back to article The clock is ticking and Korea wants to know if its chipmakers will get their export license extension

South Korean and US officials met this week to discuss the future of Chinese export controls as the clock ticks down on exceptions enjoyed by Samsung and SK hynix. In a meeting with US deputy secretary of commerce Don Graves in Seoul on Friday, South Korea's industry minister Bang Moon-kyu asked the US to clarify the future of …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    So, China makes the DRAM

    Once again, first-world short-sightedness comes back to bite us in the rear. Ah, the days when top-level executives gave themselves massive bonuses for having outsourced a chip fab to China . . good times, eh ?

    Well now here we are, restricting China from exporting the production from the tools we put in their hands. And when we put those tools in their hands, China was already the despotic regime it is now.

    Ah yes, but money. Money now, worry about the consequences later.

    There's a lesson here, somewhere. I wonder who will learn it ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Pascal Monett - Re: So, China makes the DRAM

      A politician from the country where I was born once said "a healthy dictatorship is always better than a sick democracy"

    2. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: So, China makes the DRAM

      We've got to get our collective political head out from our rears. China is not a "Despotic Regime". Its actually not that different from how its always been.

      Out propagandists throw around this kind of BS because that's what they're paid to do. China is competing with us (the US, that is -- the UK doesn't register, sorry) and we don't like competition. We can't explain to the 'rubes why we don't like them without exposing fundamental questions about social structure and economics (i.e. why lots of people can't afford anywhere to live) so we fill the space with empty slogans about 'freedom' and nonsense about 'dictatorships'.

      Since we're at an important anniversary (Chile) don't forget that one of the biggest sponsorships of despots has been the US --- its just that when the despots are 'our' guys then we gloss over their little excesses (like chucking dissidents out of planes), mass murder in the noble cause of preserving our system and way of life. We just love dictators, unfortunately -- until they get too big for their boots.

  2. bofh1961

    America's trade war

    China's economy didn't become the second largest in the world by competing in the technology sector, it did it by flooding the Western world with cheap, basic goods. How many of us in the West can afford to clothe ourselves in garments made locally? How many of us always opt for the cheapest product that'll do the job? Many, if not most, people have no choice but the cheapest. Now America is fighting a trade war to protect its tech sector in the name of "national security" and coerced the rest of the West into joining it - it's questionable if it can be sustained though. Let's face it, whoever you buy your network kit from there's a good chance it'll have undisclosed vulnerabilities that the manufacturer built in at the behest of its government.

    1. markrand

      Re: America's trade war

      Given that, until recently, China had the largest population of any country in the world, one would expect that its GDP would be pretty close to the largest in the world.

      Times change, even the American colonies overtook the countries they were competing with.

    2. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: America's trade war

      Based on personal observation when production was shifted to China things didn't become cheap. They might have become cheaper but the real reason for shifting production was the same as shifting it anywhere else -- its a quick and easy way to increase profits. The only trick that the Chinese played on us was they initially undersold their labor to get the business so that their businesses and trade position could be built up. Its not something that we can complain about, though, since everyone has done this everyone else at some time or another -- "Its the System".

  3. Tron Silver badge

    Nationalism isn't free.

    One third poorer courtesy of Brexit? Never mind, eh. Sing a song and wave a flag. That'll fix it.

    America can't compete so it tried to tilt the scales by weaponising trade. Cue inflation, poverty, interest rate rises, shortages and hunger. Best start a war to take peoples' minds off it. That usually works.

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