4 Comments

Long overdue. Change through trade has clearly failed. The west should secure all supply chains and trade preferentially with democracies

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This is more or less what FDR did to provoke the Japanese into doing Pearl Harbor. I included your article and thread in my latest https://emergingmarketskeptic.substack.com/p/emerging-markets-week-october-17-2022 plus mentioned something else that I did not know: Not only do Chinese companies need to set up an internal party office when they have at least three party members working for them, securities investment funds in China now must do the same.

THAT'S A HUGE TURNOFF FOR FOREIGN INVESTMENT THERE VS. INDIA, VIETNAM ETC!

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'Smells very Trumpian. Somethin's up

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I think Chinese industry will catch up to (and maybe even exceed) western semiconductor tech within a decade or two. Tech moves fast. The first iPhone was made in 2007 and Intel (USA) had the leading edge semiconductor fab process about 4 years ago (Intel 14nm, overtaken by TSMC 7nm). By the way, SMIC (China) has a rudimentary version of Intel 14nm node already in shipping products, so they are only about 6 years behind. A frequently cited problem to overcome is a new generation of lithography machines (extreme ultraviolet, or EUV) at the core of leading edge fab nodes. The mere existence and very rough public understanding of how these work will allow engineers with unlimited budget to create similar machines. The monopoly that ASML enjoys is an artifact of a very small leading edge fab market (they only ever sold about 140 machines, and deliver about 20ish a year?). The new export restrictions will impose the perfect protectionist environment for a domestic Chinese semi fab equipment ecosystem to emerge, to the west’s detriment. I think these new policies will achieve what the Chinese government could never do on their own - the establishment of a vibrant, complete and leading edge semiconductor ecosystem.

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