US mulls retaliation for China blacklisting Micron without evidence of security threat The chip wars between Washington and Beijing show no sign of cooling off after a senior US politician insisted his country should retaliate for the blacklisting of Micron. China this week banned products from the US memory chipmaker, supposedly on the grounds of national security, with the nation's Cyberspace Administration …
> "On May 21, the Cyberspace Administration of China determined, without providing evidence, that products made by US firm Micron Technology pose a national security risk to the People's Republic of China (PRC)," Representative Mike Gallagher said in a statement.
And I bet it was said without a single trace of irony.....
Think they've "shared" for a good 20 years - the "sharing" was enacted as either allowing, or not making much if any effort to prevent the stealing/espionage happening, rather than despatching all the corporate secrets to Beijing monthly, accompanied by a couple of strippers ;)
My main concern with this kind of politcial posturing on both sides is that the, obvious to us (but not necessarily obvious to average news consumer), hypocrisy of the argument means that there's another purpose behind airing this dirty laundry: Fomenting anti-China sentiment.
The only reason for which is to make an upcoming war with China justified or at least somewhat more palatable amongst the populace.
Most of the answers about "what would China do?" are obvious to anyone who knows anything about their recent history. The Opium Wars in the middle of the 19th century were sparked by our readiness to buy stuff from them combined with our inability to pay for it -- they wanted silver, we wanted to ship them opium. The Chinese were not strong enough to resist and this resulted in what they refer to as "the Century of Humiliation" where they became the plaything of various imperial powers, suffering particularly under the Japanese. Once they became properly independent -- the foundation of the PRC -- our response was to leave them broke and refuse to trade with them (a bit like modern Afghanistan but much bigger). They built up from this into a modern nation -- although our media talks about "slave labor" and "spying" and all that its actually "a lot of work" that got them to where they are today (and a lot of Chinese people would disagree with 'slave labor' -- there's a lot of money about).
The result is that they're back pretty much where they were before -- a major industrial power with huge resources, both human and physical. The difference between then and now is that they're not going to tolerate any opium wars or foreign free trade zones in their cities or any of the other trappings of imperialism. They want -- they demand -- to be treated as equals. The danger for us in the West is that this sort of thing could be catching; eventually we run out of politicians to bribe or bully.
So, the short answer is that they're not interested in going to war but they will if they have to.
Did the US seriously think something like this wasn't coming, when they started to ban Chinese made equipment for 'national security' reasons, China was always going to do the same to a western company.
You can pretty much ban anything, without giving explanation when you say its for national security. on the grounds that revealing why you banned it could compromise national security.
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