China orders telcos to rip out American chips by 2027 | Hacker News Reader

China orders telcos to rip out American chips by 2027

theregister.com

35 pointswalterbell16 comments

Silicon aside, it really seems that China of all places should be all in on replacing Windows as the defacto standard OS. Everything in the country runs on Windows (even the police stations use it) and the ubiquitous apps like WeChat, WeCom, Tencent Meeting etc, only have Windows, Mac and phone clients.

WeChat and WeMeet are actually available on Linux, so this is only partially true. Edit: I've noticed that officially, it's only available on Kylin for some reason. I guess this is where the confusion arises, but I don't see why people can't just make unofficial packages for other distributions and they probably do already. I just didn't bother checking.

I guess that's better than nothing, but the Kylin WeChat binary is from 2021, so it's not evidently a first-class option.

If they want to export software they need access to the international software platforms (windows, osx, android, iOS)

That's a blinkered approach. The whole sentence you should have written is:

"If they want to export software to Western Countries they need access to the Western software platforms (windows, osx, android, iOS)"

But the problem for the West is that Western countries comprise a mere one-eighth of the world's market. The West is literally a niche market. The Chinese market ALONE is larger the WHOLE of the West.

The Chinese approach is "Most of the World can use use software which doesn't need access to the Western software platforms (windows, osx, android, iOS)"

The American "World Series" is not, it's just a regional sport.

Yes, but my point is it seems a jolly strange thing to do to weld, conservatively, 100 million people, including pretty much your entire state adminstration apparatus as well as the technical baseline of a very large proportion of your IT industry to a foreign proprietary OS from your biggest geopolitical rival that could be cut off by the other side in a dispute.

I guess technically this actually applies to any country, but China's the obvious one where it could vaguely plausibly actually happen one day.

Not basing almost your entire country's IT on Windows also doesn't preclude you participating in the software export market.

Though actually they do seem to have started the process, so we'll see where that goes: https://www.techspot.com/news/102379-china-bans-intel-amd-pr...

> I guess technically this actually applies to any country, but China's the obvious one where it could vaguely plausibly actually happen one day.

It has already happened in Russia: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/03/04/microso...

An escalation here to other sectors could be deadly for the US, who have what, like 2/3 of their manufacturing done in China?

Sure China industry would lose their customer base, but definitely not as leveraged as the US

US imports from China is ~2% of US GDP and largely in electronics [0], which are actively being targeted for sanctions. It will be painful but not catastrophic for the US to "de-risk".

China has to import both energy and food to sustain it's economy and population[1, 2]. There is very little domestic consumption to absorb their own production capacity and western countries are actively blocking their markets, like the EV situation in Europe or electronics with the US.

They have a very bleak demographic picture with a massively aging population along with some of the lowest fertility rates in the world[3]. It is odd to think of China as running out of people[4], but there will be two elder dependents for every working age person very soon.

There is an expectation of a full on collapse coming and local governments there are already $100TN+ in debt collectively[5]. If there was a pivot possible, would anyone provide that capital with what is happening with the Evergrande liquidation where foreign capital is the first to get wiped out?

Any company that hasn't pivoted to India or some other SEA country for manufacturing will simply be left behind.

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-ranking-the-good...

[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/china-increasingly-relies-import...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61843

[3] https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/china-demographic...

[4] https://jonathanrileywriter.medium.com/chinese-demographic-d...

[5] https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-colossal-hidden-debt-...

Even Chinese companies are moving their manufacturing out to countries like Mexico and Vietnam. Samsung has moved all their manufacturing out of China.

China themselves do not want to get stuck just doing manufacturing. Though I suspect in their attempt to move up the value chain they’re just shooting themselves in the foot.

[dupe]

Lots of discussion on the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011464

The global cyber attack surface area is about to double (at least)!

The timing makes it blatantly obvious that this is retaliation for the TikTok sell-or-ban.

When you start an economic war you should make sure that you're not the one who's in the inferior position.

When the US started the economic war with China around 2017 it shot itself in the foot. Banning whole companies like Huawei is almost like shooting yourself in the head.

American companies need Chinese companies more than Chinese companies need American companies.

The Chinese companies will win. (They produce more and they have bigger markets.)

That’s just categorically false.

China needs US companies for their survival. They have neither food security nor energy independence, and the they’re critically dependent on American companies in several aspects of those areas.

You can’t just look at market size, you have to look at margins, and for China they haven’t been able to build brands that can get great margins outside of some exceptions like DJI. In many cases China is massively subsidising these companies with cheap loans, hoping to build up a profitable industry in the long run. How long can this last? If you take shadow banking into account China has an insanely high debt to GDP ratio.

China is also becoming an increasingly hostile place for investments, and bad for attracting talent over the long term. If you’re a world class talent in a field you can go to the US, become a citizen and build a life there. You can’t become a citizen in China and when you’re a resident you have very few rights.

China needs US companies for their survival.

OK, I'll bite.

Give me four US companies that China can't survive without.

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