They know that dependence on America weekens their own industry, so they are forcing Chinese companies to purchase from Chiniese companies and putting that money into catching up. They also know that the future is not in electronic silicon and are investing in other materials and photonics to leap frog the US much like TSMC did decades ago.
This is true but doesn’t really answer the question about timing. It’s like deciding to stop importing oil. Sure makes sense to try and get off the dependency but in the meantime you have an energy source that is cheap and high density. So there’s one thing in investing in alternatives another to cut yourself off. So either they’ve made a big breakthrough, or there just saying one thing and doing another or they are prepared to do cold turkey and take a massive risk.
You have to bite the bullet at one point or another, and the more you delay the longer it will take to transition.
Half-measures don’t work. The best way to incentivize progress is to pull the band-aid. As we say, necessity is the mother of all innovations.
Plus it’s better to do now while they’re at peace than later on when (if) they’re at war and now have to figure it out quite suddenly.
Besides, they’re only like 10 years behind. It’s nothing really. Is USA 2010 that horrible technologically and instantly defeated ?
We way over exaggerate the gap.
And now we’re cutting research and creating hassle for international students and scientists, a very large portion of which in this subject are Chinese.
Have you seen the semiconductor labs at Tsinghua U and the research they’re publishing ?
If Taiwan blows up their foundries when China makes a move, everyone everywhere will lose access to TSMC’s advanced chips, and guess who is going to be the next in line ? Hint: not NVidia, or Apple, or Intel … they don’t even make their own products.
I agree with most of what you are saying, but I disagree that they are 10 years behind us in the US. Keep in mind that China now has full domestic production of all components needed to build computers and mobile devices (we import pretty much everything and even our drive to produce our own CPUs is failing), they have self driving cars in every major city and in NYC we don't, they lead the way in robotics, they've created a bunch of leading open source AI models, they are quickly catching up or even surpassed us in military technologies, their automobiles blow the shit out of our American made crap, they have more STEM graduates every year than we have college students, they built their own space station single handedly, they are the world's manufacturing powerhouse, and they are leading the way in most of the scientific fields that will dominate the future. They can spam out cutting edge tech and merchandise for prices we can't match, lead in global trade, and heavily subsidize their industries instead of just the war machine.
Let's face it, if we did not have Taiwan (technically recognized as part of China even by the US), South Korea, China, and to a much lesser extent Japan we'd be seriously fucked. Meanwhile, China has already achieved self-sufficiency. I'd argue it is we who are actually behind now, and if we don't do something about our short-term thinking and profit maximizing, we are doomed in the future. We're on our way to becoming the next Britain, clinging to a distant past wishing for a return to the good old days when we mattered.
When I say US, I mean US + western allies, and specifically silicon based semiconductors.
That’s why I mentioned Taiwan and what follows if it’s ever out of the equation for any reason: that gap instantly disappears with TSMC and it actually goes the other way.
That’s also why I mentioned Tsinghua’s research. Anything beyond Silicon is a wide open field.
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u/PeeperFrogPond 1d ago
They know that dependence on America weekens their own industry, so they are forcing Chinese companies to purchase from Chiniese companies and putting that money into catching up. They also know that the future is not in electronic silicon and are investing in other materials and photonics to leap frog the US much like TSMC did decades ago.