Comment by yoz-y
7 hours ago
Yes and no. Having more competition in the space is excellent news. However I am sad that the world interdependence is eroding as most other countries seem to sit on their hands and happily outsource every bit of manufacturing to a single country.
Xiaomi's Xring O3 is manufactured by TSMC N3P process in Taiwan. [1]
MediaTek Dimensity 9500 is also manufactured by TSMC N3P process in Taiwan. [2]
There was no world interdependence change (unless one considers China and Taiwan to be the same countries).
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-launches-XRing-O3-claim...
[2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-9500-Proces...
> unless one considers China and Taiwan to be the same countries
The fact that the CCP is relaxed about core Chinese companies running their manufacturing in Taiwan might suggest that the CCP considers that it can make China and Taiwan one country, at a time of the CCP's choosing.
I've lived in Taiwan for a large part of my life.
They would lose all of TSMC if they do any military actions. It's not the fact that the CCP thinks that they can make Taiwan and China a country, it's the the fact that most of China does in fact consider them as one country. Taiwan is ready to defend themselves, but are very happy keeping their relationship with China the way it is.
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They already consider it as one country. The CCP sees Taiwan as a province of China.
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That act could throw us all back into the dark ages, though.
They're intentional about economic integration because it will in theory make unification easier without a war.
Its the opposite
China isn’t going to invade China until after we get our semiconductors up and running in Arizona for real
(because US won’t have to think about that situation ever again)
removing dependence imperils that island, CCP already has an EUV machine so the inevitable sanctions and export controls on ASML’s in Europe won’t matter either
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MediaTek is a Taiwanese company. Xiaomi could put any backdoor that the government tell them to install and TSMC won't be able to catch that.
I'm unaware of any actual hardware backdoors introduced by primary manufacturers in practice, especially those installed in Xiaomi hardware.
There are accounts of interdiction and post-manufacturing compromises, such as those revealed in the Snowden leaks (2013) and most recently by reporting about the Israeli security services' sabotage of Hezbollah pagers and 2-way radios. These projects didn't expose primary manufacturers to the reputational and legal risk of association.
Until there's evidence of backdoors implanted by these companies, it's better to adopt a "trust but verify" approach and use standard layered security practices to detect intrusion. Conventional network intrusion and insider threat campaigns carry less risk of failure and are simpler and cheaper to execute.
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Do you say the same about Intel, Amd, etc. or is it only big bad China?
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There are already American backdoors on intel and AMD chips everywhere, we call them ME and PSP. Switching to chinese tech won't make it worse.
Now, if the EU would start make to make chips that have no subsystem to screw me over, that would be something.
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TSMC doesn't care what you put in your CPUs. Apple could tell them they want to build a CPU where 90% of the transistor footprint is for a new CIA Engine that takes pictures of your feet every three seconds to trace where you've been from the smell and TSMC's response would be "how many wafers do you want?".
This would be interdependence expanding. Manufacturing isn't the only kind of economic activity
I don't think it's by choice just ask all those extinct manufacturers
Maybe new companies can spring up and be competitive with AI assisted design. Im assuming the cost was too high for those old companies to survive right? Small nimble companies could theoretically compete in some segments vs large bloated slobs (even if they have AI as well). This is all just hypothetical thought.
It was a choice, western oligarchs handed China the means of production on a silver platter in the pursuit of short term profits.
I think Western people still call this situation “outsourcing” when in reality what is happening is that China is better at manufacturing than everyone else, and they’re starting to be better than everyone else at design and engineering, too.
When we buy software from Silicon Valley or a nice Mercedes Benz from Germany we don’t use this same language “outsourcing.”
Colloquially, outsourcing implies low quality or cheap price. No, what’s happening here is that China makes the best products in numerous categories and we are choosing to import them, because the best products are the most desirable.
The west is interested in funneling most of the money to the top no matter what for the last 60 years that has been the drum beat/cry It can’t be done. It can’t be done.
In America, there is one fast food place that does it differently than everyone in the market they don’t franchise and they don’t lease/rent.
They own everything as they expand (the land and the building), which means it’s a little bit slower when you expand, but they don’t care but they are very profitable.
The owner probably gets a call every other week from large equity companies trying to sell them on doing it like everybody else and their pitch they can make you a worldwide company if you just let them in to f you.
Well at this point they are probably the only country in the world that can produce a car end to end starting from the raw iron ore and other elements up to the chips and software that runs on them (I’m sure they will still need to import some small stuff probably like Rhodium or Iridium maybe), who is going to compete with that? Everything done in country, no tariffs at all throughout the entire production cycle.
That said some of these industry especially metallurgical ones will never return to Europe or US as they basically destroy and pollute the environment on a large scale, in China that still seems acceptable but also might change promoting them to outsource to other countries which they already do in some areas I think.
I find it quite strange en people take a development that has happened over the last ~50 years, little more than half a lifetime, and confidently state that now "it will always stay like this". Things always change.
Imagine what those kinds of people would have said in China in the 70s, with western industries being vastly more advanced and efficient. "It's over, we will never catch up." they would probably have said. Wrong then, more wrong now.
> China that still seems acceptable
China has made a tremendous effort to move to a clean(er) industrial system, using a lot of renewables and clean energy and improving environmental standards. At this point production in China is probably the best for the environment compared to most countries, including the US that is deeply invested in oil production.
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Fair point. Outsourcing was not the right word to use, China today makes products over all quality ranges and almost always they are cheaper than any other alternative. “Giving away” would be a better word.
I think it’s a matter of perceptions catching up to reality. 15 years ago China was definitely still ripping off american products down to the english silk screening.
China didn't get that way by magic. They ran the same playbook that allowed Alexander Hamilton to snatch manufacturing from Great Britain to the US, and the US gave up manufacturing for the same reason the UK gave up manufacturing (suppression of labor interests).
It will be interesting to see what China does. They aren't ideologically committed to exclusively serving the interests of the wealthy, but they still have lots of rich people in the (ahem) Communist Party, so who knows.
China and Vietnam are the only countries worldwide which have executed bankers for corruption in recent decades. No ahem necessary.
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I can't imagine it going any other way than what we've seen from every other country in your set of examples, honestly.
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The industrialization of USA comes after the civil war, thus long after e.g. Charles Dickens, to say nothing of Hamilton.
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It's manufactured in Taiwan.
This is what was sold to – and often forced on – countries by the US and their allies via the IMF and World Bank. Global free trade meant that you only produced what you had an advantage in and bought what others could produce at lower cost.
I think describing what's happening "other countries seem to sit on their hands and happily outsource every bit of manufacturing to a single country" is disingenuous. It's been dubbed China Shock 2.0 and it's being taken very seriously by the EU. The US admin is a joke and too busy shooting itself in both feet to have coherent policy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Shock_2.0
As if our EU leaders aren't a complete joke as well. Pushing ChatControl, fascism and gambling everywhere. We're just as much of a joke.
It's not disingenuous. It was obvious this was happening 15 years ago and the US and EU could have done something about it back then.
The tendency to protect corporate profit margins is the western Achilles heel and China knew they could exploit that.
yet somehow the outcome for the US has been much better. EU wins on paper though, yay!
Sure if you are Bezos or Musk. Otherwise, no.
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> outcome for the US has been much better
Is this better outcome for the US in the room with us?
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So same as before?
Except this trend is actually reversing now, with fabs being built outside of Taiwan?
It's not reversing, it's continuing the trend of more and more manufacturing moving to Chinese companies. It already happened to TVs and it's currently happening with RAM.
By Chinese company, do you mean Taiwan is Chinese in the same way China is Chinese?
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Countries and institutions should always produce things where they are excellent at producing, in forms of specialization and compete in terms of comparative advantages.
We surely cant be this naive after the recent history of:
- China weaponizing the world's dependence on rare earth
- The US weaponizing the world's dependence on SWIFT
- Russia weaponizing Europe's dependence on natural gas
- Iran weaponizing the the world's dependence of oil supply through strait of Hormuz
This is true until you add a layer of geopolitics to your analysis.
Supply chain advantages make the country that produces most of the stuff progressively better at doing everything.
Only if you have the people to do it. China has some of the worst birth rate in the world. In ~20 years that manufacturing capacity either goes to robots or goes away. Then what?
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While I agree in passing. I think saying you'll export all your work to places with worse labor laws is short-term thinking. Chinese companies are successful yes but they also don't necessarily compete fairly. We still can export large portfolios of goods to China. So to just say they are best because they have a government protected market, plus subsidies so we should abandon local is a bad optimization in the long term
Those thing are not static! Changing them can be a political decision. It was a political decision in China to become excellent at manufacturing.
That depends on if everybody gets along and is willing to trade
This attitude, if followed without qualifications, is dangerously naive and shortsighted, as the last few years of geopolitical events have shown.
Yes, and no. Yes because you are vulnerable to supply chain disruption by illwilled countries. But illwilled countries that disrupt supply chains greatly incentivise others to diversify supply away from them.
China could have the monopoly of rare earth production and refinery for all of eternity. But because of their reaction towards all the us allies when the us increased tariffs, I don't expect them to be relevant enough to disrupt markets with rare earths sanctions in 10-20 years.
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Families should always eat at the restaurants that produce the most excellent cuisine. /s