Miscellaneous News

[Eventine]

You don't seem to understand the difference between real stuff and artificial stuff.

Chinese supply chain dominance is real physical things, it require real energy, real production, real capital. Japan and South Korea has their niches and are spokes in the global supply chain, but only China has the entire supply chain and China is the hub to which South Korea and Japan attaches. China's export ban on just a single Nexperia packaging plant for mature nodes is enough to shut down the entire western auto industry, that should give you a clue to the implication of trying to live without China.

American "dominance" in software is an artificial choice to use American software, software that China has but people has chosen not to use. For the US and its allies to develop rare earth processing, they need to physical construct things, build things, find the energy to power them, find the people to do them, teach people to do them. For people to switch to Chinese software, people simply need to run an installer. The two are a dozen orders of magnitude apart in difficulty.

What US wants to do isn't just an incentive to use Chinese software, it forces companies to do so. Even if one company choose to lose Chinese supply chain in exchange for software, it just take a single competitor who does make the switch to turn the choice into life and death for your company.

This is the exact same situation as Americans who think they can ban China from using USD: the reality is it's the ability to interface with real, physical things in China that gives American software, and US dollar its value, without that access, American software become useless, as does the USD. The ability to use iOS becomes meaningless if there are no iPhones.

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment of software. You can’t just rip out a phone’s (or PC's) operating system and its entire ecosystem over night. Huawei tried and even with the amount of resources at its disposal it was not able to replicate Google’s ecosystem, consequently HarmonyOS gained little traction outside of China.

I know the common consensus here is that hardware > software, and I agree that hardware and infrastructure are more difficult to replicate. But software monopolies are, in fact, notoriously difficult to break. Consider the Android or iOS app system. Google and Apple charge a 30% commission for use of their app stores - just for hosting the app for download, handling some basic payment, and providing a searchable platform. Yet nobody has been able to challenge their global monopoly. App developers would rather pay them the 30% tax.

The key here is ecosystem - the millions of apps that rely on each other and Google apps & features that aren’t open source. Most countries do not have the resources to do what China / Huawei did, they cannot create their own versions of everything. They'd need to entirely switch over to a Chinese ecosystem. This will be a hard sell to countries that aren’t already in China’s orbit as it is a highly disruptive political move that could be very unpopular with the population that are already invested in the Western software ecosystem, not to mention companies that rely on Western enterprise software like AutoCAD, Slack, ADP, etc. Contrary to your claim, people & companies don’t just choose what software they use - most of the times they are forced into it by dependencies.

Of course if the alternative is no trade with China, then countries with high Chinese trade will weight the benefits against the costs and go from there. But we should not pretend software ecosystem is low cost to switch, it takes a year+ for large companies to migrate just its cloud stack, now imagine that for every piece of software and their dependencies.

IMO, the US does have a card here, even if it is a nuclear one that could back fire & destroy one of the two industries that is the backbone of its economy. China’s main advantage is what Glenn mentioned - rare earths contribute little to its overall economy so even if the industry’s exports are wiped out it is no big loss. The biggest blind spot to the US gambit on the other hand is that countries could operate TWO software ecosystems, and such a move incentivizes the adoption of a second ecosystem of Chinese software for making products to sell to China, which has long term ramifications for US software monopolies. If the US embargo has no stipulations for enforcing mono ecosystem rules, then it will be catastrophic for the US.

 

[9dashline]

This is exemplified by the

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, the American national anthem, with the following verse that boasts about hunting down and killing escaped slaves in the land of the free.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,​

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:​

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,​

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.​

The "land of the free" clearly does not mean land of freedom for all. Instead it's a land where the "free" men, meaning whites, are free to enslave and do whatever they want to the lesser non-free people.

Imagine the evils America could get away with if a strong China didnt exists in the world today. Truly, China is mankinds best hope

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment of software. You can’t just rip out a phone’s (or PC's) operating system and its entire ecosystem over night. Huawei tried and even with the amount of resources at its disposal it was not able to replicate Google’s ecosystem, consequently HarmonyOS gained little traction outside of China.

I know the common consensus here is that hardware > software, and I agree that hardware and infrastructure are more difficult to replicate. But software monopolies are, in fact, notoriously difficult to break. Consider the Android or iOS app system. Google and Apple charge a 30% commission for use of their app stores - just for hosting the app for download, handling some basic payment, and providing a searchable platform. Yet nobody has been able to challenge their global monopoly. App developers would rather pay them the 30% tax.

The key here is ecosystem - the millions of apps that rely on each other and Google apps & features that aren’t open source. Most countries do not have the resources to do what China / Huawei did, they cannot create their own versions of everything. They'd need to entirely switch over to a Chinese ecosystem. This will be a hard sell to countries that aren’t already in China’s orbit as it is a highly disruptive political move that could be very unpopular with the population that are already invested in the Western software ecosystem, not to mention companies that rely on Western enterprise software like AutoCAD, Slack, ADP, etc. Contrary to your claim, people & companies don’t just choose what software they use - most of the times they are forced into it by dependencies.

Of course if the alternative is no trade with China, then countries with high Chinese trade will weight the benefits against the costs and go from there. But we should not pretend software ecosystem is low cost to switch, it takes a year+ for large companies to migrate just its cloud stack, now imagine that for every piece of software and their dependencies.

IMO, the US does have a card here, even if it is a nuclear one that could back fire & destroy one of the two industries that is the backbone of its economy. China’s main advantage is what Glenn mentioned - rare earths contribute little to its overall economy so even if the industry’s exports are wiped out it is no big loss. The biggest blind spot to the US gambit on the other hand is that countries could operate TWO software ecosystems, and such a move incentivizes the adoption of a second ecosystem of Chinese software for making products to sell to China, which has long term ramifications for US software monopolies. If the US embargo has no stipulations for enforcing mono ecosystem rules, then it will be catastrophic for the US.

When Google first debut Chrome people laughed, it only had 1% marketshare and no one thought it could overtake even Firefox much less Internet Explorer

The next version of Andriod will be locked down, no side loading allowed.

HarmonyOS and only Chinese OS will be to save the day.

America is once again shooting itself in foot with this software ploy, just like its euv sanctions in long term just made China stronger, more self sufficent, thus giving the world better options..

The world needs alternatives to Anglo software ecosystem anyway, so its good that Trump is pushing for this... it was always necessary

Anyways dont put cart before horse, without REE, chips, anglo society wont even have computers, the software is a moot point by then

 

[Chevalier]

An American think tank has just created a 6,000 word plan on how to overcome China's rare earth dominance

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1980713276401934465

Their plan rests on "4 pillars":


In other words, they plan on getting someone else to do it.

This whole “consultancy” exercise is typical of the Anglo western mercantilist financialised world order. When wordcel lawyers are paid multiple six figures and make work jobs like consultancy gigs at PwC and Deloitte exist for the fail children of the elite… is it any wonder the dialectical materialist Chinese are winning?

Imagine the evils America could get away with if a strong China didnt exists in the world today. Truly, China is mankinds best hope

why do you think alien invasion movies are a genre in American film? It’s a fear of having to bear the brunt of what they perpetrated upon the native Americans.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1981014075971944691

deeper tragedy is that both Ukraine and Sweden could have remained neutral for world peace. They even have the same colour schemes on their flags.

 

[GulfLander]

Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country
Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the few places in the world without the insects

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[horse]

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On the twelfth day of Christmas
My president gave to me
Twelve Rotting Soybeans…




An rude awakening is coming when they find out China has domestic alternatives. An embargo for an embargo.

This is getting weird, and serious, at the same time. Rather bizarre turn of events.

Let's consider it carefully, that if someone in Europe, used MS Excel to do something, then that company product is barred to be sold to China.

This is a potential embargo on China.

That is, the United States will embargo China with third countries (while they probably will have exemptions for themselves).

Same old thing Henry Kissinger once said about being an enemy of the United States and being a friend of the United States.

 

[GulfLander]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1980915006205210941

 

[Eventine]

Do you know how much market share Transsion has in Africa and other non-Western markets?

~40-50% from the latest reports that I've seen. Overall, Chinese smartphone makers hold a 52% share of the global market, most of it in China and the Global South. Actually, this is similar to China's overall market share of the global electronics supply chain (outside of specific upstream industries like rare earths where China has a virtual monopoly).

And sure, this is leverage, but it is not the kind of monopoly that US software holds. Android and iOS together account for ~96% of mobile OS market share. Windows and Mac account for ~90% of global PC OS market share. Of that last few %, almost all of it is in China (enforced by the government) and sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea (necessity). There is very little legitimate global competition to Western software and this is one area (of two) where the US has been tremendously successful.

Any way, my argument is NOT that the US has the overall leverage advantage, but that the US global software monopoly is real. It's an area where many of us who watch the space, have been frustrated at the lack of legitimate Chinese competitors for years. It was great that Tik Tok, Shein, Temu, etc. finally broke through the platforms monopoly, and things are definitely trending in the right direction. But for now, the US is still holding on due to the mistakes of earlier Chinese tech. giants like Tencent and Baidu that sat on their "captive market" without really competing. Transforming the current political climate into an opportunity to create a parallel global ecosystem is something I'd like to see China do, and hopefully the Chinese government is more motivated than ever to realize it, now that the threat of a software ban has become leverage in the US's eyes.

 

[vincent]

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment of software. You can’t just rip out a phone’s (or PC's) operating system and its entire ecosystem over night. Huawei tried and even with the amount of resources at its disposal it was not able to replicate Google’s ecosystem, consequently HarmonyOS gained little traction outside of China.

I know the common consensus here is that hardware > software, and I agree that hardware and infrastructure are more difficult to replicate. But software monopolies are, in fact, notoriously difficult to break. Consider the Android or iOS app system. Google and Apple charge a 30% commission for use of their app stores - just for hosting the app for download, handling some basic payment, and providing a searchable platform. Yet nobody has been able to challenge their global monopoly. App developers would rather pay them the 30% tax.

The key here is ecosystem - the millions of apps that rely on each other and Google apps & features that aren’t open source. Most countries do not have the resources to do what China / Huawei did, they cannot create their own versions of everything. They'd need to entirely switch over to a Chinese ecosystem. This will be a hard sell to countries that aren’t already in China’s orbit as it is a highly disruptive political move that could be very unpopular with the population that are already invested in the Western software ecosystem, not to mention companies that rely on Western enterprise software like AutoCAD, Slack, ADP, etc. Contrary to your claim, people & companies don’t just choose what software they use - most of the times they are forced into it by dependencies.

Of course if the alternative is no trade with China, then countries with high Chinese trade will weight the benefits against the costs and go from there. But we should not pretend software ecosystem is low cost to switch, it takes a year+ for large companies to migrate just its cloud stack, now imagine that for every piece of software and their dependencies.

IMO, the US does have a card here, even if it is a nuclear one that could back fire & destroy one of the two industries that is the backbone of its economy. China’s main advantage is what Glenn mentioned - rare earths contribute little to its overall economy so even if the industry’s exports are wiped out it is no big loss. The biggest blind spot to the US gambit on the other hand is that countries could operate TWO software ecosystems, and such a move incentivizes the adoption of a second ecosystem of Chinese software for making products to sell to China, which has long term ramifications for US software monopolies. If the US embargo has no stipulations for enforcing mono ecosystem rules, then it will be catastrophic for the US.

Fun fact. All phones in China don’t have Google services yet they are fully functional.

 

[Eventine]

Fun fact. All phones in China don’t have Google services yet they are fully functional.

That was a great move, but it's not something most countries can replicate. They are not China, they don't have the engineering talent and resources, and they didn't have the foresight (China banned Western tech. giants over 15 years ago after realizing the security threat their global monopolies posed), so now Western tech. giants DO have deep roots in their economies, it is not nearly as easy to tear them out.

That said, if the US goes forward with this ban, then that provides an once in a century opportunity to build a parallel global ecosystem. What China would need to do is convince other countries that it can be trusted to lead a truly open source initiative (with no possibility of a "rug pull" moment later). It'd also need to invest a lot of political and financial capital (e.g. carrots) to break the initial resistance and to force the US into making a losing move (like telling countries "you either use US software only or we destroy your economy," which will be self-defeating).

 

[AssassinsMace]

Anybody seen the footage of the ICE raid on Canal Street in New York's Chinatown? I didn't see anyone Asian looking in the area. I don't know New York so if anyone does, did they get rid of the Chinese in New York's Chinatown and is just a name now, was it some reverse gentrification going on, or was it where street vendors (which is the reason why the raid was there because it was reported by someone) will be anywhere to sell? In San Francisco and Oakland's Chinatown the only time you someone not Asian hanging around for extended periods are homeless people panhandling. You'll see some stores along Grant Ave. run by non-Chinese immigrants because that's the tourist street.