China, US relations further soured by CHIPS Act China has reacted negatively to the passing of the US CHIPS Act, saying that the program is anti-competitive and aims to block the Middle Kingdom's efforts to build up its own semiconductor industry. Tensions between the two have been further strained by the start of formal trade negotiations between the US and Taiwan, …
I take the whole situation with a huge grain of salt.
China and the US are in a cold-war state sans the nuke threats. They bicker and complain about every move the other makes, loudly and with gusto. That is because it is all politics and posturing and doesn't effect the citizenry one whit except when these clowns decide to have a "trade war" that ends up costing their own citizens more than the blockaded nation loses.
Check out how much the American public paid in extra fees and profits to corporate America in exchange for Trump's futile windmill-tilting trade war against China. BILLIONS of dollars of extra profits pulled out of the citizenry and turned over to the shareholders and CEOs... again.
"...and aims to block the Middle Kingdom's efforts to build up its own semiconductor industry."
No shit, Sherlock. Although I'm surprised Xiden didn't get anything added to let companies build factories in China with US money. I guess when you buy a politician your money doesn't go as far as it used to.
"after decades of China selling things like solar panels below cost."
What they did was a bit more insidious.
First they sold pure Silicon ingots cheap.
Then they stopped and started selling solar cells cheap.
They stopped selling the cells and started selling the whole panels.
Each step along the way they gained a s-ton of experience and were able to ramp up production. They certainly sell solar panels for less than they can be made in most other countries, but first they obliterated the supply chain for the components as they went along so if anybody wanted to come along later and compete, they'd have to rebuild everything from the raw materials to the individual components.
I may be completely wrong, but I think China is going through a massive arms build up right now, and the only reason I can see for this is to invade Taiwan; China is not threatened by invasion and has no defensive need for this buildup.
China is a dictatorship, and dictatorships sooner or later always invade their neighbours, unless it's clear they would lose.
As I say, I may be wrong, but to me it seems madness to supply dictatorships with technology.
I also find it questionable that China, with its massive and pervasive State, is complaining about this act violating the principles of the free market. That feels like Russia complaining that military re-equipment in the West threatens peace.
China may not be threatened by invasion by it's direct neighbours, but surely sees the US as an ongoing threat to it's ability to do whatever it wants to territory it sees as it's own. USA has a long track record of military intervention in other countries and it'd be naive to think they'd never attempt it with China, or anywhere China regards as part of China.
The US who continue to spend vast amounts more than China (and everyone else put together) and has no defensive need for that level of spending either (or even more so - China shares land borders with India, North Korea and Russia, among other less military inclined neighbours; USA shares land borders with Mexico and Canada).
China is a nuclear power. I may be wrong, but I think this limits the scope of US intervention, at least in China itself.
North Korea is a rogue State, but is economically dependent on China.
Russia has one tenth of the population and one tenth of the economy of China.
For sure China will need a military; but the size of the expansion now, I aver, is in no way related to possible threats from its neighbours.
Sure, I don't think even the previous US president would have launched a direct attack on the Chinese mainland - the kind of action that could lead to escalation involving nuclear weapons - but there a lot of disputed territories that can be entered and military activities that fall short of an invasion/missile strike, that can still significantly alter what a country can and can't do. Even pointless posturing can lead to a loss of reputation that can damage a country (at least internally).
I imagine China would like to get into the position where any military intervention by the US in the territories they consider theirs could be matched and retaliated against, so as to discourage them from trying.
The US Monroe doctrine dates back a couple of centuries, and they basically see themselves as having the right to intervene in any way they see fit all through the Americas*. China is merely asserting something similair - that it considers itself free to assert itself anywhere in East and Southeast Asia. Of course, both 'doctrines' are complete bullshit, and US and China should both wind their necks in.
Sadly though, the bully never sees themselves as being a bully. It's never their fault and they are never wrong.
* part of the reason for the chaos in many parts of Latin America is due to US interventionism
"I also find it questionable that China, with its massive and pervasive State, is complaining about this act violating the principles of the free market"
Particularly this. US is proposing a few billions in funding (EU also by the way, though at a smaller scale). Funding the Chinese government is giving to it's tech companies is probably in the trillions
There is a difference between countries helping their own, and a country which prevents third-parties from helping the other.
It's the second which the Chinese are complaining about, and it does appear to be a breach of WTO rules to me.
If you've been reading the news recently you'd know that 'our' political calculus is currently influenced by 'their' upcoming elections.
China is not a 'dictatorship' but it is a communist country so their system of democracy is somewhat different from ours. We like to characterize it as our freedom versus their enslavement but the reality is that having such a system allows their government(s) (they don't just have a central government) to make investment decisions and manage costs to suit their society's needs rather than having to work entirely through, and for the benefit of, multinational corporations and banks. Its this aspect that gets tagged as 'unfair competition' by our propagandists -- China's able to manipulate capital costs so they can do bigger things quicker than we can. (An outstanding example of this is high speed rail. We in California have been struggling to build a single link for long than China took to build a 7500Km system.)(....and don't even mention the time, aggravation and cost of doing this in the UK -- cast your minds back to the early incarnation of the Channel Tunnel and what happened when it was privately financed at the UK end.)
China will get their semiconductor industry for exactly the same reason as we got it in the US -- National Defense. The UK? Nah, too much investment, too little short term RoI, a better business model is to buy up housing and rent it out.
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