US sanctions help vaporize chunk of Chinese chip barons’ wealth

US chip sanctions against China have tag-teamed with a weaker economy to vaporize a chunk of the wealth held by the Middle Kingdom's richest semiconductor business owners. The cumulative wealth of China's top 100 money-making chip barons declined 28 percent in 2022 versus last year, South China Morning Post reported, citing a …

[martinusher]

'Their' MIC versus 'our' MIC

President Eisenhower was the first person to openly call out what he called "the Military Industrial Complex", the unholy alliance of government and weapons providers that feed off one another. To a certain extent this is inevitable -- somebody's got to make the guns -- but at some critical financial mass the providers stop responding to policy and start driving it. This has been the case in both the UK and the US for decades now (the UK was the first to abandon work on technology in favor of exclusive (and more profitable) government contracts). This picture (taken from an article on the Vox website) pretty much sums it up....

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-MaZDfBRMS0NoCWp3FrJuWDPNn8=/0x0:1688x1229/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1688x1229):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24293748/invitation.jpg

(The only thing left is to put the corporate logos onto the actual military hardware.)

So far I don't see the Chinese MIC being on quite the same scale. Their economy is mostly oriented towards consumer and industrial production. Obviously we in 'the west' have to stoke the case for more military spending so we're doing whatever the modern version of the 1950's era 'missile gap' (which in retrospect wasn't). We need enemies because without them a large chunk of our economy would fall apart so in the absence of anything suitable from the Middle East we're back to the old bogeymen. The idea that we're succeeding in our endeavors, though ("We're Winning, See, They're Broke!" -- spoken from a perspective of spiraling deficits, inflation, people getting poorer and all that good stuff) is critical to help build momentum.

(Those of us who've had a play with Chat GPT will never believe a news article or press release again...)

[Gene Cash]

Re: 'Their' MIC versus 'our' MIC

(Those of us who've had a play with Chat GPT will never believe a news article or press release again...)

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this.

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.

You read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 'Their' MIC versus 'our' MIC

Everything you read in the paper is true -- except for those items of which you have personal knowledge.

[zuckzuckgo]

Re: 'Their' MIC versus 'our' MIC

One way to judge whether a media outlet is at least trying to present facts is to check their corrections section. If they don't publicly admit to and record their errors then you can't take any of their 'facts' too seriously.

Of course they can still contain analysis that contradicts the facts but that kind of political slant is more easily spotted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 'Their' MIC versus 'our' MIC

the share of SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) in China’s GDP should be twenty-three to twenty-eight percent and their share in employment can be anywhere between five and sixteen percent in 2017. "How Much Do State-Owned Enterprises Contribute to China’s GDP and Employment? ", worldbank dot org

[ChoHag]

Re: 'Their' MIC versus 'our' MIC

While the period of a few decades beginning in the 1950s was unnecessarily tense in retrospect, and it's probably fair to say we were and may be continuing to overspend a bit in some countries (and underspend in others!), need I remind you that this time there's an actual war on, and that the only reason it isn't between two nuclear powers is because Ukraine dismantled their Soviet nuclear weapons in response to promises that our overweight Military Industrial Complex would come to their defense in the event of their belligerent neighbour doing ... well, what they're doing now?

[Claptrap314]

Two decades too late

When I man says he is your enemy--believe him.

If we had taken the Chinese government at their word 20, 30 years ago, we would have never allowed them access to our high tech. This would have bought us at least a couple of decades before they could seriously threaten us. It looks like we are going to sorely miss those decades...

[Tubz]

Everything you read in the newspaper between the front page title/logo and comic/sports news on the back page is untrue and bias.