more expensive price.

>I am less convinced that China is really good at playing the long game, and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles that we see in the US.

Unlikely. China is subject to different struggles but they are much better at playing a long game given that their power is more centralized and has longer terms. Xi Jing ping is likely here to stay. Bidens term is almost up and the next guy may just undo everything he did.

> Somebody for sure is willing to sell general purpose chips to China second hand at a more expensive price.

The US is stopping people from selling high tech chips to China. Have you not heard of this policy?

I tenat to agree that Xi Jing Ping is distracted with retaining power like all the other democractic polticians are. Instead of left vs rights, its ultra left-ist faction against faction, corruption and profiteering in the CCP is rife. Every day enough figure gets sent to death it would seem after falling out of favour.

Xi Jinping. The extra g caught me off guard.

China is a fairly conservative country, so calling them ultra leftist also feels wrong, since any actual leftists would get kicked out of government very quickly. It’s more like the reformer wing (was headed by ex-premiere Li Keqiang) and the more traditionalist wing that Xi represents.

From the point of view of a dictator like Xi Jinping it's the people who support him vs every one else.

Hence the term 2nd hand. China won't be able to get chips directly. They have to go through secondary sources.

Similar to how the US illegally obtained titanium from Russia for development of the sr71.

> I am less convinced that China is really good at playing the long game

The main difference is that China is good at ensuring that the state is not run for the benefit of a handful of companies and investors.

Which is not an endorsement of many of the other things the CCP inflicts on Chinese citizens.

The only reason it's so cheap is that they have the economies of scale from dominating the market by any means necessary. Take away their customers and all of a sudden their relative cost will go up.

Most people don't want to try and make things, so they are unaware how incredibly f we are.

Like I have little project and needed an enclosure made to order. Nothing fancy. Tried three rather known Western vendors and none could manufacture it to an acceptable standard. It was also very expensive and customer service seemed annoyed that I even want to order anything. I lost a lot of money on this, simply because I didn't want to support China.

Unfortunately had to hold my nose and go with Chinese. It's a night and day difference. Customer service was helpful and guided me through everything - and the quality. Damn. All dimensions exactly on point, no gaps, no off angles, no chipped paint, just perfect. The price was very similar to what I paid to more expensive Western company, but the value for money - no comparison.

It's even worse with PCBs. There is one company in Europe that I could recommend, but they are rather expensive and I wouldn't use it for larger quantity - the cost of the end product would mean you wouldn't be able to compete.

So it's China again. Amazing customer service, advanced options, short lead times.

We are so f.

Indeed. But thank you for trying!

Agree! I just ordered a custom made guitar ("NK headless guitars" on aliexpress for those who are interested). While's there's a bit of a language barrier, there's no way I could get close to the level of customer support and quality for the price ($500). You can't even start a conversation with a US/EU company for less than $2000k USD for a custom guitar build. This Chinese company started off cloning a well known brand (Strandburg) but eventually came up with their own very unique design. And not only that, they can customize things unlike the big brand.

I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1101096166?spm=a2g0o.detail...

> I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?

It is 100% possible to see China as a long term economic (and possibly military but I doubt that) threat, abhor their human rights violations, love Chinese people and despise the CCP all in one go.

So true. Even the CCP wasn’t so clearly problematic until Xi.

The CCP has been clearly problematic since Mao.

It seemed to be getting better between Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao. Obviously not great, but it took a much darker turn with Xi.

Not anti-China, anti-CCP. China has an amazing culture with deep history and they have shown themselves to be astounding competent. But autocratic systems are self-defeating. When leadership is sound, it seems like a great idea. But because power is absolute it just takes one wrong turn to wreck everything, which is what is happening now. Under Hu, Chinas ascendancy seemed inevitable. Not anymore.

Hu Jintao was a pretty weak leader who satisfied neither traditionalists nor reformers. He opened up China for the Olympics than snapped it shut. Say what you want about Xi, but he is seen as a strong leader at least.

> I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?

There are plenty of reasons for anti-China sentiments, some don't like to deal with China because of animal rights abuses, others because of mistreatments of the Uyghurs, what the CCP did to Hong Kong etc. I would rather buy the same item when it says Made in Vietnam/India/Thailand over the one that's made in China, and that's not because of bad craftsmanship or racism.

Isn't Vietnam openly (C|c)ommunist and Thailand authoritarian?

I never see people hating on Switzerland even thought it's effectively legal to eats cats and dogs in some places (and horses for my us readers) and its beeing done. One meal even named 'meow meow'

Yet I never hear people cancel Switzerland for animal right abuse

Well, Strandburg probably has some thoughts on why they dislike China.

This builder creates their own unique design. And Strandburg used to open source their designs: https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/3lb8pm/strandbe...

That reddit link reaches out to a page [0] that puts the license as CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, meaning non-commercial. Looking at the updated strandberg site[1] and some Ali clones, they look identical[2]. Maybe there are tweaks to the design, but it sure looks like the IP has been lifted entirely.

[0] https://guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com/

[1] https://strandbergguitars.com/

[2] https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-headless-guitar.html

The only similarity is that they are headless. The NKs are a pretty different body carve now.

Doing business with Chinese counterparties you have to worry they will renege on contracts if the market goes too far against them and you will have no recourse. Sometimes you get great value like your custom guitar, sometimes you get screwed. It pays to be a little cynical when doing business with Chinese companies has such a variance.

How do these non-chinese companies survive if their production is so bad, customer service so poor, and price is so high? Who are their current customers that are paying for their services?

US government contracts? (I'm joking ... I think)

I guess government, military, scientific organisations are the customers, where they want to keep their IP within the country.

>So it's China again. Amazing customer service, advanced options, short lead times.

This falls apart quickly when you come up with a product that would profit others through mimicry.

Those local manufacturers suddenly become a lot less expensive when you're cruising through Alibaba and you see the product you designed for sale in multiple colors at 2/3rds the cost you could have ever hoped to sell them for, through multiple vendors.

tl;dr : I could tell my story, I could tell my dad's story from 30 years prior, but here's the moral instead : taking IP overseas -- especially should that IP require special tooling that gets shipped around -- is crummy for a lot of reasons that may or may not come back to bite you.

Local manufacturing does have advantages, even if they may not apply to your specific needs.

> Those local manufacturers suddenly become a lot less expensive when you're cruising through Alibaba and you see the product you designed for sale in multiple colors at 2/3rds the cost you could have ever hoped to sell them for, through multiple vendors.

No need to look far, two comments removed from yours is this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35462164

There are trade offs of course. But from mechanical point of view, my project is simple enough that I am sure someone determined could just recreate it in CAD in a couple of days anyway and send to manufacturer of their own.

I think if product can be copied easily, then it will be copied. It's just a fact of life.

What can't be (easily) copied is the firmware. Someone determined could still do clean room implementation anyway.

The more complex and innovative your project is, the more time you can sell it for premium until someone copies it.

On one hand this is good, because it forces people to innovate on the other hand it makes projects less profitable in the long run.

That being said if you have your marketing and price right, your target audience is unlikely going to choose a cheap copy and those who do probably wouldn't be your customers anyway.

The west has come to the same realization with the US as well, though it's been a slow burn.

It's not the dictatorship that makes china a problem needing the trade wars, it's power, and countries with power operate outside of the rules based systems. Countries who don't submit to the rules based order shouldn't benefit from it

the reality distortion is pretty astonishing. This is clearly retaliation for the American policy of containment. The US for several years has now openly made it its goal to try to strangle Chinese technological development, most importantly in the chips sector. It's actually surprising how little response up until now came out of China.

In the world overall nobody actually perceives this as China overplaying its hand, but as a consequence of the US weaponizing trade, and the result all over the world economy will be a shift away from the US with the exception of its core military allies. The shift is already obvious in the Middle East and Africa. France(!) just settled an LNG trade with China in Yuan for the first time[1].

The American behavior is bad for everyone. The US will lose its pretty comfortable position in global trade due to the prominence of the dollar, everyone else is simply hurt by the economic fallout of trade wars.

[1]https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/china-completes-first-yuan-s...

People have been predicting that the US dollar will stop being the dominant global currency for a VERY long time.

What are your thoughts on China's treatment of the Uighurs?

Morally I think the treatment of the Uighurs is pretty awful, geopolitically it's irrelevant. Made obvious by the indifference to it even in the Islamic world. And if you think American behavior is determined by the plight of the Uighurs rather than anxiety over losing its hegeomnic position, I have a bridge to sell you.

And yes people have prematurely talked about the end of the dollar mostly for ideological reasons, but now the situation is very different. If you had told me a few years ago that over the course of weeks France will settle gas trades in the UAE in Yuan while Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations brokered by China with Washington sidelined I would have looked at you funny. This time the world has changed. It's not gonna happen tomorrow or next year, but if the US continues to weaponize its economy to enforce its own politics on other countries, it's a matter of when and not if.

Are you aware of just how strong the US dollar is right now?

It depends on how you look at it. But I am getting less and less CHF for the dollars I am earning and this is going on since Trump.

From my POV dollar is losing value nearly the same rate as the euro.

What can realistically replace the dollar as the global reserve currency?

LOL.

the strength of the dollar is exactly why people want to move away from it.

financing domestic purchases with a foreign currency is expensive.

The Muslim world is famous for their own huge human rights abuses, both to different sects of Muslims, but also don't forget the recent treatment of guest workers who were building the world cup facilities.

Some Americans are worried about their strength in the world, some are concerned about the Uighurs.

"Uyghur Genocide" is as fake as Saddam's WMDs and Gaddafi's "viagra gangs."

https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/

That people constantly raise, "What about the Uyghurs?" in conversations about the US and China constantly amazes me. After 20 years of constant war in the Middle East, including the illegal invasion of Iraq (consequence: several hundred thousand deaths), the overthrow of the Libyan government (consequence: a decade of civil war and a complete collapse of living standards), and the two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan (right across the border from Xinjiang), you'd think Americans would be a bit more self-critical and aware.

That invasion was "war"; which I am and was against. The Chinese government is repressing their own citizens. So why downplay the subjugation and genocide of the Uyghurs? (And I'm not American)

The "Uyghur genocide" has a death toll of zero, even according to the people calling it a "genocide." Words like "genocide" shouldn't be thrown around in bad faith.

I don't know what's more incredible: that anyone actually bought the "genocide" allegations, or how quickly the media has forgotten about it and moved on to the next hot-button China issue, Taiwan.

Modern definition of genocide include intentional destruction of culture, which is exactly what the Chinese are doing.

If you take a word that originally meant the mass murder of an entire ethnic group, and then use it to refer to destruction of culture, you're just trying to confuse people. The whole point of calling it the "Uyghur genocide" is to fool people into thinking that China is carrying out mass murder - which is isn't. The retreat to, "I'm talking about cultural genocide" is a bait-and-switch, used once the original accusation of "genocide" is challenged.

Even the accusations of "destruction of culture" are incredibly fuzzy. I think most people who believe in the "genocide" accusation would be very surprised to learn that the Uyghur language is still extensively taught in schools in Xinjiang, and is, in fact, still the primary language of education for most Uyghur children. They might also be surprised to learn that some of China's most popular celebrities are Uyghurs, and that Uyghur culture is actually pretty popular in China.

The "genocide" accusation is simply made in bad faith. One could actually talk about real political repression in Xinjiang, but that would be much less shocking and sensationalist than making up false accusations of "genocide."

OK, lets use the phrase "severe opression" instead of genocide.

There's a massive difference between those two phrases.

On the one hand, you have political repression of the sort that is common throughout the world, including in democracies like India (see Kashmir). On the other hand, you have the mass murder of millions of people. Somewhere in between, you have the sorts of bloody wars the US has engaged in throughout the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of people die.

I don't see the words 'US' or 'America' in that article.

If China is a dictatorship, what's the US? Gangster Oligarchy?

With the unprecedented indictment and arrest of an ex-president on trumped up and statutorily expired charges, how far is the US from a dictatorship? We already know about the rampant mass censorship, thanks to Twitter files expose, militarisation of police and accumulation of all wealth by a few corporates. The only thing left for a clear path towards dictatorship was persecution of political opponents.

I haven't heard any republicans upset about the indictment claim that Trump would never do such a thing as bribe someone to keep quiet and then file deliberately misleading tax reports, and lie on his taxes. Everyone, even his supporters thinks he does things like that. So mull that over. They are just mad it was brought to a court of law.

I do wish the more serious charges had been filed first. The reason it was unprecedented was because previous presidents hadn't committed crimes like that, en mass, at scale, and then on top of all the other things organized a rebellion against the next president's election.

People support whatever they see as the lesser evil.

Everyone knows other politicians are slimy agents of large corporations and Trump is getting in legal trouble BECAUSE he stands a chance in the upcoming elections.

It is clear to everyone that Trump was blackmailed and he seems to have done something illegal to try to keep his affair out of public eye, where it belongs.

As much as you want to pretend how much you care about the rule of law, these things don't exist in a vacuum and most people are smart enough to see what's up.

> and then on top of all the other things organized a rebellion against the next president's election.

That is not what Trump was indicted for. It's like saying my neighbour should be fined for throwing trash in his yard because he killed his wife. Both things are totally unrelated.

> The reason it was unprecedented was because previous presidents hadn't committed crimes like that

Almost every presidential campaign (including Hillary Clinton's) has done campaign funds misuse. But again, Trump is not being indicted for giving money to Daniels from campain funds (which is totally legal, believe it or not!), he is being indicted for mislabeling it as legal fees.

> But again, Trump is not being indicted for giving money to Daniels from campain funds (which is totally legal, believe it or not!)

Well, it would be legal if properly reported in campaign expenditure diaclosures, but... that kind of defeats the purpose of hush money payments to accurately and publicly disclose the amount, recipient, and purpose.

So, to make hush money from campaign funds work, you have to break the law, too.

Elected, nepotistic, robber-baron-pimps in an old money boys club..

.. i'm hoping people get these references. Risky.

More like a Plutocratic Republic.

Oligopoly is more of an economic term than a political one.

> You can't play nice with dictatorships in the hope that your long term economic interests will be aligned to the point that the other party will be forced to continue to play nice.

This is a false equivalence of democracy = partner. The US has been happy to trade with friendly dictatorships (e.g. Saudi Arabia) and has itself threatened, overthrown, or interefered in democratic and popular governments (e.g. Chile) that didn't align with its interests.

Indeed, and it shouldn't.

Saudis will never be a military threat to the democratic order the way China can be. That's a key difference.

Kinetically, no. Strategically they can and do mess with America's blood pressure by twiddling the valve on their oil output. China fields a lot of conventional military force though I have my doubts about their desire or ability to project it farther than Taiwan.

What is "the democratic order"?

Since the end of WWII, the US has overthrown at least four democratic governments (more than China) and funded numerous authoritarian governments that were/are US-aligned. To much of the world outside the north Atlantic states the "democratic order" is viewed a lot more cynically. Especially ask someone from Latin America what they think of this.

Saudi Arabia was the key force that reverted the democratization of Bahrain and in general is a block for democratization in the Arabian Peninsula. That you don't think they are a threat to democracy belies what your "democratic order" really is: US hegemony.

People on HN mostly just like pretend America is perfect though, never invaded a country, dealt with criminals etc. Only terrible people in Russia and China are capable of this.

People on HN mostly just like pretend America is perfect though, never invaded a country, dealt with criminals , dropped a nuclear bomb on a large city of civilians, etc. Only terrible people in Russia and China are capable of this.

I like America too, just important to consider a coin has multiple sides.

It feels like to me most people on HN have the opposite sentiment: America is evil, they invade countries just for fun, drop bombs just for the lutz. In contrast, there was a time when China got a lot of support on HN before their actions evaporated it.

People have varying opinions here but I see plenty of slagging on america's vast history of problems. We are trying to do better but let's see how we do over the next years - we can do so much better. We did all those things and worse, don't forget genocide against native americans, half the country is in denial that slavery and racism were terrible things that still impact us today. And on it goes.

The reason why the US doesn't like China is because the US dislikes the idea of being the #2 economy and losing control. The US has absolutely no "morals" so to say and is allied with/provides literal military support to about 70% of dictatorships[1]. The US simply acts out of national interests, not morals. History proves this. I'm baffled by how many Americans repeat state propaganda points.

[1] https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistanc...

I've been trying to preach this on HN for months. The American propaganda is blindingly strong.

The US will work with one-party countries as long as they're not a threat economically. How else do you think that Americans cheer when factories get moved to Vietnam, which is significantly worse in human rights?

Both of these things can't be true at the same time:

1. The US is concerned for Chinese citizens economically because there is only one government party in China.

2. The US thinks that CCP's policies are too effective economically that it might overtake the US as the #1 economy.

The US and China have the same amount of morals. It's basic human instincts. What's at stake here is purely socioeconomics.

What are you even talking about. China is regularly rated lower than Vietnam on human rights rankings and Vietnam is trending towards improvement. China is trending towards regression.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/vietnams-human-righ...

Lived in China and Vietnam. There is no comparison. I don't care if Vietnam allows their citizens to use Facebook.

When did you live in China? China today is a different country to pre-Xi or even early-Xi China.

Also China doesn’t let you go where the real human rights abuses are in Xinjiang.

Please go into more detail, as there's a dearth of comparative information.

I thought this article did a quite good job at what is meant when people talk about the fight for democracy: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/03/31/what-biden-mean...

Our morals in international politics are always just applied selectively, and there are few examples of where our best interest and moral considerations clash - because morality is immediately ignored or downplayed when interest is involved.

RFA? Come on.

>Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, it was established by the US International Broadcasting Act of 1994 with the stated aim of "promoting democratic values and human rights", and countering the narrative of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as providing media reports about the North Korean government.[12] It is funded and supervised by the U.S. Agency for Global Media[13] (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors), an independent agency of the United States government.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia

To be fair, the theory that economic development leads to political liberalization isn't entirely fiction. Taiwan and South Korea both used to be de facto dictatorships.

Meanwhile, Russia's vastly more economically developed[1] than it was in the 90s, yet it went fully down the authoritarian slide over the past three decades.

Also, it may be worth dropping by much of the Middle East to get another reality check on this question.

The only thing economic development seems to consistently result in is a higher demand for imports.

[1] Well, the nice parts of it are much wealthier than they used to be. The provincial towns are dying, and all the productive industries have been pushed out by oil and services.

Authoritarian slide is when those global south nations don't elect our puppets....

This. And it's beyond sad that the majority of HN users blindly follows this more than obvious propaganda war.

> I've been trying to preach this on HN for months

Please don't preach on hackernews. Instead try and communicate what you know and how you know it.

> The reason why the US doesn't like China is because the US dislikes the idea of being the #2 economy and losing control

And? Do you want Xi Xinping in charge of global culture, security, finance? How is that working out for your average Chinese these days (and I’m not talking about the previous freeer era).

You want social credit scores? One man basically in charge of the global military?

You paint a picture of America as an evil empire, but what do the alternatives look like?

I'm not even sure how to make sense of what you wrote. How did you conclude everyone on the globe will get a Chinese social credit score if China becomes #1 economy in the world? Most people outside the West don't necessarily clamour for Chinese hegemony, but want to live in a multipolar world. Why should trade between non aligned countries have to be restricted when US decides to weaponize its currency?

> You paint a picture of America as an evil empire, but what do the alternatives look like?

The nice alternatives don't have big enough militaries to be considered seriously, one could point at some European nations for a more measured approach, but it's hard to do it seriously when we only exist because the US saved us and continues to do so, as Europe pretty much has no military power if push comes to shove.

No military power is short selling Europe, just not as much as it probably should have, and that's because we figured war is no longer a viable option. Unfortunately recent events have shown this to be a fallacy.

Do we want America as a world leader? Enforcing their dated moral views on us trough controlling money flow and social media? We do have accept violence but no nudity in our media when our society is the exact opposite?

Yes that's whatabouttism but the world actually does suffer from the current state as well

I'm not sure I want America to be the world leader. But I am definitely sure I don't want it to be China.

But that's not what it is about.

China doesn't seem to try to enforce global policies (right now) nether do they claim the moral right for OUR society.

Sure they do. They just do it through second-order effects so it seems less obvious what's going on. I recall an instance where an American basketball team owner said something in support of the Hong Kong protests. His team was immediately banned from China, both physically and via broadcast.

Being able to publicly censor foreigners who dislike your policies is a useful power.

When you control economic access to a billion people, you don't always need guns to get others to do that you want. (China does have plenty of those guns, though, if and when they decide they need them.)

Not even "dated", nudity being OK goes back quite a way.

That's not what I ment. Visa&Master, whoever rates movies, facebook they all allow violence but no nudity.

In Europe nudity definitely is more normal than violence. America is forcing their different moral view on our media, normalizing violence and ashaming the youth with oldschool sexual views.

I’d note Chinese culture is even more conservative regarding nudity and just as glorifying of nationalist violence.

I totally agree. But it doesn't influence me here in Europe.

And so far I haven't seen any signs that china is trying to change that.

While visa and master banning all related to sex has real life consequences. Same with social media showing a skewed censored view on sexuality because of morality views that do not fit the society I live in. Until a few years ago you couldn't watch TV without something exploding and the US military somehow saving the day in every second movie.

We have to comply to rules that do not apply to our society.

I get that but I don’t get what barriers exist preventing competition that meets your cultures norms. There’s no state mandates involved? I suspect the answer is scale of market giving scale of impact, as well as overall quality of production and post production of American media. What’s your take? Particularly in the space of internet technologies it feels like “nothing stops you.” But I also think global social media companies are generally “family” oriented more than American morality oriented, and are opting for an intersection of cultural norms to be as minimally controversial as possible. Most cultures on earth are considerably more conservative than America, let alone Europe. Europe is very much an outlier in human cultures.

You are right I guess. Movies being the best example. Netflix and all companies that followed opened up investments in international movies and within only a few years US movies appear to be the minority, at least on German streaming sites.

Today we have several real time payment methods "better" than credit card. I still can't sell a dildo with paypal, but I do have options now (if I don't care about us customers who expect credit card payments)

Social media ist lost cause anyway.

Maybe that should be my point. America is losing its influence, and it's obviously afraid. I am afraid when America is afraid because history has shown in might react wildly.

In America this is a non issue to be honest. The rest of the world rarely registers. The American market is so vast in itself that is the primary focus. The issue of China has more to do with the courting of totalitarianism (Russia, North Korea, and various other bad guys), destabilization of international institutions, aggressive economic espionage, etc. I think the #1 vs #2 GDP is about as big a non issue to most Americans as nudity in Europe. I think this is a hold over from the 1950-1980’s, but American society now is much more insular and focused more on the Kardashians clothing choice.

> And? Do you want Xi Xinping in charge of global culture, security, finance?

Why not? Granted, I'm not an American. I haven't heard any Chinese Foreign minister goading of having killed hundreds of thousands of kids the same way as the US did [1], so why shouldn't the rest of the world give China a chance instead of the US?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP1OAD9jSaI

You haven’t heard because they are very good at being quiet about what they do. Google Uighur, then google further since you now know what to look for.

At this point I'm treating any information coming from Western sources as propaganda and definitely questionable. It wasn't always like this, but that's what the last couple of years have made me think.

As such, I'd need other sources than Western media to tell me what to think about what happens to the Uighurs (whom I'm sure do not have an easy life, far from it).

Good for you. Don't assume other sources aren't propaganda, though. In fact, they're probably worse.

Chinese sources will be devoid of any information which can put a bad face on the party even in the second order effects.

It sounds like you're saying that, because you can't be certain of the truth presented by Western media, you're just going to assume that everyone be going on in China is just a-okay.

Maybe go ahead and find those alternate news sources, explain why you believe they are accurate, and present a conclusion?

You will be downvoted and ignored for 'whataboutism' but what you say is still true and one of the many many reasons why many people in the western world do not follow, appreciate or even accept the US as quasi leader.

I guessing you haven't read much of Chinese history? They killed tens of millions of their own people.

If the choice is between the US or China running the world, I'll pick the US, every. single. time.

> I guessing you haven't read much of Chinese history

Objectively speaking, the US history of genocide, slavery and global warfare and terrorist sponsorship even before becoming an uncontested hegemony hardly makes it look better.

> If the choice is between the US or China running the world, I'll pick the US, every. single. time.

Sure, but I would bet that you might just be privileged enough to live nearby the US inner economic circle.

> You want social credit scores?

This is your daily reminder that social credit scores don't actually exist. They're a myth, a meme.

The US is a state entity where its representatives are elected, and those representatives make the policy decisions on what nations get financial support for their militaries.

To claim that these representatives don't make their decisions based on morality, or any other value that individuals have, is strictly false.

One might argue that only individuals who have opinions in line with national interests are electable, but that would be bullshit. If there's anything to truly be internalized about the elections of Barack Obama followed by Donald Trump, it's that individuals have a profound influence on American policy. If there were national interests that were solely responsible for US policy, they why was both foreign and domestic policy profoundly different across presidencies?

I'm genuinely curious how your worldview has an answer to this.

Different leaders have different policies thus the US is a true democracy and is moral? Just because the Overton Window[1] is large in the US doesn't mean that political dissenting opinions are not suppressed.

Consider the Twitterfiles, the government is actively censoring speech critical of the FBI and politicians. Think of the Hunter Biden laptop story, do you think that if that speech was not censored that different policies would be supported by the masses and that they would elect different representatives?

People need to know information to make good decisions. If they don't know the information, obviously, they won't consider that in the decision making process

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

The original claim is that the US acts out of national interest only, and doesn't take actions based on morality or other values that individuals have. To oppose that claim, one simply needs to show that individual values have at least some influence on US policy, not that individual values drive ALL policy. I've shown that

Incompetence, greed and moralistic propaganda sure can masquerade as a functioning democracy.

Is your claim that the US is not a functioning democracy? Would you be willing to offer definitions of what you mean by "functioning" and "democracy"? Many people use the word "democracy" when they mean "democratic republic".

I read your other replies, and disliked those too. So no, I will not be offering anything more because I do not care about what you think enough to do so.

But the US support for dictatorships hasn't changed between Obama and Trump (or Biden). The US will support any dictatorship that furthers US interests and will oppose any dictatorship that does the opposite.

Thus it's perfectly valid to say that it's never about whether it's morally right to support dictatorships. China is disliked by the US because it's a threat to America being #1 economically, not because it's a dictatorship. The same is true for human rights abuses, of course.

Individual politicians might have certain morals or values. I really believe Obama wanted to close Gitmo but if you look at the results, they're absolutely predictable and not at all based on any morals the US claims to have.

I think your first sentence is strictly false. For easy counterexamples, the US changed its policy towards both Cuba and Venezuela from cooperation/reproachment to outright hostility if not regime change between the Obama and Trump administrations.

Is this the case? I thought the USAID department allocated mainly its appropriations for foreign aid not the legislature? My understanding is the allocations are guided by the president, Secretary of State, and NSC.

> The reason why the US doesn't like China is because the US dislikes the idea of being the #2 economy and losing control.

This comment gets thrown around a lot but oversimplifies things.

First, in the 90s, 2000s, and some of the 2010s ‘the US’ was China’s biggest cheerleader, investor, and supporter. Most US elites knew China would eventually become a bigger economy due to their 4x larger population, and were ok with it as long as they got to share in the wealth creation. To the extent those folks were the decision makers and thus ‘the US’, they didn’t dislike the idea of being the #2 economy.

Second, sure the US doesn’t want to lose control of the mostly peaceful, prosperous, and free rules-based order it created after the disastrous first half of the 20th century. And rightly so. There is zero chance that a cult of personality totalitarian dictator like Xi Jinping is ever going to make anything broadly better for the entire world than what the US created, despite its mistakes and flaws along the way. None. It’s completely legitimate for the US to not want to lose control of that, which would mean losing some or all of it to something worse.

I don’t agree with everything the US govt does - Iraq was a travesty, and I have no idea what went on with Libya, or what is going on with Syria, for example. But there’s a 0% chance that a world dominated by Xi Jinping and the CCP would be better.

>"Second, sure the US doesn’t want to lose control of the mostly peaceful, prosperous, and free rules-based order it created after the disastrous first half of the 20th century. And rightly so."

Which has been the justification every hegemonic power has offered when working to undermine a rising power.

Whose rules are they, and who do they benefit? Who has most egregiously exempted themselves from the rules without consequence?

I agree that 'a world dominated by Xi Xinping' would be worse - though it's not clear they have any aspiration to global primacy, like the US did post-WW2 - but that's no reason to peddle myths about American exceptionalism.

The world has benefited far more than the US ever did. The "rules based order" was never created to benefit the US, if anywhere, it was created by the US to benefit Europe and East Asia to highly encourage a World War 2 to never occur again. China has benefited from this order more than the US ever has. It brought them out of poverty. Now they want to discard it now they've achieved some measure of regional power.

They benefit the world.

- Have you ever considered how much of your stuff comes via shipping lanes protected by the US Navy? Somali pirates got to FAFO what the USN thinks of pirates and we all see how that money making scheme has resonated around the globe.

- No US support = no Ukraine today (full stop)

- Is Taiwan still an independent country?

> Whose rules are they, and who do they benefit?

Ask what’s left of the US middle class that, then ask the new Chinese middle class the same question. In terms of pure quantity of people benefiting, China wins - beneficiaries were hundreds of millions of Chinese who rose out of poverty, the capital owners in both China and US, and the CCP. Losers were the US middle class, which was one of the main reasons for the rise of Trump, and the US political system as a result of that.

As I understand the history, the US started supporting China around the time of the Carter administration when Deng Xiaoping was in power. That's when China reformed to incorporate much more capitalist aspects in their economy. The Americans thought this was "their guy" who would bring capitalist democracy to China. Unfortunately they were mistaken, the CCP never had any intention of losing grasp of its authoritarian rule.

> US doesn’t want to lose control of the mostly peaceful, prosperous, and free rules-based order it created after the disastrous first half of the 20th century.

> despite its mistakes and flaws along the way

"Mistakes and flaws" is one hell of an understatement.

The global suppression of any leftist or communist leaning/related movements (operation CONDOR et al. ). The funding of guerilla and other violent groups in order to install US-friendly governments, or simply exterminate leftists (Contras, Indonesia in 1965). The installation or support of many dictators who massacred and sacked their own people (Noriega, Pinochet, throughout South America). The outright invasion of a few countries who didn't play ball.

The modern US is relatively harmless, and yes, a world dominated by the CCP would probably be worse. But let's please not forget what the US did to achieve its current world order.

> Iraq was a travesty, and I have no idea what went on with Libya, or what is going on with Syria, for example.

Beautifully spoken. Yet you still speak of peaceful, free and rules-based order.

Exactly. "I have no idea of what I am talking about, but I will repeat American State Department propaganda regardless."

I believe it would be worse under the CCP. Power corrupts inevitably, and our best option usually comes down to choosing who/what is the lesser evil, the more constrained in their use of that power. As many mistakes as the US has made, give the CCP the power and reach of the US’s military and little or no opposition or constraints and we’ll be begging for the bad old days of US hegemony.

This is stockholm syndrome. You have a proven evil (USA) and a hypothetical evil (China, based on USA propaganda and not your personal experience), yet you believe the hypothetical would be worse. By the way, it's CPC, not CCP.

CCP isn’t a hypothetical evil, it’s proven too. The only thing up for interpretation is which is the lesser of two evils.

*CPC. UAS?

This is close, but the specific verbiage that US leaders hoped for is that China would liberalize and transition to a democracy. In the 2010s, it became clear it wouldn't happen when Xi stepped into the position that he is in today.

The US likes dealing with democracies because the US has so much know how in how to influence elections. The government and CIA has a long history of meddling in elections to get the outcome that is most beneficial for the US.

Ultimately, this has built up many dictatorships around the world that violently suppress political opinions that are detrimental to the US national security.

If you don't know what was going on the middle east with iraq, libya, and syria, read this[1]. After 9/11, before the dust settled, the US wanted to force a regime change in 7 countries that they had no proof was related to 9/11. The US decimated an entire region and sent them back to the stone age for unstated reasons. Please note, all of those countries were not democracies, so they couldn't meddle in elections for more favorable leaders.

China and Xi have been smart enough to avoid a revolution/coup to become an American colony.

https://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/

>The US likes dealing with democracies because the US has so much know how in how to influence elections. The government and CIA has a long history of meddling in elections to get the outcome that is most beneficial for the US.

Foreign elections only though. They would never steer or nudge the people here that would end up being their supervisors. We know that doesn't happen.

Your comment is sarcasm, right?

Don’t you remember the last election was the “safest and most secure in history”?

"First, in the 90s, 2000s, and some of the 2010s ‘the US’ was China’s biggest cheerleader, investor, and supporter."

Sounds a bit revisionist. Maybe you don't remember what Clinton called Bush Sr during his campaign. Back then the normal trade tariff was called "Most Favored Nation" status, a concept developed by the US in the 19th century and brought to Japan and China with gunboat diplomacy. China's status was reviewed annually by Congress and some members perennially threatened to take it away. So there was an annual wave of lobby effort on show to keep the status coupled with sweeteners from China like deals to buy Boeings etc. So they renamed MFN to PNTR to make it sound more innocuous, which it was. Only with Chinese accession to the WTO did the practice end. When Bush Jr. got into office, everyone was expecting him to get tougher on China, when Chinese GDP was one tenth of US. But then 9/11 happened.

> rules-based order

What rules are those?

The USA rules, obviously. And they can change them unilaterally whenever they like. Lawmaker cop and judge at the same time.

> a world dominated by Xi Jinping and the CCP

China has made no move to dominate the world as the West has continued to do throughout history. Even the Belt and Road Initiative is a trade initiative to benefit all participating nations. China isn't going to build military bases around the world, or force countries to adopt their political proclivities, unlike the US.

As a communist country, China inherently believes that if all grow rich, all will benefit. This is completely unlike capitalism in which "there can be only one."

I don't see anything in the post of the person you're responding to that has anything to do with morals, nor the US liking or disliking China. So what exactly are you responding to?

I don't care what "the US" is in this context. I care about myself and the people close to me. And I don't like what life might look like if China were to become #1 and be able to dictate even more about our lives than it already does.

The US and other Western countries are far far far from perfect. They suck in many ways. But I much prefer the West's values over that of the Chinese government's, as flawed as they might be.

Certainly another potential global hegemon could be better for the world than the US (or, perhaps, no hegemon at all). But IMO China ain't it.

> to dictate even more about our lives than it already does

What exactly does China dictate about your lives?

I see people treat this like a fact, but there doesn't seem to be an incentive for China to instill its "way of life" outside of it, does there? So far this seems like a totally western outlook on external politics.

>What exactly does China dictate about your lives?

Extra-territorial policing might be a good start to the list.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63671943

Ask Hong Kongers

Are you or the OP in or related to Hong Kong? Because I don’t see how that’s relevant.

(Posted from Hong Kong)

I agree with your point that the US has no "morals", but that's pretty much any country. It's almost 100% self-interest, hence the geopolitical theory of "realpolitik" - pragmatism over everything else.

That said, I disagree the US doesn't like China because it will be the #2 economy. The US doesn't care about that. What it cares about is a potentially hostile power.

I wonder what the long-term impact is going to be of allowing advocates for foreign powers to fully participate in Western conversations, whilst not even Chinese citizens (let alone foreigners) can advocate against their own govt in China.

Totalitarian country should not be rewarded and supply chain should have at least a total ban option. Look at Russia and look at Taiwan, not to mention Hong Kong.

> The more China overplays its hand in this undeclared economic war

This arrogant bigotry hurts, we (not only the US but the collective west) have shown everybody how to play this game, and were also not the first. Further, if a country puts up general taxes or protects it resources against all others's the same isn't it its good right? Hate the word war is used so easily, especially in the US, the term economic war fits more most of the uneffective and also wrong sanctions imo.

> We really should pull back some of that manufacturing and deal with the resulting pollution closer to where the goods are consumed

Or, you know, not do anything? I genuinely find it laughable that people are advocating all of this China hate because they're a dictatorship. So are the Gulf nations, I don't see anyone advocating for cutting them off. Also from a global point of view, U.S. foreign policy has caused way more harm to the world than the Chinese so it is bizarre for the U.S. to champion itself as a savior of the oppressed. I genuinely think Americans should stop drinking the Kool aid of their government being the good guy.

There are good reasons to diversify where we get things from whether we hate China or not. We aren’t allies, our goals are different and often in opposition, etc… China sees the USA the same way and is making moves accordingly, so why should the USA be dumber than China?

Out of curiosity, what goals are those?

The normal. China wants reunification with Taiwan, America likes an quasi independent Taiwan as an ally. Japan, South Korea security is a big issue for America, but China has territorial issues with either. Stability in Southeast Asia, keeping the South China sea open.

Overall, none of it really matters while everyone is making money. But China enjoys its preferential status as a developing economy while America wants it to increasingly play by the rules of a developed economy.

The US wants China to retaliate tit for tat.

But China hasn't from the Huawei bans to the latest semiconductor blockade and I don't think they will do it here.

What China appears to be doing is to double down on investment in sanctioned sectors while keeping trade open. And I think they continue this strategy.

They may continue until they are ready to invade Taiwan. And then the US and the rest of the West will have some very hard choices to make - harder than the choices Germany had to make over the Ukraine invasion.

This choice would be even harder, given that the US and the rest of the West are not recognizing Taiwan as an independent state. FWIW, Kosovo seems like a totally legit state compared to Taiwan.

You have a seemingly black and white world view.

The motivations for dictatorships and democracies to behave one way or another are ultimately governed by the same principles & constraints[1].

[1] https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

Do you even understand that this is the US who started this trade war?

"Just for a moment consider what it would mean if China arbitrarily stopped exporting consumer electronics or any other category of product and what the effect on the West would be."

The economy of the west would be devastated, but so would very likely be the economy of china itself. It sounds a bit to me like the concept of nuclear war, mutual assured destruction, so no one does it.

"China is estimated to hold an about 84% share of the global market in neodymium magnets and an over 90% interest in samarium cobalt magnets. Japan, meanwhile, has about 15% of the neodymium magnet market and a less-than-10% share of that for samarium cobalt.

If China bans the export of such technologies, it would be difficult for the United States and Europe, which do not traditionally manufacture rare earth magnets, to newly enter the market, thus making those countries totally dependent on China, according to a European source.

Beijing has been investing in facilities to manufacture magnets at low cost through large-scale production, which could lead to Japan losing its market share in the future.

The draft revision says the export ban and restrictions are aimed at protecting “national security” and are in the “public interest of society.” Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration has positioned magnets as a key factor in China’s economic growth and security."

This is not normal decoupling, we're in a full on economic war.

We've been in Cold War 2 for a while. It's hard to see the other two options as better alternatives. (hot war & capitulation)

The West learned a lot during the first cold war and will outlast. Authoritarianism has a problem with corruption and not telling the leader the truth of reality.

Time will tell. We live interesting times.

Sadly, the West is looking more and more authoritarian though.

Unfortunately so, but by comparison to China it has a very long way to go.

This comment was marked as "dead" for couple minutes. Visible again now. I was about to ask why.

Likely registered via VPN or Tor.

The US imprisons more of its own citizens per capita and in absolute terms than an "authoritarian" nation-state 4x its population.

Remind us the last time China invaded a country as "liberators"? Seeing Americans of all people sit on a high horse is unreal. Like every yank forgot about "shock and awe" or "make their economy scream"

It would be great to see westerners measure their own societies by the same yardstick. Mainly because as citizens ostensibly living in a democracy (representative republic, whatever) they are complicit and responsible for the choices of their elected bodies.

We're not even a few years removed from protestors against police brutality in the US being whisked away in unmarked vans by people not in uniform. It's a race to the bottom and the US is already there, but nobody seems to care as long as they can pat themselves on the back for not being Russia/China.

In the US, the people can force change through protests and elections. What options do the Uyghurs or Chinese people have?

Do you want a real answer to this, or one that self-congratulates us, by playing to our biases and cultural myths, and generally poor understanding of how societies work?

The same options that any people have. Soft power. Every government, be it formally representative or not, multi-party or dual-party, or single-party is ultimately only able to govern with the consent of the governed. There are always levers for people to push, and they do, and sometimes government responds and sometimes it does not, and this happens in every country.

China has in most ways a worse system for responding to these demands than a system of fair elections, but it does have a system. Its leaders steer public opinion, but have to, in turn, also be steered by it - because their mandate doesn't come from a 4-year election (where they can do whatever the hell they want in the intervening years), it comes from a fear that unpopular dictators end up swinging from lamp posts (while unpopular elected representatives end up, at worst, in retirement).

And even a system of fair elections will not protect a repressed minority that everyone wants to crap on. African or native Americans can protest and vote[1] all they want, but if the political zeitgeist sees them as a second-class minority, elections and getting tear-gassed and shot in the face with rubber-coated bullets isn't something that's going to bring about meaningful change. Meaningful change will only happen when they convince the people who hold political capital that they need to be treated like human beings. That doesn't happen at the polls, that happens through culture. There's a reason why the American right has declared a war against 'wokeness', and 'crt', and is trying to convince anyone that will listen that it is actually the underdog, the victim of unparalleled historic repression. It's not afraid of losing the culture war at the polls[2], it's afraid of losing the culture war in people's minds. The loss at the polls comes after.

[1] Well, at least, in states that don't actively try to suppress and disenfranchise them.

[2] Well, it is, hence gerrymandering, voter suppression, and all the rest.

There is a lot of bias and emotion to unpack from your comment. It's not like one side is more manipulative than the other in the US, both are equally guilty of this, it's part of politics in a democracy, especially given the hyper-media. The "wokeness" movement went to far and we as a country are now self correcting, not the first time it happened, last time it was called PC for short. And it's not just a "right" side issue, many of us left leaning also feel it went too far, to the point that the DEI initiatives violate out equality rules by encouraging preference for some groups over others. It's a fallacy to think your team is right and has all the correct answers.

You've entirely missed the point that I'm making - which is that elections are in themselves not sufficient to address a minority concern (In the US[1], because of the particularly perverse mechanism for districting, the electoral college, and disproportionate regional representation, they often aren't even sufficient to address a majority concern[2]!). By definition, a minority is going to be marginalized in a representative system.

Mindshare of the majority is the real battleground, and mindshare is just as relevant in China as it is here, and it's why mindshare is fought over so bitterly across the world.

You ask how politically weak minorities in China can get what they want, I point an answer that, for contrast, provides a litany of ways for how politically weak minorities in the US can't get what they want, and you accuse me of being biased and political. I can only assume that the problems of how minority rights can be asserted in practice in the two systems wasn't actually what we were interested in discussing?

'We have elections' isn't a conversation-terminator. It's a conversation-opener, because it isn't actually the trump card that you think it is.

[1] And in other countries, but usually for other reasons.

[2] And I'm not talking about normal parliamentary checks and balances that allow a minority to hold legislature in stasis. That's to be expected from any political system that requires a more-than-50% consensus in order to deviate from the status quo. [3] I'm talking about a minority actually managing to impose its will, through new legislature, against a majority.

[3] Which is often a desirable requirement.

> We're not even a few years removed from protestors against police brutality in the US being whisked away in unmarked vans by people not in uniform.

Maybe you don’t know this so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but those were Federal law enforcement—who don’t tend to drive around in patrol-cop livery—detaining and arresting people suspected of setting a courthouse on fire.

You can peacefully protest outside of a courthouse, or you can riot, but if you riot then yes, you should be detained, arrested, charged and prosecuted for your offenses. That same courthouse has been trespassed, vandalized, barricaded and been set on fire multiple times between 2020 and 2021.

>Remind us the last time China invaded a country as "liberators"

Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong? And constantly abusing other nations territorial waters for fishing and general intimidation

> The US imprisons more of its own citizens per capita and in absolute terms than an "authoritarian" nation-state 4x its population.

This is often raised as some kind of trump card, but it of course completely ignores the Chinese system of executions, and the ability of the Chinese state to sentence someone to a lifetime of poverty without even a trial.

If you want to claim that the US criminal justice system has problems compared to the richer parts of Europe, you'd be right, but it's laughable to make this claim with regards to China.

What country do you reside in?

If this is true, you should substantiate this claim. More authoritarian compared to when? 1789? 1919? 1933? 1945? 1951? 1962? 1974? 1989? 2007? 2019?

Comparatively to before 911 for sure

Just prior to 9/11 or are you talking about the period between 1989 and 9/11?

I see it with my own eyes that after 9/11 things are getting worse. Not sure how it is not clear from my previous answer

Sure! I don’t necessarily disagree, but what is your point of reference? If September 11th 2001 was the end of an era, what was the starting point of that era? The fall of the Berlin Wall? Something else? Was the period before that starting point more or less authoritarian than today?

That users point is that the first half of the Cold War was way more authoritarian and so pre-9/11 is not a benchmark in itself

I'm not sure you are old enough to remember but at one point a progressive president was aligned with the ku klux klan and put a dissenting socialist journalist in jail.... Just because.

Not too long after (different president), shops were required to put emblems in their window showing they supported the regime's economic plan.

yes but still far far less then china

its just you hear about all the problems from the west

you mainly only hear about problems from China when they are in context of the west, china is enacting a lot of pressure and tricks to greatly reduce negative reporting about it especially about china's inner politics. Most western people speaking English but but Mandarin helps then there too.

>"The West learned a lot during the first cold war and will outlast."

During the CWI (ha I just coined the new Cold War I term) we did not get hi-tech stuff from the opponent. In CWII we are not that lucky and have no immediate replacement for many things. I am afraid if this thing really gets up to speed we a heading for disaster. That the other side suffers as well or even worse is no consolation.

What high tech stuff do we get from China?

Mostly Apple stuff, probably?

Those come from Taiwan and Korea. China does does the packaging.

Didn't we just learn how to make magnets in a novel way without rare earth? Yes, yes we did: https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magne...

I don’t think that’s a commercial product yet, still on the tech development phase. It may not pan out.

I asked for some samples a while ago so we could test them out in our magnet lab here at NASA GRC but I haven’t heard anything back yet.

NASA GRC Magnet lab, sounds attractive...

The bigger story is the recent push to settle trade in Yuan instead of USD.

BRICS [1] , Saudi Arabia [2], many South American [3] and ASEAN countries [4], (and even France [5]!) have signed on to do Yuan-based settlement.

This is the strongest concerted effort to kill the petrodollar and Bretton Woods. It would have devasting impact to the US economy if this trend continues.

The US economy and our special ability to buy cheap goods have relied upon the world buying up US dollars. The sheer amount of investment in the US is a direct consequence of the dollar's elevated status.

This is pushback to US Swift-based sanctions and hegemony and an acceleration to multi-polar power. Several counties have wanted this for a long time, but the Ukraine war and tensions with China have accelerated this.

This is a big deal with titanic, earth shaking consequences for the US and the West. It could lead to incredible inflation and an economic depression if the world stops buying up dollars.

This is pretty horrifying to watch unfold so quickly.

It's hard not to see all of the chess pieces moving. There is a huge game being played right now -- in the open, for all to see -- that will determine the balance of power for the remainder of the century.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-28/o-neill-u...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-acceptin...

[3] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3215857/c...

[4] https://www.manilatimes.net/2023/04/06/business/foreign-busi...

[5] https://www.rfi.fr/en/business/20230331-petrodollar-under-th...

I have doubts China is suddenly going to decide to stop its extreme currency manipulation. The question is how quickly it will bite the countries trading in it.

They are putting forwards a proposal for bilateral trade (and have proposed a dynamic basket of currencies as a reserve previously). The alternative being explored is not a 1-1 replacement of the USD with the Yuan.

Additionally, from the perspective of much of the world, the US has been engaging in pretty sizeable currency manipulation in the past 3 years.

There’s nothing sudden about what China’s been doing with its trade surplus. In the aughts they were spending most of it on US treasuries. After the great financial crisis they began tapering their purchases and shifting to a basket of other currencies. In the mid 2010’s they started the belt and road initiative to turn trade surplus into loans and infrastructure in foreign countries. It’s been at least 15 years of them pulling away from the tight coupling they had with USD.

Let's not fool ourselves, the USD is a shitty reserve currency.

But: It's amazing that otherwise smart people don't understand that china manipulates their currency worse than the US. How do people think that the evergrande crisis just disappeared? Magical econ dust?

I don't doubt that corrupt regimes can be bought off to the yuan, but it's hard to imagine seeing that going well for them:. USD M2:GDP hovers around 1, RMB M2:GDP is currently around 2.

Even worse, RMB has extreme capital controls. It's difficult for individuals to get RMB out of PRC, because the regime is terrified of capital flight. It's hard to predict what effect this would have on a reserve currency.

Bretton Woods officially ending in 1976, and was effectively killed in 1971 by Nixon when he ended the convertibility of dollars to gold.

> This is the strongest concerted effort to kill the petrodollar and Bretton Woods. It would have devasting impact to the US economy if this trend continues.

It's a 100 year long trend that started with the 1933 gold ban in US, later Bretton Woods, decreasing US global bond portfolio recently, and the Russian central bank asset freezing.

Personally I think that defaulting on Russia was a bigger deal than the Yuan bond trade, as it created a precedent for not paying for countries that US not even officially in war.

What's important is neighter to overreact nor underreact: this is a long process in which USD is losing its reserve currency status.

Personally I believe Bitcoin will be taking its place, but I know that that is a controversial statement.

Bitcoin, utterly worthless the moment rockets start flying and knocking out internet infrastructure

Bitcoin doesn't rely on the internet, it's a nice to have.

In a world without internet, your paper wallet will be worth ~as much as my D&D character's inventory sheet. And probably less, because at least the character sheet is big enough that I can make a paper airplane out of it.

Why's that?

Because without a working network, it becomes impossible to actually use it as currency. At least bars of gold, or gold-coated tungsten, or pirate treasure, or papiermarks or dollars or lottery scratchers or bottlecaps can physically change hands in exchange for goods.

A postal network is enough of a network

If the internet stops working, you will have bigger problems than money.

Gaddafi would be happy.

Being an early adopter was not a healthy choice for him.

Shouldn't have messed with the petrodollar

plenty of people have been warning about this for years with regards to the push towards renewable energy and electric cars. China makes 70-80% of the components of solar panels globally.

the idea that manufacturing is somehow low value and "services" are what developed economies should focus on is one of the dumbest concepts in human history. It will take the US decades to rebuild their manufacturing base

The top 3 manufacturers in the world are: China (by a lot) then Germany, then the US.

And of them, the US has far, far better access to natural resources (admittedly, having to lean on Canada).

This is false, the US is second and Japan third

https://www.brookings.edu/research/global-manufacturing-scor...

We have similar delusions here in the Netherlands, but we call it the "knowledge economy". The arrogant and misguided idea that us advanced smart people would do the thinking whilst the dummies make the stuff.

Which means you unlearn how to make anything whilst the other party gets ever more advanced at it. And then takes over the thinking too. You end up with a select few Excel managers, a decimated middle class, and a layer of poor local service workers.

The destruction of the middle class in the West has been ongoing for decades now and almost every single problem can be traced back to it.

> The destruction of the middle class in the West has been ongoing for decades now

Virtually all politicians are happy it's happening, populace is easier to control that way.

Here's the real issue:

China has been dumping rare earth metals and magnets at ridiculously low prices for decades (and polluting their country). This had the effect of making mining and refining these metals unprofitable in the west (why pay the huge price of pollution when the Chinese will contaminate their ground water below costs?).

This doesn't mean the west can't scale up prospection and innovation to have cleaner ways to make these magnets. There's little to no tech gap the Chinese have over the west.

The fact that the US Govt didn't see this as a national security issue and act accordingly (consequently doing something to prop up local industry) is the real problem.

China is playing chess while we're playing checkers.

the difference between having engineers as government leaders versus lawyers. The West is ran by smooth talking lawyers rather than a general sample of the population or subject matter experts

here's a visualization of the change over time, career government employees and lawyers took over and things went downhill in the US at least

https://i.imgur.com/xdWVes2.gif

The us tried having an engineer leader, Herbert Hoover. It did not end well.

not sure how much you can blame Hoover for the great depression, guy just had bad luck in being president when the entire world economy imploded. The US didn't pull out of it until WWII

The crash of 1919 was way worse in terms of relative drop compared to the total economy. But the US bounced back quickly. Coolidge warned before hoover was president that hoover was meddlesome: "for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice – all of it bad". Despite how people seem to misremember, hoover was very interventionist, outright declaring that he thought that society was something with knobs and levers that you could engineer your way around.

https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-herbert-hoover...

Believe it or not, FDR ran on a platform declaring that hoover was dicking around too much, though when he became president he obviously doubled down on what hoover was doing.

"Although Roosevelt would oversee a dramatic expansion of the federal government himself, he attacked Hoover during the 1932 presidential campaign for engaging in “reckless and extravagant” spending and ran on a Democratic platform calling for “an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures” by at least 25 percent. Roosevelt’s running mate, John Nance Garner, went so far as to accuse Hoover of “leading the country down the path of socialism.”

I am not entirely sure how history got rewritten to be the exact opposite of what it actually was.

What? The usg did exactly this.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/10/01/trump-execut....

Despite how it sounds, the chief difficulty with rare earths is 1) how much of a pain in the ass isolation is, and 2) how much you're willing to tolerate water pollution in the process (or how much $ you're willing to pay to clean up the effluvium).

In the short term a Chinese ban on rare earths just means a hit to the pocketbooks,not a regression to the industrial age. In the long term, it's just accelerating science -> engineering, as there are very good rare earth alternatives in the "late research" phases and even if none of them pan out the methodology to scale up extraction is publically known, and solvable.

MP Materials is doing this in a big way, in the US.

This is not normal decoupling, we're in a full on economic war.

In the short term that's terrible. In the long term, pain now will help minimize pain later when China invade Taiwan and US-China trade drops to zero overnight. It's coming sooner or later and the longer you leave your investments in China the more you risk the door slamming shut on your hand.

What does China actually stand to gain by invading Taiwan? Any kind of real analysis based in anything other than nationalistic fervor or fear mongering seems to indicate that they're better served by the status quo.

The same reason Russia invaded Ukraine even though it made no sense. The same reason Republicans put up Trump even though it made no sense. If you have 0 morals, you can gain a lot of power by riling up your base with empty promises of nationalist glory. But eventually your base expects you put up or shut up, even if it doesn't or never has made sense.

Possible access to, and control of, most of the world's top chip manufacturing node fabs.

> other than nationalistic fervor

And as you said, this. Jingoism can be used to bolster those in power. I don't know that Xi could use this boost at this point in his career, but as he seems to want to be Chairman-for-life, he may need it eventually.

Possible access to, and control of, most of the world's top chip manufacturing node fabs.

They don't know how to run them, maintain them, use them. If they did, they'd have built their own.

Only people help them here. And yet, they still don't have them.

If China invaded tomorrow, just the power loss alone would render those fabs into useless tech, taking months to clean and repair. And they'd still gain nothing, for you can be sure China's tech spies have taken notes, pictures, stolen data, know all they would know, if they seized them in war.

They could temporarily deny access to these nodes to other states.

> Only people help them here.

How many Hong Kongers aligned with the party after the preemptive takeover of the Hong Kong government? How many people simply cared more about making a living than fighting for their old political and legal system?

They didn’t have the benefit of seeing the example of what happened in Hong Kong.

There is no scenario where that is a worthy trade off for the immense costs.

According to whom?

Sure there is. The scenario is that you're the decision maker and don't have to personally suffer the immense costs.

The cost will be born by other Chinese, not him.

Not really. The U.S. really has its blinkers fully on if folks think that controlling the node fabs is a reason for the Chinese invasion. They are not dumbos - they know the foundries will be destroyed immediately.

The reason is simple - China has always considered Taiwan part of China and the U.S. agreed to that position, before it first became "strategic ambiguity" and then it became "Taiwanese Independence" under President Biden.

Judge this honestly: Do you really think a super-power is going to accept a non-friendly island next door to it militarised by an opponent super-power allowing it to project power just on its border ? Do you think the U.S. would accept Chinese military aid to Cuba with the Cubans armed with Chinese weapons and the presence of Chinese troops in Cuba ? If you know an American military officer, ask this question to him and watch him laugh at you. The Chinese would be bombed within 48 hours - hell the ships would be taken out before military supplies even reached Cuba.

The U.S. could afford to play the game of asymmetric dominance because they were the sole super-power after the Cold War. That is no longer true.

> U.S. agreed to that position

Yes, but the US never agreed which government would be the sole government of a united China.

> Do you really think a super-power is going to accept a non-friendly island next door to it militarised by an opponent super-power allowing it to project power just on its border ?

This was happening through the entire Cold War between Russia and the US in the Aleutian islands. It's the status quo change of nuclear missiles in Cuba that prompted the Cuban missile crisis, prior to that Russian troops and arms were present in Cuba without any deepening of the conflict.

>Do you think the U.S. would accept Chinese military aid to Cuba with the Cubans armed with Chinese weapons and the presence of Chinese troops in Cuba ?

We accepted this exact scenario during the Cold War with Soviet troops. We wouldn't start a nuclear war to kick them out.

There is no scenario in which PRC invades Taiwan and the taiwanese chip fabs remain intact

It's nationalistic political ideology. I'm sure the famous Taiwan semiconductor foundries would be destroyed in any invasion. China wants to finally wipe out that resistance to them.

Wiping out resistance in Taiwan… by building a swath of new uber-enemies among all of the other surrounding countries.

There’s really no positive outcome for taking Taiwan unless in 10-20yrs+ China gets out of their recent economic rut, starts rapidly growing again, and actually starts threatening not only the US but the western hegemony as a whole. Beyond just talking tough and isolating their economy, but by going to the next level of being an economic superpower that could sustain such a blow and build strong partnership with other powerful countries.

Or if other partner countries in SEA, mid east, South America, Africa, India also grow rapidly and become far stronger power players and realign towards China.

The Pacific, for one, meaning control of shipping lanes—and with these, economic/political leverage over Japan (which, as internal PLA documents for senior staff have already revealed, they intend to put to full use). Right now, China is boxed in from all sides by mostly U.S. allied countries, so breaking the "First Island Chain" encirclement is in reality a much bigger deal than the semiconductor industry, especially in the long term.

Who do they plan to ship to using their newly-conquered shipping lanes, exactly?

They will find that the rest of the civilized world can say "No" to China, just as it has to Russia.

Other authoritarian regimes. Autocrats gotta stick together. Besides, international sanctions don't last forever. Give it a decade and maybe everyone forgets. China is a gigantic market and that's a lot of political pressure. It's not a tiny island nation like Cuba.

> China is a gigantic market and that's a lot of political pressure.

how do their imports compare to their exports?

> They will find that the rest of the civilized world can say "No" to China, just as it has to Russia.

Umm...except for US+EU, no one is saying No to Russian oil and other exports. Of-course, you are free to consider that the "rest of the civilized world" in your mind.

Russia is getting $52/barrel for oil. Other producers are getting $80-85/barrel.

Comparing oil prices like this doesn't exactly work - oil is less of a commodity than we like to think. $80-85 per barrel is the price for WTI or Brent, which is a grade of crude oil called "light sweet crude." As oil goes, this is the highest purity grade. Middle Eastern oil, in general, is not anywhere near that pure, and can go for as little as $20-30/barrel. I assume Russian oil is also not quite as light and sweet as $80/barrel oil would be.

The whole point is that $52/barrel isn't (only) geopolitics, it's also about oil purity.

This chart looks like it's mostly geopolitics. The Brent-Ural spread opened pretty significantly in Jan.

[0]https://www.neste.com/investors/market-data/crude-oil-prices

Why wouldnt they, if they could, send the navy to secure Japanese islands they insist are theirs?

Isn't that wholly circular? Annex the islands to allow the navy free passage to annex the islands to...

China the nation stands to gain nothing. Chairman Xi stands to gain, or rather keep, a tremendous amount of power. Taiwan as an independent country flies in the face of party propaganda and official PRC policy.

This. Xi has made annexing Taiwan, essentially, a test of the CCP's legitimacy as ruler of China. If he fails, it's a huge loss of face, for him personally and for the CCP as a whole. Whether their power would survive that loss of face is not something they want to experimentally determine.

This is why is a long while before anything happens, they need to plan for every sanction, unlike russia, they seem to weather it ok, but it’s not very ok

Big difference between Russia and China at the moment. Russia can weather it because they have the energy resources. China does not and has to rely on imports for its energy needs.

from wikipedia: Territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,[2] is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22 km; 14 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state

I would guess that there's oil or shipping lanes or aircraft bases that they would want.

And fish.

Breaking the first island chain, which is a line of US military hardware at their front door.

This allows them military access to the pacific, which they don’t have now.

This is the wrong question. The right question is: what does the leader of china gain by ordering an invasion of Taiwan?

If I were him, I'd prefer the status quo. Invading Taiwan is not a 100% success guarantee and surely Xi doesn't want to end up like Putin in Ukraine. Even a (military) success would threaten his rule, simply by the economical consequences. That's a lot of risks for very little rewards. But who knows ... we can just hope for the sake of all of us, that the Chinese have better intelligence and better risk assessment than the Russians had.

I think you have the causality backwards. When the economic reality looks bleak, a patriotic war is always a way to distract people.

The Chinese government does, at present, strongly favor the status quo.

However, it's becoming increasingly clear that the US is shifting away from the One China policy. That shift is deeply alarming the Chinese government. There doesn't seem to be anyone in American politics who is capable of pressing the breaks, slowing down the drive towards confrontation, and reengaging in real diplomacy with China.

In the end, the belief in the US that there will be a show-down over Taiwan is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So if China invades Taiwan, it's Americas fault really?

Ridiculous.

While I don’t think America would be to blame for a war started by China, as an outsider, I think it has to be noted that America under Biden has been diplomatically rather aggressive and variably trustworthy. It’s fairly obvious than the whole alliance of democracies against authoritarianism is a paper thin cover for "countries which serve the US interests" and both include countries which don’t promote liberal values and exclude countries which do.

Or it is just protecting and standing up for our allies, the democratic and free countries of the world.

This is stupid. NATO was falling apart until last year. Suddenly it's resurgent. Do you think the US was behind this? No. Europe is scared shitless by its neighbor to the east and it's pulling American interest to it. Honestly after all of its stupid adventures in the middle east the US has lost its appetite for this shit, and "the alliance of democracies against authoritarianism" for once is not drawn by american interests (it was never really an alliance against authoritarianism, jugoslavia and Angola were on our side of during the cold war).

If the US deliberately takes steps intended to back China into a corner, with the only options being humiliation or war, then yes, it will be the US' fault.

The US has to come to grips with the fact that its power is limited, and that it must seek accommodation with other powers. If it doesn't come to this realization, we're all in for a very bad time.

Hitting someone else to avoid humiliation is behaviour that belongs on the elementary school playground.

Making "accommodations" over territory is what started World War 2.

> Hitting someone else to avoid humiliation is behaviour that belongs on the elementary school playground.

John F. Kennedy didn't think so: "Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world."[0]

> Making "accommodations" over territory is what started World War 2.

First, not everything is Munich 1938, and it is very dangerous to think that it is, because it prevents rational diplomacy. It's the sort of thinking that was used to justify the American military intervention in Vietnam. It's the sort of thinking that might cause a war over Taiwan.

Second, Taiwan was legally a part of China, and it has never officially ceased to be so. The PRC is recognized as the legitimate government of China. The large majority of people in Taiwan no longer want to be part of China, but people on the mainland believe very strongly in the territorial integrity of China and are not willing to see a part of China permanently, officially severed from the country. This is an extremely delicate issue, and simply telling the Chinese to go stuff it would be very ill-advised.

0. Kennedy's "Peace Speech": https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-k....

The Chinese government does, at present, strongly favor the status quo.

There is only one external event - an event that takes place outside of China - that can seriously disrupt the CCP's rule over China and that is Taiwan successfully declaring independence and international recognition.

It would be a humiliating loss of face for the CCP and would probably be followed by a desperate reshuffling within the party and perhaps even a civil war. The CCP is strong and rigid, but like ceramic, not like steel. Their only mandate rests on China's continued economic and diplomatic success. Taiwanese independence would be the nucleating particle for an explosion of domestic unrest and chaos.

> Taiwanese independence would be the nucleating particle for an explosion of domestic unrest and chaos

Honest question: does it have to be? Couldn't they sneer it off and keep doing what they're doing: claim it's a rebellious province they're too busy to deal with?

Every dictatorship is seething with discontent among the elites. Dictators are rarely overthrown by revolutionaries - it's more common that they're deposed by their own generals. A public failure like Taiwanese independence isn't a problem for everyone in the Chinese government - for some, it could be an opportunity. If you're at the very top, you don't want that.

> However, it's becoming increasingly clear that the US is shifting away from the One China policy. That shift is deeply alarming the Chinese government. There doesn't seem to be anyone in American politics who is capable of pressing the breaks, slowing down the drive towards confrontation, and reengaging in real diplomacy with China.

Funny, from this side it looks like the opposite: the US is shifting towards greater recognition of Taiwan because China amped up its rhetoric about reunification.

The timeline of how tensions have risen is very clear. The Trump administration began taking steps to undermine the One China policy, such as Trump holding an official call with the Taiwanese president, and calling for Taiwan to be included in international organizations that normally only accept sovereign states. Pelosi's trip was another major milestone, because it breaks the US' promise not to maintain official diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Biden's repeated statements that the US definitely will defend Taiwan are another milestone, because they jettison a decades-long American policy of strategic ambiguity. Things appear to be accelerating, with the Taiwanese president's visit to the US and meeting with Kevin McCarthy, and with increasing talk in the US about potentially backing formal Taiwanese independence.

China's reaction to this has been to reiterate its long-standing position, that it favors peaceful reunification but does not rule out military force as a last resort, and to increase military drills near Taiwan. China has been reactive here. For example, it held large military drills after Pelosi visited.

A lot of these developments are driven by American domestic politics, with the two parties competing to brandish their anti-China credentials. That drives then towards increasingly provocative actions, with little thought about the larger consequences of heading down this path.

The other element driving the shift in American policy is the fact that the naval balance of power in China's immediate periphery is shifting. The US Navy is still much stronger overall, but it may no longer be able to defeat China 100 km off of China's coast. In a decade, the balance will be even less advantageous for the US. This is a major motive for jettisoning strategic ambiguity, to force a change in Taiwan's status before the balance of power tilts further.

> The timeline of how tensions have risen is very clear. The Trump administration began...

Disagree, tensions were already rising well before that. In particular Xi Jinping made a big call for reunification in 2014, which likely lead to a more vigorously pro-independence party being elected in Taiwan in 2016. Closer cooperation with the US followed from that.

Inside of xi there are two wolves

This framing is incorrect. The official position of the PRC since its inception has been that Taiwan and the mainland are the same country. Reunification was always the plan of the CCP. Reuinification remains popular in the mainland. While few Taiwanese desire full reuinfication, a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence, indicating that both sides still see themselves as part of an abstract Chinese cultural nation.

https://www.newsweek.com/taiwan-china-politics-identity-inde...

> a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence

Given that doing so would put them on a path to an invasion by the mainland, this would seem expedient.

> indicating that both sides still see themselves as part of an abstract Chinese cultural nation.

So no, it indicates nothing of the sort.

> While few Taiwanese desire full reuinfication, a similarly small percent want to formally declare independence

That relatively small number is only due to China's promise of automatic and immediate invasion if they were to declare independence. Remove the threat to their life and their families, the vast majority of them would want to be Taiwan rather than be governed by a dictatorship.

You're right in the large. Realistically, though my question still applies because of a one considerations.

Timeframe. Realistically china has only about 10-15 years to do this before demographics and horrifying rates of infertility stemming from their massive pollution and urbanization catch up to them. The idea of reunification could just be an abstract concept in perpetuity (and will be if PRC makes no moves). What takes it to being real is a question of when and that has everything to do with what's in it for the current leader in the here and now.

As an aside. If PRC were really big brained and had this as the #1 agenda they would realize that the taiwanese drive for independence is really contingent. If PRC were chill and democratic free, and not scary, Taiwan would come running back. Probably also china would actually contend to be #1 country in the world. The CPC only shoots itself in the foot.

legacy.

China is worried about being blockaded, which is a large threat due to their reliance on middle eastern oil. The status quo makes it relatively easy for the American navy to completely encircle their shores, but without Taiwan that strategy breaks down.

Not really. You just blockade Taiwan. Move the circle out a little bit.

Moreover, attacking Taiwan guarantees that a blockade will occur.

Besides which, Taiwan probably has nukes inside the PRC. If not they are dumber than dirt.

> You just blockade Taiwan.

"Blockade Taiwan" where? The Chinese fleet currently have to pass close to land to go anywhere outside their own seas, but from Taiwan it's clear blue water all the way to Hawaii.

They have always considered Taiwan part of China. The US even agreed and signed a treaty regarding that.

The United States' One-China policy was first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972: "the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.

Since then, the US devolved first to strategic ambiguity and then recently to supporting Taiwanese Independence in the Biden Era. The Chinese are not going to take it lying down. Nationalism matters a lot to Chinese - if you think this is simply a Xi endeavour, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. Even if Xi died today, the vast majority of the high command will decide to carry forth.

Unfortunately, War is generally a snowballing, self-fulfilling prophecy. Since the U.S. has now gained access to four new Philippine bases, China will be forced to respond as well. The game of escalation will continue until the final pin drops.

Personally, I really don't think super-powers should be stubborn. There should be new negotiations and there should b e a revised Shanghai Communique. China is unlikely to accept an fully independent island so close to their border though and will want some control over Taiwanese governance. Its too much of a threat to them otherwise.

If you think the position un-reasonable, turn the situation around and judge the way the U.S. treats Cuba - strong-armed and watched over by the Guantanamo Bay military base and sanctioned to death and you might get an idea of what China's starting negotiation position will likely to be.

Taiwan's output of chips requires inputs from the rest of the world including Japan. At this time it doesn't make sense for china to cut out it's main source of high tech chips. It could make sense later if China had its own supply of chips and could cut out Taiwan altogether. China is pushing hard to make their own non-liberal order but China also depends on exports. Also China's political system is based upon absolute control over everything a person does. It will be messy implementing that onto people who already fought against it so there will be a lot of killings, disappearing people, and the usual China stuff broadcast all of time. Will be a bad look, not great to throw that in the face of people you need to export goods to.

We have no political control in Cuba even though we did take a portion of the island.

> We have no political control in Cuba even though we did take a portion of the island.

I think the Chinese will be extremely happy with a similar arrangement. Taiwanese government can continue, there will just be a nice, big military base right next door keeping an eye.

I am sure all those folks captured and tortured in Guantanamo Bay in "independent" Cuba were very happy with the level of control the U.S. applied there. Something that would have still been hidden and a state secret if not for Wikileaks. But the guy who leaked it has now been made to pay for it and is now imprisoned and in isolation.

Sometimes a country puts people into work camps for holding up a blank piece of paper, sometimes not.

> They have always considered Taiwan part of China. The US even agreed and signed a treaty regarding that.

The US has signed no such treaty.

One thing I learned recently was that when the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, they took a vast trove of priceless Chinese antiquities with them. This has long been a sore spot for China, which makes the desire to annex Taiwan not simply a dollars and cents tactical goal but also a matter of national pride.

It's like if we had a right-wing revolution in the US, and the current national government fled to Nova Scotia with the contents of the Smithsonian, the National Archives, and every important museum and library.

They did take them and a good thing too. In the cultural revolution the CCP destroyed the priceless Chinese antiquities on the mainland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds

Totally, and I'm not making any judgment about whether it was right or wrong to take all the antiquities. However, I think the current regime in China has different ideas about the value of these antiquities, and so they're eager to get them back for the sense of legitimacy and connection to China's history that they would bring.

I guarantee you that if they gave those antiquities back it wouldn't change a thing.

How many priceless Chinese antiquities were destroyed by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution? They should have taken even more! It's like if we had a radical extremist revolution in the US, and the contents of the Smithsonian, the National Archives, and nearly every important museum and library were all burned because they're too old, oppressive and counter-revolutionary.

Not sure your analogy works, since it’s the right that is so insistent on preserving cultural artifacts while the left is the side with people actively destroying them. It’s also no coincidence. The CCP did the same thing.

> the left is the side with people actively destroying them

I was just in Central Park in NYC and there was a huge golden Civil War statue that was completely unmolested, and it's sitting smack in the middle of a very liberal city. General Sherman is very safe from liberals. I'm sure John Brown statues would be as well. Maybe it's not all the cultural artifacts, but only certain ones and the very specific things they represent?

> it’s the right that is so insistent on preserving cultural artifacts while the left is the side with people actively destroying them

I dunno, right-wingers seemed just as happy, or more, with the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled as anyone else.

If you mean specifically monuments to slavery, slavers, and the Confederate States of America, sure, the Right is eager to protect those and the left opposed, but for neither side is that about “cultural artifacts” as a broad class.

Face.

As an East Asian myself, the amount of stupidity that goes on in all of the East Asian countries at all levels because of “face” is astounding.

Call it “honor” or “nationalism” or “XXX Pride” - ultimately all the same thing.

This is the answer. It is so simple and yet so alien to the west that it simply doesn’t register in most people’s minds.

It’s becoming less alien by the day, our refusal to cut tail in Iraq and Afghanistan as evidence.

> yet so alien to the west

> Chinese state planners when they successfully cloak their plans in a cloud of Orientalism

https://media.tenor.com/isrmdo9Xr9EAAAAC/mission-accomplishe...

Face is used to rile the public, but it's rarely the motivation of those calling the shots. If face were at play Xi wouldn't have suddenly opened up with covid, backed down after threats when Pelosi visited, or let the Diaoyu Island situation go.

In China tens of millions watched the live stream Pelosi's plane flying to Taiwan, expectantly waiting for it to be shot out of the air like their leadership insinuated. Those people believe in face saving efforts, while those in charge buy homes in Japan and send their children to American universities.

What do you mean by "Face"?

https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202204/19/WS625e030ba310f...

You could call it a combination of pride and appearances. Ego. It's not completely foreign to American society, but it is more pronounced in Asian societies. In these cultures, some perceive it as a sign of weakness to admit fault.

Like in the phrase "saving face".

From what I understand, it is an affront to their regime. It’s an island of free, prosperous and democratic Chinese people. It’s a repudiation of everything the CCP stands for. In a very real sense, Taiwan is not a separate country, but a unconquered territory from the Civil War, the last bastion of the pre-1949 Republic of China, and a symbol of what could have been for all of China.

Sure there are geopolitical reasons as well, but The CCP very much does not want the living proof that they are not necessary to be sitting 100 miles off their coast.

If there were ever a real democratic movement in China it would draw huge cultural inspiration from Taiwan.

> It’s an island of free, prosperous and democratic Chinese people. It’s a repudiation of everything the CCP stands for.

This is really irrelevant to the conflict, which goes back long before Taiwan democratized (which was only in the late 1990s).

The conflict is relatively simple. Taiwan was a province of China, and still is a part of the Republic of China. The People's Republic of China sees itself as the successor state of the ROC, and is also seen as such by the rest of the world. That means that the PRC considers Taiwan to be part of its rightful, legal territory.

The issue of the territorial integrity of China is especially important in modern China because of the history of colonialism and invasion in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Both the Nationalists and Communists dreamed of expelling the colonial powers and warlords, reuniting China, and finally establishing a fully sovereign, independent state. The separation of Taiwan from the mainland, as a result of the Chinese civil war, is seen as the last vestige of the era in which China was weak and not unified.

> and is also seen as such by the rest of the world

Is this actually true? It seems that most governments accept the formal definition in a diplomatic sense because they want to avoid conflict with China. However, it seems clear that at least most western countries see Taiwan as its own country in practice. From my experience the population of western countries is either surprised to hear that Taiwan isn't supposed to be its own country or see this as some bizarre concession to the power-hungry CCP we make to keep them peaceful.

> Is this actually true?

Yes. The governments of the world switched recognition from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China, and transferred "China's" UN Security Council seat to the PRC.

> However, it seems clear that at least most western countries see Taiwan as its own country in practice.

They maintain informal ties, but not formal diplomatic ties. Even the PRC has informal ties with the ROC.

> surprised to hear that Taiwan isn't supposed to be its own country

It's perhaps surprising, given Taiwan's de facto independence, but legally, it's not that surprising. Taiwan was a part of China, and it's difficult to define a point in time at which it ceased to be so. Both the ROC and PRC agreed that Taiwan was part of China for decades after the end of the civil war. The Taiwanese independence movement, which has become much stronger over the last 20 years, has changed sentiment in Taiwan itself. However, it would be a major step for other countries to decide that Taiwan no longer legally belongs to China.

> However, it would be a major step for other countries to decide that Taiwan no longer legally belongs to China.

What one means by belongs to China is another matter. Not saying you have, but people will conflate the government of China with China. Taiwan does not belong the current ruling government of China and you will not find many governments which say so.

In terms of international law, the distinction you're drawing between China and the PRC is irrelevant. Legally speaking, Taiwan was recognized as part of China. The fact that there was a revolution in China does not change that, legally speaking.

If such a principle were to be accepted, that a country's territory is called into question every time there's a revolution, it would open a Pandora's box.

Recognizing Taiwan as a formally independent state would be a major step, and it would open up all sorts of previously settled questions about what national sovereignty means.

> you will not find many governments which say so

You will find almost no governments that dispute it. Again, recognizing the formal independence of a territory that has been internationally recognized as part of China would be a major break with previous conceptions of national sovereignty.

According to whose international law? The distinction is at the heart of the issue depending which country you ask.

There is no legal distinction between the PRC and China. The PRC is China on the international stage.

As far as I know, no country makes a distinction between China and the state that runs it. There is a handful of countries in the world that consider the ROC (i.e., Taiwan) to be the true government of China - countries such as the Vatican City and the Marshall Islands. As I understand it, the Vatican still recognizes the ROC because that's a negotiating chip it can play in its dispute with the PRC over how bishops are named in China.

There are a handful of countries which do still recognize the ROC as the legal government of China. It has gotten smaller as China has bought many out over the last few decade. So, yes, there is a legal distinction depending on who you ask.

Given it has been so long and they are now so different, why is reunification even necessary at this point? (Other than the CCP wants to control Taiwan based on historical lines)

Why is the CCP so intent on controlling the land of another country? Most people practically consider Taiwan independent, even if the "agreements" around it say something else. They have their own government, flag, military, trade agreements, and more

> Why is the CCP so intent on controlling the land of another country?

The way you frame the question already suggests that you're not interested in why China (not just the CCP - this is a broad sentiment inside China) sees things the way it does.

Taiwan is not seen as "another country" in China. It's seen as a Chinese province that is temporarily separated from China due to the civil war. This was also the view of successive Taiwanese governments for decades after the civil war ended, and it shouldn't be surprising that people on the mainland still see it this way.

> So if both China and Taiwan wanted and want to be united why don't they?

I was gonna ask that but researched a little bit of history first.

So the CCP won the civil war against the government at the time, the PRC, which retreated to Taiwan. What I didn't get is that both governments consider China to include the Taiwan territory, they just don't agree on which is the legitimate government. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

On my foreigner opinion though is too late for uniting china like that because when you split the population for a long enough time the culture will evolve in a different way between those parts.

The ROC, not PRC

> What I didn't get is that both governments consider China to include the Taiwan territory, they just don't agree on which is the legitimate government.

No sane Taiwanese actually believes that (1992 Consensus), it's just stating otherwise would be seen as provocation by China. CCP wants Taiwan to stay a civil war faction rather than an independent country.

> What I didn't get is that both governments consider China to include the Taiwan territory, they just don't agree on which is the legitimate government. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

(I live and grew up in the US, but my family is Taiwanese.)

That description is a generation or two out of date. It is still technically the official position, but only because China continuously threatens total war if Taiwan ever backs down from that position. Since the end of the civil war there was never, ever any plausible way in which the nationalist forces in Taiwan could have retaken the lost mainland territory. After Mao's debacles, I don't think they even wanted to. It was only General Chiang Kai-shek's stubbornness that kept the policy in place until his death in 1975. By then the idea would have been laughable.

You may have heard about "Taiwanese independence" being an issue in the news every now and then over the last few decades. Taiwan is an independent country and always has been; its territory has never, ever been controlled by the PRC. What "Taiwanese independence" is about is the idea of a national referendum (which would involve changing the Taiwan constitution) to renounce all claims to the mainland, rename the country to be just Taiwan instead of the Republic of China, and drop the whole "One China" schtick.

In polling, the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese are "for independence" in the literal sense of being against reunification. Reunification might have once been a considered option, but the fate of Hong Kong showed what would result from going down that path. Other than a small percentage of the population who are nutjob far-right Chinese nationalist extremists (every country has its wackos), nobody wants reunification anymore.

So no political movement in Taiwan expects to reclaim the mainland. No political movement in Taiwan expects to peaceably unify with the mainland either (not since 2014 at least). The current ruling party, the DDP, keeps pledging to have a referendum on independence, but never follows through because China says it's a red line for war. The opposition party, the KMT, doesn't want reconquest or reunification anymore, but advocates for maintaining the status quo for merely pragmatic reasons.

Russia does not see Ukraine as a separate country, yet everyone else does. North & South Korea are still at war, yet they are separate countries. Why should Mainland and Taiwan be any different in the long run?

While Taiwan may have historically claimed that it should control the mainland, I don't hear this from them now. I'm sure they would be more than happy to sign an agreement with mainland that recognized them as an officially separate country with no claims to mainland.

Why can the CCP not just let Taiwan be? Why can they not be an officially separate country? What would be so bad about that?

Why can't Spain let the Basques be? Why couldn't the Northern US let the Southern US be? Lots of states don't like the idea of part of them breaking off.

Whataboutism is faux pas on HN. Each situation is different and deserves independent consideration.

I think ideology plays less of a role than is assumed. I would posture “resources” or access to resources as the definitive driver no matter if the rhetoric is ideological or religious, etc. Taiwan manufactures a lot of electronics that China does not. It has know-how and capital (means of production) of things that are important to China, China cannot manufacture, and USA, Chinas rival, has access to —- and also relies on. It is the queen on the geopolitical chessboard. But it is that because of its “resources”.

> It has know-how and capital (means of production) of things that are important to China

It has the capital. Not the Know-how or expertise. If it did, it wouldn't be stuck manufacturing lower end semi-conductors. In a hypothetical scenario - where China does manage to successfully invade the island, they won't be able to keep the foundries running for long. Because most of the design, IP, machinery and chemicals used in the process are supplied by the U.S and it's allies.

I would not expect those foundries to live for 30 seconds past the point where Chinese boots land on Taiwanese soil.

Yeah, it's entirely possible the U.S and Taiwan have plans in place to initiate a process to cripple the foundries if an invasion is imminent or underway.

Stuck manufacturing low end semiconductors? Taiwan? Low end? What?

Might want to read the above comment again. :)

This is a very western view on things.

Chinese people from mainland cares much less about democracy than citizens from western countries. The primary motivation for Chinese people to want reunification is that it's one of the last remaining symbols of colonialism.

Chinese people in Taiwan care A LOT about democracy, however. Despite the CCP's protestations to the contrary, there is nothing inherently undemocratic about Chinese culture, as Taiwan clearly demonstrates. The possibility that those ideas and that culture might spread to the mainland is a very real threat to the PRC's leadership.

Just so you know, I have friends and family from Taiwan. Some left Taiwan, and some stayed their whole lives. Some are KMT and some are DPP.

None of them want to reunite with China. Even the KMT ones just believe the KMT has a better plan for avoiding reunification. Some left Taiwan because they're afraid of a forced reunification. They care about democracy in Taiwan.

Of course Taiwanese people care about their way of lives, and they have full right to expect and defend that.

The problem is sadly much more complicated than "dictatorship wants to subjugate democracy". Simplified thinking is what the elites from China, Taiwan and the US wants you to think, so powers can be held onto and wars be justified.

Ugh... I read the same about Ukraine being a beacon of freedom, democracy, and prosperity and Putin being extremely mad because Russia has none of that, and Russians would be pointing fingers and asking questions... Which is utter rubbish.

I suggest you to educate yourself on the topic.

Russian Federation tries to roll back rename of (Kievan) Russia to Ukraine. Actual history of Russian Federation/USSR/Russian Empire/Moscow Tsardom is well guarded secret, so lot of heads are bumping against the wall trying to understand how Russia (now Ukraine) turned into Russian Federation (contains no Russia).

The leadership of China are happy to answer that question for you. You may want to reject those reasons, but I think it's dangerous to substitute your own reasoning for theirs: you risk having the significant differences in your worldview causing massive blindspots about what "real analysis" would mean to them. People said the same stuff about whether or not they'd start to take more direct control of Hong Kong early.

Similarly, it feels like the "Trump is just saying that for PR, he would stop doing and saying crazy stuff if he wins the election" 2016 discourse. Sometimes you should believe people when they say what they're gonna do. (See also: overturning Roe v Wade, a core idea of Republican discourse for decades.) Or "what does the US gain from invading Afghanistan and Iraq in real terms, other than just satisfying some loud calls for arbitrary blood?"

Own more parts of the tech chip industry it doesn’t already? It would instantly have even more massive leverage internationally.

Taiwanese fabs would become rubble in the event of an invasion.

> Own more parts of the tech chip industry it doesn’t already? It would instantly have even more massive leverage internationally.

Actually, it would gain China only anything other than this.

     If China were to invade Taiwan, the most-advanced chip factory in the world would be rendered “not operable,” TSMC Chair Mark Liu said[1]

And "non operability" might be the least of TSMC's worries.[2]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/apple-chipmaker-tsmc-warns-t...

[2] https://www.phonearena.com/news/if-china-invades-taiwan-us-c...

Those are possibilities. The only guarantee world be that China now had Taiwan. The very fact those articles exist prove why China wants Taiwan, which was the question.

A week in, china says “ok who wants chips?” And the world world help get everything rolling again, because we need things Taiwan makes in aggregate more than Taiwan does. There are no other options. We also need things China makes.

Im having a hard time approaching this question because it’s seems so obvious but it has caused me to think more carefully.

The obvious response is because they want to overthrow the government and govern it themselves. But to be more specific, they want the capacity to have a military presence on Taiwan, levy taxes, control trade, and legislate, police, people and businesses of Taiwan. All of these things help the CCP and in same ways China in general (although killing an ethnically Chinese Democracy isn’t actually doing any Chinese people favors).

Beyond this, more broadly they want to continue conquering and project power. Taiwan is their most important claim at the moment but it’s neither their first nor last. Next most obvious target is parts of Siberia and perhaps southeast Asian countries.

What does Russia stand to gain by invading Ukraine?!

Several things:

* Ukraine historically had been their bread basket

* It's one of several hard to defend routes into Russia. Russia needs Ukraine as a buffer.

* Eastern Ukraine has lots of mining and industry Russia needs that were critical to the UDSSR economy as well.

> It's one of several hard to defend routes into Russia. Russia needs Ukraine as a buffer.

No, Russia doesn't need it.

I'm sure you're correct that Russia believes this, but the reality is that no one actually wants to invade Russia, and no one has wanted to invade Russia for a very, very long time. All Russia's neighbors have only been worried about invasion and oppression from Russia, ever since the end of WWII.

Somehow, the Russian people seem to collectively have a weird paranoid victim mentality, thinking they're always under threat of invasion, when in reality everyone just hates them and wishes they'd keep to themselves. They think they're entitled to controlling other neighboring countries for their own defense, but they never give a thought to those countries' defense. Somehow, places like Poland and Sweden these days are able to not worry about being invaded by their (non-Russian) neighbors, so all the other borders within Europe are completely undefended. Maybe if Russia tried being friendly with other nations instead of constantly threatening them with military action, they could have a peaceful coexistence too.

It's self-projection, really.

Maybe they're still stuck in 1930s mentality. Back then, Hitler really did want to invade Russia (and did), along with Poland and a bunch of other countries.

However, the world has moved on in the last 80 years. Germany is part of NATO now, Poland and Germany are friends (and France, Netherlands, etc.), and no one is worried about invasion from Germany any more. Somehow, the people of Russia never got past the mindset they had back when Hitler tried to invade.

Maybe. Or maybe they’re assuming everyone else is itching to invade and subjugate Russia, because Russia would and continues to do so to all their neighbors at the slightest opportunity. They can’t conceive that the rest of the world really has moved beyond such idiotic imperialist behavior.

> they're better served by the status quo

Russia was better served by the status quo but they went ahead and invaded Ukraine.

Xi Jinping is feeling his age (just like Putin). Xi Jinping sees the mere existence of Taiwan as an independent state as an historical wrong (like Putin). Xi Jinping wants to be the one what got Taiwan, he wants it to be his legacy (again, just like Putin).

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan won't be a strategic choice or even a rational choice. It's an emotional choice.

Now do Russia and Ukraine

Most of the answers to this question seem to assume some type of material or geopolitical calculus. The issue is far more cultural.

Begin with the simple observations that reuinfication is popular with mainland Chinese people and party members and that the official position of the PRC since its inception has been that the PRC and ROC are one country. Taiwan's independence is an affront to the perceived authority of the mainland government. Reunifying China after its fracturing under imperialism is a deep cultural ethos. Material concerns are secondary to this.

- Shipping[0]: Between China and Taiwan is a very popular shipping lane. Anything that comes from anywhere except the North America likely comes through or near there. This is why they are also interested in Singapore and Indonesia. See the 9-dash line map[1], which shows where they claim control over the seas, and compare that to the shipping map on [0]. I should also reference the Kuril Islands[1.5] as an analogy and a more critical situation between Russian and Japan (Japanese control could lock Russia out, hence their deep concern).

- TSMC: I'm not sure I need to cite the chip wars as there's an article on the front page probably every week and has been so for the last 4 years.

- Territoriality control: It gives them a greater vantage over territories, especially into the ocean. Though reference first point.

- Political: Taiwan and Hong Kong (not so much Macau, considered "resolved") have represented the antithesis to the CCP's way of thinking and propaganda. Xi and the CCP have long been touting the line that democracy is not possible in Asia and specifically in China[2,3,4] noting that "the fruit looks the same but the taste is different." Taiwan specifically demonstrates a counter to their claim that the people can be free AND prosperous at the same time. But so do other surrounding countries, but there's a larger gap and these people see large gaps between cultures where us Westerns may not see any (tensions have long been high between China, Japan, and Korea and they've been warring for centuries. Particularly bad in WW2 btw). I should also note that which ever Chinese leader "passifies the dissenters" will go down in history as doing something that no previous leader could and be a great show of strength. So there's internal politics as well that may be far less important to those of us on the outside.

I'd say these are the major aspects but each one is far deeper than this comment would lead you to believe and there are of course other factors as well.

[0] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:115.7/cent...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line

[1.5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-politics-xi-jinping/xi...

[3] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3142130/xi...

[4] (this one responds to [3] but is also funny) https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3180490/why-xi-...

> The answer to this puzzle might lie in the confusion between two different Chinese expressions which are pronounced exactly the same: “concentration of power” (集权, or jiquan in pinyin) and “autocracy” (极权, also pronounced jiquan)... Therefore, “concentration of power”, not “autocracies”, should be what Xi referred to in his call with Biden.

I think many will even question if the distinction is meaningful here. There is also a link [5] that quotes Xi about how to describe a democracy:

> Whether a country is democratic or not should only be judged by the people of that country, and there is no place for a small number of outsiders to point fingers at this or that

Which again, feels off since his argument would conclude that the DPRK is Democratic and I think few would agree. We have a long history of watching autocracies and dictators refer to their systems as "democratic"

[5] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3152389/xi-...

Certainty.

The CCP has (right or wrong) declared that Taiwan is an inviolable part of China and a rogue province. That means that if Taiwan were to declare independence and succeed, it would be a signal failure for the CCP - a gross loss of face. The party's legitimacy (always a complicated thing for an authoritarian state) would be threatened by the demonstration of weakness.

Taiwanese independence is the CCP's soft and fleshy underbelly. Bringing Taiwan under Beijing's control eliminates the uncertainty that comes from that political vulnerability.

>What does China actually stand to gain by invading Taiwan?

Dignity. Healing of the last wound inflicted by invaders. China will be whole again.

And also removal of American puppet from their border and drastic decrease of US influence in the region.

Win-win.

> It's coming sooner or later and the longer you leave your investments in China the more you risk the door slamming shut on your hand.

Half the US population is asleep. During my undergrad years, I told my professor—then racing to get a foothold in China—that I thought war with China was inevitable.

15 to 25 years was my projection. He probably thought I was batshit crazy, but here we are.

China’s now using shows of military force as well as soft-power projection like CGTN.

Meanwhile we’re still struggling to bring back manufacturing capabilities.

If I had the means, I would be lobbying hard for a 30 year plan 5/10/20/30 to revamp our capabilities.

Where are we exactly? Your prediction has not been proven correct. Even as much as things are escalating, war does not appear imminent nor certain.

> Where are we exactly? Your prediction has not been proven correct. Even as much as things are escalating, war does not appear imminent nor certain.

We’re much closer than we were 20 years ago.

Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine; nor that Xi would be foolish enough to scare away Taiwan by muscling in on Hong Kong.

Unless the CCP forces Xi out, their hardliners and the middle-kingdom mindset have all but made some level of warfare certain.

>Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine

Who is 'Nobody' in this context? Because most analysis on this since Russia took Crimea in 2014 have predicated that Russia would make further attempts at capturing Ukrainian territory. Even the U.S defense establishment knew this and were preparing the Ukrainians for since 2015.

Excuse my hyperbole. The better term would be “divided”.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-what-is-risk-war-bet...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/how-real-is-the-thr...

vs.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/us-warns-russi...

for example.

They’re just random news sites you’re linking though. They’re not even political news magazines.

News editors don’t enact policy. Who cares what they thinks.

Gaslighting doesn’t work here. I provided my evidence. Show me proof of the contrary.

You didn't provide evidence.

Your argument is that "the government didn't take Russia seriously enough"

Proper evidence would be an study of government officials in power and their position at the time.

It is not 3 hand-picked private industry news articles.

> Proper evidence would be an study of government officials in power and their position at the time. > It is not 3 hand-picked private industry news articles.

It reflects public sentiment.

Analysts aren’t the ones in power. Public sentiment and leadership’s will to bend the public sentiment are what matters.

See GWB’s bullshit invasion of Iraq.

>See GWB’s bullshit invasion of Iraq.

on that point, I seem to remember all (most) of the analyst think-tanks for public policy (RAND corporation, etc) pointing the administration at the time towards the idea of war and 'obvious' WMD proliferation.

Also public sentiment was pretty on-board with (apparent) retribution after 9/11. The country got tired of the war effort quick, but the trumpets were blowing pretty loud for a long time after 9/11, both from government and the people around me at the time.

The analyst groups supporting that decision just sped the steamroller.

> on that point, I seem to remember all (most) of the analyst think-tanks for public policy (RAND corporation, etc) pointing the administration at the time towards the idea of war and 'obvious' WMD proliferation.

I remember the UN inspectors unable to convince the US leaders that evidence was lacking.

> Also public sentiment was pretty on-board with (apparent) retribution after 9/11. The country got tired of the war effort quick, but the trumpets were blowing pretty loud for a long time after 9/11, both from government and the people around me at the time.

My point exactly. A bullshit war was waged by persuasion with only tenuous evidence: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kve3z/the-cia-just-declassi...

It’s leaders and public will, not analysts.

> Because most analysis on this since Russia took Crimea in 2014 have predicated that Russia would make further attempts at capturing Ukrainian territory.

That’s very much untrue.

It was hard for experts to form a solid opinion after the Crimean invasion. It had some characteristics which the current one doesn’t have which made it rational from a realpolitik point of view.

The invasion had a clear strategic benefit: keeping access to Sevastopol, came at a time when the relationship between Russia and Ukraine was quickly shifting and was made easier by the complicated relationship between Crimea and Ukraine.

None of these applies to the current conflict.

I disagree about the Russia Ukraine prediction statements in this discussion.

Nobody wanted to admit a "full blown invasion would happen" is better wording.

Russia invaded and was meddling with Ukraine back in 2014. It invaded Georgia in an actual war back then over the same act.

EU vetoed related action and was preaching that everything is going to be fine because Germany was using all their power to not ruin their profitable trade with Russia.

We have to call things with their own name.

Related to the average Joe's beliefs: they would believe their leaders telling them everything is fine and nothing bad will happen because they want to believe it. No thinking or prediction was involved in any of this.

> Nobody wanted to admit a "full blown invasion would happen" is better wording.

That’s still a spectacular failure in its own right.

It means we’re not willing to admit the obvious until it becomes a far bigger problem.

A weakness of a democratic process without the right leaders.

Are you suggesting someone should have pre-emptively invaded Russia after Crimea, thus instead of worrying about a possible full-blown invasion, get it out of the way and just guarantee one?

Because as far as I know, the right people expected something to happen — there is just the issue of “well, what do you do about it?”

> Are you suggesting someone should have pre-emptively invaded Russia after Crimea, thus instead of worrying about a possible full-blown invasion, get it out of the way and just guarantee one?

That’s quite a leap of logic there. I think it’s enough to recognize that many believed a full invasion wasn’t in the cards.

> Because as far as I know, the right people expected something to happen — there is just the issue of “well, what do you do about it?”

The main issue here is that we let down our guard against hostile leaders and nations. And there still seems to be a a large portion of Western civilization in denial.

But a deadman-switch NATO membership? Prop up their defensive capabilities? Put pressure on Germany with regards to gas and overly cozy relationships with Russia?

Hindsight is easy and I’m sure others have better ideas; that’s besides the point.

What are you talking about?

Do you not remember this whole thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_...

Or the talk about nations joining NATO?

Or the discussion about how because we expect Russia to do something, we actually are not sure about NATO anymore because we don't want to be obligated to enter in a war?

Here's an 2021 article about US pressure on Germany to stop the import of more Russian gas before Ukraine happened (2022): https://www.marketplace.org/2021/04/19/germany-under-u-s-pre...

The US did all the things that you are complaining that it didn't do.

> The US did all the things that you are complaining that it didn't do.

Strange. Do you believe the US is the entire Western civilization?

And do you believe if the entire US believed Russia was going to invade, that we wouldn’t have pressured Germany even more?

No but your point is that it is a weakness of the democratic process when clearly the democratic process created both outcomes.

You also made the point that a weakness of democracy is that it follows the general sentiment, but clearly the US govt didn't give a damn that a lot of people didn't care about Russia or weren't even aware of the things the US govt was doing -- like trying to put US missile installations in other sovereign nations. We tried and tried... for a very long time.

If Germany had an authoritarian leader, it doesn't mean that they would have taken Russia any more seriously. I've heard that Angela Merkel supported the shutdown of nuclear reactors after Fukishima because she wanted to shore up her popularity. An authoritarian leader could have done exactly the same thing -- who doesn't want to look good?

There is a limit to the amount of pressure that the US can put on a country. Crimea already happened and if that wasn't good enough, what was?

Even after Russia did invade Ukraine, the US had to pressure Europe to really look into alternative energy sources (especially after the shutdown of those nuclear reactors) even through winter was coming up and the writing was on the wall. In the end, the US ended up becoming the world's biggest (or 2nd biggest -- don't recall) natural gas exporter this winter just to shore up Europe's heating supplies (which also meant my natural gas bill went up like 3x!).

Ultimately, I don't think democracy can be blamed. We can blame bad leadership in some cases, but that is a problem endemic to every political system.

> You also made the point that a weakness of democracy is that it follows the general sentiment,

I never implied this is a weakness.

Instead…

> but clearly the US govt didn't give a damn that a lot of people didn't care about Russia or weren't even aware of the things the US govt was doing -- like trying to put US missile installations in other sovereign nations. We tried and tried... for a very long time.

I’m saying this is a clear failure of leadership.

> I've heard that Angela Merkel supported the shutdown of nuclear reactors after Fukishima because she wanted to shore up her popularity. An authoritarian leader could have done exactly the same thing -- who doesn't want to look good?

Then that’s a clear failure of leadership. In this instance, instead of persuading the public she let the public persuade her.

Still, if Merkel genuinely believed that Russia was a threat, I doubt she would have done this. Of course, we now believe German intelligence was compromised by Russia.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-soft-target-russi...

> Ultimately, I don't think democracy can be blamed. We can blame bad leadership in some cases, but that is a problem endemic to every political system.

We enabled our enemies because leadership believed that the market would liberalize our enemies. We let our guard down.

While late, it’s now leaderships’ job to persuade the public of the threats at hand.

Too bad EIS got canceled. Keep in mind that Putins revenge for this was to crash Polish President plane the following year.

You are making a bunch of statements that virtually nobody who has paid attention to either scenario would agree with.

You believe it was universally accepted in 2021, that Russia would full-scale invade Ukraine?

Because a quick google search will easily disprove that notion.

> Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine

Plenty of people believed that Russia would launch a major invasion as part of their war with Ukraine launched in 2014. As a general concern it was raised many times by many people during the period after 2014, and that went into overdrive in the months before the actual invasion.

I wouldn't say any actions are idncidcating we're closer. There have been numerous conflicts across the strait in the last half century. If the KMT takes control of the presidency in the next election it'll calm down a lot.

Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine? They've been at war since 2014. A full blown invasion was a legitimate possibility for anyone paying attention since Russia invaded Georgia in 2008

>We’re much closer than we were 20 years

After the collapse of the Soviet Union settled, it has been the most peaceful time in human history (at least for semi-developed nations). A moderate amount of hostility is to be expected as China has approached superpower status. This is still no where near Cold War levels.

>Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine

This was always a possibility after Crimea. People just assumed that Putin wasn't stupid enough to through with it.

>nor that Xi would be foolish enough to scare away Taiwan by muscling in on Hong Kong.

Ever since the British gave up Hong Kong, China has agreed that they will allow it to be autonomous until 2047. We're already at the half way point, so China is slowly tightening it's grip on them.

One big difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is that Russia shares a large land border with it. Traditional wisdom dictates that you need at least 1 troop for every 40 inhabitants, which is over half a million for Taiwan. China simply does not have the navy to move that number of personale. If they ever hope to invade Taiwan, they would have to prepare for a D-Day level of operation, which would be immediately obvious to intelligence.

I imagine Taiwan would be ground down by a war of attrition and isolation.

They are not self-sufficient: https://ap.fftc.org.tw/article/2570

Isolation practice: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-03-08/taiwan...

If China wants the semiconductor factories producing magic 5nm chips they can't bomb much of the country or fuck with the middle class that much by making the country shitty. Of course if they just want to destroy Apple and NVIDIA and make consumer electronics unaffordable for a generation they can just get the fucking island by raining rockets on it for a week but that would be insanity.

This is not true. Many people predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine. You can look back at books like The Next 100 Years (2009) or The Accidental Superpower (2014) which predicted the war almost to the T.

Warfare with China is pretty inevitable while the US and its allies aims for containment and control over china's access to the Pacific ocean and shipping lanes.

China has a strategic need for ocean access, regardless of who is in charge, and everyone else is looking for a military confrontation on that.

If china controlled the whole US east coast's access to the Atlantic ocean, and the US needed Chinese permission to go to sea, the US would have attacked already

When were Chinese shipping lanes threatened by the west last time?

A potential threat does not count. China potentially threatens the destruction of the west coast by nukes, so by your argument the US should have gone to war long ago if potential threats count.

about 20 years ago i asked an old commie (proper commie, with portraits of marx engels lenin proudly hung on the wall and a library to show) what he thinks of china. his response stuck with me to this day

   in china you don't have socialism. what you have in china is a market for head-nooses and western capitalists are the main customer. it's absolutely genius!

The quote "Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." has been attributed to various Marxists over the decades.

china seems to have put it into praxis

I’ve always enjoyed interpreting this quote as “The Marxist system is such a terrible socioeconomic system that it can’t even produce its own rope”

where i curently live the marxist economy, despite numerous short commings, promoted a healthy work life balance, unrivaled job security, and some rather high quality public housing that even today sells at a premium

Ironically though, the reason why the West gone to China for manufacturing is that people in the West wanted employment rights, minimum wage and all sort of socialist protections, but they didn't want to pay for it.

haha yep and pretended for good 30+ years that the working class no longer exists. people seem to forget that the uk was on a brink of revolution prior to thatcher outsourcing work to china. and now apparently they want to magically go back

This has been a popular opinion for a very long time. It even supports a plot point in the movie The Departed (2006):

Oliver Queenan : Microprocessors.

Billy Costigan : Micro what?

Oliver Queenan : Microprocessors. We'll probably be at war with the Chinese in 20-odd years and Costello is selling them military technology. Microprocessors, chips, computer parts. Anybody says anything about anything like that you let us know

This has been a trope in scifi since years.

I remember the original Black Ops 2 video game campaign literally built on microprocessors all coming from China.

I believe this was also a plot point of the (newer) Outer Limits, with drugged up soldiers believing each other to be hostile aliens.

Without the USSR, the US didn’t have any other power to serve as a credible enemy.

I’m certainly not some insightful prophet: I can’t discount SF playing its part in influencing me; but it also makes sense in the long term (Carthage and Rome; Greece Polis’ and Persia…).

Headbutting is inevitable and China clearly was getting stronger even in the 1990s.

It was also a plot point in Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer, which is kind of a think-tanked hypothetical "what-if" look at WW3 between China and the US, and has been adopted as reading material by the US military. The US military is full of guys who care about nothing in life except the defense of the country. Any dependency we have on China, you can be sure they're well aware of it.

Black Ops 2 video game campaign literally built on microprocessors all coming from China

In Black Ops 2 the campaign is about stopping a latin american drug lord/terrorist who is trying to start war between the US and China to wipe them both out. He is developing some magic chip quantum tech to hack into both the US and China to trigger a war. Activision has taken the Hollywood approach and carefully avoided making China a bad guy.

The plan is robots and Silicon Valley tech. Free market capitalism is the plan.

That’s why so much funding is going into AI and robots lately.

…yes it’s a just a hunch but I believe it!

We are not at war and hopefully we won’t be

I don’t want war either, but I’m genuinely afraid it’s a matter of when and how; and not if.

My biggest fear, however, is that the US will resort to nuclear due to its weak manufacturing.

China will never "invade" Taiwan, that would be a suicide..

I think the US wants everyone to say that China will invade Taiwan, but it's just geopolitics stuff, spreading some FUD to hinder BRICS development, probably..

> "Instead of going to Mars, we invaded the Middle East," he said. "Donald Trump is right. It's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/07/21/thiel_fak...

China is looking at Russia very closely, they don't want to repeat the same mistake as Putin, they just want to make sure they don't end up being at the mercy of foreign's will and interests..

I don't understand why you need quotes for national security.

Anybody who has seen Trump's ,,China China China'' video knew that relations between the US and China have significantly shifted towards being less friendly with eachother.

Banning rare earth magnets is terrible for cleaning up the earth, but after the chip ban that US is pushing so hard, China has to answer :(

> This is not normal decoupling, we're in a full on economic war.

I can see this as a response to USA banning China from accessing top chip technologies.

A decade or two too late, IMO. They haven't, nor ever likely will, respect IP yet believe the rest of the world will respect theirs.

It's a little similar to the early history of the USA actually, there was a LOT of infringement of British and European patents in the early years. Only later, after significant economic development, did the US become an intellectual property powerhouse.

> yet believe the rest of the world will respect theirs.

Do they really?

That moment when a bunch of first world nations are about to realise defense involves more than just troops on the ground. You gotta be able to build everything that enables them being on the ground else rip.

Tbh from a risk point it astounds me the defence sector over the last 30 years with the oodles of money poured into it have failed so heavily at protecting nation state positions. We have traditionally wealthy stable nations states being crumpled by some trade deals. Lol imagine propping your entire way of life up based on the agreement with your competition thay they will fuel your success and requirements.... Comes across as pure madness from anyone with the slightest hint of risk aversion when you take a step back and look at it.

This and some other export bans happen and we’re looking at 10% fed funds rate. Supply chains are in shambles already.

But this market share is because we aren't mining them in other countries

So it is a clear sign that we need to start mining them

China is a net exporter to EU, let's ban all chinese goods and let's see, short term pain for long term gain.

US bans technology exports for certain things too. Try and export a reactor design. Recently, we are seeing more investment in semiconductor manufacturing and other electronic away from China. China is not just going to sit back if they have an opportunity to secure their position in this industry. This action shouldn't be surprising. Expect more attempts at protectionism as different industries attempt to diversify manufacturing out of China, not China to just well up and take the massive economic hit that this would mean for them.

America has done much of the same for years.

China isn't even allowed to have modern CPU technologies, and such tech is banned for export to China

> 84% share of the global market

who will they sell to if they ban export?

I'm trying to find out if the rare earth extraction plant that MP Minerals was building in Alliance, TX actually got built.[1] Google and Bing pictures are from 2021 and show a vacant lot. If anyone is near there, please go to the corner of Independence and Victory and see how the construction is going.

PR: "MP Materials broke ground for its magnet factory at Alliance last April, and completed the building’s shell in September. ... The company plans to start delivering alloy from the Fort Worth plant to General Motors late this year, and magnets in 2025, MP Materials founder James Litinsky said in an annual profit report meeting."

MP Minerals already has the largest rare earth mine in the US, at Mountain Pass, CA. That went bankrupt in 2015 because of low-priced competition from China. They finally got a process working that didn't cause major pollution problems.

That mine has been back in action since 2018. They only do initial separation at the mine; the ore is shipped to China for further processing until the US plant gets going.

China had a near-monopoly in rare-earths processing. Had. About six weeks ago, MP Minerals made a deal with Sumitomo in Japan to provide ore for to be processed into rare earths in Japan.[3][4]

There's also some company called US Rare Earths, with a mine in Colorado. Their PR shows lots of funding and announcing, not so much manufacturing and shipping.

China has been making rare-earth metal threats for years. The main result is that China's share of rare earth mining has dropped from 80% to about 55% as the US and Australia ramp up.[2] Also that the industry has become very profitable. MP Minerals profit more than doubled last year. 10-20 years ago, everybody in this space was going bust.

[1] https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-constru...

[2] https://www.mining-technology.com/features/australia-rare-ea...

[3] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/02/22/business/us-rar...

[4] https://www.pm-review.com/mp-materials-and-sumitomo-corporat...

Relevant: Huge rare earth metals discovery in Arctic Sweden https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64253708

But it will take 10 to 15 years to process it.

> Well, we're not exactly sure what elements they have found yet. What they have said is that they've - they will be producing at least two elements. One is called neodymium, and the other is called praseodymium

still missing a lot of them unfortunately, the rest are only found within chinese territory

i had last heard of the us military trying to target specific parts of the asteroid belt to make up for their lack of natural resources in this regard, and given their recent feats over the last few years with asteroids i have high hopes for that

I read "Rare Earths" are nor really rare. But the article did say extracting these elements cheaply causes a lot of environmental damage, which as we know, China is perfectly fine with.

I also read the US is close to opening a "mining" site for Rear Earths, but not sure where or for what elements.

They are rare in the sense that they tend to be extremely diffuse, rather than having nice, massive veins of concentrated ore or elemental metal like you might find for copper or bauxite.

Since they tend to be diffuse, mining them requires disrupting significant volumes of earth and rock, plus the chemicals needed to separate them out of the less interesting material that gets dug up.

The cheapest way to do that is to strip mine large tracts of land and not reclaim or treat any water used in the process, which will likely be full of heavy metals and other chemicals.

If we don't like how other countries do it, we have to be willing to do it ourselves, which means years delayed supply chains (basically every mine in the US is protested and delayed through the legal system) and higher prices for the refined materials (it costs more to do it right).

It's called "liquid-liquid extraction" [1] and requires crushing the rock and mixing it with an extractant (see D2EHPA [2] which is also used in uranium extraction) into a nasty acidic slurry. It is then separated into a aqueous layer containing the waste and a nonpolar solvent that strips the rare earth elements bound up with the extractant. All the different rare earth elements then have to be separated out of the nonpolar solvent using even more toxic chemicals, each of which leaves behind a different hazardous waste.

Fun(?) fact: This process looks a lot like the alkali extraction process used to make cocaine, DMT, and a variety of other drugs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%E2%80%93liquid_extracti...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di-(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric_ac...

I'm not a chemist, but I have watched enough explosions&fire / extractions & ire to know this sounds about right.

California had a very large RE mine until it suffered a toxic waste spill and closed in 2002. [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#:~:text=The....

"Mountain Pass was acquired out of bankruptcy in July 2017 with the goal of reviving America's rare-earth industry.[16][17][18][19] MP Materials resumed mining and refining operations in January 2018"

The US has always had rare earth mines, but competition from low cost producers in China makes them economically unviable (and the US is market based, among other things). There is plenty of supply in developed countries, but being undercut by other producers require government subsidies or a more closed market to be viable.

If China refuses to export this stuff themselves, it actually makes these mines more economically viable. However, if they export the end products, they could still have problems.

Yeah China purposefully undermined the competition through state funding in order to control the market.

I doubt it was that, I think China's lack of environmental rule enforcement led to a condition that allowed for lower cost producers, the state didn't intend on controlling this market (or maybe some combination of that, but refusing to export in the future means they won't control the market anymore).

No, it's pretty clear that this was a top down effort to control the global market, a concerted effort by the state.

https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-merges-three-rare-...

No, not at all. It is clear to you because you aren't looking at the entire history. But to anyone who has been in China for awhile, it is obvious that it happened overtime and wasn't intended. You are assuming China is an authoritarian country where state control is absolute, but in reality, China is a huge country where there are lots people making even if that means destroying the environment while the government isn't paying attention.

There are articles about this going back 20 years to the early 2000s I'm not just coming up with this thesis. It's been apparent for a long time. They had a natural advantage to begin with but they went much further.

Here is an actual concrete article you can read (vs. the ones you say exist that support your thesis): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_industry_in_China.

> In 2002, China's central government pushed forward restructuring of the domestic rare earth industry by creating two state-owned groups China Northern Rare Earth Group Company and China Southern Rare Earth Group Company.[14] This largely failed due to opposition from powerful local authorities and local producers.[14] Fierce competition in the local sector produced low profitability and inefficiency. This drove producers to consolidate and merge into larger companies for survival.[14] Market forces thus accomplished what central planning could not.

> As rare earth prices went up because of the restriction of export, many illegal mines were developed by organized criminals to benefit from the trade.[15] The smuggling by organized criminal groups is harmful to China's rare earth industry as it depletes resources rapidly, deflates prices and causes supply problems for local producers.[16] It is estimated a third of exports or 20 000 tonnes in 2008 were illegally exported from China.[16]

Now, if China had a central government controlled conspiracy to dominate rare earth elements over the last 20 years, the history between 2002 and 2008 wouldn't have turned out like that. What they have right now is a mess.

Look I understand countries are complicated and there are a lot of interests however I think that the Chinese government is totally capable of acting in a centralized way on a fixed target like mining (vs. something like semiconductors) when it believes it is a core national interest.

> however I think that the Chinese government is totally capable of acting in a centralized way on a fixed target like mining

Spend a couple weeks in China's hinterland and I'm sure that your opinion would change very quickly. There are good reasons semiconductors are concentrated in Beijing/Shanghai, but anything mining or natural resource related are going to be messy because China is a huge country and local government interests are often at odds with central government interests.

Yea people literally treat China as a hivemind. The same goes for other countries too. It's absolutely bizarre and often some sort of weird US centric mindset.

Part of it I even blame on US media, somehow, whenever there's something to discuss about in another country, even if it's some research breakthrough by a single individual presenting his work at a elementary school instead its "COUNTRY X CURES CANCER"

It isn't so different in how China thinks about the USA, even more so since our stark political divide is not familiar concept to many Chinese.

Are you saying the US is more centrally controlled than China? It seems that way but I don’t think that holds up.

The US states convened and created a constitution which granted a few explicit powers to the federal government and left everything else to the states. These rules cannot be changed by the federal government- only the states.

Whereas in China, a single party wrote the constitution, which enshrines power in themselves, and can be changed by this party whenever they want.

China does have an authoritarian government. And they literally own all the land. You can’t just extract rare earth metals from China without the CCPs blessing.

It is _that_ for steel. I don’t know about rare earth materials but it wouldn’t be a surprise.

> environmental damage which China is perfectly fine with

“China has outsourced much of its rare earth mining industry to Myanmar’s Kachin state” https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/toxic-rare-earth-mines-fue... (maybe overstated, but definitely a real issue).

> The mining areas in Kachin state are poorly regulated, undocumented, and “illegal under Myanmar’s laws,” says the report. Moreover, many mining areas are run by militias affiliated with the country’s military junta, which raises the risk of industry revenues providing income for the junta’s activities.

Remember, China insists this is good for society

I think it's important in the context of this discussion to separate the mining of rare earths and the processing thereof. Both are generally environmentally hazardous, but in different ways. The mining process generally involves strip mines or open pit mines (such as Mountain Pass in California, iirc the only US rare earth mine), neither of which are particularly friendly to the environment. The processing is also hazardous due to the chemicals and processes necessary to separate the component elements of the ores which are effectively more tightly coupled than is the case in most metal mines. Domestically that means continued and heightened investment in Mountain Pass as well as potentially other sites, but also the development of domestic processing industry. So while the mine might be in California we're going to see the ancillary industry popping up in locations with notably lower standards, i.e. Texas.

Think of "rare" as "diluted" or "rarified", as opposed to "scarce".

Does China primarily do this IN China? If so, where? I would guess West and/or north central?

I think another issue is that a lot of the various rare earths(maybe just the lanthanides?) are chemically similar and thus very difficult to isolate. In the end, a lot of this just boils down to establishing the production networks which takes time and a lot of money.

This is in direct retaliation of US ban on chip technology export. In fact, you can even find their rationale for doing so on this pro-China reddit thread from six months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/y9c1n4/china_should_r...

Not clear from the article or the comments here whether the proposed ban is on the magnets themselves or the technology to manufacture the magnets. The words read both ways. Anyone has seen/has insight into the original proposal in Chinese?

In the past the ban has been on the raw materials. Japan is setup to process raw rare earth materials so it affected them badly.

This issue has been a long time coming and China has warned us about it at least 10 years ago (probably longer). We used to have a mine in California called Mountain pass mine, but it had a toxic spill in the early 00's and never reopened due to Chinese competition.

There were plans to reactivate the mine, and it looks like it is now producing more than 12% of the worlds production (https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-rare-earth...)

Export controls on manufacturing tech not materials, which I don't imagine is particularly enforcable. Will just get transhipped through middlemen, but I can imagine increasing price astronomically for competitive advantage.

That's okay. The US has polymagnets, which are a paradigm shift in magnetics.

https://www.polymagnet.com/

That's super cool. But these have been around for years, has the paradigm really shifted so as to totally replace all Chinese magnet manufacturing?

In the interest of keeping the recent magnetic materials breakthroughs in one subthread, here's the paper I've been excited about for months:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202204... "Direct formation of hard magnetic tetrataenite in bulk alloy castings"

It has long been known that iron-nickel and iron-cobalt alloys form a stable tetragonal phase, the L1_0, at standard conditions, which is a hard magnetic material with a high magnetic energy product comparable to the best rare-earth magnets. In fact, L1_0 FeCo is predicted to be the best magnet of any material that has been modeled. But these phases are not stable at high temperatures, and the relaxation time to form them at normal temperatures is expected to be on the order of millions of years. L1_0 FeNi has been found in meteorites, but these are extremely rare, and the damage caused by impact limits the usefulness of the material.

In the recent work by Ivanov et al, L1_0 iron-nickel alloy was successfully prepared at macroscale by precipitation from a melt containing large proportions (on the order of 10%) of phosphorus and carbon. This is the first time that bulk L1_0 FeNi has been produced on Earth's surface. This potentially opens the door to producing strong magnets from just iron and nickel.

For a sense of scale, annual nickel production is about two million tonnes per year, while neodymium production is less than ten thousand tonnes per year, with neodymium representing a fraction of that. The material availability for producing strong magnets therefore jumps by more than an order of magnitude.

IIRC, Polymagnets give unique field patterns but do not replicate the overall field strength of neodymium magnets.

A much better alternative is someone like Niron Magnetics, who build nitrogen-doped iron magnets that demonstrate field strengths that are (roughly) equivalent to rare-earths:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34359383

I am going to bet that Xi is severely overplaying his hand.

They need to provide 1 billion people. I remember even an outbreak over porkmeat (1 disease) and milk powder was a national emergency. There's even a whole army of fishing boats...

China is not self reliant on food and if a war would break out, China is going to be in scrambles pretty fast.

Sure, They can contain protests in a region of China, but not across the country.

Unfortunately, i think we'll have to find out sooner or later.

Aren't the materials to make rare-earth magnets... not actually that rare? It's only rare in the sense of their dispersal in the earth's crust, this making it a rather dirty and ecologically disruptive activity sourcing them. The US could theoretically start producing rare-earth metals, couldn't they?

Yes, but it trivializes the issue. You might ask why colonies needed to import finished goods from the motherland when they had all this wood and iron available.

This is not the same thing

Colonies many times weren’t even allowed to produce manufactured goods

There might be some learning curve but the extraction of rare earth materials should be well documented, it used to be done in the US

I don’t know about the manufacturing of goods from the extracted elements though.

I have a feeling that this move would just accelerate the adoption of the newer high temperature superconductor magnets (of the sort that have recently been upending fusion reactor designs).

is this an attempt to suppress the innovation rate of other countries?

It’s likely them firing back due to US tightening chip exports.

This is really the best they could come up with?

I think its for the best to find new rare earth sources outside of China now anyway, before any great power struggles.

There are lots of sources; it's just very environmentally damaging and/or expensive to extract them. And so far China could, for various reasons, do it way more cheaply than most others. Seems this is going to change...

Or the battery minerals/components rules for EV tax credits

It's about avoiding counter-party risk and strengthening domestic supply chains against uncertain economic, geopolitical and military future. Certainly there is the element of "don't strengthen your adversaries" too. Why would they want to make the West stronger (if they can avoid it) if the West is a potential military threat?

I think its more a tit-for-tat response to previous US trade restrictions.

I mean, the US move was tit-for-tat for a decade of militarizing the South China Sea, threatening war against Taiwan, undermining the US economy through stealing trade secrets and sponsoring national champions.

Only the US, after all, is allowed to militarize the South China sea.

The Chinese simply call it the South Sea, but linguistic games don't change who in the region actively threatens to invade who.

> the US, after all, is allowed to militarize the South China sea

The U.S. doesn’t claim the sea as its sovereign waters. China does. (Which had the totally unpredictable effect of majorly pissing off every one of its maritime neighbours.)

Not true, China's claims are best known in the West because everybody hates/fears them. But there are others - like the dispute between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines regarding maritime borders.

> the dispute between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines regarding maritime borders

There are disputes over territorial waters and EEZs. China uniquely claims the whole damn thing, not as its exclusive economic zone, but its sovereign territory. The Philippines aren't asking for the right to tax ships passing through its EEZ, it just wants to fish and drill and mine them.

All the countries in the region have overlapping claims to the waters, it's not unique to China.

Including Taiwan, which makes almost exactly the same claims as China, and which occupies the largest of the islands in the South China Sea.

> Taiwan, which makes almost exactly the same claims as China

Source? I've never heard of Taiwan claiming waters off the coasts of Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam as China does [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line#/media/File:9_d...

The article you've linked to explains that Taiwan makes nearly the same claims as the PRC in the South China Sea.

In fact, the famous "dashed-line" claims in the South China Sea were originally made by the Republic of China, before it was defeated by the Communists. This is a map from 1947, showing the ROC's eleven-dash line: [0].

The only difference that I know of between the claims of the ROC and the PRC is that the PRC has slightly reduced its claims as a result of an agreement with Vietnam over the naval boundary in the Gulf of Tonkin.

0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1947_Nanhai_Zhudao.p...

> Taiwan makes nearly the same claims as the PRC in the South China Sea

Taiwan doesn’t assert the claim [1]. There is sensitivity around explicitly abandoning it, as “changing the ROC’s historical claims would indicate—especially to Beijing—that the island democracy was abandoning its historical political identity and moving towards an inherently Taiwanese national identity, or even independence” [2]. To the degree Taipei has legitimately aligned with Beijing, it has been in the limited sense of arguing Taiwan is legally a real island, not an islet which cannot make any maritime claims [3][4].

[1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/07/15/2...

[2] https://globaltaiwan.org/2020/07/taiwans-delicate-balancing-...

[3] https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/201607120024

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2016/03/23/how-ta...

Taiwan not only asserts the claim, but actually occupies much more valuable islands than the PRC does. Like the PRC, Taiwan rejected the Philippines' claims and refused to recognize the arbitration body's decision or legitimacy.

Tsai Ing-Wen doesn't want to look like she's aligning herself with China on this issue, but this is long-standing ROC policy, going back to before the PRC was even founded. It's not something the PRC invented.

The Philippines do which might as well be the US claiming sovereignty, since they are a host of the US military and in a mutual defense agreement.

So I take USA has no maritime border? Or no territorial waters? That is new for me, but if you say so.

Which countries have been saying that about the US? Last I checked, many of China’s neighbors have been upset at China.

To be fair many (all?) of china's southeast asian neighbors are hosts to US military bases. They aren't going to bite the hand that pays for their anti aircraft defenses.

lol what?

just cause a sea is named after a country doesn't mean it's theirs

just like Sea of Japan

What's you opinion about Indian Ocean, Sea of Japan, Persian Gulf and Gulf of Mexico ?

I feel that if Chinese carrier groups were based out of Cuba, or were routinely conducting exercises right outside Chesapeake bay, the complaints would probably be reversed by ~180 degrees.

That's exactly what it is. The US decided (beginning with the Trump administration) that the status quo was unacceptable and has decided to "decouple" and increasingly contain China's development with export controls. No one should be surprised that there's retaliation, but everyone pretends that it's the other side that is the aggressor while they are simply the innocent victim.

I think that's largely true; although in hindsight the US missed a crucial opportunity during the Obama administration to respond to China's bans on Google, Facebook, forced tech transfers, et cetera.

maybe they want to milk their rare earth monopoly before technology innovates around it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/tesla-tsl...

China long-term strategizes while the US often twiddles its thumbs and belatedly responds (it's waking up with the export controls on chip manufacturing tech, but it should have done that a decade ago).

Why should the US instigate trade wars so hard? Why not be pro-free trade as possible (even if it's imbalanced) while investing heavily in their own self-reliance. That sounds more win-win to me than throwing gasoline on the fire when there's little practical self-realiance replacements in the near term without bigger consequences than the alternative.

It's a dangerous game to play without substantial and subsequent investment domestically and among closer partner countries in stuff like manufacturing and mining - ahead of time. Pure competition instead of using bully tactics while only reacting appropriately when the gambles don't play out.

IMO it's because shifting towards self-reliance usually means shifting investment away from international investment and implementing protectionist regulations which are seen as economically hostile towards other states. So perhaps just the act of shifting towards domestic investment and protection will be taken as instigation.

I agree with you, though, and I think the "icing on the cake" instigations are in large part political maneuvers.

> should the US instigate trade wars so hard

I'm not suggesting instigation; China has been playing hardball for a long time now.

> without substantial and subsequent investment domestically and among closer partner countries in stuff like manufacturing and mining

this is what China is willing to do but the U.S. isn't (until very recently), which has put the U.S. at a huge disadvantage

China had (and still has) higher tariffs on U.S. goods decades ago. They don’t respect copyright laws, use tech for spying, and steal technology. How is the US starting a trade war?

I didn't say they started it. I explicitly said at a known imbalance. Because without significant preperation you just make it worse where both sides lose. Expecting China to not steal and cheat when it's a core part of their modern culture is a losing game.

Expecting some demographic way-too-used to being poor via gov policy, a long history of alleged victimization by the US being the root cause of ALL their problems sold by propaganda for 50yrs+, and totally obedient to a hyper central government built on top of reality denial (aka "saving face").

...idk I feel like the only real alternative is investment into self reliance and getting whatever concessions you can via positive trade actions until then.

It's like fighting piracy with copyright laws when everyone pirates movies and Netflix doesn't exist and you have to go to Blockbuster. And allegedly if we do ban piracy we'll eventually get downloadable movies in an indefinite amount of time because our gov will suddenly care and save us.

A little over 10 years ago, Xi Jinping came into power.

The ship massively changed direction with Xi. He literally made his own term limit forever 5 years ago.

China 10 years before is way different.

China thinks in medium term but it gets confused for long term. Authoritarianism is inherently unstable. It looks like long term until you realize their government cannot reliably transition power.

Even with recent measures against China, the U.S. is far more open to China than China is to the U.S.

Did anyone else see this and think:

Man, they must have discovered some weird defense industry application and this will be the first remembered clue that future me had that the worldwide shit was hitting the fan.?

Drones?

Does it include magnetic ferrite cores and toroids?

Steak all the tech like they steal ours.

381 comments so far and not a single Insane Clown Posse joke?!?

well now that they basically manufacture everything we're fucked unless we--at the very least--try to get along with china

Reply on news.ycombinator.com