TSMC lost the Chinese market, because their government went along headfirst with US trade war policy(similar to what Japan did in 1986, but worse in fact). South Korean officials on the other hand lobbied heavily to get long term exemptions, which allowed them to turn around their profit situation.

> Contrast that to the US and Europe who keep talking about these things, but don't actually execute(although the US at least tries to throw money at the problem).

"Our analysis of multiple surveys indicates that as much as 91 percent of U.S. manufacturers have reshored some production in 2022, up from just 7 percent 2012. " https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/98200-a-look-back-at-20...

China's annual exports drop for first time in seven years. Among key trading partners, exports to the U.S. led the decline, down 13% from the previous year https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-s-annual-exports...

> TSMC lost the Chinese market...South Korean officials on the other hand lobbied heavily to get long term exemptions, which allowed them to turn around their profit situation.

Samsung profit tumbles 35% as chip weakness persists. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3248969/china-rem...

Over 50% of Korean firms missing earnings target in China this year: survey https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230830000611

You should always be skeptical of statistics written this way. It is a very unintuitive way to aggregate and suggests that this is the strongest number they could find.

Near $120 billion spent on new manufacturing facilities in 2022 alone. The surge looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Bydq6Hb.png

The US manufacturing sector has added 900,000 jobs since 2014 (according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics). It was at 12,081,000 manufacturing jobs in January 2014, and January 2024 is at 12,979,000. For the US, which is supposed to be a wilting manufacturer, that's a huge gain over a decade (including the pandemic hit, which slashed 700,000 jobs out temporarily; one guesses the figure would just be even higher minus the pandemic).

Manufacturers don't add a million jobs if they're not expanding presence. Even if they were expanding very slowly, they would do everything possible to avoid adding jobs/labor (most US manufacturing expansion in decades past came from productivity gains).

The US has modest corporate taxes, a good business regulatory environment, amazing capital markets, enormous economic scale, a single giant market, ports that can easily get you to Asia/Europe/Latin America, consumers, and labor. It makes perfect sense that at a time of growing risk of conflict with China, that the US would be reshoring.

Yep!

> ports that can easily get you to Asia/Europe/Latin America, consumers,

Yep!

> and labor

Nope. Labor costs in the US are ridiculous and make it non-economical for most consumer manufacturing. This is why real output remains low and we are exploring 'friend-shoring.'

US: >Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022

UK: >In the financial year ending (FYE) 2022, median household income in the UK before taxes and benefits was £35,000, increasing to £38,100 after taxes and benefits.

That is 7.4% growth since 2014.

US population grew by 6.4% during that same period. Hard to see the "huge gain" here.

Increased labor costs... versus rapid, $$ last-minute transport / port fees to hide latency across the Pacific.

At some point, it's just cheaper to pay the manufacturer more, if they can more rapidly respond to demand.

Canada and Mexico have multiple entry points without as severe risk.

Looks like an inflation graph to me.

Manufacturing hubs are shifting hands, but globalism isn't ending. Companies can still get away with paying $10 a day or less to people in some countries and they're never giving that up.

One thing to keep in mind: a few years ago, South Korea with North Korea to allow corporations to do manufacturing in North Korea. [1] The result: mega corporations like Korea's Hyundai and Japan's Family Mart flooded in to take advantage of cheap (probably even slave) labor. It closed not because companies felt morally wrong about it--it closed because the governments forced it to close.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region

Price cap is poorly enforced. All economic sanctions applied to Russia are poorly enforced thanks to globalization and lack of political will of western countries.

Sanctions are severe on paper, but in real life just adds some extra friction.

Unfortunately we are living in times when there are only weak populists in the government.

I wish the next is president will be someone like Reagan, but it is impossible.

The US can no longer afford to be world police with its navy.

Russia is now outside of the US economic system, while relations with China continue to deteriorate. It will deteriorate further once China attacks Taiwan.

Russia is not really cut off from the global trade.

Africa becomes more united and collected.

Globalization is still a trend.

Some people confuse the "global" trade to the American & Friends trade.

From the other hand, Russians can buy anything western they want, just with more friction and higher price. Even dual-purpose western components for army are freely available for them.

Russia is cut off from the developed Western economy. Some NATO commanders are also warning that Russia will not stop at Ukraine.

Even if Russia and China weren’t on a war path, the US simply cannot continue to subsidize global defense of trade via our navy. Currently, only the UK and Japan have a sizable fleet of long range ships, but they still don’t compare to the US navy.

Yes, globalism is still here, but the trend is that it will be on a major decline in the coming years. Destabilizing geopolitics will only hasten it.

And yes, they will never stop because they have an empire mentality. Make Russian empire great again! Russian are ready to kill anyone and die for promise to get 2000$ per month from their government.

'Some' is doing a lot of work. What does that really mean? If 99% of manufacturers each onshore 0.01% of their manufacturing, all that has really happened is that everyone can probably now label things "made in america".

U.S. manufacturing construction spending reached a 20-year high, hitting a $194 billion annual rate in April 2023, nearly double the $107 billion annual rate from a year ago. https://thinkkc.com/news/blog/kc-smartport-blog/2023/08/01/i...

In 2021, Intel announced more than $43.5 billion in new manufacturing investments across Arizona, New Mexico and Ohio to bolster U.S. chipmaking and R&D leadership. https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1638/...

Walmart previously announced a $350 billion investment to make U.S. manufacturing more “affordable and feasible,”

https://www.sme.org/technologies/articles/2023/october/resho...

A nominal 20-year high and the increase is since the pandemic. Also this is for construction. Here are some other time series: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

Walmart $350 billion investment is over 10 years and mostly is for agriculture and some small electronics.

Also this source is an American manufacturing lobbying group.

companies have announced over $166 billion in manufacturing in semiconductors and electronics, and at least 50 community colleges in 19 states have announced new or expanded programming to help American workers access good-paying jobs in the semiconductor industry. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Apple commits $430 billion in US investments over five years https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-commits-430-bil...

Microsoft will buy enough U.S.-made solar panels to power 1.8 million homes https://www.greenbiz.com/article/microsoft-will-buy-enough-u...

Tesla plans to spend $3.6 billion more on battery and truck manufacturing in Nevada https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/24/tesla-plans-to-spend-3point6...

US manufacturing never recovered from the 2008 crisis. And in 2005, the output of manufacturing was higher than it is today (in real value terms, not funny dollars).

- Chinese stock market has dropped 11% this year, with 3 year cumulative loss of 6 trillion in 3 years https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/23/investing/china-stock-market-...

- Chinese economy is suffering from deflation

- China’s youth unemployment rate hit consecutive record highs in recent months. From April to June, the jobless rate for 16- to 24-year-olds reached 20.4%, 20.8% and 21.3% respectively

That's not evident in the persistent high youth unemployment rate. There is also something called middle income trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap

> they become the dominant world super power.

There's no sign that that is guaranteed. No sign in culture power. No sign in economic power. No sign in demographics power. No sign in innovation power. No sign in technology power. No sign in military power.

They're on course to become the biggest economy in the world. Popularity of their culture is surging (though from a very low baseline) - you hear a lot more about Chinese movies/novels/games, or even software, than even a couple of years ago. Innovation and technology are hard to measure, but on measures like scientific papers published or patents registered they're also surging. There's plenty to criticise about the Chinese government and Chinese culture, but there are definitely significant signs of success.

They are not:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-25/us-extend...

> Popularity of their culture is surging

Not as popular as Korean or Japanese, or arguably Indian.

> but there are definitely significant signs of success.

This is true. The very fact that China is considered a super power shows that they have made tremendous progress.

No. Africa and South America largely lack in basic infrastructure, political stability, and workforce education. You can't do advanced modern manufacturing in places like that. Brazil has some promise, and maybe Nigeria and Chile, but that's about it. Brazil still has major stability problems, not sure about the others.

I'm not touching the rest, but this seems like an obvious fig leaf for largely failing to bring production home.

I'm not arguing the point, mostly because I still don't have reliable evidence to argue about.

With no numbers or rules for the numerator and the denominator, and no clear methodology, and no clear understanding of the biases and the agendas of the authors, these ratios are meaningless.

Taiwan is definitely caught between a rock and a hard place. They watched what happened in Hong Kong and no longer is interested in rejoining Xi’s China. So now they are threatened with invasion unless they rejoin China. They are reliant on the US to prevent that’s from happening. So given the choices, it’s not surprising that they are choosing the US to continue existing.

It’s crazy to me that you haven’t see more divestments in China from Taiwanese companies.

There is a ton of divestment, what do you mean?

New investments in China by Taiwanese companies declined 10.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the year (2023) to US$758 million...That follows an almost 14 percent decrease in such investment last year.https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2023/04/21/2...

According to a survey conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, over a quarter of surveyed Taiwanese firms with operations in China had already moved some of their production or sourcing out of China, while another third were considering doing so in the near-term. https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=3573

Apple Aims to Make a Quarter of the World’s iPhones in India. Supplier Foxconn plans to build more factories and give India a production role once limited mostly to China https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-aims-to-make-a-quarter-of-the...

How's total investment going? If the flow is still greater than zero, then presumably the stock is still increasing... It's a funny sort of 'divestment' where you have more invested (and at risk) every year.

Foreign investors have snatched back nearly 90% (!!!) of the money they put into Chinese stocks this year (2023) https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/china-econom...

It makes sense that this is a slow process when you consider the massive scale and complexity of the supply chains involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Slavic

Whereas different dialects of Mandarin may not be mutually intelligible

> Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

A lot of common, everyday words differ in Ukrainian and or arise from different roots (e.g Polish).

English and German share 60% of vocabulary.

Although as an English-speaking native who has studied German, Dutch often maddeningly looks like it should make sense, but it doesn't.

It's plenty for communication, not plenty for a conversation.

(It's also a mirror for colonialism, by the way, where the occupied speak the language of the occupier, but the occupiers can't be arsed to learn the language of the occupied.)

Do you mean Hakka and/or Hokkien?

Hokkien which is primarily spoken across the strait in Fujian.

Hakka is primarily spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi.

Xi himself was the Party head of Fujian for most of his career and Xi's father was the Party head of Guangdong when he was rehabilitated in the Deng Xiaoping era.

This is why most manufacturing in China ended up coastal Southern China - most Chinese Taiwanese trace their heritage to there barely 2-5 generations ago at most.

The younger generation (post-1989) in Taiwan speaks and understands Mandarin.

The issue is why would Taiwanese businesses care about the China market? Aside from the fact that the China market is massive, there is a simple answer: Taiwan and China have the same business language, and that is Standard Chinese aka Mandarin.

Yes, lots of Taiwanese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin, and are not mutually intelligible with it. And lots of Chinese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin and are not mutually intelligible with it. And even some variants of Mandarin itself are not mutually intelligible. But - outside of Cantonese in HK and Macau - none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan, so it's an interesting side note but doesn't change the point.

All that said, aside from the Chinese market being massive, and the common language being convenient, there is a much bigger elephant in the room that explains why Taiwanese companies might not have a fun time doing business in China: politics.

It doesn't matter how much money Taiwanese companies might want to make if the CCP can threaten to turn off the spigot any time they want to influence Taiwanese politics, which unfortunately nowadays appears to be all the time. Sure, it's leaving a lot of money on the table, but doing business with Japan or the US or other countries that aren't run as a single party dictatorship whose leadership has a stated platform of dismantling your own government might be a less risky option.

我同意。

I was just trying to dig into what OP meant by "Taiwanese" as a language.

It's always going to be Mandarin for anything commercial.

That said, you can't deny the benefit the Hakka and Hokkien diaspora provided to China's manufacturing capacity - it was diaspora Chinese from Thailand (CP Group was the first foreign private company to incorporate in China), Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Taiwan had on PRC's catchup.

This is because the CCP does not trust southerners (people from Fujian/guangdong especially) and will send northerners in to manage/rule those provinces. China is still afraid of Fujian revolting and joining Taiwan.

If that was the case, then Hakka wouldn't be so overrepresented within the CCP.

Deng Xiaoping himself was Hakka, as were most of the the core CCP leadership until recently [0]

Hakka is the primary language spoken in TW after Mandarin btw.

If you're a fellow Bay Area native, maybe visit Fremont or Richmond District in SF sometime and actually learn about us Asian subcommunities.

[0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/654189

> Deng Xiaoping himself was Hakka, as were most of the the core CCP leadership until recently [0]

I’m going to not believe your source given how much wrong you’ve gotten already. But even if true, Chinese identity politics are more attuned to region than ethnicity. Southerners also were trusted because the KMT was heavily southern biased while the communists were the opposite. This is why the capital is in BJ and not NJ.

> Hakka is the primary language spoken in TW after Mandarin btw.

No no no. It is definitely Hokkien, a dialect of Min, which is the base dialect for Fujian.

> If you're a fellow Bay Area native, maybe visit Fremont or Richmond District in SF sometime and actually learn about us Asian subcommunities

Is that some kind of Asian American thing? You can learn plenty about Chinese ethnicities in China, why bother doing it in the states? Southern ethnicities are also over represented in overseas Chinese communities given the propensity of people from GD or FJ to go abroad, and then cultures kind of diverge a bit (another reason the CCP doesn’t trust GD/FJ).

Guang'an, the town he was born, was and is Hakka speaking, after the Hakka-Punti wars were lost by the Hakka.

> Chinese identity politics are more attuned to region than ethnicity

I can agree with that with the post 1970 generation. Deng Xiaoping and his ilk were from before that era, during the Long March.

> It is definitely Hokkien

Yes, Hokkien is prominent in TW but so is Hakka. Around 10% Hakka speaking based on the last census.

> Is that some kind of Asian American thing

Taiwanese (and HK) American specifically. Iykyk I guess. Hence why I equally smell shit from your response.

I have some confidence with dialects of my primary language(not Chinese) within ~150mi of where I am; beyond that, mutual intelligibility with local dialects isn't guaranteed. Yet, those dialects are rarely considered(including by speakers) to be separate from the standard. They're just local accents. That aren't even intelligible to city dwellers.

Except for some slang words which nobody would use in business anyway, Sichuanese is largely intelligible to native Mandarin Chinese speakers if spoken slowly and repeated a couple times. People from Sichuan can also speak standard Mandarin. The written language is identical.

As for Taiwan and China it is even less an issue. The very few words that are different may be the source for some humor sometimes but that's it. It's kind of like how British people say "lift" and Americans say "elevator". If you're not brain-dead you'll figure it out pretty quickly and maybe crack a joke or two about it. When you see a sign that says "lift" you don't panic and say that it's not intelligible, you can make some sense of the word.

It's a non-issue in practical terms.

11 years does not seem like long enough time for a language to first start declining and then end as being the primary formal language.

Which is your native language? 2012: 57% Ukrainian, 42% Russian; 2023: 82% Ukrainian, 16% Russian

Which language do you speak at home? 2023: 63% Ukrainian, 27% mixed, 7% Russian

Coincides with my andecotal experience. Source: https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ukraine/soc_olog_chne_dos...

That and the way people respond to polls now is gonna change.

In any case I think going forward you'll see English's fortunes rise in Ukraine, and probably Polish as well.

Name "few political directives" in 2014 before Moscow invasion. Ukraine actions are direct response to Moscow aggression. People don't want to be occupied by Moscow like Donetsk, Luhansk. Life is awful there, million fled from occupation. That's why changes were supported by majority of Ukrainians.

Still occupants language was learned in schools, media could use it though eventually quotas set to use Ukrainian too. And officials continued using it.

Ukraine policies fought discrimination of Ukrainian in Ukraine. Discrimination that stems from centuries of occupation by Moscow. In 2016 state stated at least 60% TV should be on Ukrainian. Only in 2017 education in schools was switched from occupants language to Ukrainian. Since 2019 Ukrainian should be used in services unless requested otherwise by customer. People switch to Ukrainian voluntarily, state provides means.

Ukraine is a democratic state, check out Euromaidan. Stop pretending like changes is anything but result of Moscow agression.

But perhaps that's how you think democracies work - when you don't like the government, you bring your friends to wear funny hats and storm the capitol, and get a new one... Should Americans do that the next time an unpopular politician ends up heading the executive? It certainly speeds up the transfer of power, even if it drops the 'peaceful' aspect of it...

Moscow invaded Ukraine (Crimea) 20.02.2014. Yanukovych fled 21.02.2014. Occupation does not just "happen", it was staged. Ukrainians felt that as betrayal, seen as occupants population cheared in support. That hurts, breaks cultural ties. In a few months Moscow invaded east of Ukraine while spreading lies. Lies obvious for Ukraine citizens, believed by occupants population.

Peaceful transfer of power is not possible in Belarus or Russian Federation. Ukrainians have no guns, democracy is not stable, judiciary and special forces are not independent, media influenced by state and oligarchs. Euromaidan saved Ukraine from Belarus fate.

Moscow invasion staged not in preceding weeks but in years. Putin revealed intentions in 2007, occupied Georgia in 2008.

"On February 23, 2014, the second day after the flight of Viktor Yanukovich, while in a parliamentary session, a deputy from the Batkivshchyna party, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, moved to include in the agenda a bill to repeal the 2012 law "On the principles of the state language policy". <...> The bill would have made Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels. <...> However, the move to repeal the 2012 law "On the principles of the state language policy" provoked negative reactions in Crimea and in some regions of Southern and Eastern Ukraine. It became one of the topics of the protests against the new government approved by the parliament after the flight of Viktor Yanukovich." [0]

And more generally: Ukrainization Post-1991: Independent Ukraine. [1]

"check out Euromaidan."

“The mob, whatever it is, has no legitimacy before the sovereign people expressing themselves through its elected representatives.” [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Att...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization#Post-1991:_indep...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/world/europe/macron-pensi...

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100518073110/http://www.gallup...

Not a single US president pushed for a FTA with Taiwan. So far every single one has opposed it, while on the back bullying Taiwan to open their markets to dump cheap American pork into it, completely against the will of the Taiwanese people by the way.

The current result is that Taiwanese wages have stagnated for decades and as a result save for a select few that go to Japan and the US, a lot of other people look for opportunities in Mainland China.

What made Taiwan so successful in the past is what makes Dubai and Singapore so successful now. Open trade with everyone, and easy business opportunities. Both things that it no longer engages in.

BTW the big joke nobody really seems to know is that the pro independence party has never submitted a bid for independence, while the pro China party has.

> Taiwan will never compete on the global market for most of its products.

the aggregate brand value of Taiwan's 25 largest brands totaled US$13.84 billion in 2023, a 5 percent rise from 2022 and marking the fourth consecutive year of the value surpassing the US$10 billion mark. https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202312020012

> The current result is that Taiwanese wages have stagnated for decades

The average annual salary for full-time employees in Taiwan reached an eight-year high of NT$694,000 (US$22,242) this year (2023). https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202311290017

Taiwan to surpass Japan in GDP per capita this year (2023): JCER https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Taiwan-to-surpass-Japan-in-G...

I am the complete opposite of a CCP shill, but that is by definition stagnation.

The 2015-16 recession was brutal in Taiwan [0]. It basically was a lost decade.

South Korea and Japan ate Taiwan's market in the upper bracket, and China ate Taiwan's market in the lower bracket.

[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/30/taiwan-gdp-falls-for-first-t...

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/taiwan/annual-househol...

13k in 2017, 17k in 2022, 30% increase. and 22k in 2023, 30% increase.

the stagnation from 2011 to 2017 is due to the pro-China president from 2008 to 2016, which fueled market and investment losses going to China. That reversed in 2016 with the Pro-Taiwan president.

The fact that Taiwan GDP per capita is close to surpassing Japan's, shows how poorly Japan has been doing despite its stock market.

For now, let's use Monthly Household Income sourced from the Taiwanese DGBAS and in NTW [0]

In 2016 it was NTW 84000 but by 2022 it was NTW 99000, which isn't a significant change, especially factoring the craziness the NTW has had since 2016.

> stagnation from 2011 to 2017 is due to the pro-China president ... That reversed in 2016 with the Pro-Taiwan president

It wasn't a DPP vs KMT issue. China had a stock market crash in 2015-16 [1], and Taiwanese companies were heavily exposed, as China is Taiwan's largest trading partner by a longshot. On top of that Taiwanese companies were already facing the brunt of the collapse of the CSSTA [2].

[0] - https://tradingeconomics.com/taiwan/disposable-personal-inco...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_Chinese_stoc...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_Service_Trade_Agr...

You can have open trade but also subsidy a portion of your economy to make that "open trade" not so open anymore. I'm not against it, just saying that a single specific decision makes Dubai and Singapore success is a reductionism that helps in nothing the discussion. Let take OPEC in matters, would you say they follow a "free trade" ideology?

When I look at what occurring, I think it has more to do with their cheapest labor force is in China. So the scale and profit is hard to leave.

Doesn't help Taiwanese companies long term.

They had an advantage in Mainland China being Chinese speaking. Already in India, Tata is becoming the Indian version of Foxconn for most manufacturers and VinGroup or Korean Chaebols like Lotte (SK has a FTA with Vietnam) the Vietnamese version of Foxconn in Vietnam.

While South Korean and Japanese companies were actively de-risking in China by returning to ASEAN+India in the early-mid 2010s, Taiwanese companies only began doing this in the late 2010s after the 2015-16 recession.

1) Being too close and too dependent on China mainland

2) Enjoying a huge amount of surplus with China (it overweights everything else combined, and almost doubled)

IMO, there is really no point for China to invade Taiwan, even if Taiwan declares independence. The best move of China, when and if that happens, is to simply grab Jinmen and Mazu (the two small islands close to Xiamen), and then start a economic debacle of some sort. They don't even have to put up a physical debacle -- the only thing they need to do is to remove that surplus by removing all economic preferential policies. The best move for Taiwan, is always to be on the brink of independence without actually getting into it. After all, it is independent in all other ways and it's fine as long as US is strong enough.

Now the real point is: Can China put military equipment in Taiwan to break through the so-called first island chain? I think it's a Yes given enough time. I guess that's why NATO has been busily working on the second chain.

On the feasibility of an invasion: there was a very good episode of the Sinica podcast on wargaming this: https://thechinaproject.com/2023/08/17/wargaming-a-taiwan-in...

Very scary for everyone and especially the US. Think several lost carriers within the first 24-36 hrs

Edit: important to note that at the end of the episode they discuss that the wargaming exercise assumed

I agree that Xi probably wants some legacy coined to him, but he is only 70 and looks pretty healthy (as far as I see) so I guess he can still wait it out.

I still don't believe there is going to be an invasion of Taiwan happening in the next few years, but if it does, I think it's going to be a lot bigger than just Taiwan. From this perspective, it is scary.

China's calculus changes if they have to strike Japanese and Philippine sovereign territory (even if it's hosting US forces) in order to accomplish their goals.

And it's unclear if even Xi is willing to send as many ships and bodies as it would take to the bottom of Taiwanese straits to get an invasion force across. (Which then faces a guerrilla insurgency in mountainous terrain)

If Xi sees Taiwan as a gateway to Pacific hegemony, maybe that math is worth it...

But asking a populace to support that in the face of economic weakness and high youth unemployment is a tall order. The COVID lockdown riots demonstrated that even China's social control is a fine line.

China doesn't have the natural resource base within its borders (they're digging up their iron ore reserves faster than any country, and they have to import oil) that Russia does.

Consequently, economic sanctions slow their economy down a lot faster than Russia's.

War may be an internal unifier... but unemployment, poverty, and scarcity is a rapid internal disintegrator.

Looking at "disintegrated" Cuba...

For reference, when Germany and Japan was expanding, they had great, young demographics, and thus very good tax base. Japan had very low debt in 1920 when they started the wars https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/columns/s15_0004.html. Germany had suspended the gold standard and financed the war by borrowing, something China cannot do today.

Another way to think about this is, instead of all the possible money China made that it could have spent on war, instead it decided to build half-finished tofu dreg buildings, then the CCP elites took those dirty money out of China and into western economies :). Even the elites knew China was no match for the combined wealth/forces of western countries.

For example, usually the party provincial secretary (most powerful man in that province) concurrently serves as the first secretary of the provincial military region party committee, but he doesn't have real power in the military. When war comes, it's the group of people who are more experienced with military (the generals) going to make the call, and everyone else is not going to be happy.

Think Politburo and the Central Military Commission. When war comes it's the CMC who is going to make the call. Some people take seats in both but some not. They all stand in the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party -- but power distribution is going to shift when things move.

That's why I think the biggest resistance comes from the party itself, not depression. Depression, historically, usually leads to wars, not from them.

Perun covers the topic of Chinese military readiness with excellent sourcing and great detail, as always:

https://youtu.be/vhI_tTEE2ZQ

This is changing quickly.

New investments in China by Taiwanese companies declined 10.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the year (2023) to US$758 million...That follows an almost 14 percent decrease in such investment last year.https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2023/04/21/2...

Exodus of Taiwanese businesses from China: push and pull factors amidst trade and tech tensions https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=3573

Which is why, historically, it didn’t. But Xi isn’t rational: he’s a dictator.

It wasn’t rational for him to force his way onto Hong Kong; the territory would automatically become China in a few decades. Same for his corruption/loyalty purges and decimation of China’s tech sector. Irrational, short-term sacrifices of China’s long-term potential for his short-term politics.

This is a non-sequitor. There's no reason, a priori, to believe a dictator is any less, or more rational than a popular idiot (and we've elected quite a few of those).

(You also don't stay a dictator for very long by being a madman or an idiot, whereas an elected official usually at least gets to finish their term.)

I think what people mean when they say a country “acts rationally” or doesn’t is that decisions are made that vaguely make sense in when analyzed by applying the rationalism framework to ”the country,” usually used as a shorthand for the populace. But of course, this would only make sense if the leaders decide that the best way to stay in power is to serve the interest of the populace. Which isn’t the case in a non-democratic country.

Rationalism is a framework in international relations, and it makes sense that some terms-of-art will sneak out into informal English. Unfortunately, in English, “irrational” is also, basically, a fancy way of saying somebody makes stupid decisions. And lots of countries that are, broadly, antagonistic toward the US are not representative democracies*. So it seems to have basically morphed into a way of saying that my country’s adversaries are stupid. An unfortunate end for an otherwise interesting term.

* not to say that we haven’t been willing to morally compromise ourselves and ally up with dictators or overthrow democracies.

Dictators are less constrained and longer serving. The latter is particularly damning, since it means the need to save face prevents course corrections.

When that happened, Hong Kong was involved in ongoing riots and people were proclaiming (Hong Kong) independence on the streets for months. The legislature was stormed in an event that was not unlike Jan 6 Capitol Hill in the US (we sure did feel the awkward resemblance of the two events...)

Everyone can have their views on whether suppressing the riots was morally justified, but Xi had to do something to assert the CCP's sovereignty over Hong Kong. It was the only rational move unless they were prepared to give up Hong Kong.

> the territory would automatically become China in a few decades

Not sure which place you're talking about. Hong Kong is already part of China at least since the 1997 handover. And Taiwan will never become under CCP rule if status quo is preserved. Don't think there's any mechanism for "automatically" taking over Taiwan.

I don't know how familiar you are with the history, but long-term thinking and patience was essentially the reason China was able to gain back control Hong Kong from the Brits, pretty much on China's terms. They took advantage of the 99-year lease on the New Territories, waited until the Brits started developing on the leased (as opposed to ceded) land, and caught them with their pants down when they realized they had no feasible plan to partially hand back the territory when the lease expired.

Hong Kong has always been a template (in the CCP's mind at least) for taking back Taiwan, I don't know how you'd come to the conclusion that they would forego long term potential for short term gains. It's like you're talking as if they already invaded Taiwan and you're shaking your head over the stupidity of it. (No, it hasn't happened yet.)

The threat of course always seem real enough. It's all a game of chicken. The one who seems most crazy wins. Back then during the 1970s, China also threatened to invade Hong Kong if the Brits didn't hand it back to them. They want you to think the leadership is irrational. Makes them harder to predict.

Because Xi ham-fistedly forced through a badly-written security law [1] and intervened in its politics [2]. It’s like stupid Tiannamen Square.

> long-term thinking and patience was essentially the reason China was able to gain back control Hong Kong from the Brits

China was rational under the CCP. It’s myopic under Xi.

> don't know how you'd come to the conclusion that they would forego long term potential for short term gains

They already did.

Hong Kong’s mess was avoidable. Most Taiwanese identifying as Taiwanese and not Chinese was avoidable [3]. The trade wars, and China being reëclipsed in manufacturing by U.S. + Japan + Deutschland, were avoidable [4]. The bank losses on overseas loans were avoidable [5]. The corruption in the rocket forces, which guarantees no Taiwan action until China’s military strength is past its relative nadir, was avoidable [6].

All of these missteps would not have happened under proper CCP leadership. They are expressions of Xi’s personal hubris. China sacrificed the immortality of its state for the favour of its mortal dictator; it’s possibly the luckiest geopolitical stroke for America after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

> during the 1970s, China also threatened to invade Hong Kong if the Brits didn't hand it back to them. They want you to think the leadership is irrational

But they didn’t. That’s rational.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_extradition_b...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56264117

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/16/most-peop...

[4] https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/top-10-manufacturi...

[5] https://www.ft.com/content/da01c562-ad29-4c34-ae5e-a0aafddd3...

[6] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-military-rocket-f...

[1] has no mention of Xi. [2] is in 2021, way after the protests/riots.

I have reliable sources (not mass media, especially not western mass media) telling me that the security law was championed by the Hong Kong government (Carrie Lam in particular). The Chinese Central People's Government was not actively involved until the whole thing spiraled out of control.

I won't/can't tell you how involved I was in the events, but Trust Me Bro ™ I'm not just reading the news and coming to the conclusions that I wrote.

There was a significant divide within LegCo (local parliment). So no, it was not "championed". For other readers: The head of state (CEO) is hand selected by CCP. (Yes, I know about the elitist voting system to select a CEO, but the choice needs to be pre-approved by CCP.) Saying the person who was pre-selected by CCP is "championing" a proposed law by CCP isn't saying much. That was her job.

What I was responding to was the claim that "Xi ham-fistedly forced through a badly-written security law". This really isn't the case, and if your argument is that "well, everything done by the government is attributed to Xi personally, I rest my case.", I guess you're right then. Whatever you please.

Sure. This was in the open. That doesn't preclude Beijing's feet on the scales, which from everything I saw, in the open and with Trust Me Bros, what clear as day.

There were better ways to handle Hong Kong. Xi handled in a way that made sense for him. It cost China dearly in the medium term, and may prove to have been a geostrategic blunder in the long term.

This is what I'm telling you didn't happen. My sources are not public, and you're free not to believe it.

Don’t try and and make it sound like HK were just randomly protesting nothing.

Nowhere. The relevant alliances are AUKUS [1] and the Quad [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUKUS

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrilateral_Security_Dialo...

Countries like South Korea, Japan, Philippians, and Australia are likely to get scared if China does too much and send some form of help.

The "threat of invasion" has been the case since 1949. The communists stopped and did not 'finish the job' because it was hard, because of a deal with the Nationalists, because they got distracted in Korea, whatever other plausible reasons. This has been the situation since.

Interestingly this does not mean that the people, especially pro-KMT, are necessarily 'pro-US'. Those people are rooting for China but not for the communists and see the US as a necessary 'evil', so to speak.

And in fairness, the US does not have a strong track record wrt its overseas military shenanigans actually helping locals, to put it lightly. A lot of people in Taiwan are anti-CCP, but at the same time, not pro-US because they see the US as an untrustworthy or at least unreliable military ally.

I followed that story in the media for months. I never saw this sentiment. Can you share some sources? I couldn't find anything from mainstream media.

Furthermore the looming US presidential election is making people nervous even in countries that don't depend strongly on the US...

Sounds like a strawman for them

Some people in Taiwan might wish the people of China well because they have family there, but this is no different to how members of the Chinese diaspora around the rest of the world feel about the country.

The pro-China political parties in Taiwan are primarily right-wing parties, which is to say they are much more interested in the Chinese market than in Chinese politics.

The context of these surveys in Taiwan is trying to determine if Taiwanese people see their own country as a different or perhaps more legitimate version of China, and the contemporary answer - unequivocally - is no. The only people pushing the myth that most Taiwanese people see themselves as citizens of China is the ruling party of China.

If we are talking about ethnicity I believe that the large majority would say they are 漢人, which is more equivalent of an America saying he's Irish, Italian, etc. Huaren is more equivalent to saying you're Chinese, culturally, ethnically, etc... 华裔 is basically saying you have Chinese blood, which may be also different conceptionally.

中国人 used to not have such a huge political connotation to mean only PRC people but was more interchangeable with 中华, 华人, etc., but that's now not the case, and the polls reflect that change in mindset.

The CCP and other historical leaders have used these concepts to try lay claim to every land that a Chinese person ever walked across, every sea they ever sailed and every fen they ever earned, but that has to be understood as the imperialism it is. Inside the empire it behooves the subjects to not publicly challenge that narrative, but outside of it people have the freedom to define themselves as they see fit.

Polling shows that the vast majority of Taiwanese people today do not consider themselves Chinese citizens (中國人), nor do they support Chinese unification (中國統一). If you put a Taiwanese person on the spot and ask them "well, in the context of the last five thousand years, could there ever be a scenario in which the island of Formosa is ruled by the same leaders as the region of East Asia along the Yangtze, Yellow and Pearl rivers?" they might say yes, because in those last five thousand years there were a couple of hundred when that was indeed the case. But that doesn't mean that they see themselves right now as having any deeper connection to the PRC than the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, US, Canada or anywhere else.

And I think you're quite wrong that people in Taiwan don't have a deeper connection to Chinese in China. Diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, etc., have largely mixed with the indigenous cultures in those areas. Most of the later generations often speak a broken form of Chinese, or Singlish, etc., and if they do speak Chinese, perhaps they speak a Chinese dialect (brokenly) and probably practically illiterate in Chinese. In Taiwan this is simply not the case, by and large they all speak Mandarin and by and large all share the same history, know the same legends, pray to basically the same deities, can watch and read each others films/media, still uses the same flag as the one that represented China 80-100 years ago, often have close enough relatives still in China that aren't e.g. 5th removed since Taiwan's population double in size post '49, etc. Although there's a difference in traditional and simplified characters, it's not enough that someone who is fluent in one or the other and spends maybe a few months trying to learn the other would have much difficulty. Not to mention I believe most people say that if they already know traditional characters, it's easier to learn simplified, with simplified characters often being the running or grass script form of the traditional character. Moreover because there's actual communication between mainland China and Taiwan, Chinese spoken in both areas won't drift like it did between N.K. and S.K.

I am not Chinese, but I lived in China for several years and now I live in Taiwan. Anecdotally, I have not met or spoken to a single Taiwanese person who sees China as their true and native home. Many Taiwanese people have never visited China and don't have any close family living there. Of course, some do, but even those have spent far less time in China than a migrant worker like me, and are less in touch with the contemporary culture of the country.

Sure, Taiwanese people still have a lot in common with Chinese people. Nobody disputes that. But Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, Canadians and Brits all watch the same shows and listen to the same music and eat the same food and speak the same language and pray to the same god, and yet nobody would suggest that they are a monolithic people, destined to inevitably unite under a single flag. That's not how emigration works. People emigrate and then they find a new identity, and that's just as true of Chinese people as every other people.

Taiwan as a country is in an unfortunate situation of having been under a military dictatorship for 40 years, and by the time the first democratic elections came about, the die was already cast. The constitution cannot be changed, the flag cannot be changed, the official name of the country cannot be changed - any of these things are likely to trigger a Chinese invasion, because of some politicking that happened between China and the US while the people of Taiwan were still under the jackboot. This status quo is not liked by anyone, but most Taiwanese people have made peace with it. Three decades ago. No candidates in the recent election stood on a platform of uniting with China. Nobody cares about that. The idea that Taiwanese people are all secretly holding on to a dream that they could one day be part of a Greater China is a fantasy held mostly by people who live in present-day China.

'China' does not mean the People's Republic of China, which is the communist state that occupies mainland China (from KMT's point of view). Taiwan is China, too.

Hongkong is a part of China that was seized by foreigners for 150 years. Inhabitants are Chinese in China. Just look at HK movies that often depict Chinese' struggle against Europeans with the 'white guys' usually the bad guys.

But that obviously does not mean that they would necessarily support the communist party or agree to relinquish their (very new) rights.

This is the same everywhere. People may oppose the government but it does not imply that they are not belonging to their country. Obviously.

Not seeing that by the numbers

1.) The heavy market losses in 2024 come hot on the heels of a bruising run last year, when the CSI 300 index, comprising 300 major stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, fell more than 11%. By contrast, the United States’ benchmark S&P 500 index climbed 24% in 2023, while Europe’s grew almost 13%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 soared 28% last year and is still going strong, notching gains of nearly 10% so far this month. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/business/china-stock-market-f...

2.) China suffers from deflation, while the rest of the world combats inflation. Not only does deflation signal a stagnating economy, it can lead to high unemployment, unaffordable debt repayment, and dismal outcomes for businesses. In the worst cases, deflation can lead an economy into a recession, or even a depression. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/deflation-worries-deepen-in-...

3.) Crushing debt. Going back further, China accounts for over half of the entire world’s total debt-to-GDP increases since 2008. https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/backgrounder-china-econo... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-06/bloomb...

4.) China’s youth unemployment rate hit consecutive record highs in recent months. From April to June, the jobless rate for 16- to 24-year-olds reached 20.4%, 20.8% and 21.3% respectively. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/14/economy/china-economy-july-sl.... For reference, G7 countries is at 10%, US is at 8% https://data.oecd.org/unemp/youth-unemployment-rate.htm

- It has vast natural resources, some like its oil surplus are resources that even China needs to import.

- It has a vast, diverse economy that includes high representation in high-complexity high-value products like software, airplanes, and, yes, semiconductors (Intel manufactures 75% of their products in the US).

- It is highly developed and highly educated with particular strength in higher education

- It is essentially impossible to physically attack

- It produces a crazy amount of food

- Its multinational corporations own a large amount of foreign assets, with a banking system that is entangled with the rest of the world

- It is close allies with basically everyone that matters except China and Russia, and arguably China is more dependent on the US than the US depends on China.

- NAFTA countries are a huge strength to the US. The US now buys more from Mexico than China.

- The world’s second largest military and navy are basically non-existent, and the US military is unmatched in logistics.

Simplified empire is about ever increasing conquest and exploitation. At one point the conquests and military upkeep becomes more expensive than the spoils and the whole process starts going in reverse.

Of course I am not saying that this is what is happening right now; maybe Russia and China are falling apart and we are entering another unipolar moment.

Its power stems from sovereign, contiguous territory with resources, or a network of global treaties both economic and military.

In contrast, Britain was a globe-spanning empire, which disintegrated with national independence movements.

The equivalent would be if California and Texas decided to split from the United States.

And as the quip goes... the next few largest economies, including China, are pretty incentivized to keep the global economy rules as-is, because they benefit.

De-dollarization is happening, but is going to be a slow shift, with an uncertain outcome.

And I think in two hundred years when history is written by someone who is dispassionate about it, the US empire will be seen a continuation of the UK and Dutch empires that was before it.

The key difference with the post-WWII economic world order was that the US generally tried to ensure that everyone else got theirs.

Granted, the US got more, but there was insight that a global economy that benefited all was more stable than a system that left powerful economies outside, with an incentive to topple it.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibi...

"This is the first phase of Intel’s plans to invest as much as 80 billion euros in the European Union over the next decade along the entire semiconductor value chain—from R&D to manufacturing and advanced packaging."

Germany earmarked $22B for chipmakers support.

Though experts think the EU needs $500B.

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/eu-chip-goal...

https://reshoring.eurofound.europa.eu/reshoring-cases

Been seeing a lot more "Remote only in EU/UK" type roles, and when I ask they're explicitly not catering to other timezone-aligned regions.

In the end, we decided for EU/UK because of law compatibility, ease of enforcement (in case we would have to deal with some serious problems) and ease of gathering together from time to time.

Please educate me. why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Network#The_%225G_tr...

https://keithkrach.com/article/tsmc-12b-chip-plant-in-arizon...

They’re socializing Americans to get used to a future where their kids have to go to the Middle East and China in search of upwards mobility. (Of course those societies will never be as accommodating of Americans as America has been of Chinese and middle Easterners.)

Where? UAE? Israel? Anywhere else? Both are still far less prosperous for the middle class than the US.

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/04/tsmcs-morr...

“We still have about a thousand workers in that factory, and that factory, they cost us about 50% more than Taiwan costs,” Chang said.

And yet salaries in the US are sustained. To me it looks like the issue is that while we know how to start companies and have VC capital, we don't know how to outsource well (even with all the local immigrants)

It doesn't and that's why Intel still has foundaries in Oregon and Arizona.

The difference is TSMC's leadership doesn't want to play ball with American work culture and wants to keep pushing the 996 mentality (yes, even Taiwan has an extreme overwork and underpay problem).

The Foundary space is a very low margin industry. There's a reason why the only companies left are TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and GlobalFoundaries.

While the TSMC plant in Chandler has been plagued with bad press, the Intel plant right next door has been expanding with almost no hiccups.