China chokes exports of semiconductor secret sauces gallium and germanium China is imposing export restrictions on two elements used in semiconductors and other electronic components, a move likely to be viewed as a calculated response to Western restrictions on sales of chips and their production tech to the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce released a statement announcing that …
See title.
Also, dual-use creates possibilities of witch-hunts. Scenario: Agent from one of the multiple, overlapping-bailiwick, US Federal agencies shows up at the loading dock of OfficeMax. "Do you have an export license for those [looks at bill of lading] ... paper clips, boxes of photocopy paper, and ink markers? No? Well that stuff all is 'any technology that is used in the design or manufacture of advanced semiconductors.' No export license for it means you're going to jail!"
Anyone pooh-poohing such a scenario should consider the case of the three Mexican nationals who were stopped at the US/Mexican border, had their vehicle searched, were arrested for US ITAR violations, convicted, and put in a US Federal prison. They had been moving from the US back to Mexico, and when they boxed up their things, they'd included the TV-top cable decoder box, which included decryption circuitry.
Middle Kingdom sounds so cute and friendly. How about calling China some suitable moniker accurately describing it as a capitalist dictatorship that fears its own citizens, has no rule of law, no habeas corpus, no religious, press or assembly freedoms, that interns its own citizens in concentration camps.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-built-380-internment-camps-in-xinjiang-study-finds
This coming from a citizen of a country that helped the US murder more Muslims than any other time in human history. Yet you people claim to champion their freedoms. That's just rich. The fact is that Uyghurs have better infrastructure than the the English and Americans combined. They have multiple high speed rail trains, and they don't need to fear racism or persecution like they would in the West.
You're right to crticise the hypocrisy of many Western nations. And the genocide and human misery they have inflicted as they built their empires. But China's doing that very thing nowadays too. They're every bit as evil. You're wrong and hypocritical if you don't criticise the tyrannical regime of President Xi and the CCP.
Millions of Uyghurs have fled to neighbouring countries like Myanmar which is notorious for human rights abuses and no democratic government. Those Uyghurs decided refugee status there was a better and safer option than staying in Xi's China, even if Xi Jinping's Administration does have fast choo-choos. I suppose they help Xi's opponents reach their internment and re-education camps quicker.
You might well be right that Uyghurs don't need to fear racism or persecution in China. Because they already have to experience Beijing's genocide.
BTW talking of religion, how are the Falung Gong doing in China these days? Do they don't need to fear racism or persecution in China these days?
I don't know if you've ever done any serious research into Falung Gong - the organisation exhibits many of the same characteristics as a cult and I would personally compare them to the Church of Scientology - you can see more information here:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun
I do believe in freedom though - so in the same way Falun Gong should be free, so should the Church of Scientology and any other cult like organisations that want to exist and extol their particular thought process
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Fear of its own citizens is the hallmark of all dictatorships. China included. Try hold up a pice of white paper in China, and see how long you last. Or try amass a group of 10 people with a poster of Winnie the Pooh, and walk down any street in China chanting down with Xi. Here in the west we can do this (and more), without fear and without government retribution. But hey, you have super fast high speed trains to whisk you away to prison without a trail.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64592333
Simple test: Try look online at a picture of Tank Man from within China (which you cannot see in China due to their internet filters/ban, like this one of Leica Online).
https://www.macobserver.com/news/china-bans-leica/
Try hold up a pice of white paper in China, and see how long you last.
Oh come on. There is no patent on being a thick police officer. It was news worthy because it is so unusual, and the Met apologized and affirmed the right to protest:
https://news.sky.com/story/people-against-monarchy-have-right-to-protest-police-say-after-man-with-a-blank-sign-confronted-12696164
Where is the same contrition from China, the dictatorship that executes its own citizens for organs.
'An estimated 25,000 to 50,000 inmates are allegedly murdered each year to harvest 50,000 to 150,000 organs. Ethan Gutmann, of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, revealed witness testimony that the harvesting operations focused on healthy prisoners ages 28 or 29. After extensive health checks and blood tests, individuals are “cross-matched for harvesting.” A week later, the selected inmates “vanished in the middle of the night.”'
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/06/07/china-genocide-organ-trafficking/7495979001/.
And they have been doing it for years.
If a state condones harmful individual actions, if it allows its citizens to violate the rights of others, surely it is responsible for doing so?
However, there are no countries that could carry out regime change in the United States of America. And its peers are genuine dictatorships, while the United States is an imperfect democracy, which, over the years, has made progress towards a greater measure of justice for its black citizens.
The American federal system, by allowing excessive latitude to individual states, permits individual states to have laws which besmirch the reputation of the whole country abroad. Because it requires the consent of 3/4 of the several states to amend the Constitution, it is difficult to correct this.
Its been a while since I was in Xinjiang but my memory is of an impressive transport infrastructure that seemed to be designed specifically to allow the PLA to quickly move to wherever the next 'local difficulty' appeared. (Think modern railways and miles and miles of smooth wide blacktops in a blisteringly hot empty desert).
Not unlike a 21st century version of General Wade's roads in Scotland built in the 18th century to help keep us Stroppy Jocks in order.
On the topics of racism and persecution, I'm not at all sure that either the Uyghur or Han Chinese folks would recognize the multicultural utopia you seem to be hinting at.
So your riposte boils down to 'How dare you say they are persecuted, hey look at the fancy trains (which they would need special permission to use- but we'll gloss over that)'
Just to clue you in a few massively over-budget rail projects does not mean great infrastructure
...nor is production technologically challenging.
Scarcity has never been a significant problem. However, environmental laws and demands have made mining in "the west" too expensive. The countries with lax environmental regulation gladly took over. And now we find ourselves in a dependent position. Well, short-term profit goals usually kill your long-term profits.
Remember how, just recently, just-in-time delivery became just-too-late delivery and progressed into just-fuck-it delivery when kinks developed in the chain?
The only surprise here is that they've held out for so long before retaliating against yankee illegal trade practices against China. This is very telling that China has exhausted every effort to try and resolve this issue amicably. The US had always know what China is capable of doing. Yet, they doubled down to call their bluff and now we see a taste of what they can do.
They also sit on more than $6 trillion in foreign reserves which I assume they will wait for the right moment to dump.They will not be saving us during the next financial crisis created by the US.
They also sit on more than $6 trillion in foreign reserves which I assume they will wait for the right moment to dump.
Not a good plan if they wish to continue purchasing integrated circuits, soybeans, cars, planes, helicopters, petroleum, chemical analysis equipment, valves, vehicle parts, pork, cotton, maize, grains. etc. from the USA as they currently do.
They'll harm themselves dropping the value of USD while they try to unload the bulk of their assets, and losing trillions in value won't go unnoticed to the Chinese economy.
It'll help the USA's exports briefly become more competitive against China's on the world market.
And hordes of investors and funds will just siphon up the cheap USD in short order and put values back to normal.
I don't agree.
Trump accused them of controlling their currency and thus causing the US harm (as usual, Trump needed an enemy to rail against), so the Chinese let their currency float for a day just to show what would happen if they didn't. I think the DOW lost something like 700 points in literally hours which only recovered once the Chinese re-established control. For those that read the tea leaves, that was about as unsubtle a hint as you could get.
There's also another vector in play: the USD depends on fossil fuel sales to blackmail other contries in holding dollar reserves, which is how they can keep borrowing gazillions without any noticeable issues for interest repayment (that's also why they bombed the bejeezus out of Saddam when he came up with the idea of making more profit by selling his oil in Euros, the whole WMD excuse was a scam). That position is under threat from (a) green energy and (b) -again- China as they are gearing up for nuclear energy sales, even the UK plants are partially owned by the Chinese.
Given that China is *way* too big to bomb and also has the ability to strike back, it'll be interesting to watch what happens if that massive US national debt is suddenly facing economic reality. It'll make the Trump years and their aftermath look like a picnic.
I am honestly surprised that the CCP played this trump card now instead of waiting until launching some kind of encirclement and shipping control around Taiwan.
It's a lucky wake up call for the US. The CCP will probably try to use it to split off the US from the EU, but I doubt they will be successful.
As a privately owned company, why would I even consider invesing a large amount of money developing either a mine for gallium or germanium, or processing facilities for them, when China can do it cheaper, and there's no way to tell when China will drop its export restrictions? Especially since China would be likely to do that as soon as outside sources reduced the impact of this measure.
So since the real benefit of having these outside sources is hard to monetize, it's governments that should be building these mines and factories for everyone's benefit - which they will yield even if they don't manage to sell much product.
So since the real benefit of having these outside sources is hard to monetize, it's governments that should be building these mines and factories for everyone's benefit - which they will yield even if they don't manage to sell much product.
Nah, the gubbermint instead regulates mining making domestic production harder and even more expensive. That's on top of environmentalists who'll protest and increase costs. Ok, sometimes this is for good reason, ie there is a large environmental impact and potential for a variety of toxic things to spill. But my favorite examples are these mines-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine
The Mountain Pass deposit was discovered in 1949 by Herbert S. Woodward, Clarence Watkins and P. A. Simon, who noticed anomalously high radioactivity. Molybdenum Corporation of America bought most of the mining claims, and began small-scale production in 1952.
Production expanded greatly in the 1960s, to supply demand for europium used in color television screens. Between 1965 and 1995, the mine supplied most of the worldwide rare-earth metals consumption
Which had the misfortune of being in California and the demand for europium dropping after we went from CRT to LCD. But also left a lot of 'rare' earths in massive spoil heaps because they weren't worth extracting at the time. There are also attempts to increase lithium mining, which are being resisted because the US doesn't need lithium to decarbonise and go Green. And then there's this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutanda_mine
Which is part of the DRC's strip mining for EVs, windmills and solar panels problem. They're soo much greener than ICEs, unless you live near the production chain. But out of sight, out of mind..
"it affects a lot of the peripheral components needed to use digital chips."
Actually in playstations and some high power gpus significantly more gallium is used in the splodge of "liquid metal" heatsink compound than the whole of the rest of the device ...
Those stupidly over-powered device owners will find their thermal control becoming more expensive ...
Those stupidly over-powered device owners will find their thermal control becoming more expensive ..
Nah, look on the bright side. It'll be like when lead solder got banned and manufacturers had to find a replacement. The replacement just has worse thermal and mechanical characteristics, so joints fail and consumers have to repair (hah!) or replace their gadget. As long as this doesn't happen during warranty, this is good for sales, even if it ends up generating more e-waste.
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