China defends ban on U.S. chipmaker Micron; accuses Washington of 'economic coercion'

The problem is that China's access to a reasonably open global trading architecture, though once perhaps a benefit, has been turned into a menace. China is more than prepared to put self-interest above sustainability of said architecture and exploit it for all it is worth. In fact, the party probably can't believe its luck that the world was prepared to give them so much so cheaply partly because the world was prepared to trust them (though partly because many companies saw riches) and even overlook how China was cheating, with unreciprocated access and deals designed purely for "technology transfer". Now, in large part thanks to China revealing its hand long before it was wise to do so, that trust has evaporated. Deng Xiao Ping said China should bide its time but the clowns in charge now just couldn't do that.

The sooner there is decoupling the better.

The problem is with the CCP having total control over Chinese companies. If the Chinese Constitution protected the companies and individuals from govt overreach, supported whistle-blowers against the CCP members, people extremely high up in the govt were actually held accountable for their misdeeds and Chinese businesses were able to refuse CCP-Govt orders through a legal framework - AND WIN - then the security concerns for Chinese-companies would be significantly less.

I don't see that happening as long as the CCP is in power and other parties are kept down ... and the highest offices in China are appointed based on fear, not votes by all Chinese citizens.

Regardless, I prefer economic pressure over blockades, surrounding an island nation, threatening the people living their with invasion and war. We all miss the days when China was a good neighbor, not a regional bully.

Never forget that the CCP-Chinese refuse to do business with small countries that also do business with Taiwan. That seems like economic pressure to me. The US didn't start that with China, though the US has been doing it for a very long time - just ask Cuba.

I'm just waiting to see who will blink first

I'm just waiting to see who will blink first

If China is banning Micron then you can be sure they already have a supply of the chips Micron were selling to China. China most likely are making those chips. They won’t be buying them from Samsung because Biden told Samsung specifically not to fill the void from Micron’s ban and this was already the case with Huawei a few years ago. South Korea must do as the U.S. says. The same with Japan They have no choice.

It’s the same as finding a job before telling your boss off and quitting your current job.

“We remain unclear as to what security concerns exist,” Murphy said on a JP Morgan technology industry conference call. “We’ve had no complaints from customers on the security of our products.”

It’s as clear as day. Once your people remove the ban on Chinese companies, these securities will disappear. Two can play the game.

“China’s cybersecurity review does not target specific countries or regions,” Mao said. “We do not exclude technologies and products from any country.”

Really, what about the coal, wines, timber, barley, lobsters and other products China has banned for years from Australia? A mirage? More blatant lies from a Chinese official, take it with a grain of salt. China cant be trusted and is an unreliable partner. Deal with them at your own peril.

China most likely are making those chips.

Yes, we all know China is proficient at thievery.

people extremely high up in the govt were actually held accountable for their misdeeds

It depends on what you want to focus on. It’s more corruption than authoritarianism. Millions of officials have been arrested since Xi took office so there is accountability. That said there was also a death penalty executed for bribery.

Good! Don't send China ANY chips of ANY kind, from ANY manufacturer!

Good! Don't send China ANY chips of ANY kind, from ANY manufacturer!

The chief executive of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, has warned that the US tech industry is at risk of “enormous damage” from the escalating battle over chips between Washington and Beijing.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Jensen Huang said US export controls introduced by the Biden administration to slow Chinese semiconductor manufacturing had left the Silicon Valley group with “our hands tied behind our back” and unable to sell advanced chips in one of the company’s biggest markets.

One of the main aims of the "anti-corruption drive" was for Xi to remove his political enemies (like Bo Xilai). His corrupt cronies never get touched, unless they run afoul of him. If he wants to do a real anti-corruption drive with real accountability, he should start by putting himself in jail.

@Xavier

The US is the no1 Superpower in the world: military, finance, banking, intelligence and economics. Yea, they print money and they have 31 trillion in debt but they still are a superpower. That said, they’ve been trying to change China since 1972 but with no results. If the U.S. can’t influence China in 50 years. No other country is going to do so not even banding together little countries .

China is going to be China. It’ll never be a Germany, Korea or Japan. China is not a country you can drop bombs on and if sanctions don’t work against a much smaller country like Russia, it certainly will not work without doing major damage to the U.S. itself.

We are witnessing the point in history where China overtakes the U.S. on technology, accelerated by Biden’s chip ban.

The Nvidia CEO says Chinese companies were starting to build their own chips to rival Nvidia’s market-leading processors for gaming, graphics and artificial intelligence.

“If [China] can’t buy from . . . the United States, they’ll just build it themselves,” he said. “So the US has to be careful. China is a very important market for the technology industry.”

He warned US lawmakers to be “thoughtful” about imposing further rules restricting trade with China.

“If we are deprived of the Chinese market, we don’t have a contingency for that. There is no other China, there is only one China,” Huang said, adding that there would be “​​enormous damage to American companies” if they were unable to trade with Beijing.

Huang added that blocking the US tech industry’s access to China would “cut the Chips Act off at the knee”, referring to the Biden administration’s $52bn funding package to encourage construction of more semiconductor manufacturing facilities — known as “fabs” — in the US.

Huang said China made up roughly one-third of the US tech industry’s market, and would be impossible to replace as both a source of components and an end market for its products.

Nvidia has embedded itself at the centre of a global race to develop a new generation of AI tools, becoming the primary source of chips that are used to train the “large language models” that power chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Chip wars with China risk ‘enormous damage’ to US tech, says Nvidia chief - Financial Times.

The Australian stuff that @Peter14 mentions is just the tip of the iceberg. 

That’s in the past, the Covid spat and inquiring about Wuhan, the institution where the US funds the research. The world has moved on. Australia is like the guy who tells his girlfriend’s father that he thinks he’s a loser and still wants to marry her. Then asks, what’s wrong with saying that?

To slow or to contain China, it wouldn’t be through semiconductors. The U.S. administration lacks perspicaciousness. To do so, Australia would be asked to stop shipping its iron ore, coal and lithium to China to start. Easier said than done but it’s not as if China can’t be stopped, it’s just that no one wants to take the hit.

Australia can refine its own lithium instead selling it to China. If China were Australia, that’s what it’d do. That’s what it’s doing with the chips ban.

China is every countries PROBLEM CHILD then them a pacifier and box of pampers!!

@quercetum

That’s in the past

What on earth are you talking about? China is still committing plenty of economic coercion. 

@Xavier

You’re right. I meant the spat with Australia and not economic leverage. There is no dispute that China uses leverage. That’s what superpowers do. The U.S. can tell South Korea to not sell to China and South Korea has to ask for permission in order to do so.

South Korea has asked the United States to review the latter's proposed limit on the expansion of production by South Korean semiconductor manufacturers in China, a U.S. public notice showed Tuesday.

@Xavier

My point is, moving and looking forward, Australia could be in the G7 and has the potential to have an impact more than Canada. The U.S. bans against China such as the GPS, semiconductor chips, International Space Station, weapons and jets, commercial planes, China have gone out and made their own, but you can’t do that with raw materials. Tell China to make coal or lithium.

It’s fine to read but I wonder if you read critically. You will find posters here once in a while that offer insightful and knowledgeable posts because they are in the know. They are connected. You can tell who thinks for themselves and who believes what they’re told or read naively. These gem posts carry way more weight than the say, The Economist, that publishes pieces on how Xi is Mao and China is returning to the days Maoism which is just nonsense and irrelevant.

Biden is taking the US back to days of John Adams. Who would read that?

Tell China to make coal China has huge coal minds. They blow up every few years killing a few to 30 people. Then the CCP covers up that a town was destroyed from the latest explosion. Even with all their unsafe mining, they can't dig enough to power their hundreds of coal power plants. China is building more coal power plants than the rest of the world combined every year. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/23/miners-killed-in-open-pit-coalmine-collapse-in-north-china is from 2023. 6 dead. With these explosions, usually there are 30+ missing miners ... but we never hear about them being found.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Jensen Huang said US export controls introduced by the Biden administration to slow Chinese semiconductor manufacturing had left the Silicon Valley group with “our hands tied behind our back” and unable to sell advanced chips in one of the company’s biggest markets.

When your income comes at the expense of the security of the nation, then you have to accept losing that portion of your income that harms the nation as a whole. A corporation's wealth cannot come at the expense of the nation that allows that corporation to exist.