Why are all the comments here so weird? It's like people saw (but didn't read) an article entitled "Man Opens a Taqueria in his Hometown" and the only responses are
1) Why didn't he open it in my hometown? This location isn't convenient for me.
2) Wouldn't it be better for someone else to open a taqueria instead? My cousin is looking for work. Shouldn't we be putting resources into helping him open a restaurant instead?
It's like people hear "X in Asian country" and all they can think about is their own geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department. Obviously Japan is going to want to develop lucrative manufacturing... within Japan.
I'll try and add something positive: Hokkaido seems like a great place to relocate and start a life for young aspiring workers. Homes are larger and quality of life has some advantages over the more densely populated parts of Japan. It's also very unique in terms of climate and geography: very heavy snows and mountains means there's limitless adventure for skiers and snowboarders. Yet, despite the snowy winters the winter isn't as brutally cold as you might think and its not so long as what you see in a place like Canada. Spring comes quickly and the summers are long, warm and pleasant so there's plenty of time to take advantage of the beaches and beautiful forests. And about those forests, one other unique thing about Hokkaido is that it's the only place in the world that can rival (or exceed) New England in terms of its brilliance of fall colors.
Anyways, just seems like a great place for Japanese workers to relocate and start a family. I guess the only thing missing were the jobs so hopefully these chip fabs fix that.
I was in Hokkaido many years ago for work and loved it. Compared to the rest of Japan, indoor/outdoor spaces are wider, food is better, and people are friendlier. I never could swing another work visit, so I dream about spending time there in retirement.
I could imagine, though, that companies might have trouble attracting quality talent to Hokkaido, because people see more opportunities in the big cities down south. I suppose it's like if you were trying to build a tech hub in Montana.
It's not landlocked and less isolated than Montana. Montana is beautiful in select parts but it's also a little bleak. Hokkaido is still a lush island and Sapporo is a proper city. I'd say it's more like getting companies to move from SF or LA to Seattle.
The same could probably be said of many areas of the US (or other countries). Good outdoor recreation opportunities, some good local food options, but not a huge number of (local) employment opportunities or the nearby options that density brings.
As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine but it's a different situation from working in a hub of whatever your specialty is.
> As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine but it's a different situation from working in a hub of whatever your specialty is.
The question is: is that actually a problem with Japanese work culture? That would be a large problem in US work culture because there's no loyalty from your employer, so you have to be prepared to find a new job at any moment. But it certainly used to be the case that if you worked for BigCorp, you could reasonably expect to work there for the rest of your life if you wanted. And under those conditions, it doesn't matter if the area is a hub for your job specialty.
I know Japan at least used to have a work culture where companies would be loyal to their employees, based on patio11's excellent blog post on how Japanese business culture differs from that of the US. But that was many years ago now, so I don't know if the culture in Japan is still like that or if it has changed.
Well, many of those BigCorps simply went out of business over the years. Kodak in Rochester was a pretty good bet until it wasn't. Not so much culture as business realities.
Japan has been more stable in that regard. More stability but probably also fewer real opportunities.
Kodak actually spun out their chemical company quite a while before things really went south with film. The real problem was that Kodak had a huge film-related consumables business and, to a first approximation, that just went away.
> Hokkaido seems like a great place to relocate and start a life for young aspiring workers.
I taught English in Tokachi (Obihiro, Makubetsu-cho, Satsunai, Ikeda) a few decades ago and it was absolutely a dream.
It's pristine farmland and country filled with crystal clear rivers and surrounded on all sides by snowcapped mountains. Fields that stretch forever. Hot springs. The freshest food. Fishing. Low cost of living.
You could look up at night and not only see all the stars, but watch dozens of meteors by the minute during showers.
Just Google for photos of Tokachi. It's gorgeous.
Everything is so relaxed, it's almost the complete opposite of Tokyo. It's very easy to meet friends. People work hard, but they take time to enjoy life and nature.
There are matsuri (festivals) almost twice a month. There are carts with whistles that beckon you to buy hot yellow sweet potatoes. There are fireworks and bonfires and sports and hiking and climbing. You can make an hour long trip to the ocean and see black pebble beaches that look like an alien world.
There are more parks than you can imagine. A park on every block. And some of them are huge and feature giant art installations you can climb on. 500-ft working clocks, rolling hills of recycled rubber you can bounce on, tall dinosaurs you can climb. And don't let that lead you to believe there aren't an incredible amount of plants and flora. It's an ecological paradise and was without question the inspiration for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.
Everyone is so friendly. The store owners know you by name and call to you. The children all want to get their photo taken with a white guy. They're adorable and they want to talk English to you. The old ladies will smile and wave.
One time I was at a lake nestled in the mountains, and a guy in his late 40's or early 50's overheard that I lamented not having a camera (pre-smartphone era). He not only spent an hour taking pictures, portraits, etc. for me with his Nikon, but he printed them and sent them to me with a postcard.
The teachers at Kohryo High School (which was sadly shut down) even gave me lucky money.
I really find it disappointing that Sakhalin didn't end up under the control of Japan as it's a natural extension of the archipelago and I feel like the Japanese could have done some cool things with it.
Because commenters outside Japan may end up buying products containing chips made in Japan. If it was built in let's say France people would be thinking less about potential invasions. Just as "obviously Japan is going to want to develop lucrative manufacturing within Japan," obviously people outside of Japan are going to want manufacturing that is not liable to be shut down or taken over in some way. Not that I think Japan and China will actually go to war any time soon myself.
>geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department
Just this week Japan and China have been getting into a fight over the current PM's comments over Taiwan. China has canceled some flights to Japan and complained to the UN, announcing it will defend itself from Japan.[0][1] I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Are you saying major disputes between China and Japan don't exist and are invented by the US state department? Or that thinking about it in this context is the result of the commenters being fed by the US state department?
The PRC and Japan is not a remotely comparable situation to the PRC and Taiwan.
The most the PRC could do is potentially sabotage production in Hokkaido, but if they can sabotage production in Hokkaido, they can sabotage it in Arizona.
More like a new plant in Iceland, after the PM of Iceland said any attack on Greenland would be a survival-threatening situation for Iceland.
To be clear I think the comments about "geopolitical stability" or whatever term we use are not as interesting as new chip plants itself. Or at least they are a bit tired by now. I also wish Japan the best and I think they are fully capable of building such a factory and I hope they do so. But to claim that the geopolitical considerations are invented is wrong. And in fact one of the reasons the Japanese government is investing in local fabs to begin with is due to national security, as mentioned in the article:
>Securing control over chip manufacturing is being seen as a national security priority, both in Japan and elsewhere, as recent trade frictions and geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan raise concerns around the risks of relying on foreign suppliers.
So yes, viewing the entire story through a geopolitical lens is understandable.
Of course. On just one avenue - The Japanese auto industry is huge, and practically everything in a car has some kind of chip in it. The chip industry isn't just CPUs and GPUs, cars use numerous fairly small, primitive chips you could make using 20-year-old process nodes. The "Comparative Advantage" of global trade specialization has its limits. During COVID, international ports shut down frequently and challenged JIT process inventory levels. Raising inventory levels the next time is one way to deal with that, but so is encouraging some minimum level of domestic production.
The Japanese population trend is unsustainable with long term growth. Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration. So unless they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going to be hard.
In general, I think the US is looking for alternatives outside of Taiwan to build and operate fabs. Yes, there is a push to get them in the US as well.
I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about this. No one is asking them not to create the programs to setup fabs. In fact the US may be thrilled that more allies are putting effort towards creating a supply chain not dependent on China (and Taiwan).
How much human labor is needed to run a semiconductor fab? This isn't exactly a new shipyard being announced. It seems like the perfect investment for an aging society, and might pay dividends in helping to support the automation of other industries.
Japan also already supplies a lot of critical materials for semiconductor fabrication, and has a lot of experience in the sector. They also have a well-developed domestic mechatronics supply chain. It seems like a fairly straightforward thing.
It takes a fair amount of people. You have techs that keep the floor level stuff running, process engineers, maintenance techs and engineers, facilities, IT & automation people, logistics, quality assurance, management, admins. I bet you're talking more than a thousand people for a big facility.
>The Japanese population trend is unsustainable with long term growth.
There are plenty of people in Tokyo/Osaka who can come to Hokkaido. If the jobs pay well, they will. Japan owes it to an entire generation who were left out in the "employment ice age." Japanese are very smart, can be trained, and should get first shot at the jobs.
>Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration.
According to western media. I (a gaijin) marched in the "anti-immigrant" rally recently myself. I was welcomed to do so. Nobody here wants to see foreigners coming in that destroy vending machines and just start building shanty towns on other peoples' property. Good gaijin are welcomed, bad ones need to leave.
>So unless they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going to be hard.
That's not going to be a problem simply based on the crazy property prices in Kita Hiroshima next door to Chitose. People are obviously coming.
> I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about this
This is a top-level issue within Europe as well.
When the Biden admin began the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS ACT, France, Germany, and the entire EU began a massive lobbying campaign that verged into a trade war [0][1][2].
I went to school with a number of people who became senior EU and EU member state civil servants and leaders, and my college always hosted European dignitaries on a daily basis (along with a yearly gala/bash where all the major EU and EU member state dignitaries would attend with students and professors [3]), and what I saw was the best and brightest remained in the US, and those who climbed the ladder the fastest in EU and EU member state governments tended to have some familial background or network they heavily leveraged. Or they lucked out and joined the right student union during the right election cycle. There is a chronic lack of vision, and more critically - a chronic disinterest to take hard decisions, because the incentive structures are completely misaligned, with MPs essentially overriding careerist technocrats all for the sake of electoral needs, and unlike Asia, businesses are kept at arms length aside from those that are quasi-state owned like Volkswagen, EDF, or Leonardo SPA.
It's almost as if the worst aspects of private sector capitalism morphed with the worst aspects of state capitalism into a legalistic quagmire.
Engineering pay in the EU is bad. If that can be rectified then top talent would not move to the US. Also, US companies actively harness senior individual contributors. I don't think traditional EU companies have that.
I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show. Yes, there could be slightly looser labor laws. But when it comes down to it - money matters and Europe just doesn't pay. The same for Canada. Their universities plodded through AI all through the "AI Winter" and now all their best AI talent works for US companies. There is no single Canadian AI company that's at the level of what their US counterparts are doing.
Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia - especially peer developed countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
The issues that have lead to laggard innovation in the EU outside of niches like Biopharma are institutional in nature.
> I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show...
I disagree about this as someone who has first hand experience about this w/ regards to the American semiconductor industry. Having a single window to manage disputes, get answers within days instead of months, and tax subsidizes should decisions not be guaranteed in a timely manner help reduce risk for massive capex investments.
This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry, and a similar template could have been used for semiconductors. The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
It can be fixed, but egos need to be set aside and individual European states will have to adopt industrial policy strategies similar to those that developing countries adopted to build their own domestic industries.
>Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia - especially peer developed countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power. While if you're an engineer in UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, etc you're not that wealthy by local standards, you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
>This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry
Not just Denmark, but bio/pharma is a protected and state sponsored industry in most EU countries, unlike software, electronics and electrical engineering which has been treated as a race to the bottom industry.
> The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
"Oh no, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions". This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future.
Munich is still a strong tech hub for electronics with Apple, Rhode & Schwarz and others developing RF and semiconductors there, but it can't hold a candle to the sci-fi work being done in SV or even Israel.
> Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power
Nope. You legitimately are not. The top 5-10% of salaries in both SK/JP/TW and Western Europe are primarily the managerial class.
And CoL is the same in SK and Japan with much of Western Europe.
> you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
Same in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. There's a reason immigration to Western Europe still remains somewhat attractive to Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese nationals to this day - similar salaries, but a better work culture and a stronger social safety net than in much of Asia.
> This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future
Europe hasn't been at the forefront of this industry since the 2000s.
Yes Infineon, ASML, IMEC, and STMicro are supposedly European domiciled, but they were heavily dependent on defense R&D due to semiconductor's dual use implications and all of them largely subsumed American subsidiaries whose leadership became their leadership. As such, these companies haven't been "European" for decades.
Usually around now (6am PST), HN tends to be dominated by Western (and some Eastern) European commentators. I've noticed they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist sentiment along with a "Europe should be able to do this too" sentiment (though in a lot of cases, this is moreso sentiment than reality).
Let me contribute my Europeanist sentiment by pointing out that the harmonious design of the fab is pure tatemae.
The Japanese professional class care fuckall about PFAS and environmental issues have always been low on the list of priorities. Sorry. I love the Hokkaido produce.
It's certainly something to be concerned about. Even the building where MOS Technology made the 6502 (in Norristown PA) is still a contaminated EPA superfund site. It's an industry with very nasty chemicals and a long history of leaking them.
>I've noticed they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist sentiment along with a "Europe should be able to do this too".
Is it wrong for people in Europe to wish for more cutting-edge/high-margin opportunities in their back yard, especially given the currently atrocious state of the job market?
Like you read news how TSMC's cutting edge chips are made in Taiwan and US fabs, then you looks at European fabs and the most cutting edge are 16/12nm.
People are seeing the lag with their own eyes and wish for some change.
Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard on developing such capabilities and assuming European nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so jarring.
Nothing stopped European nations like Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, etc from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
Just becuase Europe was historically the richest and most powerful continent doesn't mean it will be forever.
>Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard on developing such capabilities and assuming European nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so jarring.
Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, as there was no disrespecting anyone there with my comment, and I basically agree with your point.
That doesn't change that people here want those cutting edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They don't want to be stuck competition with China in commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm microcontrollers.
There's a limited market for ASML machines, Siemens gas turbines, and Airbus planes which can't support economic growth of the entire block.
>Nothing stopped European nations like from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
They're developed outside of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, etc since private businesses care most about prioritizing shareholder returns, not national sovereignty. And with Western EUs high labor costs, high taxes, high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc. Everyone with basic business know-how could have seen this coming but people still thought they could have their cake and eat it too in the globally cutthroat "free market" economy.
Case in point, Nokia just announced it is closing Infinera's Munich office and moving all operations to the US.
> That doesn't change that people here want those cutting edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They don't want to be stuck competition with China in commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm microcontrollers
You can't build an ecosystem for bleeding edge work without an even larger pipeline of non-bleeding edge and even legacy workflow. For example, it's 14nm that pays the bills for TSMC - not 5nm/7nm.
And much of the entire Taiwanese electronics industry is largely coalesced around legacy nodes and low value work as well.
> There's a limited market for ASML machines
Made in American using American IP by a US DoE JV.
> high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc
Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering remains competitive despite having similar issues as a similar capex heavy industry with a significant IP component. It's really just an institutional issue.
>Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering remains competitive despite having similar issues as a similar capex heavy industry with a significant IP component. It's really just an institutional issue.
Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition. It's a crazy patent minefield, massive regulatory moat, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus sometimes backroom deals between pharma and politicians. Nothing remotely similar to commodities like consumer software and hardware.
> Nothing remotely similar to commodities like software and hardware
First, what I should have done earlier in this conversation because I keep forgetting how broad and complex of an industry this is:
What do you mean by the semiconductor industry? No country other than the US has an end-to-end domestic pipeline from design to fabrication to packaging to developing EDAs.
For this thread, I have limited my conversation to fabrication and package. These industries have largely coalesed around the US and Korea/Japan/Taiwan/China/ASEAN for decades because of industrial policies and educational programs.
For chip design, this industry is largely limited to the US, Israel, India, China, and Taiwan for decades due to a number of key hires at Intel back in the 1990s.
The strategy needed to develop a domestic chip design ecosystem is completely distinct from that for developing a domestic fabrication or packaging ecosystem.
> Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition
It very much is depending on the type of compound, just like it is depending on the type of semiconductor (or downstream components).
> It's all about patents, massive regulatory moats, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus backroom deals between pharma and politicians
Hate to break your cherry, but that's all industries. I remember our lawyers spending months working with the trade promotion ministry of a certain CEE state along with KPMG in order to get a sweet heart deal to open a dev hub in an IT park that was associated with a politically connected oligarch. The economics of biopharma really aren't that different from semiconductors:
1. You have an entirely separate design phase that is completely independent of synthesis/fabrication
2. You have entire sub-segments of the industry devoted just to synthesis/fabrication along with testing
3. Both are high capex/low margins industries, as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics market while higher margin IP tends to be owned by the American subsidiaries of European Biopharma companies
4. It doesn't necessarily make sense to synthesize low margins APIs when you will inevitably be undercut by American, Chinese, or Indian players so the best solution is to specialize in design because that at least allows you to own IP.
------
This is a question for each individual European nation, because this is something that the European Union cannot solve - do EU nations actually care about developing industrial policies intended to develop domestic capacity or not in specific industries.
If so, does each European nation actually have the state-level capacity and the human capital capacity to start making a case for investment.
Additionally, can any European state give the 50%-150% capital subsidy grants or 0-1% interest rate loans that countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, the US, and India along with their state-level components?
After chatting with my friends who work on these types of questions in Bruxelles as well as a couple larger European capitals, the answer was no, simply because the fiscal leeway just doesn't exist and the demand really doesn't exist either. If Volkswagen AG or Groupe Renault is pushed into a corner, they will just shift manufacturing out of Europe and towards China or India respectively.
>Hate to break your cherry, but that's all industries.
It's not binary where it either it is or it isn't but there's various levels to it and Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives.
> as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics
Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever took from the pharmacy ware locally made? Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods.
> Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever took from the pharmacy ware locally made
Because it was synthesized using Chinese and Indian sourced "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (APIs) [0], both of whom synthesize around 80% of all APIs required by European pharma manufacturers.
The EU is trying to rectify this, especially after COVID when India decided to stop all exports of APIs and pharmaceuticals to Europe in order to prioritize domestic production [1], but it still takes time (they started in 2021, and it'll probably take another 5-7 years to build the critical mass needed to rebuild a domestic ecosystem).
> Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods
Becuase, as I have kept elucidating on multiple occasions on this thread, the entire ecosystem for these goods simply does not exist in Europe, and no European member state is interested in opening their pocketbooks to subsidize manufacturers to move to Europe in order to begin manufacturing the intermediate parts needed.
Countries like those across ASEAN, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, the US, and India offer millions to billions of dollars in hard cash, land, tax subsidizes, or a mix of all 3 in order to attract or retain manufacturers. EU member states simply does not do the same for electronics. Some of them absolutely do so for biopharma (such as Denmark), but by and large they tend to be exceptions of the rule.
> Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives
Ime, Pharma PLIs and incentives are fairly comparable to those that would be provided to electronic industries as well. The same tax sops India gave to attract Apple to TN were similar to those that India gave Novartis and Bayer decades ago, and China has been using the same subsidy program it used to attract electronics manufacturing to attract and become a major player in the biopharma space.
>Because it was synthesized using Chinese and Indian sourced "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (APIs) [0], both of whom synthesize around 80% of all APIs required by European pharma manufacturers.
And the EU pharma companies package it, slap their logos on it and make mega profits selling domestically.
>EU member states simply does not do the same for electronics.
Why do you think that is? Surely with a war next door and China not guaranteed be a cooperator all the time, that would be a priority.
> And the EU pharma companies package it, slap their logos on it and make mega profits selling domestically
Yep.
> Why do you think that is?
Because European nations lacks the linkages needed to build a competitive electronics industry.
Much of the industry is heavily linked across the Pacific, with the US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore transferring technology, capital, and personnel across borders to setup supply chains.
This is different with biopharma, given how closely connected European majors are with American subsidiaries. It also really doesn't hurt that much of American pharma has historically been consolidated in Greater Boston and the Delaware region which is just across the Atlantic, and European biopharma players have acted as the technology, capital, and personnel partner for developing these industries in India and China (though both do still prefer American players because of better budgets and more bleeding edge IP).
Additionally, where leadership are from matters as well. In the 1970s to 1990s, much of the electronics and software industry's mid-level and upper level leadership was West Coast based, Israel, or Asian in origin, which meant linkages were built much earlier, such as Morris Chang (Texas Instruments), Jason Chang (IllinoisTech), Vinod Dham (Intel), Dov Frohman (Intel), Kim Choong-Ki (Fairchild), Gurpreet Singh (Continental Electronics), etc. Heck, Intel began packaging semiconductors in Malaysia all the way back in 1973 - decades before they initiatited similar investments in Ireland.
The only European company that had a similar size and scope of American or Asian companies in the electronics industry was Philips NV before it broke up, but it was never at the size and scale of American Apple, IBM, or HP or Japanese Sony, Toshiba, or Sharp - let alone their Korean challengers in the 2000s like Samsung, SK Hynix, or Hyundai or their Chinese challengers in the 2010s like Huawei, TCL, Xiaomi, etc.
Most European countries lack the same bench of diaspora in leadership positions in large swathes of innovation industries. You'll easily find European leaders in services industries along with biopharma, but you'd never find a similar clustering in software, hardware, and even increasingly in biopharma to a certain extent.
Heck, most Indians who attend a Max Plank Institute for biopharma related work now return to India with a professorship or to lead an India- or America-located lab for a major like Novartis, GSK, etc.
> all they can think about is their own geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department.
It's almost like there is a propaganda campaign run all over social meda. Try a fun game, "What's it got to do with china?". Someone or something always tries to tie it to china.
As a European I have to say I am extremely jealous of a government with the willingness of doing something as radical as this.
Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain. Neither the EU nor any member states seems willing to do anything about this though.
Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent. But besides meaning posturing there is nothing being done.
China is already catching up. They have a desktop-sized 14nm EUV machine, and Xiami is setting up a 3nm manufacturing line, both entirely with local tech. Thanks USA for the export ban.
China has been dumping massive amounts of resources in this for at least 20 years, this (Making chips domestically with local tech) has been a long term goal for a very long time. The chip ban is relatively recent. IF it had an effect it was merely expediting a process that was going to happen regardless. China was NEVER going to be content importing Western chips or western machines to make chips indefinitely.
2019 is pretty recent. But it doesn't matter if the ban is 2000 or 2025. China was going to try and get the machines through subterfuge, industrial espionage, reverse engineering or novel engineering. They were always going to get a domestic chip production industry, its a matter of national security.
Xiami have designed a 3nm chip, however I am not convinced SMIC have a process for them to build the chip at any scale yet. Let's see - eventually China will obviously have a process comparable to TSMC but I think currently they are at least 18 months behind. They were 5 years behind before the sanctions so they are catching up fast.
Sure of course, just like COMAC vs Airbus/Boeing, BYD vs Western EVs etc.
But this is a bit different IMHO.
First there's still a lot of catching-up to do.
And second are they going to be able to gain sufficient marketshare in the Western market ? I am thinking here, both in terms of displacing ASML and in terms of Western companies being willing to depend on Chinese tech for such critical activities.
Selling chips or chip manufacturing equipment is one of the many ways to get a return on this investment.
There's a whole hierarchy of products and services that benefit from this. At any level that there is a ban/preference to not use Chinese products it translates to a lower price for the same technology, which feeds into the domestic market for dependent tech.
Nobody buys their chips? They build data centers and sell computation as service. That does not sell enough? Domestic R&D now has an edge, creating momentum for medicine, agriculture, consumer products, weapons.
You can ban a small country for a long time, or a large country for a small time, but not large for long
They would be catching up anyway. At least now there will be a second source for the tech. ASML does fantastic work but they may not have all the answers.
Europe cannot actually do a whole of monopolization with ASML without incurring the wrath of its only armed forces, the United States of America. Europe is essentially a military junta controlled by a foreign power. They perceive themselves to be a country because they get to do elections and stuff. Cute
Hah... europe will become king of the world! We'll tax and regulate ourselves to enormous wealth! No... jokes aside, europe is a failed union, and will slowly collapse or decompose in a decade or two.
Then we can again focus on trade, lowering taxs and creating value. The only thing that is happening now is that the political class has become enormously rich through bribes and by having managed to phase out democracy and enriching themselves.
US was not destroying its own international position for 200 years. Their international position went all the way up in that period. It was also not destroying its own quality of life for 200 years.
there is nothing to be destroyed if there is no "good reputation" in the first place
You are seeing from European perspective but I can assure you that there is people that seeing western country is a "bad guys" from these region because Western power always trying exert their influence via trade deal, regime change, fund armed group etc
Right now, sitting in Europe, wishing that Brussels was just ever so slightly more functional, you look out into the world and see how everyone else is doing, and you're reminded that things isn't actually that bad.
It's the one exception in the semiconductor supply chain where Europe is still leading. For all other parts of the value creation Europe is either a niche player at best or completely absent, well into the actual application layer.
If only European bureaucrats mortgaged their entire economy on 500 AI scam companies that never produce any profit and sold off their entire manufacturing base to their main adversary. This is how real superpowers roll.
With very bad results. I was walking a fab in China a few years ago: all machines are German, Japanese and Dutch. I asked why they don't have Chinese ones: the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster so it is not worth it and the asml machines are not there at all in any type of competitive form. It will happen, just not yet I guess.
>the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster
Japanese cars would also break down much faster than US made cars in the 1950s, but eventually they figured out reliability and overtook US competition. What are the odds Chinese companies can repat this playbook?
They're also a critical player in supplying small drone parts to both sides in Russia Ukraine war. Maybe not the most reliable parts, but the scale is insane.
btw, "Made in Germany" was introduced in 1887 as a warning label so British consumers could distinguish cheap German knockoffs from British products.
We quickly improved product quality, and suddenly "Made in Germany" was a sign of quality. The same happened with Japanese products, with Korean products and the same will happen with China.
> Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent.
That's not possible. There are just too many different parts going into semiconductor production and they're scattered around the world.
Case in point: the source of the best semiconductor-grade quartz is located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina and while there exist alternatives, for cost-competetiveness you want that.
Hilariously enough it belongs to Sibelco, which is a Belgian company, but it's still US territory, so subject to local politics.
While it may be true that cost advantages are in that specific quartz, it is not some irreplaceable product. It absolutely would be possible to use other quartz, which would require more processing and increase costs.
Do you have any actual examples of things which could not be in sourced into Europe? I am very aware that for many reasons, among them costs, semiconductor fabrication is spread globally. But is there an actual reason why it would be impossible to have every single one of these pieces in some capacity in Europe?
Europe is continually moving further apart politically from both the US and China. Relying on the US for supplies and betting on Chinese, Taiwanese peace seems increasingly foolish. How can Europe secure itself in such an environment, without its own semiconductor supply chain?
A better example is the EUV lithography light sources used by ASML. They are manufactured in the US by a US company ASML acquired with technology licensed from US government labs. That critical part of the business is American in all but name.
It is possible that the EU could develop their own state-of-the-art lithography light sources but for now ASML is dependent on the US for it.
Silicon for solar cell production is currently being mined and refined in Sweden. What would it take to adapt that production line for semiconductor-grade silicon, I wonder.
Small point worth bringing up, that quartz doesn't go into the ingots that get sliced into wafers (and then doped and diced into chips). It's used to make the crucibles that the ingots are grown in.
This is so grim. What a stark difference to Japan. On one side there is a government setting up a new company, with the aim of competing at the highest end of the most complex technological process in existence. Meanwhile the EU is setting up bureaucrat managed funds to keep the remaining companies, currently suffering from the decline of the German auto industry, alive. Oh and they also paid TSMC to set up a factory, how pathetic.
What do you think the EU is? It's not a country, not a federative union. These things need a lot of discussions and synchronization among member countries, it does not work otherwise, so it takes time. I also hold the opinion that time is a resource the EU does not have, so it badly needs to reform itself - its framework no longer works for this "new age".
the #1 problem with the EU's administrative structure is that its power comes from below, i.e. from the member states. Any of them could pull a Brexit and the entire union could be in jeopardy.
The #2 problem is language. Despite what many on HN think, European borders very much exist. They exist via language and bureaucracy.
These two combine to create many problems the EU and Europe in general has. The lack of vision, the excruciatingly slow bureaucracy, both are symptoms of the same underlying problems.
Intel was supposed to build something in Germany some years ago, didn't really work out because of reasons which seems to have been outside of Germany's control. So it's not that they are unwilling, but it just didn't succeed yet.
I don't think that's right. They make one of the many machines you need for semiconductor manufacturing. The NXP fab in Nijmegen makes simple components on a outdated 140nm+ process with 200mm wafers.
Unless there is another fab that is making actual modern chips?
One of our problems (EU citizen here too) is the delusion that because everyone in the world wants access to European markets, everyone will bend their knees to our regulations and we can effectively dictate the world's standards.
Given that our market share on the global economy is dropping steadily, this won't hold forever. By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.
Already this year we had a showdown with Qatar over some ESG reporting and we lost handily, because we needed their gas more than they needed our money.
Exactly. For the past decades much of the world was entirely dependent on European products. This gave the EU and European countries enormous leverage in setting standards and enforcing their own regulations across the world. This is very clearly changing, in many areas European companies are depending on Chinese technology (e.g. EV batteries).
I am sure that some part of the EU establishment is aware of this, but the measure taken are practically laughable compared to the magnitude of the problem. At some future point in time dealing with the EU will just not be worth it, as competitive companies outside the EU, not weighed down by EU regulations, will fill the gaps and entering the EU market will be seen as too toxic.
At least in case of India, it is in their interest to lower their trade barriers against Thailand, Viet Nam, Philippines, Indonesia etc.
This region with 500 million people in it will oscillate between Chinese and Indian influence. The Chinese are more powerful and richer, so the only way in which India can compete for influence is being more friendly.
Now, but we're talking 2040, and the situation may look a lot different.
India has been doing some incredible things lately. They just electrified their entire rail network in some five years. That is actually impressive - you need a lot of qualified people and coordination for that.
If they keep up, they will become a strategic adversary of China in Indochina (see the name?) quite soon.
India's rail network is not fully electrified, this is false. Even the most popular broad gauge network is not fully electrified. Diesel trains are still very common. Remember also that the Indian government is very skilled at manipulating data without actually delivering results. Just look at the lies they spewed during the pandemic about deaths.
India's promised ascendance to power and influence remain perpetually a few decades away. Meanwhile, the poor continue to lose purchasing power, the rich exploit the entire country, and India's total economic exports are comparable to those of the Netherlands.
You're saying that like the two are at odds. France is a military superpower with almost entirely France, worst case scenario western EU, based supply chain. Italy, Spain, to a lesser extent Germany are too. Manufacturing is also pretty strong across (most) of the EU. Automotive is struggling in Germany, but booming in France (Renault are killing it). Leading in Aeronautics too. It's just mostly high value manufacturing. In the EU, 25% of the economy is in manufacturing. Compare with 10% in the US.
And those regulations are, more often than not, for everyone's benefit - at least EU, but often the Brussels effect applies so a lot of the rest of the world benefits too.
What you are saying is just not true. Frances car industry is dying. Renault is a small company, not even in the top 10 and Stellantis is doing extremely poorly, also affecting Italy's car industry. Within a decade or so COMAC will have a competitive passenger plane, seriously threatening Airbus market share.
Germany's entire industry is currently dying since it is impossible to have a cost competitive manufacturing industry while having some of the highest energy prices in the world.
Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the market by Chinese competition.
Do you think Germany or France will continue to have a car industry, when China makes cars or the same quality for 70% of the price? Because that is currently the reality.
High energy prices are a self-imposed problem. The price of electricity is heavily dependent on the price of the most expensive energy source. Electricity from fossil fuels is expensive in European Union due to emissions trading system. A coal-fired power plant pays around 2x more for the emissions than for the coal itself. I don't know how the maths work for a natural gas plant but gas is more expensive in Europe anyway compared to the US.
> Renault is a small company, not even in the top 10
How exactly is that even remotely relevant? They only sell in select markets, and are killing it in them (best selling EV in the EU, Renault 5). What, if it's not a global behemoth dominating the world, it doesn't count as manufacturing? What exactly is your argument here?
> Within a decade or so COMAC will have a competitive passenger plane, seriously threatening Airbus market share.
Nope. Their own goal is to have, within a decade or so, a fully Chinese plane (their current C919 heavily relies on engines and other critical components from European and American suppliers). Specifically for the engines, they're looking at a comparable to the Leap 1C they were sold by CFM (American General Electric+French Safran joint venture). Those engines are around a generation behind the current best ones (Leap 1A, Pratt&Whitney GTF). In a decade, CFM and Rolls-Royce will have a new generation out, both having new models being tested right now.
So, in around a decade, the Chinese engines will be two generations behind. Efficiency is critical in aviation. And that's just the engines, in a decade Airbus will have a new A320 series replacement out, and Boeing will have one on the way too. And this is just for short to medium haul planes. And both the C919 and the C909 show that it's taking years for production to ramp up to any relevant numbers. Airbus recently opened a second final assembly line in Tianjin for the local market, they wouldn't have done that without being sure they have a market there for at least a decade or more.
> Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the market by Chinese competition.
This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Does China need something competitive to an a320neo^2 or is something competitive with a 737ng enough given they can pressure domestic airlines into buying it and undercut their way into more sticker price sensitive markets? That’s already a big loss for the duopoly, and I mean there are 717s and similar still flying
> or is something competitive with a 737ng enough given they can pressure domestic airlines into buying it and undercut their way into more sticker price sensitive markets
Potentially, but previous attempts (like the Xian MA60 and MA600, which are derivatives of the designed in the 1960s An-24) have been very unsuccessful. It made some sales in Southeast Asia and Africa, but a few of those have had accompanying corruption/bribery allegations and investigations, and most have been grounded after serious incidents and troubles keeping them operating at reasonable costs.
But my overall point is, it's going to take them more than a decade, probably around two, to be able to churn out fully Chinese passenger jets in any relevant numbers. The Chinese airplane market is massive, so even then they probably won't be able to deliver enough. There also aren't any plans to get the C919, existing or future fully Chinese version, certified by EASA or FAA or anywhere else, so legally the jet can't even fly anywhere else other than China for now.
So we have at least 2 decades more of COMAC being very behind and churning planes at a slow rate, at best. And honestly, anyone who thinks they can predict the aviation market 2 decades ahead is out of their mind. We could have hydrogen powered flying wings by then!
"so legally the jet can't even fly anywhere else other than China for now."
Or countries could just accept Chinese type certification alongside the FAA, EASE, and TC certificates. Granted, it would only be for domestic or regional flights at most - but that's a lot.
Which is what Nigeria is considering with the C919.
That's what happened with the Xian MA60, but it was still a disaster due to supply chain complexities. Even the relatively established UAC (Russia) couldn't handle the supply chain and maintenance of their most recent SSJ-100, even to friendly countries (Cuba) or close by European ones (Ireland).
>are killing it in them (best selling EV in the EU, Renault 5). What, if it's not a global behemoth dominating the world, it doesn't count as manufacturing? What exactly is your argument here?
My argument is that China is producing EVs of the same quality for 70% of the cost. European wealth comes from exports.
>This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Exactly. The European car industry only exists because China is not allowed to compete, this is my point. There is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be buying a better car for the same price or the same quality car for a lower price.
The car market for these companies will shrink from the entire world to Europe, surely you can see that this is an existential threat to European manufacturing.
>And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. A BYD EV with 27% tariffs applied is cost competitive to the lowest end Renault Platform. In other words, the only reason Dacia is selling any cars is because BYD is not allowed to compete.
On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have mastered almost every technology the west has, it is delusional to think that they will never make competitive aircraft engines. You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will catch up.
That's certainly a claim. The EU market is pretty big, and has multiple avenues for growth (the whole of the Balkans is either in the EU but catching up, or outside the EU begging to be let in). It's not axiomatic that the EU needs to export to the whole rest of the world. And even if it is, there are plenty of countries that have an appetite for European goods for a variety of reasons (be it luxury or just quality associations, or innate hatred of China, like in India or South Korea).
> Exactly. The European car industry only exists because China is not allowed to compete, this is my point
Alternatively, because Chinese dumping is not allowed to destroy the European car industry, if we're only talking in economic terms. But the reality is that cars aren't that simple, as a market. For many cars are a status symbol, or otherwise everyone would be driving Dacias and Skodas and nobody would be buying Porsches vs VWs.
> There is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be buying a better car for the same price or the same quality car for a lower price.
Of course there is. Stellantis, Renault, VW Group are selling well in their local markets, across Europe and various other markets (e.g. the US for Stellantis).
> On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have mastered almost every technology the west has, it is delusional to think that they will never make competitive aircraft engines
Never said never, said their own timeline is a decade, for something competitive to the previous gen, while in a decade we'll be two generations ahead. Considering Chinese aerospace engineering has been struggling with engines forever, and Russia never managed to get close, ever, I wouldn't bet on China suddenly being able to leapfrog their own timeline.
> You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will catch up.
They will catch up to ~previous generation (A320ceo), by then Airbus will already have the replacement to the current gen (A320neo, future gen not named yet). So China will still be ~2 decades behind, in a decade-ish. Yes, they will definitely catch up by some point in the ~2050s, so what? Airbus caught up to Boeing, and there is enough market to go around for both. Embraer is in the process of catching up too. There being one more new entrant on the (again, only short to medium haul) passenger jet market, in a decade, really isn't the end of the world you're making it out to be.
You are still arguing the status quo. By export I meant export to countries outside the EU, where Chinese and European EVs compete fairly.
To believe that the European car industry will survive purely on brand recognition is foolish and all current trends indicate otherwise. The Chinese are cars at the same quality for 70% if the price. That is obviously not sustainable and no amount of brand loyalty will overcome this.
None of your arguments seem convincing at all. Making worse cars at higher prices can not work. It is not a feasible long term strategy in any way.
Also, Stellantis is not selling well, they have huge problems with underutilized factories. Porsche is also currently in serious trouble.
Yes, we're talking about the current reality and trends about the future. Which is it, are EU manufacturers at large on the decline, or am I too focused on the current reality that they're doing okay, with exceptions?
> Making worse cars at higher prices can not work.
Who is talking about worse cars or brand loyalty?
A Renault 5 or Renault 4 are objectively good cars that sell well based on their performance and looks. Cars aren't bought only on the basis on cost, which is why premium or even just any other brand other than the lowest cost Skoda or Dacia exist in the first place.
> None of your arguments seem convincing at all.
It's not very convincing to say that manufacturing in the EU is on a death bed when its double the % of GDP as in the US, and has multiple domains where there are good performances. And then get extremely hung up that EU manufacturers must export, and that somehow cost is the only metric by which people buy stuff. And then get extremely hung up on car manufacturing in particular. But also somehow that EU manufacturing is worse quality, which you don't even attempt to prove. Yeah, when you put down the wrong conditions, you're going to get the wrong conclusions. And repeating them again and again doesn't make them more convincing.
Most best selling EV models in the EU are Tesla, from Renault or VW Group. Practically all of them are manufactured in the EU. This is not a declining trend.
And of course you're completely ignoring the reality that tariffs against Chinese dumping are a reality and here to stay in many markets. Manufacturers that relied a lot on e.g. the Chinese car market, like VW, will suffer. Others that didn't, like Renault, are doing just fine.
I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold for 70% of the price of a European made car, will outperform the European car in every market, where those cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for reasons unfathomable to me.
I believe that the European export economy is vital for its prosperity. 45% of Germany's 1 trillion+ exports are to countries outside of the EU. You believe that loosing that economy can be made up in other ways, again for reasons which are unfathomable to me.
I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could convince you otherwise. That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for cars or that European products are of lower quality) makes me not want to talk to you at all.
> I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold for 70% of the price of a European made car, will outperform the European car in every market, where those cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for reasons unfathomable to me
I disagree with that for pretty obvious reasons. The fact that companies like GM and Ford still exist, and not everyone has been buying the cheapest car that fits their needs, unquestionably proves that buying cars is more than just price. Quality is hard to directly compare, but you also have maintenance needs/availability, brand recognition, design.
But anyways, you're talking about manufacturing more widely, and we spent too much time talking about cars. 20% of the EU GDP that are in manufacturing really aren't all about cars.
> I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could convince you otherwise
That's an almost smart way of getting out of having to provide any.
> That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for cars
How else would I interpret your incessant attempts to try to convince me that a Chinese car at 70% the cost of an European one would always win? The fact that you're completely ignoring the presence of brand or the importances of marketing and design on car buying choices clearly indicates you only think of cars as their cost to buy. Which is really not what most people's first consideration is, otherwise, again, we wouldn't have Tesla, VW, Audi, Porsche, GM, Ford, Lexus, etc etc existing.
Imagine a government that considers its people more than tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit! So many regulations meant to protect the plebes!
Universal healthcare? Vacation time you can actually use? Data privacy laws?
What a bunch of losers! Next you’ll tell me they actually give parents time off to raise their kids instead of dumping them into daycare after a month of drudgery and try to call it bonding !
>Imagine a government that considers its people more than tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit!
Most European governments are for a long time now pushing migration hard overtly or subversively(since it's unpopular) arguing as if they're importing tools for the economy.
I wouldn't call European governments considering its people. Basically all of European countries suffer from housing crisis and nothing is being done to actually address it.
Some of the regulations make sense, like PFAS (correlated with chip manufacturing because HF is needed to etch Silicon and so
fluoro-organics make great complements) And they seem to be sincere about it.
As for the Japanese professional classes, environmental issues are always an afterthought. Don't let the "harmonious" design philosophy of the fab fool you..that's tatemae. (Remember Jobs and pancreatic cancer? There's the price to pay for the shiny toys)
I wont be eating from Hokkaido if this pans out (their milk is overrated imho, but the seafood is top)
Maybe I'll get to eat more Austrian millet in the near future..
We spent the last 30 years showing deference to good old Uncle Sam, sometimes back-stabbing other member states in the process. How would we ever have the nerves to do something of this scale with all the cooperation, supply chain logistics and engineering complexity that this would involve ?
Let's be real, it's not America's fault that the EU is dysfunctional in these regards. I'm sure that America does little to actually help, but the biggest problem the EU faces comes from their own internal corruption. Nothing gets done in Europe unless it can be restructured by their corrupt bureaucrats to pay all their friends and relatives, and the process of negotiating how to spread the graft around is highly political and takes many years. This is why the ESA is so dysfunctional despite Arianespace starting from a position of almost commercial launch market dominance at the end of the millennium. They're locked into Ariane 5 development even though it was obsolete on arrival and it will probably take them 20 years to negotiate the corrupt deals that will allow them to design and build something new. This cultural and political dysfunction in European society is entirely the fault of Europeans. India will send people to space before Europe.
European countries are willing to make big bets. The issue is with incompetent leadership. For example they made very big bets on quantum computing and particle accelerators for HEP, both of which have close to zero ROI. Meanwhile, up till very recently AI was sneered at as not "scientific" enough. This is a problem with leadership. The issue is mostly that we put people in leadership positions, who are experts in past technologies but those instincts do not translate well to present technologies.
I'm an American who bought a house in Hokkaido and have been living there for 18 months. Hokkaido is wonderful and Chitose is close to Sapporro (more like a suburb), has an international airport (direct flights to Seoul, Taipei, Shanghai, etc) and the bullet train will be completed by 2030 from Tokyo to Sapporro. The nature and food are unrivaled in Hokkaido and in terms of the people and culture - until about the 1880s it was primarily an Ainu place but then large immigration from all parts of Japan which has created a unique culture in Hokkiado with aspects of culture from all of Japan's regions. What has been missing is industry. Resource extraction has been one industry in decline (fishing, timber, coal). Banking and finance have mostly been centred in Tokyo. A high tech chip industry in Hokkaido, in particular if Taiwan is merged with PRC might be exactly the thing for Hokkaido to boom - in particular since it is less prone to natural disasters and climate change may be warming things up.
How much did you pay for the house? How much rennovation did it need? Are you working remotely there? How did you acquire a house in an area that's less accommodating to English than Tokyo? Did you need/use a real estate agent?
This, on the surface, makes logistical sense. Chitose (the proposed location) is the international airport for and largest airport in Hokkaido (New Chitose Airport). Setting up a fab and related facilities right next to this location would seem to have obvious benefits.
That is just logistics, but what about power consumption, environmental issues next to agriculture etc. I am wondering why Hokkaido instead of other places in Japan.
Japan tends to be a favorite for most enterprise SaaS companies when opening an APJ sales foothold - no other Asian economy is of a similar size and open to Western firms.
Additionally, a Tokyo HQ often manages your South Korea and Taiwan operations as well because of legacy business ties from the colonial era as well as the flying geese era. That said, Sapporo does remain a bit of a niche area like Seattle or Portland before semiconductors because of how dominant Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya are.
Knock on wood the Rapidus helps spark a Japanese Beaverton.
Hokkaido is by a wide margin my favorite place in the world. If I could easily HQ a tech company there (for global sales; Japan domestic market is stagnant), I would.
Meanwhile what? Europe already have chip manufacturing but focused on industrial and embedded usage, while others seems oriented towards consumer stuff.
It would be darkly amusing if all chips come from either politically unstable Taiwan or seismically unstable Hokkaido.
But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.
Isn't Taiwan also seismically active? They are reports of earthquakes affecting TSMC fabs in january 2025 and april 2024.
Apparently these were not huge blows to their fabs, otherwise we would be talking about that day-in-day-out, but there's always a risk of that happening.
That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first.
Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Right now there is no non-violent path to achieving that because Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that. Probably with the aid of America, although I’m a lot less certain of that than 5 year ago, and it’s looking like it’s a lot more likely to be with the aid of Japan as well.
Also a success by the PRC would still result in the political destruction of the Republic of China and the subjugation of its people.
It should be noted that even if Taiwan's military resistance were negligible (or on the order of Tibet's), which it's not, that would not validate invading them and taking away their autonomy. For all intents and purposes, Taiwan is a self-governing nation, distinct from China precisely because it does not wish to be part of China.
Taiwan is not distinct from China. Both the ROC and the PRC view Taiwan as part of China (ironically, at the cost of the mass slaughter of taiwanese to in service of the chinese).
Nobody is giving them more deference than the other. In a perfect world, the ROC would be the one and only surviving entity from this mess and the PRC would be a relic of history.
That isn’t what the facts on the ground are though. The ROC no more has sovereign jurisdiction over the mainland than the PRC does over Taiwan. Which is to say that at this point they are functionally separate sovereign nations independent of each other, regardless of the claims by either the PRC or the ROC. Or put another way, the way I did the first fucking time: Taiwan is an independent nation.
> Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that
I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite. If anything I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today's climate
> I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree ... I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table
One of the benefits of a free democratic society is that you can ask; and people vote according to their preferences. A recent study suggests ~13% of the public support unification with China: https://www.tpof.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250214-TPO... . Taiwan's politics are dominated by the KMT and DPP parties, both of which oppose unification.
> I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country
Ever? No. Whether or not it's moral to support the state under which you live depends entirely on the circumstances. In the best case the state is mostly an expression of the will of the nation, and if your country is invaded you support the state.
But even if the state is parasitical, in the case of an invasion it's usually moral to support it.
Ok, so why do people not violently rise up against the us government? They clearly have never represented our values, and they use the pretense of sovereignty to act as if their behavior reflects our interest.
> It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that you have influence over, that's democracy.
So what's our excuse? Do we not have a democracy, or are we simply a contemptible people?
> I live in the US. I think it's pretty obvious the PRC is more competent in every way than our own government is.
Yes, and you wouldn't be able to express your political opinion (like you do here on HN or anywhere else) if you were living in China. People living in the US tend to overlook that minute detail.
I'm willing to concede that the CCP may be more competent than the US government, but the Taiwanese government (despite their antics in parliament) ranks alongside Singapore and Norway in my top three most competent governments in the world. That's purely my own subjective opinion of course but I see no reason for the Taiwanese people to be embarrassed.
If you live in the US, supporting a Chinese invasion is definitely unusual.
> the PRC is more competent in every way
I guess it depends what you mean by competent. Dictatorships can be frightfully competent at certain things, but that doesn't make them a good place to be. We're talking about a country that is genociding its own Uyghur ethnic group, represses Tibetan culture, disappears its own elite athletes, and has a horrific LGBTI record. The US is far from perfect, but has nothing on China in terms of nastiness.
That's not even touching the biggest problem of dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace when he goes.
> The US is far from perfect, but has nothing on China in terms of nastiness.
I think you have this reversed, friend. Our culture is based on violence and death. Theirs is based on stability and prosperity.
> That's not even touching the biggest problem of dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace when he goes.
I pray he liberates us before he passes. I agree it's not likely but.... one must maintain hope in this world
Unification, in this case, means surrendering all rights to privacy, all rights to free expression, everything.
The fact that you wouldn't fight being occupied and forced to be a slave doesn't speak highly of you, but I must admit it's an honest statement, and it's true that a lot of people might feel the same way. A majority of people everywhere are cowards, collaborators and sycophants. But they're along for the ride.
> rights to privacy, all rights to free expression, everything.
Surely rights to more substantial things like healthcare make this quite an easy decision. Freedom to criticize a government doesn't matter if you can't force the government to actually give a shit about anything
Does Taiwan not have healthcare? Verbatim from Wikipedia:
> According to the Numbeo Health Care Index in 2025, Taiwan has the best healthcare system in the world, scoring 86.5 out of 100,[6] a slight increase from 86 the previous year.[7] This marked the seventh consecutive year that Taiwan has ranked first in the Numbeo Health Care Index.[8]
Just my sense as an outsider, but a lot of interest in voluntary reunification got chilled after seeing China's actions in Hong Kong. A lot of it stems from lack of trust for the CCP to honor it's idea of a one county two systems form of governence.
I don't know how much the Taiwanese would be willing to fight and die in a military invasion though.
In terms of survival strategies, letting someone else rule over you was sort of the OG Christian thing before they got control of the Roman Empire. It's kind of the default in most places. Declaring independence and actually succeeding at it and governing yourself is remarkably rare. The question isn't what you think is wise, or what you would do (because no one knows until they're in that situation). It's whether you feel you have anything worth preserving when you are conquered. Some people don't, evidently. Other people do.
You simply cannot compare the experience of being conquered in a pre-modern society to being conquered by the PRC.
Premodern States simply couldn't afford the level of oppression and exploitation that is possible today. They usually just replaced the upper layers of the old hierarchy, put some small garrisons in a few places and left most local elites in charge, often with their local armies. If there was an organized rebellion, there would usually be a a few skirmishes and then a re-negotiation of the terms.
Today even Morocco could afford to turn Western Sahara into a territory with total surveillance, checkpoints everywhere and an impenetrable wall in the desert while slowly ethnically cleansing the native population.
If you lived in a country with local political representation and free elections, would you want your children to grow up in slavery to a dictatorship across the sea? Ask the Irish.
The reports I’ve heard and read would be contrary to your claims. When I was in Hong Kong, for example, I saw huge protests, so I wouldn’t call it fine. Inside and out of Hong Kong, I’ve never met an HKer that was pleased about the China government’s plans. I also have heard that “its own system” is not a correct characterisation of the situation.
For the China part: Yes, the "by force" part certainly exists as a position, in competition to the peaceful unification approach. It's important to keep in mind, though, that the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction. There was an interesting piece in Foreign Policy about that, a social scientist from the US was questioning Chinese students at an elite university on this very topic and thus had the chance to do a time series observing the attitude change following US actions.
Secondly, in Taiwanese politics, Unification is actually a big topic and even has its own party, the New Party, advocating for it (plus the fringe CUPP). Not popular right now, but certainly existing - and evidently falsifying the notion that the all of "Taiwan doesn't want to be part of Beijing's China".
So according to your logic, it only counts if it's unanimous inside Taiwan to not be taken over by Beijing but it doesn't need to be unanimous for those who want reunification with China?
No. I pointed out that both the "by force" statement for China and the "Taiwan doesn't want" statement are so oversimplified that they became factually incorrect. The "logic" is your inference and neither stated nor implied by me.
The existance of a faction within Taiwan that wants Taiwan to reunify with Beijing's China isn't materially relevant if they don't have any path forward to accomplish their goal.
This is about international relations. You won't get any insight into it if you reduce any point you don't like to argumentative metaphors.
Even within the framework of (structural) realism so popular in contemporary US politics there's this well-known problem that the buildup of defense capabilities of party A looks like aggression to party B - and vice versa. See the seminal work Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Or the relations of Britain and Germany before WW1 and WW2.
The FP article I mentioned, "Trump’s Trade War May Make Elite Young Chinese More Nationalistic" [1], illustrates the argument. You have actual empirical data, changing over time, after exposure to the "treatment". So at least a hint of causality.
As a Czech who absolutely hates the Protectorate era, I can still see a good case to use somewhat neutral expressions like "politically unstable" if you want to discuss technical topics like supply chains without delving into the underlying politics.
Declaring "I am a friend of democracies threatened by totalitarian countries" before every economic utterance looks as performative and ultimately counterproductive to me as all the "land acknowledgments" that infected the US academia. (Not coincidentally, those don't help actual Amerindians at all.)
Yeah, Central Europe in the 1930s was politically unstable, no way around it. And it wasn't just question of Czechoslovakia vs. Germany either. Most countries had irredentist movements and/or land demands on their neighbours.
So, let's say the TSMC is the modern equivalent in "supply chain" terms as Czech guns made in Plzeň, like the Škoda 75mm cannon - wait, let's rewind. I'm not saying Czechoslovakia was politically stable in 1939. I'm saying that when your neighbor claims they need to rescue you from instability - like when America says they need to rescue a Latin American or Middle Eastern country from "political instability" when that country elects someone who doesn't want the country's resources owned and run by companies with imperialist backing - that is code for a green light to conquer them and take their resources. The same as it was for the Germans. The same as it is for China re: Taiwan and Russia re: all the former Soviet republics. Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli. I'm sure you wouldn't like your country to be invaded again if the powers around it decide you can't manage your own affairs.
[edit] I also spent about a year living in Prague and I love your country, Czechs are the best, and their sense of freedom is an immense relief from let's say other countries in the EU, so, I think it's amazing that you have maintained your independence from the enormous forces surrounding you and pulling in all directions. I think part of this is something I observed, that Czechs act like they are part of one small family.
Again, context matters and we are likely not talking in a "let us decide whom to invade" context.
BTW "Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli" is not really true, sometimes this happened, but wars have been declared for all sorts of putative reasons, like "our particular minority is being oppressed" or "the neighbouring government plotted against the life of our sovereign" or "they are infidels, go get them".
Anyway I don't really see what you propose. Binning expressions because someone someday used them in bad faith, in the belief that this will stop future invasions from happening?
This seems to be somewhat futile to me. Invasions aren't fundamentally caused by words. Words only work as a cloak and one cloak can be easily substituted by another, and it will, depending on the current state of politics in the invader and invadee country.
Note that the Russians explained their invasion into Ukraine by calling them "fascists". Should the Western civilization drop the word forever because of that?
The cloak of words has always been needed, for some reason, to convince a population to make the sacrifices necessary to go to war.
Yes, there have been other spoken reasons for invading a peaceful sovereign country. This does not change the fact that Russia is the belligerent party against Ukraine, or that China is the belligerent against a completely harmless and peaceful Taiwan.
Taiwan's situation right now is very similar to Czechoslovakia's in 1938. There is no international treaty with teeth to protect it. There is every reason for China to create a rationale for invading it. The people there have a decent life and don't want to live under occupation. And the reasons for invasion look similar; taking over industrial capacity under the guise of saving people from their confused political state.
It is indeed somewhat similar (though the sea is a better barrier + they don't have a major fifth column on their territory). And I would smell rat if it was a Chinese CCP official uttering the words about "political instability", but that would exactly be the change of context necessary.
If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability", they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what will happen in context of their own jobs.
Ahhahah. For SWEs I think the phrase is "undefined behavior".
FWIW, my friend, I'm a Jew and I spent 5 years in France, Spain and Germany before coming to Prague. Czechia was the one place I felt welcome and safe in the EU. The noble history of the Czechs played a big role in that, but you could feel it every day in the way people treated each other. There is something incredible there about the people, the family, the place and the intelligence of Czechia. It is about keeping a small land for your family and people. I would say it's similar in many ways to Israel.
Now someone will come and shoot me, heheh.
But - there was a point. This is also why I defend Taiwan and I think everyone should. People should be free to get together to decide that they want to be part of something, not swallowed up by neighbors who despise their way of life.
Czechia is the most Jewish-friendly country in the EU, and will likely stay so. Our Jewish community used to be very vibrant and it is sorely missed.
We should indeed defend Taiwan, but we (as "the entire EU") seem to be lukewarm even about defending Ukraine which is much closer to us and in a hot war. Some people just prefer sticking their head in the sand.
Maybe the Jewish people are better at discerning building-up danger, because of their long history of persecution.
I hope it remains so. I felt an affinity from even before I stepped off the train from Munich. It's a funny story - my passport was examined by German police in the bar car of the train. My passport was not in order and they were radio calling to see whether to haul me back to Munich and detain me. I played for time as the border approached. The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice trip, and he took me into the store room on the train, opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!" And immediately I fell in love with the country. I would say, God bless that bartender on the train but almost everyone I met in the next year in Prague was equally kind and wonderful.
I can't speak for all Jewish people, but yes we are raised reading history to understand the way that threats can build up over time, and the multiple masks that threats can wear. For me, personally, I see this as an affinity to all small, powerless but free people... Kurds, Taiwanese, Ukrainians, Tibetans, Yazidis... particularly those who don't evangelize but simply want to be left alone to prosper and live in peace with their own people. Czechs are similar to that as the most "western-facing Slavic people" and I grew up in America enthralled by Vaclav Havel as a beacon for individuals and every small nation wanting freedom.
You are of course right that this history of persecution raises one's antennae and evokes horror at anything that seems to favor totalitarian modes of thinking. But the Czechs level of paranoia made me laugh sometimes, maybe because it was so similar.
"The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice trip, and he took me into the store room on the train, opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!""
I can almost hear him. That is basically the essence of Czechdom :)
It is interesting how some aspects of culture are essentially the same and others diverge wildly once you cross the border. When it comes to Bier and Schnitzel and snowy Christmas, Czechs are almost indistinguishable from Bavarians. But in other aspects it is just as you saw it, two worlds apart.
Comparing Nazi Germany and the PRC in any way is certainly an interesting choice, considering they're the one major power in the world that actually doesn't have a recent history of invading sovereign nations.
Yeah they do. Even right now they're trying to take territory from the Philippines.
China just has a history of denying what they're doing as they're doing it.
There are so many examples online. My favourite is of a Chinese warship ramming into its own coast guard vessel as they fail to intimidate the Philippines Coast Guard.
China doesn’t want to destroy Taiwan , it wants to reunite with it like it did with other territories that had been taken by foreign powers, like happened to Hong Kong and Macau. Taiwan was occupied by Japan and then never went back to being China after the Japanese were defeated because the Chinese Party that was defeated in the Revolution fled to the Island and never accepted the PRC as legit government in China. Some of the more nationalist Taiwanese even consider themselves to be the legit government in exile of all China. You seem to not understand any of that when you compare China with Nazi Germany, really embarrassing.
There’s definitely something embarrassing going on, and it starts but does not end with confusing destruction of a state with destruction of… I’m not even sure what you had in mind. The land? The infrastructure?
Taiwan’s democracy is absolutely threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower, that wasn’t in any way incorrect or misleading, and that’s how the GP post phrased it. Its state is threatened with destruction. That’s entirely accurate.
Where are you from? Did you know Taiwan is not recognized as a state independent of China by Europe, the USA, Japan and nearly every other country with the exception of 12 small countries?
The concept of “political fiction” exists and is important, yes, but we need not confuse it for reality.
[edit] I think I’ve used the wrong term here but I think I get the idea across. There are diplomatic lies maintained in many situations where everyone largely operates like it’s not true, and the situation with Taiwan is so quintessentially one of these that’s it’s a common first example to illustrate the point. In my defense it’s been a loooong time since my last international relations class.
I guess it depends on what sort of monetary damage the typical Hokkaido earthquake would have on a fab - just result in a bad batch of chips perhaps, or also damage equipment? Obviously it's known that the region is very seismically active (159 earthquakes in Hokkaido so far this year!), but Japan are used to having to build to minimize earthquake damage.
Japan is quite adept at building structures resistant to earthquakes and tsunami. I'd be very surprised if the designers and architects of this endeavor are unaware of the issues.
What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon? How many wars has China started?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.
China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.
There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.
Taiwan has been illegally building tiny military outposts throughout the sea to try and enforce its claims, like the PRC's doing? Because that's what I was talking about.
I never said they weren't a threat, I said they haven't done anything illegal. But with the reasons you gave, then the US is an even bigger threat to my country.
> "Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
You still haven't answered my question and are beating it around the bush with silly jokes.
And you know the answer, you just don't like to say it because it's not politically correct. Here, I'll remove your burden and say the uncomfortable truth for you: In war, whatever you can get away with, is legal. Similar to all the warmongering and meddling the US has done in the Middle East, Asia and LATNM. If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal. Same with China's actions. When you're too big and too powerful to be held accountable for your actions, nothing that you do can be illegal because legality is an artificial man made construct where the strong enforce their will on the weak, not an irrefutable fact of nature. This has been the US's MO and soon China's.
You might not like that it's like this, but IT IS like this. And you're not doing yourself nor anyone any favors by pretending it isn't like this.
I don't disagree with your general argument, but I do have a small nitpick with this:
> If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal.
Just because someone isn't punished for an act doesn't make the act legal. I think a more accurate description of the behaviour of certain countries is "if you can get away with it, who cares if it's legal."
China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.
I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]
About a decade ago, some Chinese propagandists were encouraging calling Okinawa the Ryukyu kingdom and trying to ferment an independence campaign. It didn’t get too far.
Ryukyu was an independent kingdom with its own ruling court, language, culture etc until 1872, when it was annexed by Japan. Quite a few Okinawans would rather like to return to the previous state of affairs, although probably not if it involves exchanging the Japanese yoke for the Chinese one. (Ryukyu was a Qing tributary, but the Qing had bigger problems on their hands than worrying about a bunch of small islands.)
China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.
"""
The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India began to occupy territory that China considered to be its own. India's thinking was partly based on the fact that China had many external problems in early 1962, especially with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. Also, Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish a war.[18]
You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We stubbornly refuse to.
Both countries, have now have growing economies with stable politics, and social direction. Things can only get better from here, and will.
Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok. Because way bigger good things await these both nations. And we want them.
Either way there is no theatre. The Himalayas make a large wall and ensure no big border conflict can even happen. Even through missiles. The remainder is irrelevant, and both parties are more than happy to just keep talking until some agreement is in place, which even without isn't much of an issue with regards to economy, resources or anything.
As someone who has been living in Asia for decades (including in several of China's neighbouring countries), thank you for this even-handed take. It aligns very well with my own experience of how people living in these regions outside of the Western media bubble generally think about China.
Thank you for voicing a different tone than the seemingly prevalent obscene warmongering. I believe people of good will are generally less comfortable speaking out and are therefore underrepresented, including here on HN.
China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).
So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?
They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people and China holds regular military exercises around that island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.
The CCP takes a long view of things. They know the diplomatic fallout from the invasion will subside eventually, so they're less worried about "global concern" than you might think. It's likely they would have done the invasion already but for the fact that invasions over water are really difficult and they're not sure it would succeed.
Don't most people maintain the view that Tibet is part of PRC China? They might think further autonomy or independence for it would be a good thing, like the Basque Country, but the control isn't really disputed right now. And nobody really seems to think it should be part of India.
In contrast to Taiwan, where the governments in both Beijing and Taipei officially maintain that those places are part of the same country, and the international community sometimes pretends the same and only recognises one government, but de facto everyone trades with both countries and deals with both governments.
Sure, Tibet is part of China now. But the country was independent from 1912 until China annexed it in 1951. I'm pretty sure most Tibetans would rather be independent.
> Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs.
Not an issue I follow, but I did read something that said China had proposed swapping claimed territory for zones of actual control, and India turned them down.
It's literally the same argument that every king, dictator, or president used to justify invasions in Europe (and presumably most of the world) since the end of feudalism. Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that land in the distant past.
> there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
There is no credible theory to that effect. Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus. Namely, Proto-Germanic speakers did visit the eastern Baltic coast for trading and raiding, and so there are Germanic loanwords into Finnic languages of Proto-Germanic date, but the agreed location where Proto-Germanic formed is in Scandinavia, not Finland.
Yes, I’m afraid that you are still misunderstanding the research. Your linked article speaks about gene flow associated with the movement of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers to Scandinavia, but later Proto-Germanic formed in southern Scandinavia according to the longstanding consensus. This is clearly spelled out in the abstract: “Following the disintegration of Proto-Germanic, we find by 1650 BP a southward push from Southern Scandinavia.”
There’s no new theory here at all, just some nice archaeogenetic evidence to support a quite traditional view. FWIW, I work in a closely related field and am constantly reading Germanic–Finnic and Baltic–Finnic contact literature, and I can assure you this is old-hat stuff.
Do you think I'm misunderstanding something other than that I'm not drawing the same distinction between proto-Germanic and "paleo-Germanic" that that paper appeals to?
You've quoted something that says after proto-Germanic had diversified, daughter lineages left southern Scandinavia to establish themselves elsewhere in the world.
But I pointed out a completely different idea in the paper, that before proto-Germanic diversified, about 2000 years before the time you mention, its speakers arrived in Scandinavia from "the northeast coast of the Baltic".
Your post above wrote “the location of the proto-Germanic speakers”. Terminology matters; Proto-Germanic is something strictly defined as to what it was, with a longstanding consensus about where and when it was. If you wanted to talk about pre-Proto-Germanic speakers (or “Paleo-Germanic” speakers as this paper does, though I suspect some would quibble with that term used for a very early date), then you could have done so.
Moreover, you posted about a “new theory”, but the paper here only gives new evidence for an old theory.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s Prime Minister), on the day that China launched an unprovoked surprise war against India in 1962. It was a crushing victory for China, and they grabbed all their territory they wanted. More can always be said but here’s a 2 minute video that explains the war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek
You know how Mao said diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun? That wasn’t a metaphor. That is PRC policy since 1949.
I suspect they only care about Tibet in as much as it’s crucial for freshwater supply across significant parts of Asia, which is precisely why there are border clashes with Indian forces.
That's a fair point if you only start the clock in 1949, but it's not scaremongering. It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.
The territory we now call "China" is the product of relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own justification is usually "they were Chinese all along" (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute). That's the same logic every empire has ever used.
Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most successful conquest dynasty in human history.
For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not because it lacked capability or ambition.
Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven" belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).
So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook. Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even starts.
Right. There's no clan that's blameless. All our current progress stands on a mountain of blood and death. Humanity is drenched in war. Is that all we can ever be?
Also Korean War, 1959 Tibetan Uprising, Nathu La and Cho La clashes, Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, Paracel Islands conflict, Sino-Vietnam border clashes, Johnson South Reef Skirmish, China–India border clashes (Galwan), South China Sea standoffs.
These do not have a non-hostile invasion purpose. China could have used these peacefully as some sort of "Look at how peaceful we are" PR in getting aid into Palestine, like the US's floating piers, and likely had better results, but they didn't, because these are war machines for invading Taiwan.
Almost all other military buildup China has done can be validly called protecting itself from a US blockade and maintain an ability to protect shipping, but these barges cannot be considered anything else.
>What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon?
China has publicly declared their intentions to take back Taiwan, and publicly declared their intent to be militarily competitive with the United States, and publicly bitches and moans whenever anyone treats Taiwan as the independent country it is.
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India completely unprovoked over some border territory. China’s aggression continues unabated even into present day - they’ve been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure on India. That has been China’s way of negotiating all their borders - through violence first. More can always be said but here’s a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.
Here you are defending China when I bet you’d be hard pressed to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken’s Neck on a map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously claiming you don’t know of the Nine Dash line and the violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime claims?
Traditional threat to Hokkaido is Soviet tank battalions, not Chinese. It's roughly due east to Vladivostok and to south of Sakhalin island. Unless Russian Federation actually falls and these regions change hands into hostile entities, it should be okay. And there will be more important things to worry than continuing economical chip production if that happens.
“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?”
-Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, directed at Japan
Japan's also like, long as the distance between Warsaw to Barcelona. Or to Gibraltar if you include islands south to Okinawa. And Hokkaido is an "island" that's about as big as the entire Czech Republic. Is investment in a French chip factory considered risky because it's practically right in front of Russia... not really no?
The Chinese threat is also being handled by rapid rearmament. JSDF has been like, dual-fast-tracking lots of things including MRBMs for operational capabilities in 2026-27 timeframes.
I found this a really funny thread of answers to read. Maybe Japan should start making historical claims like China does. Japan could claim much of Asia, create a new historical narrative that the atrocities were manufactured fake news and that the oppressed peoples of Taiwan, Korea, Nanjing, South East Asia, and Oceania were illegally forced to leave the Japanese Empire due to propaganda and illegal militantism where the victors then created a fake narrative of Japanese war crimes. Maybe Japan should tear up the peacenik constitution that was forced on it by Nuclear USA and written by a woman from Kansas and turn the SDF back into the Japanese War Machine - revive industries, begin to reclaim territories for essential resources, and once again move towards the creation of a glorious co-prosperity sphere. The US seems to be reviving the NAZI war machine and is only steps away from adopting swastika as a positive symbol, so why not Japan bring back the old flag and mentality too? - I know this is ridiculous. So are most of these comments.
Japan has a big army/"self-defence force", impenetrable terrain over most of its territory, and 45 tonnes of plutonium. Even if the defence treaty with the US vanishes, the probability of a foreign invasion is rather low.
Yes. But I will entertain the idea that Hokkaido is not defensible. Now, with Hokkaido not being defensible, please explain why it has been an Japanese territory since the 15th century?
Taiwan just the last remnant that the losing faction of the China civil war still holds. I don't think that China wants to conquer korea or japan. Having a vassal is usually cheaper than outright conquest and occupation. They just want the US vassals to switch to being China's
> Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.
China will not annex Japan or South Korea. As a Chinese person, I can assure you that this is not how our mindset works at all. Most of the Western media hype about this is deliberately designed to muddy the waters around the Taiwan issue. Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.
But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples. Every non-Chinese group has always been viewed as a net burden. Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port, the price would be having to assimilate tens of millions of Burmese people. That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it. The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
So with South Korea and Japan, the real goal is to surpass them industrially and economically, to leave them in the dust on the factory floor and in the lab. When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table. No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.
Chiang Kai-shek is a standard part of the world history course in the US in high school. We know why China wants Taiwan at the personal level, much of the world is just interested in that not happening.
It's a civil war like the American revolution was a civil war and France helped out.
This is the first time I've ever seen a non-Chinese person say it this way on Reddit, X, or this platform.
I must have scrolled through way too much Reddit.
Yep, it's 100% common knowledge. I distinctly remember Mr. Eyerly making a point to explain why Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jieshi were both valid transliterations in my 10th grade world history class.
No one in America with a high school education believes that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map. Chinese history from antiquity to modern European/Japanese colonialism and war crimes to the unresolved civil war and KMT's retreat from the mainland are standard course material; the history and politics around reunification aren't some big mystery.
Don't get me wrong. The history is interesting, but from an American perspective interesting history doesn't translate into justification for violent incursion on an established nation's sovereignty. We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with. The American lesson from our history isn't "we screwed up in Iraq and Vietnam, so other countries should get a pass to behave similarly"; it's "let's work to prevent such tragedies from repeating".
> We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with.
Of course you don't support invasions of your puppet nation that only exists because of your intervention. But let's flip this around. Suppose that there was a second American civil war, one side lost and retreated to California. PRC funds the losers, stations troops there, signs a treaty guaranteeing to defend their independence. Do you think the US would ever, in a million years, accept that? Even after 75 years, it's obvious the US is going to state that California still belongs to it, and would try to reclaim it whenever possible.
If you looked at this objectively, rather than from your perspective as the defender of the puppet state, it would be clear that PRC's claim is justified. All the more so because not only was the territory rightfully theirs, but now they have a hostile power from halfway across the world threatening to use it as a staging point against them.
Your American lesson, also, does not disbar any country from having any claim to any land. America is by far the most egregious actor in the world stage because it routinely does, in fact, invade lands that are halfway across the world. It can be true that invading a country on the other side of the planet is wrong, and that seeking to re-unify your partitioned country is not so wrong.
That said, I don't particularly expect it to ever come to war, anyways. I think it's much more realistic that PRC will exercise political influence and economic pressure to achieve re-unification rather than invasion.
I agree that, in principle, the people of every territory should have the right to peaceful self-determination regardless of validity of other people's claims to territory. In practice, virtually nobody acknowledges that right, even though it's ostensibly the first article of the UN charter. The Irish had to make life hell for the English to get any concessions, Catalonia had its independence movement dismantled, Kurds are oppressed by every state they live in. The US itself is guilty of this; there was no particular reason the union of two completely opposite cultures had to be enforced, and in another timeline perhaps there was a peaceful national divorce. The hypothetical independent California was actually, in reality, an independent Confederacy of several states, and their independence movement was crushed. To that extent, I could agree China is in the wrong, but only insomuch as any other country is, and it should not be singled out as a particularly aggressive nation when it's playing by the same international norms as the rest of the world. That it wants to reclaim Taiwan is in no way indicative that it has any intention to invade Korea or Japan, as supposed upthread.
It sounds like we have some common ground, but I think you may have a misunderstanding of the present American worldview and politics.
We're 79 years removed from Philippine independence, and you would have to try very hard to find a single American who wants them back. The US military would have been fully capable of annexing Iraq and Afghanistan with violent repression of dissent and zero concern for civilian casualties, had that been the will of the people. After 75 years of peaceful coexistence with a hypothetical independent California, I would be very surprised to see any political will for annexation.
The "same international norms as the rest of the world" you refer to are anachronistic. The post-WWII norms, to a large extent defined and upheld by the US, aren't based around maximal balkanization or unconditional support for separatism, but rather opposition to transfer of territory by force. If that sounds like ladder-pulling, maybe it is, but China has no standing to complain; Western conquests have been largely disbanded, while China remains as the third-largest nation in the world (ahead of the US).
I'm not claiming that the US has never done anything wrong. I asserted the opposite of that. I'm arguing that pointing out someone else's crime isn't a justification for someone to go commit a crime of their own. If you shoot someone from a rival gang, your lawyer isn't going to argue in court that it's okay because someone else from that gang shot someone else a decade ago. There's actually a word for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.
But if we both agree that wars of aggression are bad regardless of whether they're started by the US, China, Russia, or anyone else, then we're basically on the same page.
I think that the American worldview is heavily propagandised and doesn't particularly reflect reality. The post WWII-norms are not at all a story of peaceful self-determination. The decolonisation of the Phillipines was an anomaly and an outlier. At the same time that the US was letting go of the Phillipines, it was gearing up for war in Korea on behalf of its puppet military dictatorship that was, at the time, even more repressive than the North Korean one. The Dutch fought a war in an attempt to keep control of Indonesia. France fought a war for its colonial possessions, which the US joined in on. Portugal fought wars for its colonial possessions. The UK let India go only because it was utterly ravaged by WWII, and they recognised they would not likely be able to keep it by force.
Moreover, the US specifically simply adopted a different model: puppet governance. As did the USSR. You would hardly find an American who would say that the USSR was benevolent, despite the fact that they believe themselves to be benevolent while doing the same things. Invading a country to install a regime loyal to yours is not meaningfully different from annexing the country outright. But it allows the populace at home to believe that they are doing the right thing. Why, their form of governance is the best governance in the world, so they're doing other nations a favor by invading them and replacing their governments!
Americans will make all kinds of fuss over China doing meaningless posturing in territorial waters, meanwhile their government is currently launching missiles in Venezulean waters, actually killing people. They violated the sovereignity of Iranian airspace, dropping bunker busters on government buildings. They assassinated another nation's top general. These are all acts of war. Nothing has changed. America continues to operate as it always has, under the principle of "might makes right", while dressing its operations up in pretty rhetoric.
Pointing out hypocrisy in ongoing international norms is not whataboutism. In a world where nobody is ever punished for shooting a rival gang member, then you either shoot or get shot; that is simply the natural way of things. And moreover, the prosecutor bringing charges against the Red Gang is a member of the Blue Gang that shot theirs first. Why would the Red Gang entertain, for a moment, the charges of aggression from the Blue Gang which did already intervene in its civil war and effectively seized territory from it? For the Blue Gang to possibly be convincing to the Red Gang, it would first need to make amends and to stop actively committing 10x worse crimes than the crime it accuses the Red Gang of. If we want a peaceful world, I'd argue the onus is on the US to live up to its self-proclaimed "rules based international order" first, because it is the one violating those rules the most, and other nations will not simply lie down and agree to be bound by rules that are openly being violated to their detriment.
I'm in agreement that wars of aggression are bad, but I strongly dislike the tendency for that to be selectively leveraged to paint only certain actors in a bad light. I think from a non-American perspective, it's pretty clear that the US is a much more egregious international actor than China. But if you agree with that, you're in a true minority of Americans. Even if there are a substantial portion of Americans who disagree with their own invasions, most of them will still see China as much worse than themselves, despite the fact that the PRC's last and only real invasion was the reclamation of Tibet 70 years ago, and otherwise it has only started a couple of minor border skirmishes for the entirety of its existence. Meanwhile Americans engage in Yellow Scare-esque fearmongering about China invading Japan which, as a neutral third party, seems so far outside the realm of possibility as to be utterly delusional.
Even if the criticism is fair, it's still whataboutism. I agree with you that countries other than China have done bad things, including post-WWII, but not that it in any way justifies turning the streets of Taipei into a warzone.
I wouldn't unconditionally agree that "the US is a much more egregious international actor than China". I'd use a more neutral descriptor than "egregious", maybe "militaristic". Following the rule of "might makes right", as you point out, the US more or less became the self-appointed world police after WWII. That's inherently going to involve unpopular decisions and occasional abuse of power, but it's a fundamentally different relationship with the world than pure assertion of first-party interests. The ultimate goal of post-WWII American foreign policy has been to ensure that the rest of the world remains stable and open enough for reliable trade, from which China has also benefited tremendously.
US as world police is a mixed bag, but it is what it is. No one outside the US is really complaining that America bears the cost of its navy protecting international trade routes, for example. I'm as harsh a critic of certain US actions and policies as anyone, but modern American hegemony doesn't resemble the prior centuries of great powers running amok. The US today doesn't invade innocent countries for the purpose of stealing their land and resources or enslaving their people.
The concerns about China aren't limited to its past military actions, but also its domestic policies and stated future goals. For better or worse, China's domestic policies are quite illiberal relative to American values. This alone precludes China from being considered a clear ally of the US, and informs perceptions of what a hypothetical Chinese-led world order might look like. China gets to play the "what about America" card because the US is still generally invested in globalism, but how China might behave in a power vacuum created by a US shift to isolationism remains speculative.
.. would be an illegal American war, yes. Like most of the American incursions into South America and violations of sovereignty of South American countries.
Yep, any war of aggression would be wildly unpopular today. Limited actions may be somewhat tolerated inasmuch as they're seen as being at the behest of the legitimate Venezuelan government in exile, but no one wants a land invasion or to see American missiles killing civilians.
I'm not saying it could never happen, but the party in power would be burning a ridiculous amount of political capital, to put it mildly. A big part of the reason President Trump even exists is the perception that Bush lied to get us into Iraq and Obama kept us there. Trump consistently ran as the "anti-war" candidate, and Biden was also known for his dovish politics.
I don't understand why you think an invasion or widespread airstrikes would be unlikely.
- Trump has been building up our military presence in the area over the last few months[1]
-He's already striking boats that he claims have weapons of mass destruct... I mean drugs in them
- Trump said “I don’t think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them,” [1]
- He declared the cartels terrorist groups [2]
I believe he's going to link Marudo to the cartels and use it to justify a war to force him out of power.
Republicans, will support him. He'll lie, like he always does, and they'll believe it either due to stupidity or tribalism. The further they follow him the more painful admitting they are wrong will be.
I haven't commented one way or another on the likelihood of an invasion. My claim is that an escalation from limited airstrikes to full-scale invasion would be wildly unpopular, which I stand by.
I'm not referring to any specific actions or commenting on who did what. I summarized what I've observed to be the common perception, which is that Iraq and Afghanistan were "forever wars" conducted against the informed consent of the American public, and a spectacular failure of our institutions and both party establishments.
If that sounds lacking in nuance, well, I never claimed to believe American political discourse was particularly nuanced ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think a lot of us recognize it was a civil war. The idea that it is a civil war, conducted in the present tense, is the weird and dangerous one. When was the last actual fighting, WW2?
There are a number of frozen conflicts around the world, like North/South Korea and Cyprus. Both of those could be regarded as "civil war with external support", like Vietnam. What would be better is if those involved could recognize the situation as it actually is on the ground, and withdraw their claims and intents of actually resuming armed conflict.
Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts over ancient grudges, from the Hundred Years War to the Balkans. The post-WW2 world order was an attempt to finally draw a hard line underneath that.
> Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts over ancient grudges
most of the conflicts today is created by Europe(+US). for example, the china-taiwan issue didn't resovled before is because USA Intervene. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide originated from the artificial division of the same ethnic group during the colonial period; the India-Pakistan conflict was a deliberately left-over dispute by the colonial powers upon their withdrawal(UK); the border issues between Cambodia and Thailand(France), as well as the ongoing turmoil in the Palestinian region(UK USA), are all closely linked to historical interference by external forces(Europe).
Korea is also permanently partitioned thanks to being played as pawns between the Former Europeans and Vodka Europeans. Europeans really managed to get their fingers in everything.
My personal experience tells me that people are happy to praise China’s achievements in technology and poverty alleviation, but when it comes to the territorial issues of Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, a completely uniform narrative has already formed.
Every single day on Reddit I see a new map of China being Balkanized.
If historical claims are valid, then Mongols would be very happy to claim large swaths of land. Or if more recent claims are to be taken, then the Brits have claims over quite a large amount of countries.
Historical claims are meaningless and are just an excuse for expansion.
I did not comment on the "validity" of the claim, just explained its rationale and history.
Chinese territorial claims in general are not "an excuse for expansion", they are rooted in territorial losses at the end of the 19th century and during the revolution of 1912 with the formal aim of recovering them. They also predate the PRC as you'll find that the ROC/Taiwan has the same claims for the same reason. This does not mean that China is going to go to war over them, certainly it won't go to war with India.
> This does not mean that China is going to go to war over them, certainly it won't go to war with India.
Then why make a claim? Claims are made to prepare the domestic audience so that when war comes there is home support for the action. It is not made lightly.
The Chinese are definitely taking action in the South China Sea. It is not just words.
Tibet is not (and was not) defended by a nuclear superpower. South Korea and Japan both have United States military bases and troops stationed there.
I am willing to bet all of the money I will ever make in my lifetime that China will not invade either one as long as they remain under the US nuclear umbrella.
That is, the constitution written by the KMT dictatorship that was awarded the island as spoils of war after the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in WW2.
In the present day, neither the Taiwanese government nor Taiwanese people are in some kind of dispute with the CCP over who owns Gansu province or whatever, they just would like recognition of their already-existing sovereignty.
That's a little misrepresenting history... Taiwan was part of the Qing Empire and Japan took it in 1895 following China's defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War. China got it back after WWII.
Sure, and before the Qing armies invaded it was declared an independent kingdom by a Ming loyalist who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother, and before that there were a couple of European outposts and scattered settlers from Fujian, and before that there were indigenous peoples who themselves are part of an ethnic group that can now be found everywhere from Madagascar to New Zealand.
The point I was responding to was the misleading comment that the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in some kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is entirely a CCP framing of the issue. Few if any people in modern-day Taiwan believe that they are the true inheritors of the Chinese mainland. The pretense has to be upheld in order to preserve the status quo, but in practice there is no serious movement staking a claim to any part of China.
> the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in some kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is entirely a CCP framing of the issue.
This is broadly true, not just "CCP framing". Obviously because of history and external influence there is also an "independentist" faction.
I don't see why this should be hard to accept unless the aim is indeed a "reframing" to push the independentist narrative, which does not really need it as the status quo mean de facto independence. So perhaps the aim is actually more along the lines of an anti-China narrative.
This comment is so divorced from reality on the ground in Taiwan that it's hard to respond to. Certainly, someone can look at cherry-picked pieces of legislature or historical documents and imagine that they represent some kind of intrinsic truth, but in reality it is simply not the case that Taiwanese people understand themselves as locked in some kind of ongoing civil war with the CCP. The culture has long since moved on from 1940s era politics that even at the time were imported by a minority group from the mainland.
This is so stupid. It doesn't mean anything. History is history. What exists now is that Taiwan is an independent country with its own currency and military, and Taiwanese pay no taxes to China.
If you want to use history as some kind of justification, why don't we go all the way back to when the human race originated in Africa?
But sibling comment is correct that today the PRC and ROC are functionally two separate nations, and neither wants unification by submitting completely to the other. So the only way it's happening is with force.
> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
> "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
Don’t forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty – none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
Qing Dynasty annexed Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, as well as large chunks of Central Asia, and fought with Sikhs over Kashmir. Looks like a good case of imperial expansion to me.
It was not the Manchus who reconquered Tibet in the 1950s, after it had been an independent country for several decades.
And the general argument is not about whether there is something inherently imperialistc in the Han -- it is about whether the Han are so isolationist that this should somehow prevent China as a political entity from expanding. Well it has not prevented this before (cf. also the Tang period expansion, if we want to talk about more distant history), so I see no reason why it should prevent it now. Unless, say, the CCP cedes control to an openly Han-nationalist party, but then the last one was imperialist alright (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)).
I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory. It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be "liberated" from Japan.
Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.
And they will never become part of China again, ever.
They once were, and after World War II they were supposed to be handed over to the Republic of China (Nationalist government), but the Nationalists stupidly refused. Then the United States gave them to Japan as a reward.
This completely violated the post-WWII United Nations agreements. So if the UN still wants to claim any legitimacy or relevance, these places should not belong to Japan, but they will never belong to China either.
Okinawa was as much a part of China as Botswana and Argentina were. Going back centuries, they've always spoken a japonic language so your government propaganda is a strange approach for seeding justification for invasion in the future.
The Okinawans are a branch of Japanese, but the Ryukyu kingdom was tributary to the Chinese empire before being annexed by Japan in the second half of the 19th century.
Before being annexed by Japan one century and a half ago, the culture of Okinawa was much more strongly influenced by China than by Japan, which is why during the first few decades after being occupied by Japan there still were many in Okinawa who would have preferred to become a part of China instead of a part of Japan, but the new Japanese authorities have eventually succeeded to suppress any opposition.
I believe that there is no doubt that Okinawa should belong to Japan and not to China, but historically this was not so clear cut. If the Okinawans could have voted in the 19th century to whom they should belong, instead of being occupied by force, it is unknown which would have been their decision.
Therefore any comparisons with Botswana or Argentina are completely inappropriate for a kingdom that had strong ties with China for many centuries and which recognized the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor.
While for me as a foreigner, the similarities between the Ryukyuan languages and mainland Japanese are obvious and many features of shared cultural heritage with ancient Japan (Yamato) are also obvious, these were not at all obvious for the Japanese themselves, who, after occupying Okinawa tended to consider the Okinawans as foreign barbarians, so for a long time they were heavily discriminated in Japan.
This completely ignores a lot of history. Okinawa went from being a tributary (trade partner) of China to vassal state (occupied and controlled) by Japan in 1609. [1] What would be modern day Afghanistan and Thailand paid tribute to China as well, but for some reason, those are ignored with the Chinese claim to territory. It's simply "well the Republic of China's victory in WW2 means we get land from countries we traded with in the 1600s!", which is bizarre view of history. Frankly, it's nothing more than trying to seed the ground for opportunism, because it's a guarantee those same arguments will be used to say Vietnam, Thailand, and Afghanistan aren't independent if those become valuable lands in the future and they seem as easily seizable as small Okinawan islands.
After the war from 1609, Ryukyu remained officially a vassal of China, not of Japan, even if it became secretly also a vassal of the Satsuma domain from Japan (not of the Japanese state).
This dual allegiance of Ryukyu, openly to China and secretly to Satsuma allowed Ryukyu to be an intermediary in some commerce between China and Japan, which officially was forbidden.
The official occupation of Ryukyu by Japan happened only in 1872, after the Meiji Restoration.
After 1609, there was no occupation of Ryukyu by Japanese. There was only a permanent threat of military intervention from Satsuma if the Ryukyuan king would have dared to act against the demands of Satsuma, which included a tribute and unfavorable commercial relationships.
Not sure where you're getting "secretly" from since there was no secret and they were openly obedient to Japan. There's nothing outside of CCP sources, and particularly no historical sources, that could even remotely claim otherwise.
And even if you goalpost shift to the Meiji Restoration, 1872 is still well before any period where Japan was required to give up any territory as a result of WW2 imperialism.
I never said they speak Chinese or anything like that. in ancient times they were part of China’s tributary system. The Chinese tributary system explicitly allowed different places to keep their own culture and language.
It was Japan that annexed them and then systematically destroyed the local culture.
The post-WWII agreements (Cairo Declaration, Potsdam Proclamation, San Francisco Peace Treaty framework) all stated that these places was to be stripped from Japan.
China is only using this historical fact now to pressure Japan on the propaganda and diplomatic level.
No Chinese person actually believes China should (or will) annex them.
All Chinese media are emphasizing that these places do not belong to Japan, not that they belong to China.
That’s the essential difference.
Tributary networks were a system of trade and diplomacy. It'd be like saying the Philippines belongs to Indonesia because they're in ASEAN. And saying Okinawa doesn't belong to Japan is the exact, 100% identical argument Russia used and continues to use to justify its brutal invasions of Georgia, Ukraine, and more and more countries. It's kind of bizarre how anyone who speaks English could assume this propaganda works, though I am making the giant leap in assuming I'm not talking to Deepseek right now.
What I’ve always wanted to emphasize is the post-World War II agreements. That should be the real focus, right? At least according to those treaties and agreements, these territories (Okinawa/Ryukyu, etc.) explicitly do not belong to Japan.
Okinawa has been part of Japan since before the Qing Dynasty even existed. Government operatives claim a lot of things, but thinking WW2 negates 400+ year old borders is truly wild and something no human not on a government payroll would make.
I'm a bit confused, would love to learn. The Potsdam agreement said that Japan controls is main islands (the ones right by the mainland) and the other minor islands (anything not right next to the main island) would be determine by the Allies later. This was signed by China and obviously has been followed.
Then the Treaty of San Francisco (which didn't involve China signing or agreement or anything) said that the Allies would revert control of Okinawa to Japan, which was the Allies choice at that point given that they were in control as stipulated by the Potsdam agreement.
What's the gap between what was said and what happened? You could argue that the WW2 agreements were unfair and didn't follow historical ownership but I'm not sure which part of the agreements themselves was directly violated.
I respect China (in fact, in this stupid timeline more than the U.S.) but China is already huge. The whole world would be a much better place if China just chilled the fuck out and would just stop harassing border countries (I know, I know, this is true for at least two quarters of planet Earth). Let them have Taiwan if that would make them shut up, but it won't. Tributary system? Allowed to keep? Pressure Japan? How much more do you want and how long will you go back in history to justify your greed for power and territory? China is trying to look nice and they succeed in many places, they are very close to something of a heavenly kingdom in my book, but this behavior always makes me ask which face is real. The power hungry bully, or the wise emperor?
I think you’ve nailed it perfectly. China definitely has its imperialist side, but the way it operates is completely different from the US style.
I often feel China’s foreign policy is kinda “dumb” in execution, but that’s just our national character at work. Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple – send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But we’re not America, and we can’t do that without the entire Western media tearing us apart. So China’s approach is: “You guys fight it out yourselves, whoever wins, I’ll do business with them. Just don’t touch the projects and interests I already have.”
This naturally makes ordinary people in those countries dislike China – they genuinely believe China is the root cause of many of their problems, and they think importing Western systems will let them solve everything and stand on their own. In reality, that probably won’t happen most of the time. But there’s no helping it; I don’t know what a “better” Chinese foreign policy would even look like.
All I can say is China has been really lucky – thank Trump, thank Sanae Takaichi – they’ve helped us way more than people realize.
> Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple – send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But we’re not America, and we can’t do that without the entire Western media tearing us apart.
The way to do it, is to propose a UN coalition invasion. Or to quietly provide arms to the side you like more (which never backfires).
> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.
How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
(Or maybe it could happen through some longer and slower political process. And the country as a whole should agree, with a lot more than 50% agreeing, to a unification.)
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Like above, I hope you're not implying that a culturally similar people in another country #2 somehow gives country #1 power over it's sovereignity.
> How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
The difference is that Taiwan only exists because the losers of the Chinese Civil war ran away to it, and the winners (CCP) were not allowed by the US to finish the job. So for the CCP, Taiwan has always been a problem still left to resolve, an American thorn in their side. It was along the main reasons for them joining the Korean war, because the monumentally dumb McArthur publicly praised and supported Chiang (the leader of the losers of the civil war, the KMT), which led to CCP fears the US will use the Korean peninsula as a sprinboard to attack them and install Chiang back to power.
So while self-determination trumps those concerns for my personal view, I can totally see where China (CCP) is coming from. Especially with a very aggressive American stance against them, why would they want to keep a very friendly to the US runaway province out there?
For Americans, imagine the Confederates ran away to Puerto Rico, force assimilated the locals, and became very friendly with Russia. For the French, that a Bonaparte was ruling Corsica while being friendly with the big bad wolf (depending on the age, Brits or Russians maybe). And on and on.
Thanks for the context. I don't really know the Taiwan situation well.
My main gripe was mostly around the perceived reasoning that ethnicity or culture of some people would make it more okay to try to annex, or invade, anything.
> When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table.
From GP. That is also a bit worrying to me. Who decides what's the fair "historical score"? But mostly, people shouldn't desire for war or use past wars as a reason for new wars. This is more complicated than ethnicity or culture, but it's dangerous and people should just learn to let go or it never stops.
False flag attacks are a thing and have been used many times as a pretext for an attack. Russia has done it. Russia also often uses history as an excuse for new wars. I'm sure it's always possible to dig out some rationalization. The result is mostly more suffering of innocent (who might not have even been born during the cited conflict).
The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China.
Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.
So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.
> not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop
May I ask if you actually live in one of these neighbouring countries? I do -- in fact I have lived in more than one -- and I can assure you that many/most people living in these areas outside of the Western media bubble absolutely do not share your view.
From the CCP's (and many Chinese people's) perspective:
1) the U.S. repeatedly interfered in the CCP's/KMT's attempts to resolve the civil war -- see e.g. the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (during which the PRC shelled Taiwan), Project National Glory (the ROC's plan to reconquer the mainland) -- preventing the mainland and Taiwan from reunification;
2) the Taiwanese government has lost the civil war, and the loser doesn't get to set the terms.
Pretending that the PRC's interest in Taiwan isn't special is to ignore extremely crucial historical circumstances that are core to understanding the situation today. Regardless of what you think of the PRC's stance on reunification, their desire to reunify doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it takes ahistorical leaps of reasoning to suggest that the PRC might want to annex South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. next.
> only during the last few centuries
This is way more than enough time to drastically transform the culture of a society. Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC than it is to the West. In some aspects it is also similar to Japan, despite the fact that Japan colonised it for "only" 50 years.
>Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC than it is to the West
The cultural distance between Taiwan and Japan, Korea and Hong Kong is less than the distance from mainland China. Aka Asian liberal democracies (or at least with strong political plurality and civil society). You're mistaking a regional difference with a commonality with the PRC, when in reality the PRC's epistemic worldview is highly distorted in comparison to virtually every other actor in the region. They don't speak for the region.
Are you arguing by metaphor that the Han Chinese on Taiwan are slaves to the native Taiwanese, or what? Or that slaves weren't Americans? I have no idea what your comment is trying to say.
Taiwan has spent the approx 120 years on a very different political, economic, cultural track from the mainland. Taiwan diverged from the other subject of the Qing dynasty before Han nationalists began their century long project to forge a united Chinese nation. In particular, Taiwan did not go through decades of communist terror, but did experience the fruit of democracy.
Xinjiang and Tibet have been part of China for many periods throughout history; Japan never was.
At most, Korea was merely part of the tributary system.
There is a fundamental difference here.
Tibet, too, was only part of the tributary system. Even during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese imperial state had no effective control over central Tibet - all local rulers and judges were Tibetan, and they employed Tibetan, not Chinese, law. Outside of diplomatic circles, Tibetans at the time weren't paying any attention to Chinese culture and politics.
Claims to the contrary are largely historical revisionism. (As are the various claims that Tibet was culturally influenced by China - the story of Princess Wencheng bringing agricultural technologies to uncultured Tibet, as it is often taught in Chinese schools and portrayed in period dramas, is a myth that only came to popularity during the Chinese Civil War.)
Remember also that until 1951, Tibet occupied Chinese territories more often than vice versa - although given the case of Manchuria, China might actually see this as an argument in favor of Tibet being Chinese.
> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it […]
Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.
[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.
so i guess the Mayanmar people shouldn't blame china now.. they should build some thing like the Vietness people: we fight the chinese and we always win, lets be proud of it.
Invasion is one thing, unfavorable trade deals, deindustrialization, and political coercion is more realistic outcome yet all the more undesirable. Imperialism after all often didn't spread spread by outright conquest.
While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown): Nationalistic fervor.
From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.
And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.
And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time
Sure, nationalism definitely serves that purpose. But please consider: in the most recent conflicts/flare-ups, the initiator has actually been Japan, not China.
Their new female prime minister is an extreme-right-wing politician who is not only provoking China, but also picking fights with South Korea and Russia at the same time, while pushing aggressively anti-immigrant and exclusionary policies.
Her approval ratings are also unusually high.
It feels pretty strange that Japan gets zero criticism for this while all the focus stays on China.
Takaichi is a slightly right of centre nationalist. Pushing a mild tightening of some immigration rules to maintain the social contract around immigration, and fend off the right wing populists. Her policies amount to things like tightening foreign land ownership rules and refusing visa renewals for people not paying their health insurance or pension (which is mandatory by law for all residents).
She’s had friendly relations with SK so far and recently met with the SK President and bowed in respect to the Korean flag.
Her “provocation” of China was to state, when asked in parliament, that an armed invasion of Taiwan by China would be a case of a potential existential threat to Japan.
Which frankly is utterly obvious to anyone, including of course China. Japan hosts American military bases. If China attacked Taiwan, triggering an American repose then there would at the least be Chinese missiles aiming for Tokyo (Yokosuka) and Okinawa.
The CCP has demonstrated that it’s not above killing tens of millions of its own citizens to achieve its political aims. I doubt they’d see ‘pacifying’ an occupied population as much of an issue.
What kind of line is "once china solves the taiwan problem"? You assume that they will take Taiwan. Have you not been privy to the utter embarrassment of a continental power trying to take Ukraine right now? China is very aware of the isolated situation Russia is now in. They have desire to be in that situation.
Noone is letting China "solve the taiwan problem" like you said.
The Ukraine invasion is the biggest boost to China's Taiwan invasion plan ever.
If the world reacts to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan the way we have reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, China will consider that a great victory, and might be able to take Taiwan.
If the US, Japan, and Korea do not commit fully to naval interdiction and blockading China from attacking Taiwan, Taiwan is likely to fall eventually.
China is not Russia. Xi somehow is not as utterly isolated from reality as Putin is. Putin didn't even know that Ukraine would resist, and was entirely convinced that Ukrainians would welcome them. China can build new equipment, and new modern equipment at that. Russia can barely manage to bring ancient tank hulls up to 2000s level and send them to the front line. They are also running out of old hulls to do that with.
China has a sizeable and meaningful air force, modern battlespace management that was shown effective by Pakistan's use in their recent conflict.
Is the current US admin actually competent enough to protect Taiwan even if they want to?
The Soviets trivially took the Kuril Islands and they can trivially defeat Japan if they so desire. China's also really interested in Okinawa independence. Both countries have appealed to arguments on liberating indigenous populations to hint at future military action against Japan.
It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.
Ukraine has a proper army and the support of Europe, albeit with dated weapons. Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in. Hokkaido has always been under threat from Russia and the Soviets quickly took the Kuril Islands, which wasn't even originally theirs.
> Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in.
There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense of Japan against any aggressive party.
The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+ military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year to support the US military presence there. Japan is also a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
For over 60 years the United States-Japan Alliance has served as the cornerstone of peace, stability, and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment to Japan’s defense under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 is unwavering. https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-japan/
The Budapest Memorandum (1994) gave assurances, that the U.S. would militarily intervene or defend Ukraine under attack like an alliance-treaty.
Ukraine surrendered the sharpest tool in its arsenal for those assurances, its inherited nuclear arsenal, the world’s third-largest at the time.
But the loss was broader than warheads; it was the surrender of a strategic future.
America first means America first.
All politicians will say one thing and do another, always check the incentives…
The Budapest Memorandum did no such thing. It is completely and totally incomparable to the US-Japan alliance. At most, it calls for a weaselly "security council action to provide assistance".
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
No. The only way the Russians could prevail is to break out the nukes, and that would always run the risk of a nuclear response from the US. Japan's navy is more powerful than the Russian pacific fleet in a conventional conflict. Any attempt to land on Hokkaido would be stillborn.
Even if they managed to land they would probably be pushed off pretty quickly. Japan's military is more powerful than that of Ukraine, and the Russians are already having trouble supporting troops just across the border. There's no way they would be able to support an invasion force over water. I'm skeptical the Russians could pull that off without opposition, something they would certainly have in spades.
The Russians lost control of the Black Sea to a country that doesn’t have a navy. Its naval incompetence is legendary. There is zero chance of them conducting an amphibious invasion against anyone any time this century.
If the Okinawan Americans aren't going to do something useful for Japan, Japan would be very happy to kick them out and stop them harassing the locals.
A land invasion of mainland Japan is so unrealistic that even the US in WW2 didn't attempt it.
The United States defends Japan. The United States has nuclear weapons.
Knowing those two facts, we can conclude that Russia will not be invading Japan as long as it is protected by the United States. The calculus is very simple when nuclear weapons are involved.
Also, keep in mind that D-Day was the largest amphibious assault in history and all they had to do was cross the English Channel. Russia invading Hokkaido would be suicide, the US nuked Japan rather than try invading the homeland to end WW2 and we controlled every island surrounding Japan at the time.
Japan defeated the Russian navy in 1905. I guess that means that the Empire of Japan can trivially defeat the Russian Empire if such political entities cared to exist anymore and if the result of a past confrontation was a true benchmark of the current capabilities of the respective armies and economies.
Maybe we should stop selecting islands next to China to be global critical supply chain hubs. I mean, even if the Chinese were non-expansionist and benevolent, it's still kind of tempting them a little too much.
Who is "we"? Japan doesn't have much choice, they either do things even though they are next to China, or ..what?
Maybe its time for people to stop being paralyzed by fear and invest in their future. If China is such a severe threat to Japan, then invest more in the JSDF. Yes, China is powerful and has an aggressive stance, but that's no reason to give up without a fight. Japan and South Korea together can very nearly match China's shipbuilding tonnage per year, and besides that Japan collaborates with America to develop advanced naval missiles like the SM-3 Block IIA. Effective deterrence of China w.r.t. Japan should be achievable if people stop overdosing on blackpills.
They already are investing in the JSDF. The JS Chokai is in San Diego right now being equipped with Tomahawk cruise missles, but AFAIK the plan is to equipped all 8 Kongo class destroyers with those missles.
And that's just one part of the expansion. But the short version is that the JSDF isn't staying a defensive only institution.
The large ships are well-protected. A “small unmanned underwater ship” has been a primary threat model for a century e.g. heavy torpedoes. These already have very long range and sophisticated sensors that allow them to hunt targets autonomously.
The other side of this is that modern large military ships are almost literally unsinkable. It is very difficult to get enough explosive on target due to their extreme damage resistance.
When the military does live fire exercises where they attack obsolete military vessels with no active defenses using torpedos, missiles, bombs, etc, they usually don’t manage to sink it. They have to send a specialized demolition crew afterward to actually scuttle the damaged ship and turn it into an artificial reef.
An operational large military vessel will have layers of substantial active defenses that make this even more difficult.
The whole point of the navy is to be able to control waterways. The whole point of being able to control waterways is to be able to economically ship large amounts of material and people; in the case of warfare, soldiers, bullets, food, water, fuel, etc.
An unmanned fast attack sub is going to be useless for defending your logistics fleet from strike fighters and anti ship missles. Even a dingy that has a guy in it with a rocket propelled grenade can send a cargo ship to it's grave. You have to have a surface ships with powerful defenses to protect them.
This is more of a humorous take. We already have trouble with one chip nexus is right next to China, and now we build another one? "ha ha". We is humanity. The collective we probably doesn't want a lever of the future controlled by a totalitarian communist ehnostate.
But yes, I agree Japan, Indonesia (as was intended), etc should wise up.
This is Japan selecting itself to develop a critical industry.
Being deeply embedded in global supply chains and your allies’ economies makes it a lot more difficult for them to justify abandoning you to your enemies.
This is 750 km from China (going through Russia) and a 2600km trip from China's nearest port.
If this isn't safe enough is all of Asia off limits then?
Imagine if China built one base in Mexico or the Caribbean. People would be treating it like a declaration of war. Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as bellicose in any way.
> Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as bellicose in any way.
Shouldn't you take WWII history into the account?
1. South Korea - Korean war happened and majority of South Korean want US military base there 'cause you know North Korea with its nukes point at Seoul.
2. Japan - well, everyone know what happened and the treaty were signed thus military base in Japan.
That's because the US was founded on a unique constitution to empower individuals against tyranny, then defeated (with Russia, mind) the Nazis in world war II, bootstrapped the UN, went to the moon, and ushered in an era of global leadership and peace, along with unmatched soft power (films, news, etc). Camelot, shining city on the hill. China had a bloody communist revolution, then got rich (in part by breaking deals and ripping off IP) - also through hard work. America is porous, "Shortbus", "anyone can make it", American dream. China is ethnonationalist, and has a sense of ethnic and cultural supremacy that is not inclusive of "outsiders". That's why it's a problem, and, rightly, seen/intuitied to be a problem, more so than the US (despite US' many failings/misteps, etc).
Why are all the comments here so weird? It's like people saw (but didn't read) an article entitled "Man Opens a Taqueria in his Hometown" and the only responses are
1) Why didn't he open it in my hometown? This location isn't convenient for me.
2) Wouldn't it be better for someone else to open a taqueria instead? My cousin is looking for work. Shouldn't we be putting resources into helping him open a restaurant instead?
It's like people hear "X in Asian country" and all they can think about is their own geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department. Obviously Japan is going to want to develop lucrative manufacturing... within Japan.
I'll try and add something positive: Hokkaido seems like a great place to relocate and start a life for young aspiring workers. Homes are larger and quality of life has some advantages over the more densely populated parts of Japan. It's also very unique in terms of climate and geography: very heavy snows and mountains means there's limitless adventure for skiers and snowboarders. Yet, despite the snowy winters the winter isn't as brutally cold as you might think and its not so long as what you see in a place like Canada. Spring comes quickly and the summers are long, warm and pleasant so there's plenty of time to take advantage of the beaches and beautiful forests. And about those forests, one other unique thing about Hokkaido is that it's the only place in the world that can rival (or exceed) New England in terms of its brilliance of fall colors.
Anyways, just seems like a great place for Japanese workers to relocate and start a family. I guess the only thing missing were the jobs so hopefully these chip fabs fix that.
I was in Hokkaido many years ago for work and loved it. Compared to the rest of Japan, indoor/outdoor spaces are wider, food is better, and people are friendlier. I never could swing another work visit, so I dream about spending time there in retirement.
I could imagine, though, that companies might have trouble attracting quality talent to Hokkaido, because people see more opportunities in the big cities down south. I suppose it's like if you were trying to build a tech hub in Montana.
It's not landlocked and less isolated than Montana. Montana is beautiful in select parts but it's also a little bleak. Hokkaido is still a lush island and Sapporo is a proper city. I'd say it's more like getting companies to move from SF or LA to Seattle.
The same could probably be said of many areas of the US (or other countries). Good outdoor recreation opportunities, some good local food options, but not a huge number of (local) employment opportunities or the nearby options that density brings.
As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine but it's a different situation from working in a hub of whatever your specialty is.
> As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine but it's a different situation from working in a hub of whatever your specialty is.
The question is: is that actually a problem with Japanese work culture? That would be a large problem in US work culture because there's no loyalty from your employer, so you have to be prepared to find a new job at any moment. But it certainly used to be the case that if you worked for BigCorp, you could reasonably expect to work there for the rest of your life if you wanted. And under those conditions, it doesn't matter if the area is a hub for your job specialty.
I know Japan at least used to have a work culture where companies would be loyal to their employees, based on patio11's excellent blog post on how Japanese business culture differs from that of the US. But that was many years ago now, so I don't know if the culture in Japan is still like that or if it has changed.
Well, many of those BigCorps simply went out of business over the years. Kodak in Rochester was a pretty good bet until it wasn't. Not so much culture as business realities.
Japan has been more stable in that regard. More stability but probably also fewer real opportunities.
The successor to Kodak is Eastman chemicals which is doing quite well.
Kodak actually spun out their chemical company quite a while before things really went south with film. The real problem was that Kodak had a huge film-related consumables business and, to a first approximation, that just went away.
> Hokkaido seems like a great place to relocate and start a life for young aspiring workers.
I taught English in Tokachi (Obihiro, Makubetsu-cho, Satsunai, Ikeda) a few decades ago and it was absolutely a dream.
It's pristine farmland and country filled with crystal clear rivers and surrounded on all sides by snowcapped mountains. Fields that stretch forever. Hot springs. The freshest food. Fishing. Low cost of living.
You could look up at night and not only see all the stars, but watch dozens of meteors by the minute during showers.
Just Google for photos of Tokachi. It's gorgeous.
Everything is so relaxed, it's almost the complete opposite of Tokyo. It's very easy to meet friends. People work hard, but they take time to enjoy life and nature.
There are matsuri (festivals) almost twice a month. There are carts with whistles that beckon you to buy hot yellow sweet potatoes. There are fireworks and bonfires and sports and hiking and climbing. You can make an hour long trip to the ocean and see black pebble beaches that look like an alien world.
There are more parks than you can imagine. A park on every block. And some of them are huge and feature giant art installations you can climb on. 500-ft working clocks, rolling hills of recycled rubber you can bounce on, tall dinosaurs you can climb. And don't let that lead you to believe there aren't an incredible amount of plants and flora. It's an ecological paradise and was without question the inspiration for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.
Everyone is so friendly. The store owners know you by name and call to you. The children all want to get their photo taken with a white guy. They're adorable and they want to talk English to you. The old ladies will smile and wave.
One time I was at a lake nestled in the mountains, and a guy in his late 40's or early 50's overheard that I lamented not having a camera (pre-smartphone era). He not only spent an hour taking pictures, portraits, etc. for me with his Nikon, but he printed them and sent them to me with a postcard.
The teachers at Kohryo High School (which was sadly shut down) even gave me lucky money.
Hokkaido is a magical place.
Your description makes me wonder how Southern Sachalin would look like today if it didn't fall to the Soviets in 1945.
I really find it disappointing that Sakhalin didn't end up under the control of Japan as it's a natural extension of the archipelago and I feel like the Japanese could have done some cool things with it.
This is some good copy. I feel like you're selling me a timeshare or something.
If you're a talent manager in AI space and looking for an engineer (EU) to relocate to Hokkaido, kindly contact me.
Because commenters outside Japan may end up buying products containing chips made in Japan. If it was built in let's say France people would be thinking less about potential invasions. Just as "obviously Japan is going to want to develop lucrative manufacturing within Japan," obviously people outside of Japan are going to want manufacturing that is not liable to be shut down or taken over in some way. Not that I think Japan and China will actually go to war any time soon myself.
>geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department
Just this week Japan and China have been getting into a fight over the current PM's comments over Taiwan. China has canceled some flights to Japan and complained to the UN, announcing it will defend itself from Japan.[0][1] I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Are you saying major disputes between China and Japan don't exist and are invented by the US state department? Or that thinking about it in this context is the result of the commenters being fed by the US state department?
[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3333992/china-blasts...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-takes-spat-with-ja...
Fun fact, there's more precedent to Russia successfully invading Paris than Japan. Although to be fair, they had help.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Sixth_Coalition
The PRC and Japan is not a remotely comparable situation to the PRC and Taiwan.
The most the PRC could do is potentially sabotage production in Hokkaido, but if they can sabotage production in Hokkaido, they can sabotage it in Arizona.
Imagine HN was Japanese and everyone was talking about how the US was threatening to invade Greenland on a topic about a new plant in Montana.
More like a new plant in Iceland, after the PM of Iceland said any attack on Greenland would be a survival-threatening situation for Iceland.
To be clear I think the comments about "geopolitical stability" or whatever term we use are not as interesting as new chip plants itself. Or at least they are a bit tired by now. I also wish Japan the best and I think they are fully capable of building such a factory and I hope they do so. But to claim that the geopolitical considerations are invented is wrong. And in fact one of the reasons the Japanese government is investing in local fabs to begin with is due to national security, as mentioned in the article:
>Securing control over chip manufacturing is being seen as a national security priority, both in Japan and elsewhere, as recent trade frictions and geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan raise concerns around the risks of relying on foreign suppliers.
So yes, viewing the entire story through a geopolitical lens is understandable.
Of course. On just one avenue - The Japanese auto industry is huge, and practically everything in a car has some kind of chip in it. The chip industry isn't just CPUs and GPUs, cars use numerous fairly small, primitive chips you could make using 20-year-old process nodes. The "Comparative Advantage" of global trade specialization has its limits. During COVID, international ports shut down frequently and challenged JIT process inventory levels. Raising inventory levels the next time is one way to deal with that, but so is encouraging some minimum level of domestic production.
The Japanese population trend is unsustainable with long term growth. Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration. So unless they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going to be hard.
In general, I think the US is looking for alternatives outside of Taiwan to build and operate fabs. Yes, there is a push to get them in the US as well.
I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about this. No one is asking them not to create the programs to setup fabs. In fact the US may be thrilled that more allies are putting effort towards creating a supply chain not dependent on China (and Taiwan).
How much human labor is needed to run a semiconductor fab? This isn't exactly a new shipyard being announced. It seems like the perfect investment for an aging society, and might pay dividends in helping to support the automation of other industries.
Japan also already supplies a lot of critical materials for semiconductor fabrication, and has a lot of experience in the sector. They also have a well-developed domestic mechatronics supply chain. It seems like a fairly straightforward thing.
It takes a fair amount of people. You have techs that keep the floor level stuff running, process engineers, maintenance techs and engineers, facilities, IT & automation people, logistics, quality assurance, management, admins. I bet you're talking more than a thousand people for a big facility.
>The Japanese population trend is unsustainable with long term growth.
There are plenty of people in Tokyo/Osaka who can come to Hokkaido. If the jobs pay well, they will. Japan owes it to an entire generation who were left out in the "employment ice age." Japanese are very smart, can be trained, and should get first shot at the jobs.
>Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration.
According to western media. I (a gaijin) marched in the "anti-immigrant" rally recently myself. I was welcomed to do so. Nobody here wants to see foreigners coming in that destroy vending machines and just start building shanty towns on other peoples' property. Good gaijin are welcomed, bad ones need to leave.
>So unless they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going to be hard.
That's not going to be a problem simply based on the crazy property prices in Kita Hiroshima next door to Chitose. People are obviously coming.
> I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about this
This is a top-level issue within Europe as well.
When the Biden admin began the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS ACT, France, Germany, and the entire EU began a massive lobbying campaign that verged into a trade war [0][1][2].
I went to school with a number of people who became senior EU and EU member state civil servants and leaders, and my college always hosted European dignitaries on a daily basis (along with a yearly gala/bash where all the major EU and EU member state dignitaries would attend with students and professors [3]), and what I saw was the best and brightest remained in the US, and those who climbed the ladder the fastest in EU and EU member state governments tended to have some familial background or network they heavily leveraged. Or they lucked out and joined the right student union during the right election cycle. There is a chronic lack of vision, and more critically - a chronic disinterest to take hard decisions, because the incentive structures are completely misaligned, with MPs essentially overriding careerist technocrats all for the sake of electoral needs, and unlike Asia, businesses are kept at arms length aside from those that are quasi-state owned like Volkswagen, EDF, or Leonardo SPA.
It's almost as if the worst aspects of private sector capitalism morphed with the worst aspects of state capitalism into a legalistic quagmire.
[0] - https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/real-reason...
[1] - https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/en/schadet-der-us-inflation...
[2] - https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/how-europe-should-answe...
[3] - https://euroconf.eu/
Engineering pay in the EU is bad. If that can be rectified then top talent would not move to the US. Also, US companies actively harness senior individual contributors. I don't think traditional EU companies have that.
I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show. Yes, there could be slightly looser labor laws. But when it comes down to it - money matters and Europe just doesn't pay. The same for Canada. Their universities plodded through AI all through the "AI Winter" and now all their best AI talent works for US companies. There is no single Canadian AI company that's at the level of what their US counterparts are doing.
> Engineering pay in the EU is bad
Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia - especially peer developed countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
The issues that have lead to laggard innovation in the EU outside of niches like Biopharma are institutional in nature.
> I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show...
I disagree about this as someone who has first hand experience about this w/ regards to the American semiconductor industry. Having a single window to manage disputes, get answers within days instead of months, and tax subsidizes should decisions not be guaranteed in a timely manner help reduce risk for massive capex investments.
This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry, and a similar template could have been used for semiconductors. The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
It can be fixed, but egos need to be set aside and individual European states will have to adopt industrial policy strategies similar to those that developing countries adopted to build their own domestic industries.
>Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia - especially peer developed countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power. While if you're an engineer in UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, etc you're not that wealthy by local standards, you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
>This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry
Not just Denmark, but bio/pharma is a protected and state sponsored industry in most EU countries, unlike software, electronics and electrical engineering which has been treated as a race to the bottom industry.
> The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
"Oh no, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions". This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future.
Munich is still a strong tech hub for electronics with Apple, Rhode & Schwarz and others developing RF and semiconductors there, but it can't hold a candle to the sci-fi work being done in SV or even Israel.
> Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power
Nope. You legitimately are not. The top 5-10% of salaries in both SK/JP/TW and Western Europe are primarily the managerial class.
And CoL is the same in SK and Japan with much of Western Europe.
> you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
Same in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. There's a reason immigration to Western Europe still remains somewhat attractive to Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese nationals to this day - similar salaries, but a better work culture and a stronger social safety net than in much of Asia.
> This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future
Europe hasn't been at the forefront of this industry since the 2000s.
Yes Infineon, ASML, IMEC, and STMicro are supposedly European domiciled, but they were heavily dependent on defense R&D due to semiconductor's dual use implications and all of them largely subsumed American subsidiaries whose leadership became their leadership. As such, these companies haven't been "European" for decades.
Usually around now (6am PST), HN tends to be dominated by Western (and some Eastern) European commentators. I've noticed they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist sentiment along with a "Europe should be able to do this too" sentiment (though in a lot of cases, this is moreso sentiment than reality).
Let me contribute my Europeanist sentiment by pointing out that the harmonious design of the fab is pure tatemae.
The Japanese professional class care fuckall about PFAS and environmental issues have always been low on the list of priorities. Sorry. I love the Hokkaido produce.
https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-america/chemi...
It's certainly something to be concerned about. Even the building where MOS Technology made the 6502 (in Norristown PA) is still a contaminated EPA superfund site. It's an industry with very nasty chemicals and a long history of leaking them.
>I've noticed they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist sentiment along with a "Europe should be able to do this too".
Is it wrong for people in Europe to wish for more cutting-edge/high-margin opportunities in their back yard, especially given the currently atrocious state of the job market?
Like you read news how TSMC's cutting edge chips are made in Taiwan and US fabs, then you looks at European fabs and the most cutting edge are 16/12nm.
People are seeing the lag with their own eyes and wish for some change.
Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard on developing such capabilities and assuming European nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so jarring.
Nothing stopped European nations like Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, etc from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
Just becuase Europe was historically the richest and most powerful continent doesn't mean it will be forever.
>Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard on developing such capabilities and assuming European nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so jarring.
Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, as there was no disrespecting anyone there with my comment, and I basically agree with your point.
That doesn't change that people here want those cutting edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They don't want to be stuck competition with China in commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm microcontrollers.
There's a limited market for ASML machines, Siemens gas turbines, and Airbus planes which can't support economic growth of the entire block.
>Nothing stopped European nations like from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
They're developed outside of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, etc since private businesses care most about prioritizing shareholder returns, not national sovereignty. And with Western EUs high labor costs, high taxes, high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc. Everyone with basic business know-how could have seen this coming but people still thought they could have their cake and eat it too in the globally cutthroat "free market" economy.
Case in point, Nokia just announced it is closing Infinera's Munich office and moving all operations to the US.
> Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, as there was no disrespecting anyone there with my comment, and I basically agree with your point.
Not you. The EU. They are disrespecting pretty much anyone.
> That doesn't change that people here want those cutting edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They don't want to be stuck competition with China in commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm microcontrollers
You can't build an ecosystem for bleeding edge work without an even larger pipeline of non-bleeding edge and even legacy workflow. For example, it's 14nm that pays the bills for TSMC - not 5nm/7nm.
And much of the entire Taiwanese electronics industry is largely coalesced around legacy nodes and low value work as well.
> There's a limited market for ASML machines
Made in American using American IP by a US DoE JV.
> high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc
Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering remains competitive despite having similar issues as a similar capex heavy industry with a significant IP component. It's really just an institutional issue.
>Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering remains competitive despite having similar issues as a similar capex heavy industry with a significant IP component. It's really just an institutional issue.
Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition. It's a crazy patent minefield, massive regulatory moat, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus sometimes backroom deals between pharma and politicians. Nothing remotely similar to commodities like consumer software and hardware.
> Nothing remotely similar to commodities like software and hardware
First, what I should have done earlier in this conversation because I keep forgetting how broad and complex of an industry this is:
What do you mean by the semiconductor industry? No country other than the US has an end-to-end domestic pipeline from design to fabrication to packaging to developing EDAs.
For this thread, I have limited my conversation to fabrication and package. These industries have largely coalesed around the US and Korea/Japan/Taiwan/China/ASEAN for decades because of industrial policies and educational programs.
For chip design, this industry is largely limited to the US, Israel, India, China, and Taiwan for decades due to a number of key hires at Intel back in the 1990s.
The strategy needed to develop a domestic chip design ecosystem is completely distinct from that for developing a domestic fabrication or packaging ecosystem.
> Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition
It very much is depending on the type of compound, just like it is depending on the type of semiconductor (or downstream components).
> It's all about patents, massive regulatory moats, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus backroom deals between pharma and politicians
Hate to break your cherry, but that's all industries. I remember our lawyers spending months working with the trade promotion ministry of a certain CEE state along with KPMG in order to get a sweet heart deal to open a dev hub in an IT park that was associated with a politically connected oligarch. The economics of biopharma really aren't that different from semiconductors:
1. You have an entirely separate design phase that is completely independent of synthesis/fabrication
2. You have entire sub-segments of the industry devoted just to synthesis/fabrication along with testing
3. Both are high capex/low margins industries, as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics market while higher margin IP tends to be owned by the American subsidiaries of European Biopharma companies
4. It doesn't necessarily make sense to synthesize low margins APIs when you will inevitably be undercut by American, Chinese, or Indian players so the best solution is to specialize in design because that at least allows you to own IP.
------
This is a question for each individual European nation, because this is something that the European Union cannot solve - do EU nations actually care about developing industrial policies intended to develop domestic capacity or not in specific industries.
If so, does each European nation actually have the state-level capacity and the human capital capacity to start making a case for investment.
Additionally, can any European state give the 50%-150% capital subsidy grants or 0-1% interest rate loans that countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, the US, and India along with their state-level components?
After chatting with my friends who work on these types of questions in Bruxelles as well as a couple larger European capitals, the answer was no, simply because the fiscal leeway just doesn't exist and the demand really doesn't exist either. If Volkswagen AG or Groupe Renault is pushed into a corner, they will just shift manufacturing out of Europe and towards China or India respectively.
>Hate to break your cherry, but that's all industries.
It's not binary where it either it is or it isn't but there's various levels to it and Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives.
> as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics
Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever took from the pharmacy ware locally made? Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods.
> Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever took from the pharmacy ware locally made
Because it was synthesized using Chinese and Indian sourced "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (APIs) [0], both of whom synthesize around 80% of all APIs required by European pharma manufacturers.
The EU is trying to rectify this, especially after COVID when India decided to stop all exports of APIs and pharmaceuticals to Europe in order to prioritize domestic production [1], but it still takes time (they started in 2021, and it'll probably take another 5-7 years to build the critical mass needed to rebuild a domestic ecosystem).
> Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods
Becuase, as I have kept elucidating on multiple occasions on this thread, the entire ecosystem for these goods simply does not exist in Europe, and no European member state is interested in opening their pocketbooks to subsidize manufacturers to move to Europe in order to begin manufacturing the intermediate parts needed.
Countries like those across ASEAN, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, the US, and India offer millions to billions of dollars in hard cash, land, tax subsidizes, or a mix of all 3 in order to attract or retain manufacturers. EU member states simply does not do the same for electronics. Some of them absolutely do so for biopharma (such as Denmark), but by and large they tend to be exceptions of the rule.
> Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives
Ime, Pharma PLIs and incentives are fairly comparable to those that would be provided to electronic industries as well. The same tax sops India gave to attract Apple to TN were similar to those that India gave Novartis and Bayer decades ago, and China has been using the same subsidy program it used to attract electronics manufacturing to attract and become a major player in the biopharma space.
[0] - https://pharmacia.pensoft.net/article/172383/
[1] - https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/05/india-vaccine-heist-shod...
>Because it was synthesized using Chinese and Indian sourced "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (APIs) [0], both of whom synthesize around 80% of all APIs required by European pharma manufacturers.
And the EU pharma companies package it, slap their logos on it and make mega profits selling domestically.
>EU member states simply does not do the same for electronics.
Why do you think that is? Surely with a war next door and China not guaranteed be a cooperator all the time, that would be a priority.
> And the EU pharma companies package it, slap their logos on it and make mega profits selling domestically
Yep.
> Why do you think that is?
Because European nations lacks the linkages needed to build a competitive electronics industry.
Much of the industry is heavily linked across the Pacific, with the US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore transferring technology, capital, and personnel across borders to setup supply chains.
This is different with biopharma, given how closely connected European majors are with American subsidiaries. It also really doesn't hurt that much of American pharma has historically been consolidated in Greater Boston and the Delaware region which is just across the Atlantic, and European biopharma players have acted as the technology, capital, and personnel partner for developing these industries in India and China (though both do still prefer American players because of better budgets and more bleeding edge IP).
Additionally, where leadership are from matters as well. In the 1970s to 1990s, much of the electronics and software industry's mid-level and upper level leadership was West Coast based, Israel, or Asian in origin, which meant linkages were built much earlier, such as Morris Chang (Texas Instruments), Jason Chang (IllinoisTech), Vinod Dham (Intel), Dov Frohman (Intel), Kim Choong-Ki (Fairchild), Gurpreet Singh (Continental Electronics), etc. Heck, Intel began packaging semiconductors in Malaysia all the way back in 1973 - decades before they initiatited similar investments in Ireland.
The only European company that had a similar size and scope of American or Asian companies in the electronics industry was Philips NV before it broke up, but it was never at the size and scale of American Apple, IBM, or HP or Japanese Sony, Toshiba, or Sharp - let alone their Korean challengers in the 2000s like Samsung, SK Hynix, or Hyundai or their Chinese challengers in the 2010s like Huawei, TCL, Xiaomi, etc.
Most European countries lack the same bench of diaspora in leadership positions in large swathes of innovation industries. You'll easily find European leaders in services industries along with biopharma, but you'd never find a similar clustering in software, hardware, and even increasingly in biopharma to a certain extent.
Heck, most Indians who attend a Max Plank Institute for biopharma related work now return to India with a professorship or to lead an India- or America-located lab for a major like Novartis, GSK, etc.
>Because European nations lacks the linkages needed to build a competitive electronics industry.
That wasn't the case 20+ years ago. Nokia phones were designed and assembled in Finland. Siemens designed and made CPUs and RAM.
How come they gave up and didn't push to remain world leaders?
"Everyone except for me is an -ist. I'm an enlightened non-ist."
AI generated comments, that's why.
Only 11 top level comments right now, and 354 total comments. To see just 3% of comments be top level is something.
> all they can think about is their own geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department.
It's almost like there is a propaganda campaign run all over social meda. Try a fun game, "What's it got to do with china?". Someone or something always tries to tie it to china.
As a European I have to say I am extremely jealous of a government with the willingness of doing something as radical as this.
Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain. Neither the EU nor any member states seems willing to do anything about this though.
Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent. But besides meaning posturing there is nothing being done.
> Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain.
To be fair, Europe does have ASML which has something like 2/3 market share in DUV and almost monoplistic in EUV.
The moat is enormous, so they are unlikely to face any serious competition for at least a decade if not more.
China is already catching up. They have a desktop-sized 14nm EUV machine, and Xiami is setting up a 3nm manufacturing line, both entirely with local tech. Thanks USA for the export ban.
China has been dumping massive amounts of resources in this for at least 20 years, this (Making chips domestically with local tech) has been a long term goal for a very long time. The chip ban is relatively recent. IF it had an effect it was merely expediting a process that was going to happen regardless. China was NEVER going to be content importing Western chips or western machines to make chips indefinitely.
The EUV ban is not recent.
2019 is pretty recent. But it doesn't matter if the ban is 2000 or 2025. China was going to try and get the machines through subterfuge, industrial espionage, reverse engineering or novel engineering. They were always going to get a domestic chip production industry, its a matter of national security.
Xiami have designed a 3nm chip, however I am not convinced SMIC have a process for them to build the chip at any scale yet. Let's see - eventually China will obviously have a process comparable to TSMC but I think currently they are at least 18 months behind. They were 5 years behind before the sanctions so they are catching up fast.
> China is already catching up.
Sure of course, just like COMAC vs Airbus/Boeing, BYD vs Western EVs etc.
But this is a bit different IMHO.
First there's still a lot of catching-up to do.
And second are they going to be able to gain sufficient marketshare in the Western market ? I am thinking here, both in terms of displacing ASML and in terms of Western companies being willing to depend on Chinese tech for such critical activities.
Selling chips or chip manufacturing equipment is one of the many ways to get a return on this investment.
There's a whole hierarchy of products and services that benefit from this. At any level that there is a ban/preference to not use Chinese products it translates to a lower price for the same technology, which feeds into the domestic market for dependent tech.
Nobody buys their chips? They build data centers and sell computation as service. That does not sell enough? Domestic R&D now has an edge, creating momentum for medicine, agriculture, consumer products, weapons.
You can ban a small country for a long time, or a large country for a small time, but not large for long
> They have a desktop-sized 14nm EUV
Who falls for this crap? An ASML EUV machine costs over $100 million and is delivered in dozens of shipping containers, taking up 2 floors in a fab.
You're going to need really extraordinary evidence that the PRC has a "desktop sized EUV machine" if you want us to believe you.
They announced this during an industry conference last week. It’s entirely different tech to ASML’s.
This is the company/machine: http://lumi-universe.com/?list_27/84.html
You can check the dimensions there, max 80cm. This is only the EUV light source, not an entire wafer fab.
They would be catching up anyway. At least now there will be a second source for the tech. ASML does fantastic work but they may not have all the answers.
Europe cannot actually do a whole of monopolization with ASML without incurring the wrath of its only armed forces, the United States of America. Europe is essentially a military junta controlled by a foreign power. They perceive themselves to be a country because they get to do elections and stuff. Cute
Not that Japan is much different
Hah... europe will become king of the world! We'll tax and regulate ourselves to enormous wealth! No... jokes aside, europe is a failed union, and will slowly collapse or decompose in a decade or two.
Then we can again focus on trade, lowering taxs and creating value. The only thing that is happening now is that the political class has become enormously rich through bribes and by having managed to phase out democracy and enriching themselves.
There are issues with Europe, no doubt. But this kind of comment is ridiculous.
You mean, like America is doing right now while simultaneously destroying its international position and quality of life?
"simultaneously destroying its international position"
US has been doing the same thing for last 200 years and you act like its been different ???
oh, is that because you dnt get benefit as opposed to instability that US cause like middle east, south america, africa and asia ????
US was not destroying its own international position for 200 years. Their international position went all the way up in that period. It was also not destroying its own quality of life for 200 years.
there is nothing to be destroyed if there is no "good reputation" in the first place
You are seeing from European perspective but I can assure you that there is people that seeing western country is a "bad guys" from these region because Western power always trying exert their influence via trade deal, regime change, fund armed group etc
And America is loosing their ability to exert their influence.
You are claiming it has no position while similtaneously using its past position as argument.
learn geopolitics first before spouting non-sense
Right now, sitting in Europe, wishing that Brussels was just ever so slightly more functional, you look out into the world and see how everyone else is doing, and you're reminded that things isn't actually that bad.
Isn't Europe the source of almost all the tooling that goes into brand new fabs?
It's the one exception in the semiconductor supply chain where Europe is still leading. For all other parts of the value creation Europe is either a niche player at best or completely absent, well into the actual application layer.
And the bits that go into those machines are themselves globally distributed.
Nah, according to Hacker News Europe does nothing except exist and make up rules by 'bureaucrats'.
It's the lack of 996 grindset holding Europe back.
If only European bureaucrats mortgaged their entire economy on 500 AI scam companies that never produce any profit and sold off their entire manufacturing base to their main adversary. This is how real superpowers roll.
Laptop sticker "This machine feeds bureaucrats". /s
I think chinnese already made their own "ASML"
With very bad results. I was walking a fab in China a few years ago: all machines are German, Japanese and Dutch. I asked why they don't have Chinese ones: the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster so it is not worth it and the asml machines are not there at all in any type of competitive form. It will happen, just not yet I guess.
>the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster
Japanese cars would also break down much faster than US made cars in the 1950s, but eventually they figured out reliability and overtook US competition. What are the odds Chinese companies can repat this playbook?
They're also a critical player in supplying small drone parts to both sides in Russia Ukraine war. Maybe not the most reliable parts, but the scale is insane.
btw, "Made in Germany" was introduced in 1887 as a warning label so British consumers could distinguish cheap German knockoffs from British products.
We quickly improved product quality, and suddenly "Made in Germany" was a sign of quality. The same happened with Japanese products, with Korean products and the same will happen with China.
> Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent.
That's not possible. There are just too many different parts going into semiconductor production and they're scattered around the world.
Case in point: the source of the best semiconductor-grade quartz is located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina and while there exist alternatives, for cost-competetiveness you want that.
Hilariously enough it belongs to Sibelco, which is a Belgian company, but it's still US territory, so subject to local politics.
While it may be true that cost advantages are in that specific quartz, it is not some irreplaceable product. It absolutely would be possible to use other quartz, which would require more processing and increase costs.
Do you have any actual examples of things which could not be in sourced into Europe? I am very aware that for many reasons, among them costs, semiconductor fabrication is spread globally. But is there an actual reason why it would be impossible to have every single one of these pieces in some capacity in Europe?
Europe is continually moving further apart politically from both the US and China. Relying on the US for supplies and betting on Chinese, Taiwanese peace seems increasingly foolish. How can Europe secure itself in such an environment, without its own semiconductor supply chain?
A better example is the EUV lithography light sources used by ASML. They are manufactured in the US by a US company ASML acquired with technology licensed from US government labs. That critical part of the business is American in all but name.
It is possible that the EU could develop their own state-of-the-art lithography light sources but for now ASML is dependent on the US for it.
Silicon for solar cell production is currently being mined and refined in Sweden. What would it take to adapt that production line for semiconductor-grade silicon, I wonder.
Small point worth bringing up, that quartz doesn't go into the ingots that get sliced into wafers (and then doped and diced into chips). It's used to make the crucibles that the ingots are grown in.
They would have to include the UK and it would actually be a good European project (not just EU) to maybe bring them back into the fold.
They are doing _something_ according to https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-c... . It'd be good for someone with more knowledge to summarise what this act means though.
This is so grim. What a stark difference to Japan. On one side there is a government setting up a new company, with the aim of competing at the highest end of the most complex technological process in existence. Meanwhile the EU is setting up bureaucrat managed funds to keep the remaining companies, currently suffering from the decline of the German auto industry, alive. Oh and they also paid TSMC to set up a factory, how pathetic.
> Meanwhile the EU
What do you think the EU is? It's not a country, not a federative union. These things need a lot of discussions and synchronization among member countries, it does not work otherwise, so it takes time. I also hold the opinion that time is a resource the EU does not have, so it badly needs to reform itself - its framework no longer works for this "new age".
the #1 problem with the EU's administrative structure is that its power comes from below, i.e. from the member states. Any of them could pull a Brexit and the entire union could be in jeopardy.
The #2 problem is language. Despite what many on HN think, European borders very much exist. They exist via language and bureaucracy.
These two combine to create many problems the EU and Europe in general has. The lack of vision, the excruciatingly slow bureaucracy, both are symptoms of the same underlying problems.
The EU can't really do anything. The EU is a loose confederation of countries that delegate responsibilities to this united body.
Japan is a single country with a single government that can unilaterally decide what it wants to do.
But single countries in Europe can do something. If they choose to.
Most of them have 0 IT tradition. Even the big ones.
Intel was supposed to build something in Germany some years ago, didn't really work out because of reasons which seems to have been outside of Germany's control. So it's not that they are unwilling, but it just didn't succeed yet.
The Netherlands has its own semi supply chain, from photolithographs to chip design to printing the actual chips.
I don't think that's right. They make one of the many machines you need for semiconductor manufacturing. The NXP fab in Nijmegen makes simple components on a outdated 140nm+ process with 200mm wafers. Unless there is another fab that is making actual modern chips?
ST Microelectronics makes 18 nm chips and 6 out of their 7 fabs are in Europe: https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/manufacturing-at-...
> They make one of the many machines you need for semiconductor manufacturing.
That's an especially obtuse way of minimizing the significance of their manufacture of the most complex machine ever made.
At least European countries excel at introducing new regulations and taxes.
Yeah. Who wants to be a military superpower or a manufacturing superpower, when they could be a regulatory superpower.
One of our problems (EU citizen here too) is the delusion that because everyone in the world wants access to European markets, everyone will bend their knees to our regulations and we can effectively dictate the world's standards.
Given that our market share on the global economy is dropping steadily, this won't hold forever. By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.
Already this year we had a showdown with Qatar over some ESG reporting and we lost handily, because we needed their gas more than they needed our money.
Exactly. For the past decades much of the world was entirely dependent on European products. This gave the EU and European countries enormous leverage in setting standards and enforcing their own regulations across the world. This is very clearly changing, in many areas European companies are depending on Chinese technology (e.g. EV batteries).
I am sure that some part of the EU establishment is aware of this, but the measure taken are practically laughable compared to the magnitude of the problem. At some future point in time dealing with the EU will just not be worth it, as competitive companies outside the EU, not weighed down by EU regulations, will fill the gaps and entering the EU market will be seen as too toxic.
> By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.
in favour of what? Every other large market (China, India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.
> > By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.
> in favour of what? Every other large market (China, India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.
The EU has higher tariffs than the US overall, especially for agriculture and cars. Policy is structured and uniform.
The IS has lower tariffs than the EU overall, but often used as political/economic weapon on specific countries and sectors.
The current administration's tactics notwithstanding.
At least in case of India, it is in their interest to lower their trade barriers against Thailand, Viet Nam, Philippines, Indonesia etc.
This region with 500 million people in it will oscillate between Chinese and Indian influence. The Chinese are more powerful and richer, so the only way in which India can compete for influence is being more friendly.
India is too busy fighting on their own sphere of influence (south asian)
china keep them in check via pakistan
Now, but we're talking 2040, and the situation may look a lot different.
India has been doing some incredible things lately. They just electrified their entire rail network in some five years. That is actually impressive - you need a lot of qualified people and coordination for that.
If they keep up, they will become a strategic adversary of China in Indochina (see the name?) quite soon.
India's rail network is not fully electrified, this is false. Even the most popular broad gauge network is not fully electrified. Diesel trains are still very common. Remember also that the Indian government is very skilled at manipulating data without actually delivering results. Just look at the lies they spewed during the pandemic about deaths.
India's promised ascendance to power and influence remain perpetually a few decades away. Meanwhile, the poor continue to lose purchasing power, the rich exploit the entire country, and India's total economic exports are comparable to those of the Netherlands.
You're saying that like the two are at odds. France is a military superpower with almost entirely France, worst case scenario western EU, based supply chain. Italy, Spain, to a lesser extent Germany are too. Manufacturing is also pretty strong across (most) of the EU. Automotive is struggling in Germany, but booming in France (Renault are killing it). Leading in Aeronautics too. It's just mostly high value manufacturing. In the EU, 25% of the economy is in manufacturing. Compare with 10% in the US.
And those regulations are, more often than not, for everyone's benefit - at least EU, but often the Brussels effect applies so a lot of the rest of the world benefits too.
What you are saying is just not true. Frances car industry is dying. Renault is a small company, not even in the top 10 and Stellantis is doing extremely poorly, also affecting Italy's car industry. Within a decade or so COMAC will have a competitive passenger plane, seriously threatening Airbus market share.
Germany's entire industry is currently dying since it is impossible to have a cost competitive manufacturing industry while having some of the highest energy prices in the world.
Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the market by Chinese competition.
Do you think Germany or France will continue to have a car industry, when China makes cars or the same quality for 70% of the price? Because that is currently the reality.
High energy prices are a self-imposed problem. The price of electricity is heavily dependent on the price of the most expensive energy source. Electricity from fossil fuels is expensive in European Union due to emissions trading system. A coal-fired power plant pays around 2x more for the emissions than for the coal itself. I don't know how the maths work for a natural gas plant but gas is more expensive in Europe anyway compared to the US.
> Renault is a small company, not even in the top 10
How exactly is that even remotely relevant? They only sell in select markets, and are killing it in them (best selling EV in the EU, Renault 5). What, if it's not a global behemoth dominating the world, it doesn't count as manufacturing? What exactly is your argument here?
> Within a decade or so COMAC will have a competitive passenger plane, seriously threatening Airbus market share.
Nope. Their own goal is to have, within a decade or so, a fully Chinese plane (their current C919 heavily relies on engines and other critical components from European and American suppliers). Specifically for the engines, they're looking at a comparable to the Leap 1C they were sold by CFM (American General Electric+French Safran joint venture). Those engines are around a generation behind the current best ones (Leap 1A, Pratt&Whitney GTF). In a decade, CFM and Rolls-Royce will have a new generation out, both having new models being tested right now.
So, in around a decade, the Chinese engines will be two generations behind. Efficiency is critical in aviation. And that's just the engines, in a decade Airbus will have a new A320 series replacement out, and Boeing will have one on the way too. And this is just for short to medium haul planes. And both the C919 and the C909 show that it's taking years for production to ramp up to any relevant numbers. Airbus recently opened a second final assembly line in Tianjin for the local market, they wouldn't have done that without being sure they have a market there for at least a decade or more.
> Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the market by Chinese competition.
This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Does China need something competitive to an a320neo^2 or is something competitive with a 737ng enough given they can pressure domestic airlines into buying it and undercut their way into more sticker price sensitive markets? That’s already a big loss for the duopoly, and I mean there are 717s and similar still flying
> or is something competitive with a 737ng enough given they can pressure domestic airlines into buying it and undercut their way into more sticker price sensitive markets
Potentially, but previous attempts (like the Xian MA60 and MA600, which are derivatives of the designed in the 1960s An-24) have been very unsuccessful. It made some sales in Southeast Asia and Africa, but a few of those have had accompanying corruption/bribery allegations and investigations, and most have been grounded after serious incidents and troubles keeping them operating at reasonable costs.
But my overall point is, it's going to take them more than a decade, probably around two, to be able to churn out fully Chinese passenger jets in any relevant numbers. The Chinese airplane market is massive, so even then they probably won't be able to deliver enough. There also aren't any plans to get the C919, existing or future fully Chinese version, certified by EASA or FAA or anywhere else, so legally the jet can't even fly anywhere else other than China for now.
So we have at least 2 decades more of COMAC being very behind and churning planes at a slow rate, at best. And honestly, anyone who thinks they can predict the aviation market 2 decades ahead is out of their mind. We could have hydrogen powered flying wings by then!
"so legally the jet can't even fly anywhere else other than China for now."
Or countries could just accept Chinese type certification alongside the FAA, EASE, and TC certificates. Granted, it would only be for domestic or regional flights at most - but that's a lot.
Which is what Nigeria is considering with the C919.
That's what happened with the Xian MA60, but it was still a disaster due to supply chain complexities. Even the relatively established UAC (Russia) couldn't handle the supply chain and maintenance of their most recent SSJ-100, even to friendly countries (Cuba) or close by European ones (Ireland).
>And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
The Dacia Spring is made in China.
>are killing it in them (best selling EV in the EU, Renault 5). What, if it's not a global behemoth dominating the world, it doesn't count as manufacturing? What exactly is your argument here?
My argument is that China is producing EVs of the same quality for 70% of the cost. European wealth comes from exports.
>This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Exactly. The European car industry only exists because China is not allowed to compete, this is my point. There is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be buying a better car for the same price or the same quality car for a lower price.
The car market for these companies will shrink from the entire world to Europe, surely you can see that this is an existential threat to European manufacturing.
>And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. A BYD EV with 27% tariffs applied is cost competitive to the lowest end Renault Platform. In other words, the only reason Dacia is selling any cars is because BYD is not allowed to compete.
On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have mastered almost every technology the west has, it is delusional to think that they will never make competitive aircraft engines. You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will catch up.
> European wealth comes from exports
That's certainly a claim. The EU market is pretty big, and has multiple avenues for growth (the whole of the Balkans is either in the EU but catching up, or outside the EU begging to be let in). It's not axiomatic that the EU needs to export to the whole rest of the world. And even if it is, there are plenty of countries that have an appetite for European goods for a variety of reasons (be it luxury or just quality associations, or innate hatred of China, like in India or South Korea).
> Exactly. The European car industry only exists because China is not allowed to compete, this is my point
Alternatively, because Chinese dumping is not allowed to destroy the European car industry, if we're only talking in economic terms. But the reality is that cars aren't that simple, as a market. For many cars are a status symbol, or otherwise everyone would be driving Dacias and Skodas and nobody would be buying Porsches vs VWs.
> There is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be buying a better car for the same price or the same quality car for a lower price.
Of course there is. Stellantis, Renault, VW Group are selling well in their local markets, across Europe and various other markets (e.g. the US for Stellantis).
> On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have mastered almost every technology the west has, it is delusional to think that they will never make competitive aircraft engines
Never said never, said their own timeline is a decade, for something competitive to the previous gen, while in a decade we'll be two generations ahead. Considering Chinese aerospace engineering has been struggling with engines forever, and Russia never managed to get close, ever, I wouldn't bet on China suddenly being able to leapfrog their own timeline.
> You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will catch up.
They will catch up to ~previous generation (A320ceo), by then Airbus will already have the replacement to the current gen (A320neo, future gen not named yet). So China will still be ~2 decades behind, in a decade-ish. Yes, they will definitely catch up by some point in the ~2050s, so what? Airbus caught up to Boeing, and there is enough market to go around for both. Embraer is in the process of catching up too. There being one more new entrant on the (again, only short to medium haul) passenger jet market, in a decade, really isn't the end of the world you're making it out to be.
You are still arguing the status quo. By export I meant export to countries outside the EU, where Chinese and European EVs compete fairly.
To believe that the European car industry will survive purely on brand recognition is foolish and all current trends indicate otherwise. The Chinese are cars at the same quality for 70% if the price. That is obviously not sustainable and no amount of brand loyalty will overcome this.
None of your arguments seem convincing at all. Making worse cars at higher prices can not work. It is not a feasible long term strategy in any way.
Also, Stellantis is not selling well, they have huge problems with underutilized factories. Porsche is also currently in serious trouble.
> status quo
Yes, we're talking about the current reality and trends about the future. Which is it, are EU manufacturers at large on the decline, or am I too focused on the current reality that they're doing okay, with exceptions?
> Making worse cars at higher prices can not work.
Who is talking about worse cars or brand loyalty?
A Renault 5 or Renault 4 are objectively good cars that sell well based on their performance and looks. Cars aren't bought only on the basis on cost, which is why premium or even just any other brand other than the lowest cost Skoda or Dacia exist in the first place.
> None of your arguments seem convincing at all.
It's not very convincing to say that manufacturing in the EU is on a death bed when its double the % of GDP as in the US, and has multiple domains where there are good performances. And then get extremely hung up that EU manufacturers must export, and that somehow cost is the only metric by which people buy stuff. And then get extremely hung up on car manufacturing in particular. But also somehow that EU manufacturing is worse quality, which you don't even attempt to prove. Yeah, when you put down the wrong conditions, you're going to get the wrong conclusions. And repeating them again and again doesn't make them more convincing.
Most best selling EV models in the EU are Tesla, from Renault or VW Group. Practically all of them are manufactured in the EU. This is not a declining trend.
And of course you're completely ignoring the reality that tariffs against Chinese dumping are a reality and here to stay in many markets. Manufacturers that relied a lot on e.g. the Chinese car market, like VW, will suffer. Others that didn't, like Renault, are doing just fine.
In the end I think outlet disagreement is this:
I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold for 70% of the price of a European made car, will outperform the European car in every market, where those cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for reasons unfathomable to me.
I believe that the European export economy is vital for its prosperity. 45% of Germany's 1 trillion+ exports are to countries outside of the EU. You believe that loosing that economy can be made up in other ways, again for reasons which are unfathomable to me.
I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could convince you otherwise. That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for cars or that European products are of lower quality) makes me not want to talk to you at all.
> I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold for 70% of the price of a European made car, will outperform the European car in every market, where those cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for reasons unfathomable to me
I disagree with that for pretty obvious reasons. The fact that companies like GM and Ford still exist, and not everyone has been buying the cheapest car that fits their needs, unquestionably proves that buying cars is more than just price. Quality is hard to directly compare, but you also have maintenance needs/availability, brand recognition, design.
But anyways, you're talking about manufacturing more widely, and we spent too much time talking about cars. 20% of the EU GDP that are in manufacturing really aren't all about cars.
> I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could convince you otherwise
That's an almost smart way of getting out of having to provide any.
> That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for cars
How else would I interpret your incessant attempts to try to convince me that a Chinese car at 70% the cost of an European one would always win? The fact that you're completely ignoring the presence of brand or the importances of marketing and design on car buying choices clearly indicates you only think of cars as their cost to buy. Which is really not what most people's first consideration is, otherwise, again, we wouldn't have Tesla, VW, Audi, Porsche, GM, Ford, Lexus, etc etc existing.
Imagine a government that considers its people more than tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit! So many regulations meant to protect the plebes!
Universal healthcare? Vacation time you can actually use? Data privacy laws?
What a bunch of losers! Next you’ll tell me they actually give parents time off to raise their kids instead of dumping them into daycare after a month of drudgery and try to call it bonding !
>Imagine a government that considers its people more than tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit!
Most European governments are for a long time now pushing migration hard overtly or subversively(since it's unpopular) arguing as if they're importing tools for the economy.
I wouldn't call European governments considering its people. Basically all of European countries suffer from housing crisis and nothing is being done to actually address it.
Some of the regulations make sense, like PFAS (correlated with chip manufacturing because HF is needed to etch Silicon and so fluoro-organics make great complements) And they seem to be sincere about it.
https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-america/chemi...
As for the Japanese professional classes, environmental issues are always an afterthought. Don't let the "harmonious" design philosophy of the fab fool you..that's tatemae. (Remember Jobs and pancreatic cancer? There's the price to pay for the shiny toys)
I wont be eating from Hokkaido if this pans out (their milk is overrated imho, but the seafood is top)
Maybe I'll get to eat more Austrian millet in the near future..
This is a good initiative from Japan's government. On the other side, their bet on hydrogen is probably a very expensive blind alley.
We spent the last 30 years showing deference to good old Uncle Sam, sometimes back-stabbing other member states in the process. How would we ever have the nerves to do something of this scale with all the cooperation, supply chain logistics and engineering complexity that this would involve ?
Let's be real, it's not America's fault that the EU is dysfunctional in these regards. I'm sure that America does little to actually help, but the biggest problem the EU faces comes from their own internal corruption. Nothing gets done in Europe unless it can be restructured by their corrupt bureaucrats to pay all their friends and relatives, and the process of negotiating how to spread the graft around is highly political and takes many years. This is why the ESA is so dysfunctional despite Arianespace starting from a position of almost commercial launch market dominance at the end of the millennium. They're locked into Ariane 5 development even though it was obsolete on arrival and it will probably take them 20 years to negotiate the corrupt deals that will allow them to design and build something new. This cultural and political dysfunction in European society is entirely the fault of Europeans. India will send people to space before Europe.
Haven't said otherwise, it's our elites "impotent" mentality that is to blame (excuse my french)
European countries are willing to make big bets. The issue is with incompetent leadership. For example they made very big bets on quantum computing and particle accelerators for HEP, both of which have close to zero ROI. Meanwhile, up till very recently AI was sneered at as not "scientific" enough. This is a problem with leadership. The issue is mostly that we put people in leadership positions, who are experts in past technologies but those instincts do not translate well to present technologies.
non sense
Google deepmind headquarter is located in Europe, US tech dominance just that good to attract talent all of europe
You can see list of AI researcher that comes from europe+asia
That is incompeten5 leadership no? If your talent wants to move...
Notably though, Deepmind is based in London, UK - not the EU.
London is inside England, which is an european country.
nowhere I mention EU and you EU crackhead cant comprehend Europe anymore huh????
I'm an American who bought a house in Hokkaido and have been living there for 18 months. Hokkaido is wonderful and Chitose is close to Sapporro (more like a suburb), has an international airport (direct flights to Seoul, Taipei, Shanghai, etc) and the bullet train will be completed by 2030 from Tokyo to Sapporro. The nature and food are unrivaled in Hokkaido and in terms of the people and culture - until about the 1880s it was primarily an Ainu place but then large immigration from all parts of Japan which has created a unique culture in Hokkiado with aspects of culture from all of Japan's regions. What has been missing is industry. Resource extraction has been one industry in decline (fishing, timber, coal). Banking and finance have mostly been centred in Tokyo. A high tech chip industry in Hokkaido, in particular if Taiwan is merged with PRC might be exactly the thing for Hokkaido to boom - in particular since it is less prone to natural disasters and climate change may be warming things up.
A few questions:
How much did you pay for the house? How much rennovation did it need? Are you working remotely there? How did you acquire a house in an area that's less accommodating to English than Tokyo? Did you need/use a real estate agent?
Somewhat related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44828559
Good choice with a proven track record. S. R. Hadden built an impressive machine there in the late 90’s.
I resolutely approve of this comment. Bravo.
"Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
This, on the surface, makes logistical sense. Chitose (the proposed location) is the international airport for and largest airport in Hokkaido (New Chitose Airport). Setting up a fab and related facilities right next to this location would seem to have obvious benefits.
That is just logistics, but what about power consumption, environmental issues next to agriculture etc. I am wondering why Hokkaido instead of other places in Japan.
Japan tends to be a favorite for most enterprise SaaS companies when opening an APJ sales foothold - no other Asian economy is of a similar size and open to Western firms.
Additionally, a Tokyo HQ often manages your South Korea and Taiwan operations as well because of legacy business ties from the colonial era as well as the flying geese era. That said, Sapporo does remain a bit of a niche area like Seattle or Portland before semiconductors because of how dominant Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya are.
Knock on wood the Rapidus helps spark a Japanese Beaverton.
Hokkaido is by a wide margin my favorite place in the world. If I could easily HQ a tech company there (for global sales; Japan domestic market is stagnant), I would.
Good snowboarding at Niseko back in the day
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Meanwhile in Europe...
Meanwhile what? Europe already have chip manufacturing but focused on industrial and embedded usage, while others seems oriented towards consumer stuff.
https://www.esmc.eu/ it's not 3 or 5nm, but 12nm FinFet isn't bad.
isn't it risky to build this in a seismically active region? wouldn't somewhere that has almost no history of earthquakes like korea be better?
It would be darkly amusing if all chips come from either politically unstable Taiwan or seismically unstable Hokkaido.
But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.
Isn't Taiwan also seismically active? They are reports of earthquakes affecting TSMC fabs in january 2025 and april 2024.
Apparently these were not huge blows to their fabs, otherwise we would be talking about that day-in-day-out, but there's always a risk of that happening.
Seems silly to be talking about this as if this is some kind of global consortium effort.
Japan is building Japan at semi conductor industry, for the benefit of itself, of course it is located in Japan.
Sure, Japan and Taiwan have no choice. They have to build on their seismically active islands or give up, which is not an option.
Seems even more active, at least according to number of magnitude 6+ earthquakes since 1900 in the region https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=12.72608...
That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first.
Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
It's been in vogue since the American invasion of Vietnam
right, another reason China shouldn't invoke it to invade a free country.
I don't think China wants to destroy Taiwan. They want it to be a part of China.
Right now there is no non-violent path to achieving that because Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that. Probably with the aid of America, although I’m a lot less certain of that than 5 year ago, and it’s looking like it’s a lot more likely to be with the aid of Japan as well.
Also a success by the PRC would still result in the political destruction of the Republic of China and the subjugation of its people.
It should be noted that even if Taiwan's military resistance were negligible (or on the order of Tibet's), which it's not, that would not validate invading them and taking away their autonomy. For all intents and purposes, Taiwan is a self-governing nation, distinct from China precisely because it does not wish to be part of China.
Taiwan is not distinct from China. Both the ROC and the PRC view Taiwan as part of China (ironically, at the cost of the mass slaughter of taiwanese to in service of the chinese).
"One China" is a political fig leaf that allows both sides to pretend the other country doesn't exist.
Back in reality, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is fully independent from the People's Republic of China and fulfills every criteria of nationhood.
Ok, nothing you said contradicts anything I said
From that perspective, the ROC is the legitimate government of Beijing.
Facts on the ground appear otherwise, but facts on the ground also imply that Taiwan is not part of the PRC's version of China.
> From that perspective, the ROC is the legitimate government of Beijing.
No. I don't understand how you came to this conclusion. Both governments claim legitimacy and only one has actual sovereignty.
In practice, they are both sovereign over separate territories.
With respect to Beijing, only one does.
There is no respect due to Beijing or the Chairman Winnie the Pooh regime on this issue.
Taiwan is an independent country.
> Taiwan is an independent country.
Taiwan is an island. It is still China. It is impossible to both give deference to the ROC and say otherwise.
Nobody is giving them more deference than the other. In a perfect world, the ROC would be the one and only surviving entity from this mess and the PRC would be a relic of history.
That isn’t what the facts on the ground are though. The ROC no more has sovereign jurisdiction over the mainland than the PRC does over Taiwan. Which is to say that at this point they are functionally separate sovereign nations independent of each other, regardless of the claims by either the PRC or the ROC. Or put another way, the way I did the first fucking time: Taiwan is an independent nation.
Agreed.
> Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that
I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite. If anything I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today's climate
> I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree ... I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table
One of the benefits of a free democratic society is that you can ask; and people vote according to their preferences. A recent study suggests ~13% of the public support unification with China: https://www.tpof.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250214-TPO... . Taiwan's politics are dominated by the KMT and DPP parties, both of which oppose unification.
> I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country
Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
>> Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
That or a remarkably flexible sense of morality, coupled with a supine nature and a total lack of balls.
Let's not pretend it's ever moral to support the state you live under. You should support yourself and bide whatever state imposes itself on you.
Ever? No. Whether or not it's moral to support the state under which you live depends entirely on the circumstances. In the best case the state is mostly an expression of the will of the nation, and if your country is invaded you support the state.
But even if the state is parasitical, in the case of an invasion it's usually moral to support it.
It is usually morally correct to fight off literal tyrannical invasion, what are you on about?
Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't moral for the French to fight the Nazis or the people of Afghanistan to fight off the Soviets and Americans?
>You should support yourself and bide whatever state imposes itself on you.
Pathetic. Might as well go back to feudalism with that attitude.
It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that you have influence over, that's democracy.
Ok, so why do people not violently rise up against the us government? They clearly have never represented our values, and they use the pretense of sovereignty to act as if their behavior reflects our interest.
> It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that you have influence over, that's democracy.
So what's our excuse? Do we not have a democracy, or are we simply a contemptible people?
> Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
I live in the US. I think it's pretty obvious the PRC is more competent in every way than our own government is.
And from what I've seen of the ROC parliament, it is also an embarrassment to their own people
> I live in the US. I think it's pretty obvious the PRC is more competent in every way than our own government is.
Yes, and you wouldn't be able to express your political opinion (like you do here on HN or anywhere else) if you were living in China. People living in the US tend to overlook that minute detail.
> you wouldn't be able to express your political opinion (like you do here on HN or anywhere else) if you were living in China
Being able to express our opinion doesn't mean much if nothing ever changes or improves
I'd call the Civil Rights Act an improvement.
I'm willing to concede that the CCP may be more competent than the US government, but the Taiwanese government (despite their antics in parliament) ranks alongside Singapore and Norway in my top three most competent governments in the world. That's purely my own subjective opinion of course but I see no reason for the Taiwanese people to be embarrassed.
If you live in the US, supporting a Chinese invasion is definitely unusual.
> the PRC is more competent in every way
I guess it depends what you mean by competent. Dictatorships can be frightfully competent at certain things, but that doesn't make them a good place to be. We're talking about a country that is genociding its own Uyghur ethnic group, represses Tibetan culture, disappears its own elite athletes, and has a horrific LGBTI record. The US is far from perfect, but has nothing on China in terms of nastiness.
That's not even touching the biggest problem of dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace when he goes.
> The US is far from perfect, but has nothing on China in terms of nastiness.
I think you have this reversed, friend. Our culture is based on violence and death. Theirs is based on stability and prosperity.
> That's not even touching the biggest problem of dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace when he goes.
I pray he liberates us before he passes. I agree it's not likely but.... one must maintain hope in this world
I gave four concrete examples and you gave me hot air in return.
Cool! Make sure you let China know you're ready to surrender. China loves a quisling.
Unification, in this case, means surrendering all rights to privacy, all rights to free expression, everything.
The fact that you wouldn't fight being occupied and forced to be a slave doesn't speak highly of you, but I must admit it's an honest statement, and it's true that a lot of people might feel the same way. A majority of people everywhere are cowards, collaborators and sycophants. But they're along for the ride.
Now, if your country is Burma, I don't blame you.
> rights to privacy, all rights to free expression, everything.
Surely rights to more substantial things like healthcare make this quite an easy decision. Freedom to criticize a government doesn't matter if you can't force the government to actually give a shit about anything
Does Taiwan not have healthcare? Verbatim from Wikipedia:
> According to the Numbeo Health Care Index in 2025, Taiwan has the best healthcare system in the world, scoring 86.5 out of 100,[6] a slight increase from 86 the previous year.[7] This marked the seventh consecutive year that Taiwan has ranked first in the Numbeo Health Care Index.[8]
Access to healthcare and right to healthcare are distinct concepts
Just my sense as an outsider, but a lot of interest in voluntary reunification got chilled after seeing China's actions in Hong Kong. A lot of it stems from lack of trust for the CCP to honor it's idea of a one county two systems form of governence.
I don't know how much the Taiwanese would be willing to fight and die in a military invasion though.
> I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite.
Realy? What is your country and why would you prefer to live under a dictatorship?
The US; and the "dictatorship" such as it is clearly values human life more than our existing government does.
Well that’s not what Amnesty International say.
I’d be careful what you wish, you might just get it.
What is your country? China is always looking for more territory. If you've got water and mineral resources, all the better.
The US. Xi Jinping, please liberate us
Fascinating! Why not? Why would you just lay down and let someone else rule over you?
In terms of survival strategies, letting someone else rule over you was sort of the OG Christian thing before they got control of the Roman Empire. It's kind of the default in most places. Declaring independence and actually succeeding at it and governing yourself is remarkably rare. The question isn't what you think is wise, or what you would do (because no one knows until they're in that situation). It's whether you feel you have anything worth preserving when you are conquered. Some people don't, evidently. Other people do.
> Some people don't, evidently. Other people do.
I like how this can be interpreted two ways, depending on whether you place loved ones above governance, or vice versa.
You simply cannot compare the experience of being conquered in a pre-modern society to being conquered by the PRC.
Premodern States simply couldn't afford the level of oppression and exploitation that is possible today. They usually just replaced the upper layers of the old hierarchy, put some small garrisons in a few places and left most local elites in charge, often with their local armies. If there was an organized rebellion, there would usually be a a few skirmishes and then a re-negotiation of the terms.
Today even Morocco could afford to turn Western Sahara into a territory with total surveillance, checkpoints everywhere and an impenetrable wall in the desert while slowly ethnically cleansing the native population.
This is an excellent point that I overlooked.
Does anyone on earth have a choice otherwise? I would rather be ruled by the PRC than the losers in DC.
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If you lived in a country with local political representation and free elections, would you want your children to grow up in slavery to a dictatorship across the sea? Ask the Irish.
China has already said they'd allow one country two systems.
How’s that going in Hong Kong?
It is going fine in Hong Kong. Still operating as its own system.
The reports I’ve heard and read would be contrary to your claims. When I was in Hong Kong, for example, I saw huge protests, so I wouldn’t call it fine. Inside and out of Hong Kong, I’ve never met an HKer that was pleased about the China government’s plans. I also have heard that “its own system” is not a correct characterisation of the situation.
Have you been to Hong Kong?
LOL. is this a joke? Hong Kong?
No it isn't. Been in Hong Kong for years. Still the same every day life.
China wants to destory Taiwan's democracy, as OP said quite correctly.
By force. Because Taiwan doesn't want to be a part of Beijing's China.
Both points are not really true.
For the China part: Yes, the "by force" part certainly exists as a position, in competition to the peaceful unification approach. It's important to keep in mind, though, that the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction. There was an interesting piece in Foreign Policy about that, a social scientist from the US was questioning Chinese students at an elite university on this very topic and thus had the chance to do a time series observing the attitude change following US actions.
Secondly, in Taiwanese politics, Unification is actually a big topic and even has its own party, the New Party, advocating for it (plus the fringe CUPP). Not popular right now, but certainly existing - and evidently falsifying the notion that the all of "Taiwan doesn't want to be part of Beijing's China".
So according to your logic, it only counts if it's unanimous inside Taiwan to not be taken over by Beijing but it doesn't need to be unanimous for those who want reunification with China?
No. I pointed out that both the "by force" statement for China and the "Taiwan doesn't want" statement are so oversimplified that they became factually incorrect. The "logic" is your inference and neither stated nor implied by me.
How is it not factually correct?
The existance of a faction within Taiwan that wants Taiwan to reunify with Beijing's China isn't materially relevant if they don't have any path forward to accomplish their goal.
>> the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction
This is the argument that you hit your wife because someone on the telephone made you angry.
This is about international relations. You won't get any insight into it if you reduce any point you don't like to argumentative metaphors.
Even within the framework of (structural) realism so popular in contemporary US politics there's this well-known problem that the buildup of defense capabilities of party A looks like aggression to party B - and vice versa. See the seminal work Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Or the relations of Britain and Germany before WW1 and WW2.
The FP article I mentioned, "Trump’s Trade War May Make Elite Young Chinese More Nationalistic" [1], illustrates the argument. You have actual empirical data, changing over time, after exposure to the "treatment". So at least a hint of causality.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/21/trump-tariffs-china-tra...
Come here, chicken. I don't want to hurt you, I just want to eat you!
Become a part of a country with no freedom of speech? Yep, that's destruction.
As a Czech who absolutely hates the Protectorate era, I can still see a good case to use somewhat neutral expressions like "politically unstable" if you want to discuss technical topics like supply chains without delving into the underlying politics.
Declaring "I am a friend of democracies threatened by totalitarian countries" before every economic utterance looks as performative and ultimately counterproductive to me as all the "land acknowledgments" that infected the US academia. (Not coincidentally, those don't help actual Amerindians at all.)
Yeah, Central Europe in the 1930s was politically unstable, no way around it. And it wasn't just question of Czechoslovakia vs. Germany either. Most countries had irredentist movements and/or land demands on their neighbours.
So, let's say the TSMC is the modern equivalent in "supply chain" terms as Czech guns made in Plzeň, like the Škoda 75mm cannon - wait, let's rewind. I'm not saying Czechoslovakia was politically stable in 1939. I'm saying that when your neighbor claims they need to rescue you from instability - like when America says they need to rescue a Latin American or Middle Eastern country from "political instability" when that country elects someone who doesn't want the country's resources owned and run by companies with imperialist backing - that is code for a green light to conquer them and take their resources. The same as it was for the Germans. The same as it is for China re: Taiwan and Russia re: all the former Soviet republics. Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli. I'm sure you wouldn't like your country to be invaded again if the powers around it decide you can't manage your own affairs.
[edit] I also spent about a year living in Prague and I love your country, Czechs are the best, and their sense of freedom is an immense relief from let's say other countries in the EU, so, I think it's amazing that you have maintained your independence from the enormous forces surrounding you and pulling in all directions. I think part of this is something I observed, that Czechs act like they are part of one small family.
Again, context matters and we are likely not talking in a "let us decide whom to invade" context.
BTW "Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli" is not really true, sometimes this happened, but wars have been declared for all sorts of putative reasons, like "our particular minority is being oppressed" or "the neighbouring government plotted against the life of our sovereign" or "they are infidels, go get them".
Anyway I don't really see what you propose. Binning expressions because someone someday used them in bad faith, in the belief that this will stop future invasions from happening?
This seems to be somewhat futile to me. Invasions aren't fundamentally caused by words. Words only work as a cloak and one cloak can be easily substituted by another, and it will, depending on the current state of politics in the invader and invadee country.
Note that the Russians explained their invasion into Ukraine by calling them "fascists". Should the Western civilization drop the word forever because of that?
The cloak of words has always been needed, for some reason, to convince a population to make the sacrifices necessary to go to war.
Yes, there have been other spoken reasons for invading a peaceful sovereign country. This does not change the fact that Russia is the belligerent party against Ukraine, or that China is the belligerent against a completely harmless and peaceful Taiwan.
Taiwan's situation right now is very similar to Czechoslovakia's in 1938. There is no international treaty with teeth to protect it. There is every reason for China to create a rationale for invading it. The people there have a decent life and don't want to live under occupation. And the reasons for invasion look similar; taking over industrial capacity under the guise of saving people from their confused political state.
> The cloak of words has always been needed, for some reason
Needed? Probably not. There is just no reason not to use that cloak of words.
It is indeed somewhat similar (though the sea is a better barrier + they don't have a major fifth column on their territory). And I would smell rat if it was a Chinese CCP official uttering the words about "political instability", but that would exactly be the change of context necessary.
If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability", they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what will happen in context of their own jobs.
Ahhahah. For SWEs I think the phrase is "undefined behavior".
FWIW, my friend, I'm a Jew and I spent 5 years in France, Spain and Germany before coming to Prague. Czechia was the one place I felt welcome and safe in the EU. The noble history of the Czechs played a big role in that, but you could feel it every day in the way people treated each other. There is something incredible there about the people, the family, the place and the intelligence of Czechia. It is about keeping a small land for your family and people. I would say it's similar in many ways to Israel.
Now someone will come and shoot me, heheh.
But - there was a point. This is also why I defend Taiwan and I think everyone should. People should be free to get together to decide that they want to be part of something, not swallowed up by neighbors who despise their way of life.
Czechia is the most Jewish-friendly country in the EU, and will likely stay so. Our Jewish community used to be very vibrant and it is sorely missed.
We should indeed defend Taiwan, but we (as "the entire EU") seem to be lukewarm even about defending Ukraine which is much closer to us and in a hot war. Some people just prefer sticking their head in the sand.
Maybe the Jewish people are better at discerning building-up danger, because of their long history of persecution.
I hope it remains so. I felt an affinity from even before I stepped off the train from Munich. It's a funny story - my passport was examined by German police in the bar car of the train. My passport was not in order and they were radio calling to see whether to haul me back to Munich and detain me. I played for time as the border approached. The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice trip, and he took me into the store room on the train, opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!" And immediately I fell in love with the country. I would say, God bless that bartender on the train but almost everyone I met in the next year in Prague was equally kind and wonderful.
I can't speak for all Jewish people, but yes we are raised reading history to understand the way that threats can build up over time, and the multiple masks that threats can wear. For me, personally, I see this as an affinity to all small, powerless but free people... Kurds, Taiwanese, Ukrainians, Tibetans, Yazidis... particularly those who don't evangelize but simply want to be left alone to prosper and live in peace with their own people. Czechs are similar to that as the most "western-facing Slavic people" and I grew up in America enthralled by Vaclav Havel as a beacon for individuals and every small nation wanting freedom.
You are of course right that this history of persecution raises one's antennae and evokes horror at anything that seems to favor totalitarian modes of thinking. But the Czechs level of paranoia made me laugh sometimes, maybe because it was so similar.
"The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice trip, and he took me into the store room on the train, opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!""
I can almost hear him. That is basically the essence of Czechdom :)
It is interesting how some aspects of culture are essentially the same and others diverge wildly once you cross the border. When it comes to Bier and Schnitzel and snowy Christmas, Czechs are almost indistinguishable from Bavarians. But in other aspects it is just as you saw it, two worlds apart.
Spot on. And the mistake of considering appeasement of said totalitarian superpower by “letting them have it” would be just as enormous.
Comparing Nazi Germany and the PRC in any way is certainly an interesting choice, considering they're the one major power in the world that actually doesn't have a recent history of invading sovereign nations.
Come again? Tibet was absolutely a sovereign nation. I guess it depends what you mean by "recent", but the colonization is still underway, daily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
'Tibet was absolutely a sovereign nation. I guess it depends what you mean by "recent"'
The rest of the world notes from afar that Hawaii became a US state in 1959, whilst Tibet entered the PRC way back in 1951.
In 1993, the US congress apologised for this - they didn't give it back :)
Yeah they do. Even right now they're trying to take territory from the Philippines.
China just has a history of denying what they're doing as they're doing it.
There are so many examples online. My favourite is of a Chinese warship ramming into its own coast guard vessel as they fail to intimidate the Philippines Coast Guard.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev22n0lm1xo
does the Sino-Vietnamese War not count as recent?
This is a lie. China has an ongoing invasion of Bhutan.
China built a road and villages and military outposts in Bhutan, over China-Bhutan border.
China doesn’t want to destroy Taiwan , it wants to reunite with it like it did with other territories that had been taken by foreign powers, like happened to Hong Kong and Macau. Taiwan was occupied by Japan and then never went back to being China after the Japanese were defeated because the Chinese Party that was defeated in the Revolution fled to the Island and never accepted the PRC as legit government in China. Some of the more nationalist Taiwanese even consider themselves to be the legit government in exile of all China. You seem to not understand any of that when you compare China with Nazi Germany, really embarrassing.
There’s definitely something embarrassing going on, and it starts but does not end with confusing destruction of a state with destruction of… I’m not even sure what you had in mind. The land? The infrastructure?
Taiwan’s democracy is absolutely threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower, that wasn’t in any way incorrect or misleading, and that’s how the GP post phrased it. Its state is threatened with destruction. That’s entirely accurate.
Where are you from? Did you know Taiwan is not recognized as a state independent of China by Europe, the USA, Japan and nearly every other country with the exception of 12 small countries?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
You want it to be a state but your own country says it’s not one most likely. Stop embarrassing yourself.
The concept of “political fiction” exists and is important, yes, but we need not confuse it for reality.
[edit] I think I’ve used the wrong term here but I think I get the idea across. There are diplomatic lies maintained in many situations where everyone largely operates like it’s not true, and the situation with Taiwan is so quintessentially one of these that’s it’s a common first example to illustrate the point. In my defense it’s been a loooong time since my last international relations class.
What happens is Taiwan opposes the union? You know, through a democratic vote?
The standard authoritarian playbook would require moving to step two, which we saw in action a few years ago on the other side of Eurasia:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/stark-b...
I guess it depends on what sort of monetary damage the typical Hokkaido earthquake would have on a fab - just result in a bad batch of chips perhaps, or also damage equipment? Obviously it's known that the region is very seismically active (159 earthquakes in Hokkaido so far this year!), but Japan are used to having to build to minimize earthquake damage.
https://earthquaketrack.com/p/japan/hokkaido/recent
I believe Koreans would find being colonized again to be at least a little bit objectionable.
Hokkaido is significantly safer compared to Honshu. It does still experience quakes, but it is at least not directly on major fault lines.
Japan doesn't have the option of building in Korea? Not if it wants to retain sovereign control.
Japan is quite adept at building structures resistant to earthquakes and tsunami. I'd be very surprised if the designers and architects of this endeavor are unaware of the issues.
Given Korea hasn’t been a Japanese colony since the War, and they want to build in their territory, options are limited.
Why would the Japanese government back a company to build chips...in Korea?
TSMC is in a seismically active region
you have silicon valley right by the San Andreas fault line..
Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.
Is Hokkaido defensible? Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.
What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon? How many wars has China started?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.
China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.
There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.
Wait till you find out Taiwan has the same claims.
Taiwan has been illegally building tiny military outposts throughout the sea to try and enforce its claims, like the PRC's doing? Because that's what I was talking about.
Who decides which military posts are legal and illegal?
Then if it's decided it's illegal, who enforces that decision?
"Why's everyone scaremongering about China?"
*reasons given for China being an actual threat*
"Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
> reasons given for China being an actual threat
I never said they weren't a threat, I said they haven't done anything illegal. But with the reasons you gave, then the US is an even bigger threat to my country.
> "Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
You still haven't answered my question and are beating it around the bush with silly jokes.
And you know the answer, you just don't like to say it because it's not politically correct. Here, I'll remove your burden and say the uncomfortable truth for you: In war, whatever you can get away with, is legal. Similar to all the warmongering and meddling the US has done in the Middle East, Asia and LATNM. If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal. Same with China's actions. When you're too big and too powerful to be held accountable for your actions, nothing that you do can be illegal because legality is an artificial man made construct where the strong enforce their will on the weak, not an irrefutable fact of nature. This has been the US's MO and soon China's.
You might not like that it's like this, but IT IS like this. And you're not doing yourself nor anyone any favors by pretending it isn't like this.
I don't disagree with your general argument, but I do have a small nitpick with this:
> If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal.
Just because someone isn't punished for an act doesn't make the act legal. I think a more accurate description of the behaviour of certain countries is "if you can get away with it, who cares if it's legal."
It's illegal, but that's inconvenient to your narrative, so you'd rather play definitional games like this.
"Nothing's illegal in war, bro!"
yep, and the industrial output/military to back up its claim to the mainland! no wait....
China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.
I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
The best defense is to have a military strong enough they won't dare attack.
Which is what China is doing because the US is a liability to everyone not in their sphere of influence. But that's bad apparently.
"Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death."
Otto von Bismarck
The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]
[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3333468/ch...
About a decade ago, some Chinese propagandists were encouraging calling Okinawa the Ryukyu kingdom and trying to ferment an independence campaign. It didn’t get too far.
Ryukyu was an independent kingdom with its own ruling court, language, culture etc until 1872, when it was annexed by Japan. Quite a few Okinawans would rather like to return to the previous state of affairs, although probably not if it involves exchanging the Japanese yoke for the Chinese one. (Ryukyu was a Qing tributary, but the Qing had bigger problems on their hands than worrying about a bunch of small islands.)
Not "ferment". "Foment".
Nice analogy though.
This is to counter the claim of the Japanese PM that Japan might join in the war if China goes for Taiwan.
China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.
Speaking as an Indian. Most of these are just diplomatic flexing of muscles which mostly reduce to literally nothing.
There is not going to a be a war in the modern context.
Secondly, only one war has happened between China and India, in which arguably we Indians kind of started it- Read here- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_policy_(Sino-Indian_co...
""" The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India began to occupy territory that China considered to be its own. India's thinking was partly based on the fact that China had many external problems in early 1962, especially with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. Also, Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish a war.[18]
"""
Nonsense. China occupied big chunch of Indian land. They will be a big war sooner or later. It's just how the world works
You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We stubbornly refuse to.
Both countries, have now have growing economies with stable politics, and social direction. Things can only get better from here, and will.
Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok. Because way bigger good things await these both nations. And we want them.
Either way there is no theatre. The Himalayas make a large wall and ensure no big border conflict can even happen. Even through missiles. The remainder is irrelevant, and both parties are more than happy to just keep talking until some agreement is in place, which even without isn't much of an issue with regards to economy, resources or anything.
Much ado about nothing!
As someone who has been living in Asia for decades (including in several of China's neighbouring countries), thank you for this even-handed take. It aligns very well with my own experience of how people living in these regions outside of the Western media bubble generally think about China.
No it doesn't.
Thank you for voicing a different tone than the seemingly prevalent obscene warmongering. I believe people of good will are generally less comfortable speaking out and are therefore underrepresented, including here on HN.
> You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We stubbornly refuse to.
Americans love sending other people into meat grinders for bankers' profit.
What people like you never understand is that ccp doesn't believe in peace. They are expansionists.
By the way China doe not want to share the power with anyone in Asia
China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).
So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?
They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people and China holds regular military exercises around that island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.
It may not be far fetched but it would absolutely be a self inflicted wound to the PRC. Galvanizing global concern towards china.
The CCP takes a long view of things. They know the diplomatic fallout from the invasion will subside eventually, so they're less worried about "global concern" than you might think. It's likely they would have done the invasion already but for the fact that invasions over water are really difficult and they're not sure it would succeed.
That did not stop russia.
Don't most people maintain the view that Tibet is part of PRC China? They might think further autonomy or independence for it would be a good thing, like the Basque Country, but the control isn't really disputed right now. And nobody really seems to think it should be part of India.
In contrast to Taiwan, where the governments in both Beijing and Taipei officially maintain that those places are part of the same country, and the international community sometimes pretends the same and only recognises one government, but de facto everyone trades with both countries and deals with both governments.
Sure, Tibet is part of China now. But the country was independent from 1912 until China annexed it in 1951. I'm pretty sure most Tibetans would rather be independent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands
Okay it belongs to Taiwan, and they actually claim it, period.
Islands that were stolen from China during the Imperial Japanese occupation?
> Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs.
Not an issue I follow, but I did read something that said China had proposed swapping claimed territory for zones of actual control, and India turned them down.
North Korea is a buffer zone. That's the reason.
isn't that the same clever argument that Comrade Vladimir uses in Ukraine?
It's literally the same argument that every king, dictator, or president used to justify invasions in Europe (and presumably most of the world) since the end of feudalism. Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that land in the distant past.
> Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that land in the distant past.
Interestingly enough, there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
> there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
There is no credible theory to that effect. Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus. Namely, Proto-Germanic speakers did visit the eastern Baltic coast for trading and raiding, and so there are Germanic loanwords into Finnic languages of Proto-Germanic date, but the agreed location where Proto-Germanic formed is in Scandinavia, not Finland.
> Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus.
I'm not sure you have a good grasp on the meaning of the word "recent". A recent theory, by definition, must differ from the consensus.
> There is no credible theory to that effect.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.13.584607v2
Granted, they don't say "Finland". They say "the northeast along the Baltic coastline".
Yes, I’m afraid that you are still misunderstanding the research. Your linked article speaks about gene flow associated with the movement of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers to Scandinavia, but later Proto-Germanic formed in southern Scandinavia according to the longstanding consensus. This is clearly spelled out in the abstract: “Following the disintegration of Proto-Germanic, we find by 1650 BP a southward push from Southern Scandinavia.”
There’s no new theory here at all, just some nice archaeogenetic evidence to support a quite traditional view. FWIW, I work in a closely related field and am constantly reading Germanic–Finnic and Baltic–Finnic contact literature, and I can assure you this is old-hat stuff.
Do you think I'm misunderstanding something other than that I'm not drawing the same distinction between proto-Germanic and "paleo-Germanic" that that paper appeals to?
You've quoted something that says after proto-Germanic had diversified, daughter lineages left southern Scandinavia to establish themselves elsewhere in the world.
But I pointed out a completely different idea in the paper, that before proto-Germanic diversified, about 2000 years before the time you mention, its speakers arrived in Scandinavia from "the northeast coast of the Baltic".
Your post above wrote “the location of the proto-Germanic speakers”. Terminology matters; Proto-Germanic is something strictly defined as to what it was, with a longstanding consensus about where and when it was. If you wanted to talk about pre-Proto-Germanic speakers (or “Paleo-Germanic” speakers as this paper does, though I suspect some would quibble with that term used for a very early date), then you could have done so.
Moreover, you posted about a “new theory”, but the paper here only gives new evidence for an old theory.
Bingo
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s Prime Minister), on the day that China launched an unprovoked surprise war against India in 1962. It was a crushing victory for China, and they grabbed all their territory they wanted. More can always be said but here’s a 2 minute video that explains the war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek
You know how Mao said diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun? That wasn’t a metaphor. That is PRC policy since 1949.
> And then there's Tibet.
I suspect they only care about Tibet in as much as it’s crucial for freshwater supply across significant parts of Asia, which is precisely why there are border clashes with Indian forces.
That's a fair point if you only start the clock in 1949, but it's not scaremongering. It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.
The territory we now call "China" is the product of relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own justification is usually "they were Chinese all along" (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute). That's the same logic every empire has ever used.
Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most successful conquest dynasty in human history.
For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not because it lacked capability or ambition.
Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven" belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).
So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook. Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even starts.
> It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.
Now do the same for the USA, UK, Japan, Italy, Turkey, etc.
Right. There's no clan that's blameless. All our current progress stands on a mountain of blood and death. Humanity is drenched in war. Is that all we can ever be?
Let's wait for some aliens. And then human apes can finally stop squabbling among themselves because they then realize how insignificant they are.
How about a fake alien reveal?
Probably at some point there will be only one country?
What will it be called?
Humanity
US needs China to have something for us to rally against, otherwise focus might be on the asset owners vs workers, which would cripple us.
We need to win the AI race! The implication being that there can not be more than one winner…
since WW2: Annexation of Tibet, Taiwan Strait Crisis, Sino-Indian War, Sino-Vietnamese War.
Also Korean War, 1959 Tibetan Uprising, Nathu La and Cho La clashes, Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, Paracel Islands conflict, Sino-Vietnam border clashes, Johnson South Reef Skirmish, China–India border clashes (Galwan), South China Sea standoffs.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges
These do not have a non-hostile invasion purpose. China could have used these peacefully as some sort of "Look at how peaceful we are" PR in getting aid into Palestine, like the US's floating piers, and likely had better results, but they didn't, because these are war machines for invading Taiwan.
Almost all other military buildup China has done can be validly called protecting itself from a US blockade and maintain an ability to protect shipping, but these barges cannot be considered anything else.
>What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon?
China has publicly declared their intentions to take back Taiwan, and publicly declared their intent to be militarily competitive with the United States, and publicly bitches and moans whenever anyone treats Taiwan as the independent country it is.
Stop squeezing your eyes shut.
There's heavy investment in spreading lies about China. HackerNews consumes that shit just like american teenagers consume tiktok.
For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
> How many wars has China started?
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India completely unprovoked over some border territory. China’s aggression continues unabated even into present day - they’ve been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure on India. That has been China’s way of negotiating all their borders - through violence first. More can always be said but here’s a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.
Here you are defending China when I bet you’d be hard pressed to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken’s Neck on a map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously claiming you don’t know of the Nine Dash line and the violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime claims?
Traditional threat to Hokkaido is Soviet tank battalions, not Chinese. It's roughly due east to Vladivostok and to south of Sakhalin island. Unless Russian Federation actually falls and these regions change hands into hostile entities, it should be okay. And there will be more important things to worry than continuing economical chip production if that happens.
“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?” -Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, directed at Japan
Is that not a threat?
Japan's also like, long as the distance between Warsaw to Barcelona. Or to Gibraltar if you include islands south to Okinawa. And Hokkaido is an "island" that's about as big as the entire Czech Republic. Is investment in a French chip factory considered risky because it's practically right in front of Russia... not really no?
The Chinese threat is also being handled by rapid rearmament. JSDF has been like, dual-fast-tracking lots of things including MRBMs for operational capabilities in 2026-27 timeframes.
I found this a really funny thread of answers to read. Maybe Japan should start making historical claims like China does. Japan could claim much of Asia, create a new historical narrative that the atrocities were manufactured fake news and that the oppressed peoples of Taiwan, Korea, Nanjing, South East Asia, and Oceania were illegally forced to leave the Japanese Empire due to propaganda and illegal militantism where the victors then created a fake narrative of Japanese war crimes. Maybe Japan should tear up the peacenik constitution that was forced on it by Nuclear USA and written by a woman from Kansas and turn the SDF back into the Japanese War Machine - revive industries, begin to reclaim territories for essential resources, and once again move towards the creation of a glorious co-prosperity sphere. The US seems to be reviving the NAZI war machine and is only steps away from adopting swastika as a positive symbol, so why not Japan bring back the old flag and mentality too? - I know this is ridiculous. So are most of these comments.
Japan has a big army/"self-defence force", impenetrable terrain over most of its territory, and 45 tonnes of plutonium. Even if the defence treaty with the US vanishes, the probability of a foreign invasion is rather low.
Yes. But I will entertain the idea that Hokkaido is not defensible. Now, with Hokkaido not being defensible, please explain why it has been an Japanese territory since the 15th century?
If we aren’t already in a world war from China solving Taiwan as you say, we would be in one from China taking Korea or Japan.
I don't know. China is pretty successful so far in "solving Ukraine" by propping up the moth infested bear pelt USSR animatronic that is Russia.
Taiwan just the last remnant that the losing faction of the China civil war still holds. I don't think that China wants to conquer korea or japan. Having a vassal is usually cheaper than outright conquest and occupation. They just want the US vassals to switch to being China's
"Once China solves the Taiwan problem"? Then I suppose Japan has nothing to worry about.
“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?”
- Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, in reference to Japan
It depends what japan and korea will do to piss of China just to please their far away masters.
> Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.
China will not annex Japan or South Korea. As a Chinese person, I can assure you that this is not how our mindset works at all. Most of the Western media hype about this is deliberately designed to muddy the waters around the Taiwan issue. Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity. But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples. Every non-Chinese group has always been viewed as a net burden. Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port, the price would be having to assimilate tens of millions of Burmese people. That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it. The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.” So with South Korea and Japan, the real goal is to surpass them industrially and economically, to leave them in the dust on the factory floor and in the lab. When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table. No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.
> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.
Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the legitimate democratic ROC government then.
yeah its a civil war, lets see who will won.
(Thank you for acknowledging that this is a civil war — that's something you rarely see on Western forums.)
Chiang Kai-shek is a standard part of the world history course in the US in high school. We know why China wants Taiwan at the personal level, much of the world is just interested in that not happening.
It's a civil war like the American revolution was a civil war and France helped out.
This is the first time I've ever seen a non-Chinese person say it this way on Reddit, X, or this platform. I must have scrolled through way too much Reddit.
Yep, it's 100% common knowledge. I distinctly remember Mr. Eyerly making a point to explain why Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jieshi were both valid transliterations in my 10th grade world history class.
No one in America with a high school education believes that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map. Chinese history from antiquity to modern European/Japanese colonialism and war crimes to the unresolved civil war and KMT's retreat from the mainland are standard course material; the history and politics around reunification aren't some big mystery.
Don't get me wrong. The history is interesting, but from an American perspective interesting history doesn't translate into justification for violent incursion on an established nation's sovereignty. We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with. The American lesson from our history isn't "we screwed up in Iraq and Vietnam, so other countries should get a pass to behave similarly"; it's "let's work to prevent such tragedies from repeating".
> We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with.
Of course you don't support invasions of your puppet nation that only exists because of your intervention. But let's flip this around. Suppose that there was a second American civil war, one side lost and retreated to California. PRC funds the losers, stations troops there, signs a treaty guaranteeing to defend their independence. Do you think the US would ever, in a million years, accept that? Even after 75 years, it's obvious the US is going to state that California still belongs to it, and would try to reclaim it whenever possible.
If you looked at this objectively, rather than from your perspective as the defender of the puppet state, it would be clear that PRC's claim is justified. All the more so because not only was the territory rightfully theirs, but now they have a hostile power from halfway across the world threatening to use it as a staging point against them.
Your American lesson, also, does not disbar any country from having any claim to any land. America is by far the most egregious actor in the world stage because it routinely does, in fact, invade lands that are halfway across the world. It can be true that invading a country on the other side of the planet is wrong, and that seeking to re-unify your partitioned country is not so wrong.
That said, I don't particularly expect it to ever come to war, anyways. I think it's much more realistic that PRC will exercise political influence and economic pressure to achieve re-unification rather than invasion.
I'm sure that's subjectively clear to you, maybe not so much to the people actually living in Taiwan or the hypothetical independent California.
I agree that, in principle, the people of every territory should have the right to peaceful self-determination regardless of validity of other people's claims to territory. In practice, virtually nobody acknowledges that right, even though it's ostensibly the first article of the UN charter. The Irish had to make life hell for the English to get any concessions, Catalonia had its independence movement dismantled, Kurds are oppressed by every state they live in. The US itself is guilty of this; there was no particular reason the union of two completely opposite cultures had to be enforced, and in another timeline perhaps there was a peaceful national divorce. The hypothetical independent California was actually, in reality, an independent Confederacy of several states, and their independence movement was crushed. To that extent, I could agree China is in the wrong, but only insomuch as any other country is, and it should not be singled out as a particularly aggressive nation when it's playing by the same international norms as the rest of the world. That it wants to reclaim Taiwan is in no way indicative that it has any intention to invade Korea or Japan, as supposed upthread.
It sounds like we have some common ground, but I think you may have a misunderstanding of the present American worldview and politics.
We're 79 years removed from Philippine independence, and you would have to try very hard to find a single American who wants them back. The US military would have been fully capable of annexing Iraq and Afghanistan with violent repression of dissent and zero concern for civilian casualties, had that been the will of the people. After 75 years of peaceful coexistence with a hypothetical independent California, I would be very surprised to see any political will for annexation.
The "same international norms as the rest of the world" you refer to are anachronistic. The post-WWII norms, to a large extent defined and upheld by the US, aren't based around maximal balkanization or unconditional support for separatism, but rather opposition to transfer of territory by force. If that sounds like ladder-pulling, maybe it is, but China has no standing to complain; Western conquests have been largely disbanded, while China remains as the third-largest nation in the world (ahead of the US).
I'm not claiming that the US has never done anything wrong. I asserted the opposite of that. I'm arguing that pointing out someone else's crime isn't a justification for someone to go commit a crime of their own. If you shoot someone from a rival gang, your lawyer isn't going to argue in court that it's okay because someone else from that gang shot someone else a decade ago. There's actually a word for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.
But if we both agree that wars of aggression are bad regardless of whether they're started by the US, China, Russia, or anyone else, then we're basically on the same page.
I think that the American worldview is heavily propagandised and doesn't particularly reflect reality. The post WWII-norms are not at all a story of peaceful self-determination. The decolonisation of the Phillipines was an anomaly and an outlier. At the same time that the US was letting go of the Phillipines, it was gearing up for war in Korea on behalf of its puppet military dictatorship that was, at the time, even more repressive than the North Korean one. The Dutch fought a war in an attempt to keep control of Indonesia. France fought a war for its colonial possessions, which the US joined in on. Portugal fought wars for its colonial possessions. The UK let India go only because it was utterly ravaged by WWII, and they recognised they would not likely be able to keep it by force.
Moreover, the US specifically simply adopted a different model: puppet governance. As did the USSR. You would hardly find an American who would say that the USSR was benevolent, despite the fact that they believe themselves to be benevolent while doing the same things. Invading a country to install a regime loyal to yours is not meaningfully different from annexing the country outright. But it allows the populace at home to believe that they are doing the right thing. Why, their form of governance is the best governance in the world, so they're doing other nations a favor by invading them and replacing their governments!
Americans will make all kinds of fuss over China doing meaningless posturing in territorial waters, meanwhile their government is currently launching missiles in Venezulean waters, actually killing people. They violated the sovereignity of Iranian airspace, dropping bunker busters on government buildings. They assassinated another nation's top general. These are all acts of war. Nothing has changed. America continues to operate as it always has, under the principle of "might makes right", while dressing its operations up in pretty rhetoric.
Pointing out hypocrisy in ongoing international norms is not whataboutism. In a world where nobody is ever punished for shooting a rival gang member, then you either shoot or get shot; that is simply the natural way of things. And moreover, the prosecutor bringing charges against the Red Gang is a member of the Blue Gang that shot theirs first. Why would the Red Gang entertain, for a moment, the charges of aggression from the Blue Gang which did already intervene in its civil war and effectively seized territory from it? For the Blue Gang to possibly be convincing to the Red Gang, it would first need to make amends and to stop actively committing 10x worse crimes than the crime it accuses the Red Gang of. If we want a peaceful world, I'd argue the onus is on the US to live up to its self-proclaimed "rules based international order" first, because it is the one violating those rules the most, and other nations will not simply lie down and agree to be bound by rules that are openly being violated to their detriment.
I'm in agreement that wars of aggression are bad, but I strongly dislike the tendency for that to be selectively leveraged to paint only certain actors in a bad light. I think from a non-American perspective, it's pretty clear that the US is a much more egregious international actor than China. But if you agree with that, you're in a true minority of Americans. Even if there are a substantial portion of Americans who disagree with their own invasions, most of them will still see China as much worse than themselves, despite the fact that the PRC's last and only real invasion was the reclamation of Tibet 70 years ago, and otherwise it has only started a couple of minor border skirmishes for the entirety of its existence. Meanwhile Americans engage in Yellow Scare-esque fearmongering about China invading Japan which, as a neutral third party, seems so far outside the realm of possibility as to be utterly delusional.
Even if the criticism is fair, it's still whataboutism. I agree with you that countries other than China have done bad things, including post-WWII, but not that it in any way justifies turning the streets of Taipei into a warzone.
I wouldn't unconditionally agree that "the US is a much more egregious international actor than China". I'd use a more neutral descriptor than "egregious", maybe "militaristic". Following the rule of "might makes right", as you point out, the US more or less became the self-appointed world police after WWII. That's inherently going to involve unpopular decisions and occasional abuse of power, but it's a fundamentally different relationship with the world than pure assertion of first-party interests. The ultimate goal of post-WWII American foreign policy has been to ensure that the rest of the world remains stable and open enough for reliable trade, from which China has also benefited tremendously.
US as world police is a mixed bag, but it is what it is. No one outside the US is really complaining that America bears the cost of its navy protecting international trade routes, for example. I'm as harsh a critic of certain US actions and policies as anyone, but modern American hegemony doesn't resemble the prior centuries of great powers running amok. The US today doesn't invade innocent countries for the purpose of stealing their land and resources or enslaving their people.
The concerns about China aren't limited to its past military actions, but also its domestic policies and stated future goals. For better or worse, China's domestic policies are quite illiberal relative to American values. This alone precludes China from being considered a clear ally of the US, and informs perceptions of what a hypothetical Chinese-led world order might look like. China gets to play the "what about America" card because the US is still generally invested in globalism, but how China might behave in a power vacuum created by a US shift to isolationism remains speculative.
so the war in Venezuela...
.. would be an illegal American war, yes. Like most of the American incursions into South America and violations of sovereignty of South American countries.
Yep, any war of aggression would be wildly unpopular today. Limited actions may be somewhat tolerated inasmuch as they're seen as being at the behest of the legitimate Venezuelan government in exile, but no one wants a land invasion or to see American missiles killing civilians.
I'm not saying it could never happen, but the party in power would be burning a ridiculous amount of political capital, to put it mildly. A big part of the reason President Trump even exists is the perception that Bush lied to get us into Iraq and Obama kept us there. Trump consistently ran as the "anti-war" candidate, and Biden was also known for his dovish politics.
I don't understand why you think an invasion or widespread airstrikes would be unlikely.
- Trump has been building up our military presence in the area over the last few months[1]
-He's already striking boats that he claims have weapons of mass destruct... I mean drugs in them
- Trump said “I don’t think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them,” [1]
- He declared the cartels terrorist groups [2]
I believe he's going to link Marudo to the cartels and use it to justify a war to force him out of power.
Republicans, will support him. He'll lie, like he always does, and they'll believe it either due to stupidity or tribalism. The further they follow him the more painful admitting they are wrong will be.
[1]https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-won-t-congress-ove...
[2]https://www.state.gov/designation-of-international-cartels
I haven't commented one way or another on the likelihood of an invasion. My claim is that an escalation from limited airstrikes to full-scale invasion would be wildly unpopular, which I stand by.
Blaming Bush is justified because he lied about WoD. Obama pulled out in 2011, the date Bush agreed to in 2008.
Are you referring to 2014s invasion because of ISIS?
I'm not referring to any specific actions or commenting on who did what. I summarized what I've observed to be the common perception, which is that Iraq and Afghanistan were "forever wars" conducted against the informed consent of the American public, and a spectacular failure of our institutions and both party establishments.
If that sounds lacking in nuance, well, I never claimed to believe American political discourse was particularly nuanced ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Are both parties equally responsible?
Shouldn't discussions be as nuanced as possible if change is expected?
Of course they're not.
Ideally they would be, but I haven't observed that they generally are and wouldn't make such a claim.
Reddit is the dumbest forum on the web, so id say yes!
I think a lot of us recognize it was a civil war. The idea that it is a civil war, conducted in the present tense, is the weird and dangerous one. When was the last actual fighting, WW2?
There are a number of frozen conflicts around the world, like North/South Korea and Cyprus. Both of those could be regarded as "civil war with external support", like Vietnam. What would be better is if those involved could recognize the situation as it actually is on the ground, and withdraw their claims and intents of actually resuming armed conflict.
Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts over ancient grudges, from the Hundred Years War to the Balkans. The post-WW2 world order was an attempt to finally draw a hard line underneath that.
> Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts over ancient grudges
most of the conflicts today is created by Europe(+US). for example, the china-taiwan issue didn't resovled before is because USA Intervene. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide originated from the artificial division of the same ethnic group during the colonial period; the India-Pakistan conflict was a deliberately left-over dispute by the colonial powers upon their withdrawal(UK); the border issues between Cambodia and Thailand(France), as well as the ongoing turmoil in the Palestinian region(UK USA), are all closely linked to historical interference by external forces(Europe).
Korea is also permanently partitioned thanks to being played as pawns between the Former Europeans and Vodka Europeans. Europeans really managed to get their fingers in everything.
> that's something you rarely see on Western forums.
No, it's quite common.
My personal experience tells me that people are happy to praise China’s achievements in technology and poverty alleviation, but when it comes to the territorial issues of Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, a completely uniform narrative has already formed. Every single day on Reddit I see a new map of China being Balkanized.
> That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it
China was happy to invade Tibet and assimilate it's population.
Hard to believe that a government who claims all of South China sea, large parts of India (Arunachal Pradesh) does not want to expand.
Or do you think people of Arunachal Pradesh are also Chinese?
Arunachal Pradesh is a historic part of Tibet and was part of the Qing Empire before the Chinese revolution of 1912.
When Tibet then broke away from China the Brits got what is now Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet.
Hence the ongoing Chinese claim but the days of any military actions are long gone.
If historical claims are valid, then Mongols would be very happy to claim large swaths of land. Or if more recent claims are to be taken, then the Brits have claims over quite a large amount of countries.
Historical claims are meaningless and are just an excuse for expansion.
I did not comment on the "validity" of the claim, just explained its rationale and history.
Chinese territorial claims in general are not "an excuse for expansion", they are rooted in territorial losses at the end of the 19th century and during the revolution of 1912 with the formal aim of recovering them. They also predate the PRC as you'll find that the ROC/Taiwan has the same claims for the same reason. This does not mean that China is going to go to war over them, certainly it won't go to war with India.
No need for drama or hysteria over those claims.
> This does not mean that China is going to go to war over them, certainly it won't go to war with India.
Then why make a claim? Claims are made to prepare the domestic audience so that when war comes there is home support for the action. It is not made lightly.
The Chinese are definitely taking action in the South China Sea. It is not just words.
> Claims are made to prepare the domestic audience so that when war comes there is home support for the action. It is not made lightly.
That's your opinion, not reality.
What is in your view the need to make a claim?
if its not valid maybe we should return Califonia to mexico?
Tibet is not (and was not) defended by a nuclear superpower. South Korea and Japan both have United States military bases and troops stationed there.
I am willing to bet all of the money I will ever make in my lifetime that China will not invade either one as long as they remain under the US nuclear umbrella.
For those unfamiliar with the history, Taiwan’s (ROC) own constitution says it is part of China. Its dispute is with the CCP, not China itself.
Conflating the PRC vs ROC conflict with a China vs Japan conflict is just ignorant.
That is, the constitution written by the KMT dictatorship that was awarded the island as spoils of war after the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in WW2.
In the present day, neither the Taiwanese government nor Taiwanese people are in some kind of dispute with the CCP over who owns Gansu province or whatever, they just would like recognition of their already-existing sovereignty.
That's a little misrepresenting history... Taiwan was part of the Qing Empire and Japan took it in 1895 following China's defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War. China got it back after WWII.
Sure, and before the Qing armies invaded it was declared an independent kingdom by a Ming loyalist who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother, and before that there were a couple of European outposts and scattered settlers from Fujian, and before that there were indigenous peoples who themselves are part of an ethnic group that can now be found everywhere from Madagascar to New Zealand.
The point I was responding to was the misleading comment that the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in some kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is entirely a CCP framing of the issue. Few if any people in modern-day Taiwan believe that they are the true inheritors of the Chinese mainland. The pretense has to be upheld in order to preserve the status quo, but in practice there is no serious movement staking a claim to any part of China.
> the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in some kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is entirely a CCP framing of the issue.
This is broadly true, not just "CCP framing". Obviously because of history and external influence there is also an "independentist" faction.
I don't see why this should be hard to accept unless the aim is indeed a "reframing" to push the independentist narrative, which does not really need it as the status quo mean de facto independence. So perhaps the aim is actually more along the lines of an anti-China narrative.
This comment is so divorced from reality on the ground in Taiwan that it's hard to respond to. Certainly, someone can look at cherry-picked pieces of legislature or historical documents and imagine that they represent some kind of intrinsic truth, but in reality it is simply not the case that Taiwanese people understand themselves as locked in some kind of ongoing civil war with the CCP. The culture has long since moved on from 1940s era politics that even at the time were imported by a minority group from the mainland.
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This is so stupid. It doesn't mean anything. History is history. What exists now is that Taiwan is an independent country with its own currency and military, and Taiwanese pay no taxes to China.
If you want to use history as some kind of justification, why don't we go all the way back to when the human race originated in Africa?
The ROC claims it is China, not a part of China.
But sibling comment is correct that today the PRC and ROC are functionally two separate nations, and neither wants unification by submitting completely to the other. So the only way it's happening is with force.
“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?”
- Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, addressing Japan
> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
> "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
Don’t forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty – none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
Qing Dynasty annexed Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, as well as large chunks of Central Asia, and fought with Sikhs over Kashmir. Looks like a good case of imperial expansion to me.
The person you replied to wrote: none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
This is correct, since the Qing Dynasty was led by the Manchus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty), not by the Han Chinese.
It was not the Manchus who reconquered Tibet in the 1950s, after it had been an independent country for several decades.
And the general argument is not about whether there is something inherently imperialistc in the Han -- it is about whether the Han are so isolationist that this should somehow prevent China as a political entity from expanding. Well it has not prevented this before (cf. also the Tang period expansion, if we want to talk about more distant history), so I see no reason why it should prevent it now. Unless, say, the CCP cedes control to an openly Han-nationalist party, but then the last one was imperialist alright (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)).
They also annexed China. That's your idea of "Chinese expansionism"?
basiclly every big country...
I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory. It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be "liberated" from Japan.
Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.
And they will never become part of China again, ever. They once were, and after World War II they were supposed to be handed over to the Republic of China (Nationalist government), but the Nationalists stupidly refused. Then the United States gave them to Japan as a reward. This completely violated the post-WWII United Nations agreements. So if the UN still wants to claim any legitimacy or relevance, these places should not belong to Japan, but they will never belong to China either.
Okinawa was as much a part of China as Botswana and Argentina were. Going back centuries, they've always spoken a japonic language so your government propaganda is a strange approach for seeding justification for invasion in the future.
The Okinawans are a branch of Japanese, but the Ryukyu kingdom was tributary to the Chinese empire before being annexed by Japan in the second half of the 19th century.
Before being annexed by Japan one century and a half ago, the culture of Okinawa was much more strongly influenced by China than by Japan, which is why during the first few decades after being occupied by Japan there still were many in Okinawa who would have preferred to become a part of China instead of a part of Japan, but the new Japanese authorities have eventually succeeded to suppress any opposition.
I believe that there is no doubt that Okinawa should belong to Japan and not to China, but historically this was not so clear cut. If the Okinawans could have voted in the 19th century to whom they should belong, instead of being occupied by force, it is unknown which would have been their decision.
Therefore any comparisons with Botswana or Argentina are completely inappropriate for a kingdom that had strong ties with China for many centuries and which recognized the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor.
While for me as a foreigner, the similarities between the Ryukyuan languages and mainland Japanese are obvious and many features of shared cultural heritage with ancient Japan (Yamato) are also obvious, these were not at all obvious for the Japanese themselves, who, after occupying Okinawa tended to consider the Okinawans as foreign barbarians, so for a long time they were heavily discriminated in Japan.
This completely ignores a lot of history. Okinawa went from being a tributary (trade partner) of China to vassal state (occupied and controlled) by Japan in 1609. [1] What would be modern day Afghanistan and Thailand paid tribute to China as well, but for some reason, those are ignored with the Chinese claim to territory. It's simply "well the Republic of China's victory in WW2 means we get land from countries we traded with in the 1600s!", which is bizarre view of history. Frankly, it's nothing more than trying to seed the ground for opportunism, because it's a guarantee those same arguments will be used to say Vietnam, Thailand, and Afghanistan aren't independent if those become valuable lands in the future and they seem as easily seizable as small Okinawan islands.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Ryukyu
After the war from 1609, Ryukyu remained officially a vassal of China, not of Japan, even if it became secretly also a vassal of the Satsuma domain from Japan (not of the Japanese state).
This dual allegiance of Ryukyu, openly to China and secretly to Satsuma allowed Ryukyu to be an intermediary in some commerce between China and Japan, which officially was forbidden.
The official occupation of Ryukyu by Japan happened only in 1872, after the Meiji Restoration.
After 1609, there was no occupation of Ryukyu by Japanese. There was only a permanent threat of military intervention from Satsuma if the Ryukyuan king would have dared to act against the demands of Satsuma, which included a tribute and unfavorable commercial relationships.
Not sure where you're getting "secretly" from since there was no secret and they were openly obedient to Japan. There's nothing outside of CCP sources, and particularly no historical sources, that could even remotely claim otherwise.
And even if you goalpost shift to the Meiji Restoration, 1872 is still well before any period where Japan was required to give up any territory as a result of WW2 imperialism.
I never said they speak Chinese or anything like that. in ancient times they were part of China’s tributary system. The Chinese tributary system explicitly allowed different places to keep their own culture and language. It was Japan that annexed them and then systematically destroyed the local culture. The post-WWII agreements (Cairo Declaration, Potsdam Proclamation, San Francisco Peace Treaty framework) all stated that these places was to be stripped from Japan. China is only using this historical fact now to pressure Japan on the propaganda and diplomatic level. No Chinese person actually believes China should (or will) annex them.
All Chinese media are emphasizing that these places do not belong to Japan, not that they belong to China. That’s the essential difference.
Tributary networks were a system of trade and diplomacy. It'd be like saying the Philippines belongs to Indonesia because they're in ASEAN. And saying Okinawa doesn't belong to Japan is the exact, 100% identical argument Russia used and continues to use to justify its brutal invasions of Georgia, Ukraine, and more and more countries. It's kind of bizarre how anyone who speaks English could assume this propaganda works, though I am making the giant leap in assuming I'm not talking to Deepseek right now.
What I’ve always wanted to emphasize is the post-World War II agreements. That should be the real focus, right? At least according to those treaties and agreements, these territories (Okinawa/Ryukyu, etc.) explicitly do not belong to Japan.
No, i'm the lates Kimi model
Okinawa has been part of Japan since before the Qing Dynasty even existed. Government operatives claim a lot of things, but thinking WW2 negates 400+ year old borders is truly wild and something no human not on a government payroll would make.
I'm a bit confused, would love to learn. The Potsdam agreement said that Japan controls is main islands (the ones right by the mainland) and the other minor islands (anything not right next to the main island) would be determine by the Allies later. This was signed by China and obviously has been followed.
Then the Treaty of San Francisco (which didn't involve China signing or agreement or anything) said that the Allies would revert control of Okinawa to Japan, which was the Allies choice at that point given that they were in control as stipulated by the Potsdam agreement.
What's the gap between what was said and what happened? You could argue that the WW2 agreements were unfair and didn't follow historical ownership but I'm not sure which part of the agreements themselves was directly violated.
I respect China (in fact, in this stupid timeline more than the U.S.) but China is already huge. The whole world would be a much better place if China just chilled the fuck out and would just stop harassing border countries (I know, I know, this is true for at least two quarters of planet Earth). Let them have Taiwan if that would make them shut up, but it won't. Tributary system? Allowed to keep? Pressure Japan? How much more do you want and how long will you go back in history to justify your greed for power and territory? China is trying to look nice and they succeed in many places, they are very close to something of a heavenly kingdom in my book, but this behavior always makes me ask which face is real. The power hungry bully, or the wise emperor?
I think you’ve nailed it perfectly. China definitely has its imperialist side, but the way it operates is completely different from the US style. I often feel China’s foreign policy is kinda “dumb” in execution, but that’s just our national character at work. Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple – send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But we’re not America, and we can’t do that without the entire Western media tearing us apart. So China’s approach is: “You guys fight it out yourselves, whoever wins, I’ll do business with them. Just don’t touch the projects and interests I already have.” This naturally makes ordinary people in those countries dislike China – they genuinely believe China is the root cause of many of their problems, and they think importing Western systems will let them solve everything and stand on their own. In reality, that probably won’t happen most of the time. But there’s no helping it; I don’t know what a “better” Chinese foreign policy would even look like. All I can say is China has been really lucky – thank Trump, thank Sanae Takaichi – they’ve helped us way more than people realize.
> Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple – send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But we’re not America, and we can’t do that without the entire Western media tearing us apart.
The way to do it, is to propose a UN coalition invasion. Or to quietly provide arms to the side you like more (which never backfires).
> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.
How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
(Or maybe it could happen through some longer and slower political process. And the country as a whole should agree, with a lot more than 50% agreeing, to a unification.)
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Like above, I hope you're not implying that a culturally similar people in another country #2 somehow gives country #1 power over it's sovereignity.
> It's not for China to decide?
do your homework, taiwan also claims its china. maybe you mean its not for them to decide?
I don't claim to know the Taiwan situation well. I'm just saying that culture or ethnicity of people isn't a sufficient argument in general.
> How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
The difference is that Taiwan only exists because the losers of the Chinese Civil war ran away to it, and the winners (CCP) were not allowed by the US to finish the job. So for the CCP, Taiwan has always been a problem still left to resolve, an American thorn in their side. It was along the main reasons for them joining the Korean war, because the monumentally dumb McArthur publicly praised and supported Chiang (the leader of the losers of the civil war, the KMT), which led to CCP fears the US will use the Korean peninsula as a sprinboard to attack them and install Chiang back to power.
So while self-determination trumps those concerns for my personal view, I can totally see where China (CCP) is coming from. Especially with a very aggressive American stance against them, why would they want to keep a very friendly to the US runaway province out there?
For Americans, imagine the Confederates ran away to Puerto Rico, force assimilated the locals, and became very friendly with Russia. For the French, that a Bonaparte was ruling Corsica while being friendly with the big bad wolf (depending on the age, Brits or Russians maybe). And on and on.
Thanks for the context. I don't really know the Taiwan situation well.
My main gripe was mostly around the perceived reasoning that ethnicity or culture of some people would make it more okay to try to annex, or invade, anything.
> When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table.
From GP. That is also a bit worrying to me. Who decides what's the fair "historical score"? But mostly, people shouldn't desire for war or use past wars as a reason for new wars. This is more complicated than ethnicity or culture, but it's dangerous and people should just learn to let go or it never stops.
False flag attacks are a thing and have been used many times as a pretext for an attack. Russia has done it. Russia also often uses history as an excuse for new wars. I'm sure it's always possible to dig out some rationalization. The result is mostly more suffering of innocent (who might not have even been born during the cited conflict).
The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China.
Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.
So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.
> not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop
May I ask if you actually live in one of these neighbouring countries? I do -- in fact I have lived in more than one -- and I can assure you that many/most people living in these areas outside of the Western media bubble absolutely do not share your view.
From the CCP's (and many Chinese people's) perspective:
1) the U.S. repeatedly interfered in the CCP's/KMT's attempts to resolve the civil war -- see e.g. the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (during which the PRC shelled Taiwan), Project National Glory (the ROC's plan to reconquer the mainland) -- preventing the mainland and Taiwan from reunification;
2) the Taiwanese government has lost the civil war, and the loser doesn't get to set the terms.
Pretending that the PRC's interest in Taiwan isn't special is to ignore extremely crucial historical circumstances that are core to understanding the situation today. Regardless of what you think of the PRC's stance on reunification, their desire to reunify doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it takes ahistorical leaps of reasoning to suggest that the PRC might want to annex South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. next.
> only during the last few centuries
This is way more than enough time to drastically transform the culture of a society. Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC than it is to the West. In some aspects it is also similar to Japan, despite the fact that Japan colonised it for "only" 50 years.
>Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC than it is to the West
The cultural distance between Taiwan and Japan, Korea and Hong Kong is less than the distance from mainland China. Aka Asian liberal democracies (or at least with strong political plurality and civil society). You're mistaking a regional difference with a commonality with the PRC, when in reality the PRC's epistemic worldview is highly distorted in comparison to virtually every other actor in the region. They don't speak for the region.
During the American Civil War, the majority of the population in the Deep South states were actually Black slaves
Are you arguing by metaphor that the Han Chinese on Taiwan are slaves to the native Taiwanese, or what? Or that slaves weren't Americans? I have no idea what your comment is trying to say.
Exactly.
Taiwan has spent the approx 120 years on a very different political, economic, cultural track from the mainland. Taiwan diverged from the other subject of the Qing dynasty before Han nationalists began their century long project to forge a united Chinese nation. In particular, Taiwan did not go through decades of communist terror, but did experience the fruit of democracy.
> No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.
I don't think what you claim the people want matters (if even true). Look at Tibet and Xinjiang
Xinjiang and Tibet have been part of China for many periods throughout history; Japan never was. At most, Korea was merely part of the tributary system. There is a fundamental difference here.
Tibet, too, was only part of the tributary system. Even during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese imperial state had no effective control over central Tibet - all local rulers and judges were Tibetan, and they employed Tibetan, not Chinese, law. Outside of diplomatic circles, Tibetans at the time weren't paying any attention to Chinese culture and politics.
Claims to the contrary are largely historical revisionism. (As are the various claims that Tibet was culturally influenced by China - the story of Princess Wencheng bringing agricultural technologies to uncultured Tibet, as it is often taught in Chinese schools and portrayed in period dramas, is a myth that only came to popularity during the Chinese Civil War.)
Remember also that until 1951, Tibet occupied Chinese territories more often than vice versa - although given the case of Manchuria, China might actually see this as an argument in favor of Tibet being Chinese.
> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it […]
Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.
[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.
so i guess the Mayanmar people shouldn't blame china now.. they should build some thing like the Vietness people: we fight the chinese and we always win, lets be proud of it.
Invasion is one thing, unfavorable trade deals, deindustrialization, and political coercion is more realistic outcome yet all the more undesirable. Imperialism after all often didn't spread spread by outright conquest.
yeah like the tariffs.
Well no actually, it would be more like forcefully removing tariffs. The right to export to foreign markets is ultimately a privilege after all.
While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown): Nationalistic fervor.
From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.
And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.
And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time
Sure, nationalism definitely serves that purpose. But please consider: in the most recent conflicts/flare-ups, the initiator has actually been Japan, not China. Their new female prime minister is an extreme-right-wing politician who is not only provoking China, but also picking fights with South Korea and Russia at the same time, while pushing aggressively anti-immigrant and exclusionary policies. Her approval ratings are also unusually high. It feels pretty strange that Japan gets zero criticism for this while all the focus stays on China.
Not strange at all. China is powerful, thus scary.
sounds fair. but i doubt the normal japan people know that...
Ummm no… This is total fantasy.
Takaichi is a slightly right of centre nationalist. Pushing a mild tightening of some immigration rules to maintain the social contract around immigration, and fend off the right wing populists. Her policies amount to things like tightening foreign land ownership rules and refusing visa renewals for people not paying their health insurance or pension (which is mandatory by law for all residents).
She’s had friendly relations with SK so far and recently met with the SK President and bowed in respect to the Korean flag.
Her “provocation” of China was to state, when asked in parliament, that an armed invasion of Taiwan by China would be a case of a potential existential threat to Japan.
Which frankly is utterly obvious to anyone, including of course China. Japan hosts American military bases. If China attacked Taiwan, triggering an American repose then there would at the least be Chinese missiles aiming for Tokyo (Yokosuka) and Okinawa.
> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port
What, does the Pearl River freeze over in winter?
we also would like to have Vladivostok back
And what was the original, Chinese name of the city, may I ask?
The CCP has demonstrated that it’s not above killing tens of millions of its own citizens to achieve its political aims. I doubt they’d see ‘pacifying’ an occupied population as much of an issue.
you sounds dispointed. but i believe the future will tell you the truth and i'm telling the facts.
What kind of line is "once china solves the taiwan problem"? You assume that they will take Taiwan. Have you not been privy to the utter embarrassment of a continental power trying to take Ukraine right now? China is very aware of the isolated situation Russia is now in. They have desire to be in that situation.
Noone is letting China "solve the taiwan problem" like you said.
Such inflammatory language.
The Ukraine invasion is the biggest boost to China's Taiwan invasion plan ever.
If the world reacts to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan the way we have reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, China will consider that a great victory, and might be able to take Taiwan.
If the US, Japan, and Korea do not commit fully to naval interdiction and blockading China from attacking Taiwan, Taiwan is likely to fall eventually.
China is not Russia. Xi somehow is not as utterly isolated from reality as Putin is. Putin didn't even know that Ukraine would resist, and was entirely convinced that Ukrainians would welcome them. China can build new equipment, and new modern equipment at that. Russia can barely manage to bring ancient tank hulls up to 2000s level and send them to the front line. They are also running out of old hulls to do that with.
China has a sizeable and meaningful air force, modern battlespace management that was shown effective by Pakistan's use in their recent conflict.
Is the current US admin actually competent enough to protect Taiwan even if they want to?
The Soviets trivially took the Kuril Islands and they can trivially defeat Japan if they so desire. China's also really interested in Okinawa independence. Both countries have appealed to arguments on liberating indigenous populations to hint at future military action against Japan.
It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.
Can you clarify this for me: the Soviets don't exist, so how can they possibly take the whole of Japan - in some future?
If you mean Russia, then no.
Ukraine has a proper army and the support of Europe, albeit with dated weapons. Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in. Hokkaido has always been under threat from Russia and the Soviets quickly took the Kuril Islands, which wasn't even originally theirs.
> Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in.
There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense of Japan against any aggressive party.
The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+ military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year to support the US military presence there. Japan is also a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
The Budapest Memorandum (1994) gave assurances, that the U.S. would militarily intervene or defend Ukraine under attack like an alliance-treaty.
Ukraine surrendered the sharpest tool in its arsenal for those assurances, its inherited nuclear arsenal, the world’s third-largest at the time. But the loss was broader than warheads; it was the surrender of a strategic future.
America first means America first. All politicians will say one thing and do another, always check the incentives…
The Budapest Memorandum did no such thing. It is completely and totally incomparable to the US-Japan alliance. At most, it calls for a weaselly "security council action to provide assistance".
No. The only way the Russians could prevail is to break out the nukes, and that would always run the risk of a nuclear response from the US. Japan's navy is more powerful than the Russian pacific fleet in a conventional conflict. Any attempt to land on Hokkaido would be stillborn.
Even if they managed to land they would probably be pushed off pretty quickly. Japan's military is more powerful than that of Ukraine, and the Russians are already having trouble supporting troops just across the border. There's no way they would be able to support an invasion force over water. I'm skeptical the Russians could pull that off without opposition, something they would certainly have in spades.
The Russians lost control of the Black Sea to a country that doesn’t have a navy. Its naval incompetence is legendary. There is zero chance of them conducting an amphibious invasion against anyone any time this century.
If the Okinawan Americans aren't going to do something useful for Japan, Japan would be very happy to kick them out and stop them harassing the locals.
A land invasion of mainland Japan is so unrealistic that even the US in WW2 didn't attempt it.
Japan is a turn key nuclear state, that is all…
The United States defends Japan. The United States has nuclear weapons.
Knowing those two facts, we can conclude that Russia will not be invading Japan as long as it is protected by the United States. The calculus is very simple when nuclear weapons are involved.
Also, keep in mind that D-Day was the largest amphibious assault in history and all they had to do was cross the English Channel. Russia invading Hokkaido would be suicide, the US nuked Japan rather than try invading the homeland to end WW2 and we controlled every island surrounding Japan at the time.
Japan defeated the Russian navy in 1905. I guess that means that the Empire of Japan can trivially defeat the Russian Empire if such political entities cared to exist anymore and if the result of a past confrontation was a true benchmark of the current capabilities of the respective armies and economies.
Maybe we should stop selecting islands next to China to be global critical supply chain hubs. I mean, even if the Chinese were non-expansionist and benevolent, it's still kind of tempting them a little too much.
Who is "we"? Japan doesn't have much choice, they either do things even though they are next to China, or ..what?
Maybe its time for people to stop being paralyzed by fear and invest in their future. If China is such a severe threat to Japan, then invest more in the JSDF. Yes, China is powerful and has an aggressive stance, but that's no reason to give up without a fight. Japan and South Korea together can very nearly match China's shipbuilding tonnage per year, and besides that Japan collaborates with America to develop advanced naval missiles like the SM-3 Block IIA. Effective deterrence of China w.r.t. Japan should be achievable if people stop overdosing on blackpills.
They already are investing in the JSDF. The JS Chokai is in San Diego right now being equipped with Tomahawk cruise missles, but AFAIK the plan is to equipped all 8 Kongo class destroyers with those missles.
And that's just one part of the expansion. But the short version is that the JSDF isn't staying a defensive only institution.
Nowadays, are large ships well protected from small unmanned underwater ships? Are they worth building?
The large ships are well-protected. A “small unmanned underwater ship” has been a primary threat model for a century e.g. heavy torpedoes. These already have very long range and sophisticated sensors that allow them to hunt targets autonomously.
The other side of this is that modern large military ships are almost literally unsinkable. It is very difficult to get enough explosive on target due to their extreme damage resistance.
When the military does live fire exercises where they attack obsolete military vessels with no active defenses using torpedos, missiles, bombs, etc, they usually don’t manage to sink it. They have to send a specialized demolition crew afterward to actually scuttle the damaged ship and turn it into an artificial reef.
An operational large military vessel will have layers of substantial active defenses that make this even more difficult.
Yes to being worth building.
The whole point of the navy is to be able to control waterways. The whole point of being able to control waterways is to be able to economically ship large amounts of material and people; in the case of warfare, soldiers, bullets, food, water, fuel, etc.
An unmanned fast attack sub is going to be useless for defending your logistics fleet from strike fighters and anti ship missles. Even a dingy that has a guy in it with a rocket propelled grenade can send a cargo ship to it's grave. You have to have a surface ships with powerful defenses to protect them.
This is more of a humorous take. We already have trouble with one chip nexus is right next to China, and now we build another one? "ha ha". We is humanity. The collective we probably doesn't want a lever of the future controlled by a totalitarian communist ehnostate.
But yes, I agree Japan, Indonesia (as was intended), etc should wise up.
"We already have trouble with one chip nexus is right next to China, and now we build another one? "ha ha". We is humanity."
Your "whole humanity 'We'" isn't who's investing in chip industry in Hokkaido. It's Japan.
But these things are done based on global supply chains. It's about more than just Japan, isn't it?
Same time, Japan clearly wants freedom to do things its own way. Good. It has the freedom. It just has to take it. Do it.
This is Japan selecting itself to develop a critical industry.
Being deeply embedded in global supply chains and your allies’ economies makes it a lot more difficult for them to justify abandoning you to your enemies.
Hokkaido is not close to China... it is close to Russia, I don't know what is worse xD
This is 750 km from China (going through Russia) and a 2600km trip from China's nearest port. If this isn't safe enough is all of Asia off limits then?
How many bases does china have around the world? How many does the US?
Imagine if China built one base in Mexico or the Caribbean. People would be treating it like a declaration of war. Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as bellicose in any way.
> Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as bellicose in any way.
Shouldn't you take WWII history into the account?
1. South Korea - Korean war happened and majority of South Korean want US military base there 'cause you know North Korea with its nukes point at Seoul.
2. Japan - well, everyone know what happened and the treaty were signed thus military base in Japan.
That's because the US was founded on a unique constitution to empower individuals against tyranny, then defeated (with Russia, mind) the Nazis in world war II, bootstrapped the UN, went to the moon, and ushered in an era of global leadership and peace, along with unmatched soft power (films, news, etc). Camelot, shining city on the hill. China had a bloody communist revolution, then got rich (in part by breaking deals and ripping off IP) - also through hard work. America is porous, "Shortbus", "anyone can make it", American dream. China is ethnonationalist, and has a sense of ethnic and cultural supremacy that is not inclusive of "outsiders". That's why it's a problem, and, rightly, seen/intuitied to be a problem, more so than the US (despite US' many failings/misteps, etc).