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by mywacaday4 hours ago |
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upvoteby fhn2 hours ago|
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China is not a good trading partner at all. They put up barriers for companies entering their market, mandatory China employee in your company, IP theft, they subsidize and flood the market killing competition, most everything they make is lowest quality possible, lots of fraud even within China.
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upvoteby shimman56 minutes ago|
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This just reads as sour grapes when countries don't want to deal with bad trades from Western corporations that mostly focus on extracting local populaces while inflicting as much damage to possible toward local labor groups.

Can't really be shocked when nation states enact laws to protect industries + workers.

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upvoteby hansonkd8 minutes ago|
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to be fair, nobody said they were shocked. just that they were a bad trading partner.
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upvoteby azinman23 hours ago|
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It’s foolish to be completely dependent on anyone else, no matter how stable the CURRENT situation is. We’ve seen this with the gulf countries and Strait of Hormuz, China with rare earth metals, Ukraine with grains, etc. Once China goes to take Taiwan all bets are off…
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upvoteby williamdclt2 hours ago|
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Your example are somewhat funny (in a not-so-funny way), the most obvious example for "foolish to be completely dependent on anyone else, no matter how stable the CURRENT situation is" is the US, from a european perspective
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upvoteby azinman22 hours ago|
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Exactly. This is true for everyone.
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upvoteby b3ing37 minutes ago|
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We are dependent on H1b workers
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upvoteby azinman214 minutes ago|
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If US educational policy says don’t educate the people because we have H1B, then that’s a total dependence and is foolish. If instead, you welcome smart talented people from all around the world then that’s a winning strategy. It’s up to those host countries to offer more so as to avoid a brain drain.
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upvoteby jorts4 hours ago|
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Their aging population will pose an extremely serious problem in the coming decades.
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upvoteby dhx3 hours ago|
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If demographics are a problem for chipmaking in China, then it's good to compare against key chipmaking countries.

To compare, 2024 (UN) fertility rates (highest-lowest):[1]

  US:     1.62
  Japan:  1.23
  China:  1.02
  ROC:    0.86
  ROK:    0.75 (where an increase to 0.8 in 2025 was cause for celebration, as is a predicted increase to 0.85 by mid 2026)[2]
Alternatively (and perhaps accounting for migration etc), UN 2024 forecasts population differences in these countries between 2024-2050 as:[3]

  US:    +10%
  Japan: -16%
  China:  -8%
  ROC:    -6%
  ROK:   -12%
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...

[2] https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/01/24/IVHGRT...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...

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upvoteby FuriouslyAdrift2 hours ago|
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Chipmaking is not a high labor industry (other than during the building of plants).

China's one big advantage over other work forces is massive amounts of labor that can be directed by central planning. As their labor costs have gone up, labor intensive manufacturing has already started shifting away. When population declines cause labor costs to go even higher, they lose their advantage.

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upvoteby Forgeties7934 minutes ago|
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It is impossible to overstate how disastrous the 1CP was and continues to be for China. They will likely never recover from it.
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upvoteby cyberax2 hours ago|
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One thing missing is that the population growth in the US is mostly reliant on immigration (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/demo/popproj/2023-su...). And our most favoritest political party is working on stopping it.
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upvoteby bluegatty1 hours ago|
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China will neither decline nor be eliminated, but there will be hardships from now on and - it would be very bad to have any kind of key reliance on them.

China threatened to pull rare earths from the menu which is how they beat Trump in the trade war, among other things which were not going to be sustainable aka farm stuff.

They want to take Taiwan eventually and that will cause potential confrontation.

So the key to China is that it just can't be a lynchpin for anything.

Major trading partner - yes.

Key partner for anything - no.

The US is already a material player in Chips, outside of Trump's 'knee jerk' and reactionary instinct based on 1980's geopolitics and stupid understanding of trade (aka 'importing = getting ripped off', or 'other people doing similar things = stealing from us') ... it does make sense to have material domestic capabilities.

The only place that can be more or less trusted to not play hard shenanigans is Europe. They will do their own regulatory things, and play rough with exports, but they would not threaten something hard.

Europe has underplayed the value of ASML etc..

China has also flipped from 'Quiet and Bide Time' to the opposite, and are not a nice geoplitical actor in their direct environs like S. China sea, although are relatively 'neutral' on most other things.

Best thing is to a) have 'reliable domestic capability' b) learn to build stuff, if not labour intensive ways c) don't depend on sketchy places for key things d) moslty carrots, have a big stick when needed.

China will never 'play fair' in terms of what we would consider 'fair' - they have their own views of everything - that's fine - but it just means has to be manaaged.

Also China should not have any access to data or popular social media / entertainment etc. TikTok must be locally managed, and strong data sovereignty rules also apply.

More of a 'good fences make good neighbours' think with them.

See former Aussie PM Rudd on 'Strategic Guardrails' - he has a good understanding.

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upvoteby actionfromafar4 hours ago|
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The Belt and Road initiative is a nice try, but it's not a roaring success. The flaws of democracies are easy to see because of the openness, and whatever goes wrong usually do so over a long time. Dictatorships go wrong in more dramatic ways.
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upvoteby riffraff1 hours ago|
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I think it's also worth noting that China today is not China from twenty years ago. The communist party ran the country but there was some form of "internal quasi democracy" and leadership changes happened, with term limits.

This changed under Xi Jinping and no one knows what the effects will be.

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