[HN Gopher] Arm China Has Gone Rogue
___________________________________________________________________
Arm China Has Gone Rogue
Author : xbmcuser
Score : 626 points
Date : 2021-08-27 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (semianalysis.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (semianalysis.substack.com)
| ipnon wrote:
| The visual cliche of the "evil Chinese man in front of a red
| background with five yellow stars" has come as far as that of the
| "hacker guy wearing a hoodie in a dark room with obfuscated
| JavaScript floating in the frame."
| avaldes wrote:
| The "red background with five yellow stars" is the chinese
| flag. It's a common graphic pattern when you want to convey the
| idea of a person of geopolitical interest. Like putting Biden
| in front of the American flag o Macron in fron of the french
| one. Isn't specific to china nor represent any anti-china
| meaning.
| m33k44 wrote:
| Has the MIPS acquisition not borne fruits then?
| justincormack wrote:
| Ha, well no that is another interesting story. But way less
| valuable than Arm.
| benreesman wrote:
| The PRC isn't fucking around. They're playing for the whole show
| and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did
| against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time.
|
| Being England or whatever isn't the end of the world, there is
| life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic
| about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to
| get nothing done isn't how you win in full-contact sports.
|
| For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights
| violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a
| plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent
| society. Sucked ass if you were a minority but there was movement
| on that, real wages seemed to be trending ok, technological
| innovation was on point. It looked to be going somewhere.
|
| I'm not sure when it all went sideways, but the PRC is looking
| more than happy to design the future, and it seems unclear at
| best if that would be a net win in the "get to Star Trek as fast
| as possible" game.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > I'm not sure when it all went sideways,
|
| When we sold our manufacturing base and equipment to them, then
| bought the same products from them just shipped over seas. They
| had suppressed labor prices and used it to tilt the table.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| If you're looking for a turning point, it was fall of 2001 with
| the 9/11 attacks and China's accession to the WTO. The USA
| became distracted and the 00s were the time when China's
| economy grew like gangbusters.
| colordrops wrote:
| Turning point for China, yes. The turning point for the USA
| was as late as the Reagan administration dismantling the
| country for profit, though the seeds were planted earlier.
| webmaven wrote:
| https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
| gamegoblin wrote:
| One could also make an argument that the fall of the USSR
| began a period of complacency. Terms like "the end of
| history" [0] come to mind.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_
| Las...
| benreesman wrote:
| Speaking for myself I'm happy that many millions of people
| got lifted out of crushing poverty in Asia. I think it's a
| good thing that the economy in the PRC started producing
| fewer famines and more of a middle class.
|
| The part I'm less happy about is whatever point the Western
| economies began working less well for most people in them.
|
| Even serious economists have trouble being rigorous about
| this sort of thing, so I won't even try. But I don't think
| I'm the only one with a queasy feeling that Eastern elites
| seem to be admitting more people to the middle class while
| Western elites seem to be pushing people out of it. In spite
| of there being powerhouse economies in both systems.
|
| People love to nitpick this stuff to pimp whatever dumbass
| Ayn Rand thing, but people outside the elite in the West seem
| to be doing worse over time, and that is not how you get an
| economy that is and feels fair, that's not how you make sure
| the talent rises to the top, that's not how you get a
| financial system that isn't a ripoff, that's not how you get
| a government that gets shit done, that's not how you get a
| military that buys good weapon systems at a compelling price
| point.
|
| That's not how you win.
| mousepilot wrote:
| Libertarianism isn't very realistic anyways.
|
| I read something pretty interesting recently that pretty
| much convinces me that the folks at the top get there by
| luck rather than merit. Obviously I'm sure that they
| themselves would disagree but I'm talking about them, not
| to them.
|
| The US got to the position it is in the 20th century by
| luck, we discovered a new world with wealth to exploit,
| took the country from the indigenous, then had a stack of
| decades with slavery, then took that momentum into the
| world wars, coming out on top into the boom years when our
| competitors were saddled with rebuilding ruins.
|
| If we're in decline then its our own undoing, heck we
| pretty much inherited the best deal in the world and pissed
| it away.
|
| The people who like Ayn Rand don't like history.
| dv_dt wrote:
| There is this guy named Karl (and actually if you read
| carefully a guy named Adam Smith) that has some relevant
| predictions on how that went sideways.
| kragen wrote:
| Well, on one hand you have mass ideological repression,
| concentration camps designed for cultural genocide against
| ethnic minorities, and censorship that means you can't trust
| common knowledge, so we don't even know if the persistent
| rumors of mass organ harvesting from religious dissidents are
| true. But on the other hand you have the capacity to
| manufacture respirators and stop pandemics dead in their
| tracks, not to mention most of the world's microelectronics
| (particularly if you include ROC), and PRC was vaccinating
| people in July of last year, only four months after the first
| vaccine was developed (in March in the USA).
|
| Meanwhile, the EU has banned borax on grounds that amount to
| pure superstition, California has banned xylene, Texas only
| recently repealed a years-long lab glassware ban, the US
| Supreme Court didn't legalize screen-scraping until this year,
| and the USA still has 1% of its adult population imprisoned,
| just like shortly after the lead-driven crime wave crested 30
| years ago (I guess its legislature does get _some_ things done;
| they also direct the world 's biggest military budget). Also,
| the US maaybe just passed 50% of the population believing in
| evolution, and gifted programs are being cut out of their high
| schools because they "promote inequality". And apparently
| police killing people with impunity is a major political cause
| in the US now? And let's not forget that Armadillo Aerospace
| had to abandon their working rocket engine design and restart
| from scratch because nobody would sell them peroxide, probably
| due to the US regulatory regime surrounding product liability.
| And when Clinton launched the National Nanotechnology
| Initiative in 02000, instead of diamondoid mechanosynthesis we
| got the fraudulent rebranding of any random submicron particle
| research, down to the study of medieval stained glass, as
| "nanotechnology".
|
| In short, the US and EU are stupid enough that they're dooming
| themselves, regardless of whatever happens in China. I can
| empathize.
|
| Having your government run by the kind of people who would vote
| for Donald Trump might be okay as long as the government
| doesn't control anything important, but inevitably putting the
| foolish and stupid in charge of the wise and learned is going
| to end in disaster, as it has with the covid pandemic. On the
| other hand, dictatorships and monarchies are no guarantee of
| wise leadership, often the opposite; they tend to oscillate
| randomly, often when succession happens. Marcus Aurelius is
| succeeded by Commodus, who is succeeded by Pertinax, then
| Didius Julianus, and the country is thrown into catastrophe.
| Qin Shi Huang may have been an asshole who destroyed China's
| cultural heritage, but he wasn't the fool Qin Er Shi was.
|
| I'm not sure Star Trek is a worthy ideal; it's a militarist
| naval soap opera that doesn't begin to grapple with the
| political and psychological implications of post-scarcity
| civilization. Let's have the courage to imagine a future worth
| living in, and then create it.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human
| rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed
| like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical,
| benevolent society.
|
| A large digression, but I do wish we didn't need these silly
| ritual flagellations each time we mention that the West was
| actually pretty good. To call these things "human rights
| violations" implies that the West defied some accepted standard
| for how we treated people, but the West was always on the
| leading edge for human rights (slavery, colonialism, racism,
| etc were normal on virtually every continent until the West
| decided they were wrong). We often talk about the West as
| though it is some great failure because it didn't emerge from
| the mists of history fully-formed and prepared to adhere to our
| modern moral standards, ignoring the fact that our modern moral
| standards are precisely the product of millennia of Western
| progress.
| benreesman wrote:
| I think you make a fair point and arguably better articulate
| something I was trying to say. People, institutions, and
| nations do in fact need to be viewed in the context of the
| relevant time period, applying present-day values to e.g. the
| Framers is a silly waste of time. They did what they did,
| hopefully it was their best, and there seems to be lasting
| value.
|
| On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to expect
| a civilization to spring socially equitable from the forehead
| of Zeus, we should also continue to strive to be better.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| To be perfectly clear, I wasn't rebutting you, but the
| bizarre anti-West kayfabe culture.
|
| > On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to
| expect a civilization to spring socially equitable from the
| forehead of Zeus, we should also continue to strive to be
| better.
|
| I don't think even the most zealous western chauvinist
| would disagree with this. :)
| vikiomega9 wrote:
| I agree with you except post-independence in the middle of
| the _19th and 20th century_ , the supposedly benevolent West
| hedged and continue to plunder and usurp Africa and Asia.
| _Values based? Sure, see how rational it is, for you but not
| for us. We must agree upon universal declarations and you
| better listen up we know what we 're doing_.
|
| I have no idea why you think these are `silly ritual
| flagellations`. Drop everything, the British left the Indian
| subcontinent in flames. Oh wait, this sounds a lot like
| Afghanistan. Down vote me for all I care, but if you've not
| experienced the horror of colonialism and the mess we have to
| pickup after and fix, with poverty, disease and f_cking IP
| (TB, Aids, Food Security), and fragile democracy setup to
| serve external masters, in the presence of _evolved men_ , I
| respectfully ask you to be empathetic to a lot of voices that
| still can't be heard. You clearly don't seem to understand
| the utter s_it some of us and our parents have lived through.
|
| Sure, the awesome Western cultural evolution is grand and
| something to wait for, who knows what form it will take.
|
| Ok, let's drop all of history except the last 70 years. The
| zenith of evolution. A poor country had to give you, the
| West, the finger to save the less fortunate from Aids[1].
|
| I respectfully ask you to continue to self-flagellate.
|
| [1] https://qz.com/india/1666032/how-indian-pharma-giant-
| cipla-m....
| platz wrote:
| > the USA
|
| But, according to the article, ARM Britain didn't sell to
| China, SoftBank (Japan) did.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >Sucked ass if you were a minority
|
| This is just propaganda from minority groups. For the vast
| majority of non-immigrant minorities, life has been reliably
| excellent.
| coryrc wrote:
| We put ethnic Japanese in concentration camps after stealing
| away every bit of wealth they accumulated.
|
| White women have only been able to vote for 100 years. Some
| black women half that.
|
| American Indians were driven off their land.
| htyland wrote:
| This subthread is about _the latter 20th century_. The
| 1990s were more relaxed racially than we are now, thanks to
| the outrage industry.
| coryrc wrote:
| Okay. Number of babies born out of wedlock was starkly
| differentiated by race, as were high school and college
| graduation rates.
|
| Cabrini Green came down in 1995.
|
| 600k+ people fled Detroit from 1960 to 2000. Only some of
| them were welcomed.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Do you have evidence of this claim? Thank you!
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| >e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done
| isn't how you win in full-contact sports
|
| So we need a totalitarian government to compete with their
| totalitarian government? No thank you. If your company gets
| ripped off by the Chinese, like many do, then that is your
| company's fault.
| benreesman wrote:
| There's a little daylight between having a central committee
| and having legislators who don't even pretend that the top of
| their to-do list every day is preventing, ya know,
| legislation. This is a non-partisan observation. Everybody
| pulls this shit these days.
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| If you want a rubber stamp committee, then someone has to
| dictate that rubber stamp.
| rglover wrote:
| It went sideways when the CCP/PRC realized that they could just
| sell off their citizens to U.S. corporations as cheap slave
| labor. My speculation is that they also figured out an
| effective system for blackmailing the executives of those
| companies and U.S. politicians into doing whatever they want
| (e.g. Christine Fang).
|
| The subsequent ideological compromise of the West is the result
| of the CCP getting its tendrils into Western leadership
| (https://nypost.com/2020/12/13/us-companies-riddled-with-
| memb...) and culture. This video of John Cena apologizing for
| recogizing Taiwan as a country in Mandrin should have been a
| deeply frightening wake up call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
| v=zre2p7mg64g&ab_channel=China....
| n8cpdx wrote:
| The West and Americans (in my experience) take for granted that
| civil rights, free speech, democracy, and other values
| automatically create better outcomes than authoritarianism.
| This is how it was taught to me, and it seems baked into the
| culture.
|
| Unfortunately, the reality is that while (in my opinion)
| liberal values create better outcomes, it takes care and
| concerted effort to get the benefits. A democracy isn't
| automatically better than an authoritarian regime; that assumes
| that the democracy is effective and that the authoritarians are
| not.
|
| The CCP is clearly effective. They are able to nail jello to
| the wall and have it stick. The US Congress is clearly not
| effective. Chinese people got to go to movie theaters and eat
| at restaurants and dance at raves for most of 2020 and 2021; I,
| as an American, could not. The CCP delivered for their people
| in a way that the US did not.
|
| The United States is not particularly effective at national
| security (2021-01-06), foreign engagements (Afghanistan and
| Iraq, last 20 years), or social mobility (https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...). The media
| ecosystem is a mess (due to purposeful de-regulation), voting
| rates are abysmal, education is poor by rich world standards.
| Democracy doesn't work well when the populace is not
| sufficiently educated, accurately informed, and empowered by a
| political system (see the Senate's strong R electoral
| advantage). We keep choosing leadership who lose at the polls
| because we haven't invested in modernizing our democracy.
|
| The US and other Western states need to step up and put in the
| work to prove that their values can deliver for their people
| better than the authoritarians can.
| indigochill wrote:
| China also has some unique ineffective areas. One example I
| ran into a little while ago was that China has essentially a
| review board that approves video games to be distributed to
| the Chinese market. A particular political backdoor to
| expedite the approval process was exposed, which quickly lead
| to an extreme backup of the approval queue as the party
| clamped down on that backdoor and made the entire video game
| industry wait several months to a year for them to get their
| ducks back in a row.
|
| Additionally, if you want to publish in China, it is
| advisable (although I don't think strictly required...
| yet...) that you provide some way to block any messages in
| your game that the party disapproves of. For some sorts of
| games, this is basically untenable.
|
| Essentially, China is effective where its policy of iron-
| handed top-down dictatorship is effective. It is less
| effective at bottom-up development, except insofar as that
| bottom-up development is done with the express intent of
| being a tool of the iron hand (but the iron hand's whims can
| change, so that presents a moving target).
|
| I suspect what we'll see over the next hundred-or-so years is
| that the iron-handed approach is effective while it has
| intelligent leadership (and though I disagree with China's
| politics, I'll concede they're making strong strategic
| decisions). Inevitably, though, every empire has stupid
| emperors and we'll probably see China stumble when its turn
| comes.
| neither_color wrote:
| I agree with your first two paragraphs but I don't
| necessarily agree with the rest. The CCP is clearly effective
| at letting you see what it wants you to see because no matter
| what you think of our media, even the most biased right-wing
| or left-wing sources are more open than theirs and criticism
| of everything that goes wrong in the US flows freely. We're
| more like a reality TV drama that frequently airs our dirty
| laundry. Taking news from China at face value is like looking
| at someone's Instagram feed, you are only seeing the
| highlights. Some Chinese people got to go movie theaters and
| eat at restaurants in contemporary urban middle class sense.
| Hundreds of millions in the interior cannot afford the
| aforementioned middle class lifestyle. You can see the large
| gap in per capita GDP for provinces here: https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...
|
| Also, if you were under the impression that they locked down
| once and beat the virus, then you'd be surprised to find out
| that they've had to do multiple recurring region-wide lock-
| downs all throughout, even up until now.
|
| August 2021
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-
| under...
|
| June 2021 https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-
| china/article/31380...
|
| January 2021
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-
| lo...
|
| I don't know what state youre from; I went through lockdowns
| too but I've gone to restaurants and movie theaters and
| traveled to other places freely as well. If you didn't,
| that's on your state, just like there were times that people
| in Shanghai had more freedom than people in Shenzhen, and
| vice versa.
|
| Your third paragraph is hard to comment on briefly and partly
| subjective, I can't comment on 1/6 because it's still an
| ongoing investigation with the FBI reporting a lack of
| evidence that it was some centrally coordinated plot.
| Sometimes riots get out of hand, we should be thankful that
| unlike a certain riot in 1989 we didn't roll out the tanks
| and run them over. Instead we arrested them all and they are
| going through due process. The foreign engagement failures of
| Afghanistan and Iraq don't exist in a vacuum. We've been in
| Germany, South Korea, and Japanese for decades and those are
| going quite well - you win some you lose some. When South
| Koreans went under repressive rule by Park Jung Hee, you
| could've said our nation building failed, but we held on and
| now it's a thriving country that exports its culture
| worldwide. As for social mobility, I'm an ethnic minority and
| no matter how bad you think social mobility is, and it's not
| easy, you do not have better chances anywhere other than the
| US and Europe. Make of that what you will, I've experienced
| it. First in my family to go to college, got a job in tech
| and all that. Believe me if you want. I appreciate the social
| mobility here and acknowledge that my family couldn't have
| done it without the civil rights movement of decades prior. I
| also understand why Americans look down on their own history,
| but the thing is contemporary Chinese folks do not look down
| on theirs. They are proud, they want their country to be the
| best, they want to win. More power to them, but the "Chinese
| Dream" is only for them. You can go there as a student, be an
| expat, but it's almost impossible to become a citizen. They
| are not a nation of immigrants. At best you can be a
| permanent resident, preferably if you have a western
| passport. Africans there are not treated as kindly:
|
| https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079497/us-w.
| ..
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/no-blacks-evicted-harassed-
| targeted-1...
|
| They didn't get the support of allies mass protesting police
| brutality in every city like Americans did. People like me
| don't appreciate the self-defeating sentiment that China's
| ascension is inevitable and well deserved because of our bad
| history. I don't mean to detract from your points too much.
| We do need better education, better healthcare, a more
| prudent foreign policy and all that. I'm just adding more
| context and my input that all hope is not lost and that
| western values are inferior to Chinese ones. All hope is not
| lost. We don't want to get to the point where we say "welp
| that settles it the only way to improve our standard of
| living is to become repressive authoritarian regimes too"
| benreesman wrote:
| This comment should be the parent of mine. You've laid out a
| far more detailed and compelling case for what I called a
| "queasy feeling" about how the West lost its stride.
| tkinom wrote:
| In 2-5 years, US/Japan/UK can/will block every single silicon
| build with "ARM China" IP for < 28nm, similar to how it block
| Huawei last year. Just look at Huawei's current, next couple
| years revenues, you can predict what will happen to "ARM
| China".
|
| "ARM China" without any IP license / Interop tests for USB4,
| PCIe gen4,5,6, LPDDR5,6 etc, will be completely useless in 3
| years.
|
| CCP is following the path of North Korean/Iran/Mao.....
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Chinese people got to go to movie theaters and eat at
| restaurants and dance at raves for most of 2020 and 2021; I,
| as an American, could not.
|
| I suspect this is largely CCP propaganda.
|
| > The United States is not particularly effective at national
| security (2021-01-06), foreign engagements (Afghanistan and
| Iraq, last 20 years), or social mobility (https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...). The media
| ecosystem is a mess (due to purposeful de-regulation), voting
| rates are abysmal, education is poor by rich world standards
|
| I'm not sure that I accept these as facts, but even so, I
| believe you're comparing the US to other democracies. If you
| compare the cohort of democracies to the cohort of
| authoritarian regimes, how do the democracies compare? I
| suspect China is an outlier among authoritarian regimes, and
| even while we marvel at Chinese foreign policy, their per-
| capita GDP and other indicators don't suggest that they are
| meeting our Western standards for "effective government".
|
| And even if an authoritarian government is more effective at
| establishing a global hegemony, what's the point if it comes
| at the cost of its citizens' basic rights, prosperity, etc?
| qeternity wrote:
| Some of what you mention is indeed true, but some of it is
| selective. The US is truly a union, and one that is
| increasingly heterogenous.
|
| The US higher education system is the best in the world,
| which is why you will see wealthy Chinese send their kids to
| the US (or Oxbridge). The high school system is very mixed,
| as half the union runs around trying to convince the world
| that math is racist (no joke).
|
| I've lived in China. You're not likely to see the next SpaceX
| emerge from there for all the reasons you mention. It's an
| economy that is tuned to replicating/copying. But this is so
| culturally enshrined now that I cannot fathom the emergence
| of the Sino version of the American Dream.
| benreesman wrote:
| I find it more than a little disturbing that most of the
| interest in this comment centers on people trying to refute
| what amounts to a parenthetical that while a lot of things were
| looking pretty awesome in 1960 in e.g. the US, being black or
| gay probably weren't among them.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Being black or gay in the west was better than being black or
| gay in any other part of the world. There are _still_
| countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. Being
| black or gay in the US in the 1960s was worse than being
| white and straight in the 1960s, but my precise point in my
| sibling comment is that this a stupid criticism because the
| West was _pioneering_ equality.
|
| There seems to be some widely-held superstition that if we
| acknowledge Western progress, then we will stop progressing.
| PaulAJ wrote:
| Presumably this is going to get interesting when they try to
| export hardware containing Arm-China items to the West. Arm will
| claim that it contains pirate IP, leading to seizures at the
| border.
| ur-whale wrote:
| A sobering story for all those who forgot what the word sovereign
| actually means.
| ggm wrote:
| Not entirely defending things but observing that if you are of a
| view that IPR is basically absurd, "stealing" it may be equally
| absurd, but rational.
|
| After you've stolen it, it's still "there" except for the
| exclusivity.
|
| Chips will still exist, fab lines will still run. Profits have
| tanked, sure. Innovation is probably stifled but that's an
| opportunity loss.
|
| There's a long history of stealing IPR at the state level around
| the world. States do this, private individuals do this, assets
| get seized everywhere from time to time.
|
| 'Sovereign risk' has always to be factored in to any business
| venture, anywhere. Nobody can possibly have been investing
| millions in China mainland without knowing this risk going in. At
| this point, "outrage" is part of the negotiating tactics. Outrage
| won't really stop this happening here or anywhere else. Bilateral
| consequences might? What Chinese assets will somebody seize?
|
| The German petrochemical and drugs sector was economically robbed
| postwar WW1 and WW2 and personally I think somewhat rightly so.
| Bayer made cool drugs, but also helped the nazi party. Russia and
| America both took things as expropriation. Postwar, but.. does
| war make this IPR and asset claim really that much better?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Look at everything China have done over the last 10 years. And we
| in the west have done nothing. One has to wonder if there is
| anything the CCP even could do to be taken seriously as a threat.
| I had hoped that with Trump out and Brexit at least quite we
| might see some action. I was wrong.
| chrischen wrote:
| "In the new joint venture, Arm Holdings, the SoftBank subsidiary
| sold a 51% stake of the company to a consortium of Chinese
| investors for paltry $775M. This venture has the exclusive right
| to license Arm's IP within China. Within 2 years, the venture
| went rogue. Recently, they gave a presentation to the industry
| about rebranding, developing their own IP, and striking their own
| independently operated path."
|
| It sounds like what really happened is that Softbank and Chinese
| investors initially voted to oust Allen Wu, but he held onto
| something called a seal that gave him legal control of the
| company still. Retrieving the seal would have taken additional
| lawsuits and cooperation of Chinese courts, but they did not do
| this because the Chinese investors were not onboard with it.
|
| Apart from Allen Wu holding onto the seal the rest is just
| cutthroat capitalism.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| While I agree with most of the article, I find the conclusion
| makes it seem like propaganda:
|
| "it is clear that SoftBank's short sighted profit driven behavior
| has caused a massive conundrum"
|
| If I understand things correctly, Arm China going rouge is a big
| problem for all western governments, who in the past have heavily
| relied on the leverage that they had thanks to western IP being
| needed for chip design. So shifting the blame onto SoftBank
| appears wrong. Did anyone expect a Japanese money-driven
| investment bank to do what's politically the right thing for the
| U.S.? I don't think it would be reasonable to expect that. So in
| my opinion, a better conclusion would be:
|
| "Western governments allowing SoftBank to take Arm's IP into
| China has caused a massive conundrum"
| HPsquared wrote:
| "Going rouge" as in red? Seems appropriate...
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Perhaps, as Scott Adams has said, "It is not safe to do business
| in China."
| flyinglizard wrote:
| It is also not safe, from a business perspective, to ignore
| China altogether. Very difficult situation indeed.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Unless by "safe" you mean "maximizing profits at all costs" I
| disagree.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Maximizing short term profits.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| CEOs answer to shareholders. Shareholders want returns.
| You want returns for your own investments and so do I.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I suppose shareholders also want to maintain ownership of
| the technology that makes their profits happen in the
| first place, right?
|
| Wait, who am I kidding? Only a handful of shareholders
| decide the actions of a company, and even fewer know what
| the company actually does besides money-in = more-money-
| out. Most just want as much profit as fast as possible,
| hence the risks taken with China.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| It has been established that the KPIs and bonuses of most
| corporate executives are tied to the quarterly returns.
|
| From their perspective, is there an incentive to maximize
| long term profit?
| anchpop wrote:
| do corporate executives not get stock options? or at
| least typically plan to stay at the same company for more
| than a few quarters?
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| How much money is "enough" is the problem. Companies seem to
| always choose "all the money" but I'm not sure that is always
| wise. What's wrong with doing work you are proud of and
| paying your employees a fair wage? It seems to always come
| back to the stock price and how it always has to go up for
| publicly traded companies.
| [deleted]
| srswtf123 wrote:
| It most certainly is not _difficult_. The ethics of it are
| exceptionally straightforward.
|
| Greed is at the root of your conundrum. Put that aside, and
| you'll see more clearly.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Perhaps you shouldn't quote race-baiting sociopaths who have
| absolutely zero credibility, knowledge or insight.
| hncurious wrote:
| The author of Dilbert, a comic popular because of its
| insight, has zero knowledge or insight? Good luck defending
| that assertion, let alone the rest of your claim.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Is this a true story? If so, this is an extraordinary indictment
| of the Chinese court system and a real wake up call for Silicon
| Valley.
|
| Thus far I've been of the opinion that people exaggerate the
| danger that Chinese IP theft poses ... but this is just
| ridiculous. Has any major newspaper covered this? It seems like
| it should make headlines ... ARM IP is a strategic asset!
| api wrote:
| Can we call Chinese flavored ARM chips ARrrrrrrrM after pirates?
| fspeech wrote:
| This article gave some background on the reason for Arm China's
| existence in the first place:
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/Beijing-s-latest-t...
|
| I wonder if the joint venture structure was contemplated as a
| pre-condition for Chinese approval of the Softbank acquisition.
| denverkarma wrote:
| So when is the western world going to wake up and realize that
| China is a cutthroat competitor that does not respect western law
| or traditions, cannot be trusted, and intends to dominate the
| world? This seems especially troubling for the tech world as IP
| is easily copied and the only thing that really protects it is
| the legal system, which China has shown over and over they don't
| care about.
| hintymad wrote:
| I have an honest question: why could China catch up to the
| western countries in many verticals and even become the
| dominant player, while in history the western could stay
| lightyears ahead of developing countries, no matter how hard
| the developing countries tried, with or without government
| interference or industrial espionage? What's changed?
| angio wrote:
| We have an example most readers here are familiar with: the
| US ignored European (mostly British) intellectual property
| when they were developing and now they produce more
| innovation than any European country. Germany, Switzerland,
| and Italy also ignored patents for a while and now they are
| power houses when it comes to pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > the US ignored European (mostly British) intellectual
| property when they were developing and now they produce
| more innovation than any European country.
|
| There's this common trope, but there's two parts to IP;
| infringement and enforcement.
|
| The British didn't enforce their patents. They could have,
| but they didn't.
| vkou wrote:
| > What's changed?
|
| Colonialism ended.
|
| The west was not light years ahead of, say, India, when it
| was first colonized.
|
| In the process of colonizing it, India's industrialization
| was stopped.
|
| Countries didn't somehow fall into 'developed' and
| 'undeveloped' buckets by divine fiat. The latter tended to be
| invaded by the former, with the occupiers focusing more on
| wealth extraction, than development.
|
| Once that parasitic relationship has been broken, a large
| number of developing countries have started moving towards
| prosperity. Some slower than others, to be sure.
| [deleted]
| hintymad wrote:
| I'm not sure if we can attribute the gap solely to
| colonialism. Chinese rulers back in 1890s thought the
| products of industrialization were simply exotic crap. They
| despised STEM and didn't have a single school teaching STEM
| (there were a few such schools due to the Western Affairs
| Movement, but they were not created by the government). I
| don't think this level of barbarian culture was caused by
| colonialism.
| vkou wrote:
| You can't speculate as to China's outcome in the 21st
| century, based on what its rulers may have thought in the
| 19th century, on an alt-historical timeline that skipped
| the opium wars, and the century of occupation, civil war,
| war, and some more civil war.
|
| I mean, you can, but your speculation is as good as
| anyone else's.
|
| In the late 19th century, Russia still had serfs, and
| Americans practiced chattel slavery. By the mid 20th
| century, both of those countries built the atomic bomb. A
| century is a very long time to make accurate alt-historic
| predictions about.
| nzmsv wrote:
| In 1890s? In other words, soon after China lost the
| second Opium War. The British took Hong Kong and secured
| their right to poison the populace with opium. Are you
| sure colonialism was not at play?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| drumhead wrote:
| They were distracted by their "clash of cultures" wars in the
| middle east. They failed to fully identify China as the main
| threat to democratic nations and allowed the transfer of
| capital and technology to go on unhindered. The lack of
| democracy and human rights wasnt a real issue to them because
| China wasnt considered to be a future threat. There was the
| naive belief that democracy would be the inevitable outcome of
| economic growth and a growing and more affluent middle class.
|
| But people care primarily about their economic well being, and
| whatever system delivers it is what they'll be happy with.
| There are no huge movements calling for democratic reforms in
| well off non-democracies like Saudi Arabia, or the Gulf states.
| And even in democracies like Hungary or Poland the slow slide
| to a more authorotarian government hasnt got the majority of
| people worked up, as long as their personal circumstances arent
| too badly affected. Democracy is only that thing which is
| demanded when they want to change their circumstances for the
| better, otherwise its forgotten or undermined when the good
| times are rolling.
|
| Will China win? No I dont think they will, they dont have the
| ability to change course peacefully or quickly enough under an
| authorotrian system. They let momentum carry them in straight
| lines until they crash into a wall. Our problem is that we're
| stuck with a rich and technologically advanced threat that we
| built. Trump for all his faults did the right thing by starting
| the economic war with them, Obama was quite happy to let the
| status quo of technology, capital and job transfers continue
| unabated.
|
| But we havent learnt our lesson and we risk making the same
| mistakes with India. The western nation are looking for another
| low wage, low cost manufacturing base, and they're going all
| out on India. But we can see the authorotarian and less
| democratic direction the government there is taking everyday.
| Yet all our major tech companies and planning to build and
| invest in capacity over there. Until we end up with another
| rich and technologically nation that isnt a friend of
| democracy.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| Pretty sure that the western world does realize this. Just as
| we are addicted to oil and realize it will be our downfall.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Western businesses will never care. They don't care that the
| chinese destroy the planet. They don't care that the chinese
| manipulate the quality of the products they manufacture on
| their behalf. They don't care that the chinese sell
| counterfeits at huge markups in markets developed countries
| couldn't care less about.
|
| The only thing they care about is money. They'll never stop
| doing business with China until it stops making them money.
| post_break wrote:
| We would sell the moon and the planet if it meant profit.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| > Western businesses
|
| Western business and the ruling class that are in bed with
| the said corporate world.
| arcanus wrote:
| There has long been the quip, 'The Capitalists will sell us
| the rope with which we will hang them.'
| bserge wrote:
| I think "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which
| we will hang ourselves" is more accurate.
| bllguo wrote:
| they want to dominate the world? shall we compare war
| involvement or record of foreign influence? this is literally a
| response to an American act of aggression to cut China off of
| access to chips. but we're the peaceful good guys?
| echelon wrote:
| As soon as we stop banning people from saying that.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Who is banning people for saying China doesn't respect
| western IP? Please show me a single example.
| cronix wrote:
| Naw, we shall label them as racist and xenophobic for even
| bringing it up, and we just can't have people labeled as
| racists running around spewing "facts," so out the ban hammer
| comes. And the world will cheer it on as they only read the
| headline of "Another racist banned from x" and scroll on
| thinking what good people they are.
| trollski wrote:
| and blaming _everything_ on Ze Russians?
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| You joke, but I was earnestly pleasantly surprised to see
| that dang isn't chilling this conversation with his
| complaints about "nationalist flamebait" yet.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| indeed we should open our eyes because those Chinese are just
| playing the racist/blm card if we give back pressure
| nickff wrote:
| You make the implicit assumption that it is possible to
| maintain an advantage in the market after destroying ongoing
| business relationships/expectations (as ARM China appears to
| have done). I think you may be overestimating the importance of
| 'apparent market power', and underestimating the value of
| consistency and adaptability.
|
| Highly centralized (command & control) and mercantilist systems
| tend to do well in the short term, but struggle and founder in
| the long term. In contrast, more chaotic, free market economies
| tend to look messy in the short term, but achieve amazing,
| spontaneous order over time.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| > Highly centralized (command & control) and mercantilist
| systems tend to do well in the short term, but struggle and
| founder in the long term.
|
| That sounds like a prayer to me.
|
| What evidence is there that China can't win? How are you
| certain that authoritarian regimes can't both gain and keep
| dominance over timescale of decades or centuries?
|
| Consider that the dominance of democracy is a relatively
| short term thing on the historical timescale. For the vast
| majority of human history, civilizations have been ruled by
| authoritarian dictators. The rise of China could just be
| reversion to the mean.
|
| I don't want totalitarianism to win. But if we just
| complacently assume that it won't, doesn't that make the
| worst case scenario much more likely?
| audunw wrote:
| > What evidence is there that China can't win?
|
| There's no evidence here. We're talking about predicting
| the future in a system that's too complex to make
| predictions with any certainty.
|
| But for those of us following the politics and economics of
| China closely, it's pretty clear that they're screwed.
|
| People said Japan would dominate the world. Then the
| demographic shift hit them and the economy has been
| stagnating ever since. China's demographic shift is much
| bigger and faster, they're further behind (per capita), and
| they're way less prepared. China has the same problem of
| not accepting enough immigrants, and they just made it
| worse by cracking down on after-school tutoring.
|
| The vast majority of history is very different from the
| world we live in today. People can move between countries
| relatively easily, and all countries compete for the top
| talent. A huge share of workers these days are knowledge
| workers. You can't generalise based on history when the
| fundamentals are so vastly different. China has very little
| to offer there, and they're increasingly becoming hostile
| to foreigners.
|
| They have an enormous housing bubble. Well, if you can call
| it a bubble when it's propped up so it never bursts. But
| much of their GDP is pure waste as they're building
| apartments nobody lives in, and that deteriorates within
| years. Why? Because they can't build a trustworthy stock
| market where people can invest, so people invest in
| housing. They just demonstrated once again that you should
| never but money in the Chinese stock market, so the problem
| isn't getting better.
|
| Chinas infrastructure is weak. Many cities are built
| without proper drainage. Dams are breaking. The US may have
| a huge infrastructure debt, but at least it was solid to
| begin with.
|
| China has an insane amount of public servants per worker.
| The whole economy is deeply inefficient, and has only been
| propped up by a crazy 996 work ethic, one that Xi is now
| trying to crack down on.
|
| Which illustrates the fundamental instability: they can't
| continue to grow through capitalism anymore. The insane
| income inequality is becoming a big problem, and the
| wealthy was accumulating too much power, threatening the
| power of the party. So Xi is reverting to more traditional
| socialist policies, to remove some of the power of wealthy
| individuals and satisfy the public. But that will
| fundamentally weaken the economy. It'll push them in the
| direction of economies like North Korea and Venezuela.
|
| China is being squeeze from both ends: low value
| manufacturing is moving to other countries as labor costs
| in China increases. But China has trouble establishing high
| value exports and services. How many trusted brands are
| there from China? Quite a few sure, but not compared to its
| population size.
| chrischen wrote:
| If your system can't win because it's inherently better,
| then maybe your system shouldn't win?
|
| Have a little faith. Our system shouldn't win just because
| we are using it. After all, our core beliefs are that it is
| a better system, not just through our pure force of will.
|
| The OP is right, much of China is is still undeveloped and
| their policies short-sighted and naive. In fact the whole
| government is so sensitive to face-saving that it screams
| insecure teenager. Getting worried they might be winning
| and that we must start to take alternative measures just
| legitimizes their tactics.
| archibaldJ wrote:
| > How are you certain that authoritarian regimes can't both
| gain and keep dominance over timescale of decades or
| centuries?
|
| Authoritarianism always comes with a top-down execution
| structure, which optimises for cost-to-execute but not
| cost-to-transform.
|
| When the need-to-transform exceeds a certain value, it
| would either have to re-adjust its internal structure or it
| will crumble (as the cost skyrockets) [1].
|
| Interestingly, the same applies to compiler design, as well
| as any software systems when viewed at the right
| abstraction.
|
| And from a functional programming perspective, it is also
| the principle that underlines the famous Alan Perlis'
| epigram "LISP programmers know the value of everything and
| the cost of nothing" (which outlines the importance of
| compiler optimization such as in tail-end recursion.)
|
| [1] We're already seeing this in China's aging population
| crisis (thanks to the one-child policy introduced in 1980
| [3]), and I doubt Xi's banning of private tuitions [2]
| would help (if we take his policy at face value).
|
| [2]:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-24/china-
| ban...
|
| [3]: fun fact - this policy had affected many people
| including myself in a deep personal level. By law I am not
| supposed to exist (I'm a Gen Z born in China illegally as a
| second child (after my parents bribed the hospital, and
| afterwards we still had to pay huge fines)).
| strogonoff wrote:
| Your point about cost-to-adjust resonated with me. What
| I've found is that designing for software successfully
| existing over time implies giving up control and instead
| going up to a meta-level, enabling sound methods of
| development to evolve--as opposed to defining specific
| processes, architecture and implementation, which in
| longer term leads to a situation in which whenever lead
| developer has not enough time (or is replaced) the
| software stops living. Something about infinite games in
| Carse's and building worlds in Ian Cheng's terminology.
|
| To your footnote, I've read that the one-child policy in
| China was not strictly enforced outside of major cities,
| and resulted in many children born in the countryside
| essentially "outside of the system", not having access to
| education or healthcare... I wonder how much of it is
| true.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I mean, they seem to win by simply throwing bodies on the
| pyre, working their own citizens to suicide in order to
| provide cheap labor to the rest of the world until they get
| valuable IP and steal it.
|
| Capitalism thrives on cheap labor and cannot stop itself
| from being lead like a lamb to slaughter as long as China
| keeps pumping out all of those man hours of labor for the
| taking.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| We've been down this road with the Soviet Union during
| portions of the cold war, when folks in the West thought
| that high Soviet GDP catch-up growth would translate into
| sustained non-catch-up growth and meant non-authoritarian
| governments were doomed. It didn't work out that way.
|
| Democracy isn't assured, we could easily vote it away in
| the West. But there is definitely a pattern whereby
| enormous cutting-edge economic growth seems to require
| relatively free societies. To make a long term bet on an
| authoritarian approach in a world where those societies
| exist, that seems like a very risky thing to do.
| random314 wrote:
| Soviet Russia had a much smaller population and market
| size than China.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| And China has its own problems, including hugely
| problematic demographics and an export-fueled economy
| that is still highly dependent on trade with the West.
| random314 wrote:
| Your reasoning is based on narratives which I personally
| always discount.
|
| Economists expect China to overtake the US economy in
| size by the 2030s. This can obviously either accelerate
| or decelerate and there will be hindsight reasoning in
| any case. Nevertheless, I don't see any of your narrative
| based arguments substantive.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| All those centuries of authoritarian rule also coincided
| with technological and economic stagnation. That might
| not be causal, but I think it is. The industrial
| revolution came _after_ a number of liberalizing
| political movements in northwestern Europe.
| papito wrote:
| A couple of points. Not to turn this into a discussion about
| advantages of one system vs another, but here is why China
| has a leg up:
|
| 1. What the United States has is not Capitalism - it's a
| badly broken Capitalism. The power of healthy oversight and
| regulation has been decimated by shocking amounts of money
| which, now, thanks to the same corrupted system, is mostly
| "dark". We are not exactly in an oligarchy, but we are _very_
| close.
|
| 2. You can think of China as a team. They still, as a whole,
| unite around their national and strategic interests, as a
| _nation_. We, on the other hand, wonder about which country
| owns this or that particular Congressperson, and wearing a
| mask as a health measure for the greater good of the country
| is bloody murder.
|
| How is this going to work?
| jimworm wrote:
| Short term weaknesses can make long term advantages
| irrelevant. Actually it's the primary force that shapes
| history.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| You can steal your way to the top.
|
| It worked for the greeks. It worked for the mongols. Arguably
| it worked for the spanish and british.
|
| I dont see the free market holding back authoritarian
| takeovers. At some point the west will wake up but when they
| do, is it too late?
| ezconnect wrote:
| This is what the US did in its infancy and after WWII since
| their country was not devastated by the war took in all the
| scientist they could take for their own benefits.
| the-dude wrote:
| Trump was pretty woke.
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not sure what anyone expected when we cut China off of chip
| IP. We did the same thing in the US, we had a policy of just
| straight up encouraging people to memorize patents before they
| immigrated over, and paying for their family to immigrate with
| them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
| syedkarim wrote:
| I can understand the value of memorizing designs, plans, and
| technical drawings that are kept as proprietary information,
| but why bother memorizing a patent? Patents are public
| information and are only valid in the specific country granting
| the patent. Without additional local filings, foreign patents
| are not valid in America and vice versa.
| monocasa wrote:
| Because Britain had a ban on exporting patents at the time
| and would search people leaving the country for patent
| documents, with jail time penalties.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| certainly that was before email, encryption, and zip files?
| monocasa wrote:
| Yes, this was the late 18th, early 19th century. A
| country's IP protectionism schemes obviously take a
| different approach now given modern communications media.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Are there more examples of this? I want to cite them every time
| people defend intellectual property.
| angio wrote:
| Fuchsine dye was patented in France, so factories moved to
| Switzerland to produce it freely. Now pharma is one of
| Switzerland's main industries.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Same story for watchmaking.
| jjmellon wrote:
| The Hollywood movie industry was created to escape from
| Edison's patent enforcement actions on the east coast.
| nosianu wrote:
| For my country (Germany), you just have to look up the
| history of "Made in Germany". Which Britain introduced to
| defend against cheap knock-off products made in Germany,
| which was learning from (i.e. "stealing" in today's terms) by
| copying.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany#History
|
| > _The label was originally introduced in Britain by the
| Merchandise Marks Act 1887, to mark foreign produce more
| obviously, as foreign manufactures had been falsely marking
| inferior goods with the marks of renowned British
| manufacturing companies and importing them into the United
| Kingdom. Most of these were found to be originating from
| Germany, whose government had introduced a protectionist
| policy to legally prohibit the import of goods in order to
| build up domestic industry_
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I can't find a source so it might not be true, but I heard
| Philips was founded in a specific city to avoid IP issues.
| reaperducer wrote:
| So, you contend that because the United States did something
| questionable 200 years ago, it's OK for China to do it in
| modern times.
|
| Got it.
| monocasa wrote:
| I contend that it's foolish to expect countries to not act in
| their own best interest. When you cut them off of technology
| because you're scared that they can reproduce it, you
| shouldn't be surprised that they actively go around your
| restrictions. It's the only sane move, the move that our own
| country took in their situation, and one aspect that led to
| our own economic greatness.
| nosianu wrote:
| Alternative hypothesis:
|
| What the US - and others, see my related comment about my own
| country (Germany) in this sub-thread - was not "questionable"
| at all. Instead, the way we defend "IP" today is what is
| _questionable_.
|
| You won't find the equivalent of a law of physics to support
| either hypothesis, in the end those are different paths for
| society to take and it's a choice. I'M presupposing here that
| there is no end goal for humanity, so there is no obvious way
| to weigh the different outcomes by some higher level
| objective measure.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| China is playing the same game that the US used to try to get
| ahead of the UK. Seems like turn about being fair play. FWIW
| US lawmakers have the power to do something about this by
| creating trade blockades until equal market access is
| provided. Trump tried this & look how unpopular a trade war
| with China is. I don't think it was all just because Trump
| was doing it, although the US being schizophrenic about which
| side implements an otherwise popular policy is going to be an
| ongoing challenge.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Now we know why Softbank wanted to get rid of Arm. As it has lost
| the largest market to its own subsidiary
| rayiner wrote:
| Western executives are in over their heads dealing with China. I
| don't think they even realized who was holding their leashes
| until China decided to start yanking on them a bit.
| [deleted]
| nabla9 wrote:
| Ray Dalio is fucked. Bridgewater has been expanding and
| expanding their Chinese assets. Dalio moved his Home Office to
| Singapore to really manage the assets from diversifying between
| America and China.
|
| He is still defending his position. (He can't talk negatively
| about Cina anyways) 'Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said
| investors are misconstruing China's regulatory clampdown on
| tech companies as "anti-capitalist."'
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/ray-dalio-wrong-about-china-...
|
| Already in 2018 someone asked: "Ray Dalio Needs China. Does
| China Need Ray Dalio?"
| https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1936rrvltbzc1...
| notabanker wrote:
| Does that mean Ray Dalio is pessimistic about US prospects
| and thinks China will dominate the future?
|
| But how does one invest in China without worrying about their
| capricious, personality-centered policies?
| pphysch wrote:
| Ray Dalio is actually part of the minority of the Western
| FIRE sector that is not "fucked", precisely because
| Bridgewater has a strong position in China.
|
| This is what "fucked" looks like:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=GoIg
| blacktriangle wrote:
| I know one shouldn't attribute to malice what can be attributed
| to incompetence, but in this case I think malice is where it's
| at. Western executives are not so dumb to think China will play
| nice with them. I've never met anybody whose spent more than 2
| hours working with the Chinese who thinks they are remotely
| trustworthy. Western execs whole plan has been to pump short
| term numbers, cash in, and get out before the CCP pulls the rug
| out from under them.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I met a US California man who made a lot, a lot of money
| selling western tech in China, and I believe he had exactly
| this intention, from anecdotal evidence.
| ayngg wrote:
| Western executives only care about getting paid, they don't
| need to care about geopolitics because they will have already
| offloaded their responsibilities before it matters.
| president wrote:
| They don't care because they'll be long gone and next
| generations will be dealing with the problem. Same as engineers
| who come in at the start of a project and do a number on the
| architecture, get their accolades and bonus, leave to their
| next gig, and let the suckers deal with the BS they built.
| leaveyou wrote:
| the oldest trick in the book..
| comrade-hn wrote:
| Why is anybody surprised?
|
| You know how they say in communism:
|
| Your company is our company.
|
| Your IP is our IP.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| Yet another SoftBank fuckup...
| rootsudo wrote:
| "Allen Wu has aggressively taken over the firm and is operating
| it how he sees fit. One interesting tidbit is that Allen Wu sued
| Arm China in order to declare his dismissal illegal. He
| essentially sued himself as he represented both sides in that
| specific court case. "
|
| Well, Smart.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| ARM did this to themselves. When you create a new entity in
| China, you agree that you don't control it. It is free to go off
| and do it's own thing. So when you create a nee entity in China,
| and give it a ETERNAL LICENSE to your CPU CORES you can't take
| that back if it "goes rogue". ARM created a monster and now they
| have to compete with it.
| knodi wrote:
| Is anything shocked by this? Chinese has been stealing IP for
| over 40 years now with government backing. In-fact government of
| China has encouraged such behavior and in some cases down right
| funded it.
|
| Just like before they'll get away with it. Who's going to stop
| this behemoth thug China?
| platz wrote:
| But, according to the article, ARM Britain didn't sell to China,
| SoftBank (Japan) did.
| krak12 wrote:
| Business as usual, nothing to see here. Any company looking to do
| business with China will face the same fate.
| charles_f wrote:
| > Arm Holdings, the SoftBank subsidiary sold a 51% stake of the
| company to a consortium of Chinese investors
|
| The story can be shaped in many ways. The fact is that after that
| transaction, that consortium owns more than half, and SoftBank is
| a minority investor, which means that it's not _theirs_ anymore.
| I might be missing something, but once you surrendered the
| control of the company, can you really say it went rogue?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, I cannot see this sort of thing stopping, until we see a
| point where non-Chinese investors revolt when they hear about the
| company they've invested going into China, rather than cheering.
| If investors have had such a change of heart at this point, I
| have not seen it.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow.
|
| If it's taken for granted that its impossible to make profits
| on the Chinese market, the best outcome for a company is to
| sell their IP to China and make sure the markets are kept
| completely segregated.
| Nevermark wrote:
| You can control the sale your own tech, but you have little
| control over whether you will then be competing against it
| down the road - regardless of the terms you thought you were
| all agreeing too.
|
| The best way forward with any critical tech won't be a simple
| decision. Not competing in China, partnering in China, or
| selling tech for use only in China, all contain existential
| risks.
|
| This is a battle happening at the Chinese (as a nation) vs.
| the non-Chinese world level. Non-Chinese tech actors will
| remain at high risk until the non-Chinese world can negotiate
| together with the same coherence as the Chinese system can.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| This story is visceral, it's now reached a broader audience.
| Boards of directors who weren't aware now are on notice.
| klelatti wrote:
| This sort of thing definitely has deterred investment in China.
| I was aware of it (in a very different industry) twenty years
| ago and it definitely affected decision making. It's impossible
| to track investments not made though.
| cm2187 wrote:
| To be honest it has now become politically toxic for a
| western company to announce a large investment in China.
| vkou wrote:
| It's financially toxic for them not to invest in the
| Chinese market.
|
| Name a major American brand, and odds are you've named
| either someone who manufactures in China, sells to China,
| or more commonly, does both.
|
| When it comes to optics or money, boards and investors will
| choose money.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the parent was referring to making investments
| into Chinese businesses, not just manufacturing their
| products or selling there.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Disney's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" would
| like to have a word with you. Think they made a Chinese
| lore film for Americans?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well that is a good point, it's the dog that didn't bark.
| nootropicat wrote:
| Diversity happened. Civic nationalism empirically doesn't work
| [1]. Societies need some level of individual sacrifice for the
| group to prosper over the long term, and diversity kills the
| impulse to do that. Favoring the ingroup over the outgroup is a
| stable state for groups, starting from ants and ending with
| humans. Trying to eradicate those impulses was perhaps noble, but
| ended in utter failure. Hapless attempts at civic nationalism
| collapsed under assault from much stronger ethnic/racial and/or
| religious forces.
|
| I can see this changing if intelligent aliens turn out to exist,
| but until then, homogeneous countries (China is >90% Han) are
| going to continue winning over the West, increasingly mired in
| racial and religious strife.
|
| In addition to aliens, if necessary technology arrives, the
| ingroups could conceivably coalesce into basic humans vs
| transhumans, or perhaps humans vs independent ai beings, but
| that's pure scifi at this point.
|
| [1]
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007...
| yongjik wrote:
| Topic: China steals IP.
|
| Top comment to top comment: diversity in the West is bad.
|
| Geez, even given the topic (which is guaranteed to attract
| flamewar), this is bad. We aren't even pretending to stay on
| topic, are we.
| omegaworks wrote:
| "The West" is absolutely reliant on the people that emigrate to
| it from elsewhere for its success. There is empirical evidence
| that startups that incorporate H1B workers see their measures
| of "financial performance, likelihood of going public, and
| quantity and quality of innovation" increase significantly[1],
| the paper detailing as such trended on HN not one week ago[2].
|
| Efforts to stymie diversity and decrease immigration have in
| fact caused permanent damage to the industry. Insularity and
| ignorance concretely undermines both economic and social
| growth. China has come far by holding tight to the reins of
| private capital wealth and forcing it to reinvest in common
| infrastructure. Meanwhile the nations of "the west" have
| undermined their social safety nets and unmoored their
| hypercapitalists to the point that they have nothing better to
| do with their money then burn it up chasing their toddler
| cowboy astronaut fantasies.
|
| 1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3459001
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28276814
| jabl wrote:
| Apart from the fact that the article doesn't support the point
| you're trying to make, as pointed out by other answers,
| historically, we have an excellent example of an extremely
| successful empire that embraced diversity and stuck around for,
| depending on how you look, a couple of millennia, namely Rome.
| Embracing diversity was a key factor in how Rome managed to
| expand and conquer it's (typically significantly xenophobic)
| neighbors. Rome co-opted territories it conquered, giving the
| conquered peoples a path toward Roman citizenship, while
| crucially giving Rome manpower for its armies. In more detail:
| https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-o...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| ...for Scandanavians, maybe. Europe, generally speaking,
| doesn't know how to do immigration. America, for all its
| faults, does. (UK might as well)
| [deleted]
| benreesman wrote:
| Somehow I fail to see a line from the civil rights movement to
| smash-and-grab late capitalism. Diversity happened a long time
| ago, treating minorities ever-so-slightly more like human
| beings fails the smell check for the cause of a crumbling
| distribution of rewards for hard work and innovation.
|
| If I had to point to a single set of policies that I'd call an
| "own goal" it's making it difficult for brilliant people to
| live and work in the West generally and the US in particular.
| Yeah, get your world-class technical education here and then
| get the fuck out of my country and into the H1-B maze.
|
| Apparently we've got top people on that one.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents,
| and please stop using HN for ideological battle or flamewar,
| especially race war. Those things are not what this site is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28332301.
| [deleted]
| mmastrac wrote:
| You are quoting a paper described by the author as "twisted" to
| make the case against diversity while trying to argue against
| diversity.
|
| > Putnam denied allegations he was arguing against diversity in
| society and contended that his paper had been "twisted" to make
| a case against race-based admissions to universities. He
| asserted that his "extensive research and experience confirm
| the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and
| ethnic diversity, to our society." [1]
|
| [1] wikipedia
| coryrc wrote:
| I wonder how many of the people who will be coming to flag you
| also blame Middle East strife on drawing lines without regard
| to ethnic territories?
| benreesman wrote:
| I don't think I've ever flagged anyone, I rarely even
| downvote.
|
| With that said are you trying to make a case that analogies
| to the conclusion that some German cartographer drawing nice
| straight lines on a map of Africa in 1860 or whatever was a
| win for Africa?
|
| The Middle East is a mess for a number of reasons, and in
| fairness some of them (like sitting on the tectonic fault
| line between Europe and Asia) predate predatory colonialism.
|
| But most of them don't predate predatory colonialism. The
| world powers of whatever era slicing and dicing it, toppling
| stable regimes, setting up pliant authoritarian regimes to
| extract resources cheaply, and generally raping the region
| senseless plays uh, a meaningful role in it being a mess.
| coryrc wrote:
| In almost every mention of Sykes-Picot, not laying lines
| along "actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions" is
| brought up as a contributing reason to present-day strife.
| I believe that in the US, people who publicly champion
| diversity typically also align with political movements
| which partly blame where the borders are for strife.
|
| An I wrong? Is it a big tent ideology and they don't share
| the same views? Or do people hold both ideas
| simultaneously? If so, how do you reconcile them?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25299553
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-
| sy...
| hvemsomhelst wrote:
| not only does "arm china" license "arm limited" technology and
| develop its own technology, but "arm china" also employs many
| people on behalf of "arm limited" for global (not "arm china")
| r&d
| [deleted]
| cletus wrote:
| People need to wake up to the fact that China being a potential
| market of >1B people is an illusion. This is particularly
| relevant for any tech company.
|
| Let me spell it out: Chinese companies are extensions of the
| state. They are tools of Chinese foreign and trade policy. What
| cooperation you think US companies provide the US government, it
| is nothing in comparison.
|
| The Chinese government will ensure that no Western competitor
| will "win" in China. Period. I understand why to a point. My main
| issue is with the West being completely oblivious to it.
|
| If China wants to impose such restrictions on Western companies,
| they shouldn't get access to Western markets. And that's it.
|
| Here's where I think this will first come to a head: I believe
| the US government will at some point soon decide that any person
| born in mainland China is a security risk as far as working on
| anything national security related. This will probably extend to
| key industries of national importance too (eg SpaceX).
| ilaksh wrote:
| It will come to a head with WWIII, millions dying from nuclear
| or biological warfare (which by the way Wuhan was the Hiroshima
| of biological warfare [whether it was intentional or not]). Or
| if we are lucky, they will just give in rather than face the
| next bioweapon.
|
| Anyway, as you see I am not optimistic.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| "If China wants to impose such restrictions on Western
| companies, they shouldn't get access to Western markets. And
| that's it."
|
| Why? Why should we prohibit US citizens from purchasing things
| they want from wherever/whoever they want? Why would we do that
| to ourselves (I'm a US citizen), and to each other?
| causality0 wrote:
| The same reason we don't let people do business with North
| Korea or purchase stolen goods. The same reason we shouldn't
| let people buy conflict diamonds or clothes made with slave
| labor.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Here's where I think this will first come to a head: I
| believe the US government will at some point soon decide that
| any person born in mainland China is a security risk as far as
| working on anything national security related. This will
| probably extend to key industries of national importance too
| (eg SpaceX).
|
| Even naturalization or birth in America can't erase ties to
| Chinese entities, through family links for instance. Beware of
| double allegiances. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-
| sent...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| One of the problems is that Chinese Americans may still have
| family ties in China, and the CCP's United Front [1] or other
| orgs will use those ties to extort, blackmail, or otherwise
| pressure them.
|
| It's absolutely imperative that the US Govt, and the govts of
| all democracies, recognize and combat this, and take active
| measures to protect their Chinese citizens.
|
| One thing that needs to happen if it's not the case already,
| is ensuring the 5th Amendment - no self-incrimination -
| protects any who want to come forward about such pressure.
| They need to know there's a legal safe-haven for them to
| cooperate with the government.
|
| Democratic governments should probably also look into
| providing an expedited immigration path for their Chinese
| citizens' relatives still in China.
|
| Right-wingers may complain about this, but they have to
| understand that: 1) historically, subjects/victims of
| oppressive govts are more likely to be allies of US and other
| democracies, rather than enemies, and 2) innocent till proven
| guilty must apply universally.
|
| [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Front_(China)
| secondcoming wrote:
| > It's absolutely imperative that the US Govt, and the
| govts of all democracies, recognize and combat this, and
| take active measures to protect their Chinese citizens.
|
| Yes, but they can't protect the Chinese-mainland-living
| extended families of those citizens
| hker wrote:
| > It's absolutely imperative that the US Govt, and the
| govts of all democracies, recognize and combat this, and
| take active measures to protect their Chinese citizens.
|
| Agree.
|
| > Democratic governments should probably also look into
| providing an expedited immigration path for their Chinese
| citizens' relatives still in China.
|
| Just want to point out that, Chinese spies tried to exploit
| expedited immigration paths in UK intended for Hong Kongers
| [1]. I don't have an easy solution.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-spies-try-uk-
| visa-pe...
| tcbawo wrote:
| The general mistreatment and neglect of whistleblowers
| makes me think such a policy is unlikely to work.
| colordrops wrote:
| Things will get really ugly once you codify special classes
| citizens and other US persons. It won't happen even though
| conservative congresspeople have been pushing for it for
| decades.
| tomp wrote:
| Are you sure about that? It's the norm in Europe. E.g. you
| can't work for UK security services (MI5, MI6) unless one
| of your parents was also British, you lived in the UK for a
| while and you might be required to give up dual
| citizenship.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Are you sure about that? It's the norm in Europe. E.g.
| you can't work for UK security services (MI5, MI6) unless
| one of your parents was also British, you lived in the UK
| for a while and you might be required to give up dual
| citizenship.
|
| I think it's actually similar for US security clearances,
| though not explicitly codified like that.
|
| IIRC, if you're a dual citizen, you have to renounce the
| non-American one. Apparently it's not good enough to say
| "I'll renounce it if you ask," since that's conditional
| (on them requesting it). You have to renounce it
| unconditionally. I think that even applies to allied
| countries (e.g. no US-Canadian dual citizens).
|
| I think the US would also reject a clearance if the
| applicant had relatives that were in a situation that
| could be used to exploit them (e.g. foreign nationals,
| living in a non-friendly country, etc).
|
| Basically, the idea is that you shouldn't have any
| (discoverable) competing loyalties, and you shouldn't
| have anything in your life that makes you vulnerable to
| manipulation.
|
| Disclaimer: I have no actual expertise in this area, but
| I did spend an afternoon browsing the government website
| where they described security clearance rejection
| appeals.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I know dual citizen US folk with secret clearances. DoD
| is pickier with Top Secret.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It depends on the country. You will have to renounce for
| some even for S.
| christkv wrote:
| You can get approved for secret clearance if you are a
| citizen of a NATO ally. I guess because you can be
| vetted. Higher than that I think would be hard.
| sjs7007 wrote:
| Well you have security clearances already no?
| ipspam wrote:
| It will. Yet, any country has the right to discriminate in
| any way against someone wishing to enter the country. It's
| once those people are let in, and given citizenship or PR
| that they enjoy protections against discrimination.
|
| This would have to be a "moving forward policy". Anyone in
| the US already enjoys protection against discrimination
| based on place of their birth or race.
|
| In the future, it could be a condition of entry that people
| acknowledge they are not allowed to work in certain
| industries, for the government, or universities etc.
| bserge wrote:
| Guess it's the American Dream of the rich, "anyone can make it
| (on the Chinese 1.3 billion people market)".
| baq wrote:
| The anarcho-capitalist's nightmare: realization that you need
| a strong government to enforce fair, intervention-free
| market.
| kazen44 wrote:
| one of the best arguments against anarcho-capitalism is
| that without a goverment, there would be no market to speak
| of.
|
| why exchange in trade if no one can guarantee it will be
| beneficial for you? Why would the other party trade instead
| of just stealing your stuff? You could ofcourse defend
| against by carrying a bigger stick then the next guy or
| cooperating with others.
|
| Which starts to look an awful lot like the organised
| structure of a state..
| tablespoon wrote:
| > one of the best arguments against anarcho-capitalism is
| that without a goverment, there would be no market to
| speak of.
|
| > why exchange in trade if no one can guarantee it will
| be beneficial for you? Why would the other party trade
| instead of just stealing your stuff? You could ofcourse
| defend against by carrying a bigger stick then the next
| guy or cooperating with others.
|
| > Which starts to look an awful lot like the organised
| structure of a state..
|
| Anarcho-capitalism is like one of those high atomic
| number elements with a half-life of microsecond. The
| society it describes is so unbelievably unstable, due to
| its own internal contradictions, that it practically
| cannot exist. A stable version of it is a _literal
| fantasy_.
| at_compile_time wrote:
| >any person born in mainland China is a security risk
|
| We've staffed our campuses and laboratories with these people
| because there's nothing university administrators like more
| than cheap labour. The Chinese Communist Party has agents
| inside western countries who can get to these people, to say
| nothing of what they can do to these people's families back in
| mainland China.
| thetwotimer wrote:
| University administrators? More like any medium to large
| employer these days.
|
| The carrot on the stick is gone for a lot of westerners and
| so they would rather bring in modern slaves from China,
| India, and Iran and blame the whole thing on "lazy" youth and
| "worker shortages". Gee, I wonder what the cause of that
| shortage is. Could it be because workers are miserable and
| have no foreseeable future? Nah, must be because the
| government is giving them a few thousand bucks.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's pretty well known [0] [1] but there's a reason your
| local administrator/politician won't talk about it [2]
|
| [0] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/06/11/alleged-
| chinese...
|
| [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/19/universities-
| confucius-...
|
| [2] https://www.axios.com/china-spy-california-
| politicians-9d2df...
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| > The Chinese government will ensure that no Western competitor
| will "win" in China. Period. I understand why to a point. My
| main issue is with the West being completely oblivious to it.
|
| > If China wants to impose such restrictions on Western
| companies, they shouldn't get access to Western markets. And
| that's it.
|
| And there are people around who give this a pass. And usually
| the defense is "China is just following Chinese law".
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And if China is _in_ China, they can follow Chinese law. Once
| they come _out of_ China, to do business with the West, then
| that excuse doesn 't cut it. (Just like the way that Western
| companies have to follow Chinese law to do business in
| China.)
| factorialboy wrote:
| I slap when when you come over to my home, because it's
| rule of my home.
|
| When you invite me, I take advantage of your hospitality
| and enjoy some tea.
| nsonha wrote:
| > no Western competitor will "win" in China. Period
|
| define "win"? To corporate America, making profit is a win.
| Even being the market leader is not a requirement.
| maccolgan wrote:
| This isn't very dissimilar to how the US populace at large
| won't let Chinese companies win in the US either, so all is
| fair in the world.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Let me spell it out: Chinese companies are extensions of the
| state.
|
| Where this comes to a head, and where western capitalistic
| governments seem ill equipped to handle it sufficiently, is in
| how China itself can and does act like one giant super
| conglomerate company and uses that to bully smaller companies
| because they are bigger than _anything_ around. Western
| governments are loathe to intervene in business dealing when
| they don 't have to, because their systems are based on a
| fairly hands off approach with the free market. The one place
| they sometimes do step in is when there's a monopoly or some
| other anti-competitive practice. The problem here is that the
| anti-competitive practice is being enabled by a foreign state
| that's working under the illusion of separate corporate
| entities.
|
| What's a country like the US or UK to do? Tell it's local
| companies that want to and are totally willing to shift IP to
| China to access the market "No, sorry, you aren't allowed to,
| even though you own that information and it's not a state
| secret"? That may be what's needed, but it's a large difference
| in thought in how they've treated their markets to this point.
| LamaOfRuin wrote:
| >What's a country like the US or UK to do? Tell it's local
| companies that want to and are totally willing to shift IP to
| China to access the market "No, sorry, you aren't allowed to,
| even though you own that information and it's not a state
| secret"?
|
| Yes, that is literally what the US has always done. The
| government can ban you from exporting anything it wants,
| which explicitly includes tech transfer.
| kbenson wrote:
| China isn't just taking tech IP. They're taking everything.
| They localized and took a bunch of train IP from German
| company they partnered with in the past. They've been doing
| it for decades.
|
| You can say we do that all the time, but have we really
| been prohibiting experienc and technology for diesel
| engines?
|
| Like you say, maybe we should, but it will be an
| interesting argument to have with companies that really
| want access to the market, and view this specific aspect of
| the contract as none of the governments business.
| LamaOfRuin wrote:
| Stuff like train IP is actually included in tech, same as
| rockets would be. My understanding is this is a legal
| definition of technology which can include basically
| anything (especially anything you might ever patent or
| have patented).
|
| I also didn't mean to imply that the US has done a lot of
| this. I don't think they have in the free trade era. I
| just meant to point out that it has always been done for
| some stuff (one of the most controversial and what
| introduced me to this many years ago was the crypto
| export ban). The last few years have already seen an
| explicit expansion of much more general purpose tech
| being restricted, with China being a known bad actor for
| forced tech transfer, so it doesn't seem like a stretch
| that we'll see more of it.
| exporectomy wrote:
| I suspect China doesn't really need western markets in the long
| term so denying access isn't all that powerful. Their
| population is the same as the entire OECD combined. They could
| become an entire "western developed economy" isolated within
| themselves plus a bunch of 3rd world allies.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Putting over 1bn people under general suspicion? I fail to see
| how this will solve anything.
|
| I agree with most of the rest you said... This is about markets
| and it is about the protection of IP.
|
| Edit: Spelling
| platz wrote:
| SoftBank sold ARM to China, not Western companies.
| dialogbox wrote:
| Taiwan is not China.
| platz wrote:
| Are you sure
| salawat wrote:
| Taiwan is China. West Taiwan just needs to get with the
| program.
| scythe wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/j2c8
| ra/...
| scythe wrote:
| SoftBank is Japanese, An Mou Ke Ji is Chinese. Taiwan
| isn't at issue here.
| dialogbox wrote:
| SoftBank sold ARM to Nvidia. And I thought Nvidia is
| Taiwanese since the parent comment mentioned China but
| maybe I was wrong. It seems like Nvidia is American. Why
| he mentioned China?
| platz wrote:
| it's literally in the beginning of the article
|
| > As part of the emphasis on the Chinese market, SoftBank
| succumbed to pressure and formed a joint venture. In the
| new joint venture, Arm Holdings, the SoftBank subsidiary
| sold a 51% stake of the company to a consortium of
| Chinese investors for paltry $775M.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I've heard a couple stories in SV of a certain chinese network
| hardware maker hiring phd researchers away from places like
| Cisco. Then finding ways to coerce or blackmail (threatening to
| ruin them) them into coughing up secrets from their previous
| employer.
| googlerthrowway wrote:
| >Here's where I think this will first come to a head: I believe
| the US government will at some point soon decide that any
| person born in mainland China is a security risk as far as
| working on anything national security related.
|
| I was at Google during the Project Dragonfly revelations. My
| name is on this petition [0]. Internally, I expressed
| discomfort at cooperation with a state that (among other
| things) sets up covert Communist Party cells at American
| universities and requires Party members to write reports on
| other Chinese students' political speech and activities. After
| sharing this concern, a fellow Googler reached out and told me
| earnestly, "don't worry, none of us writing those reports took
| it seriously."
|
| This was cold reassurance.
|
| [0] https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-
| google-e...
| Animats wrote:
| _Chinese companies are extensions of the state._
|
| Some are, some aren't. The current China "antitrust" flap is
| over ones that got really big without being extensions of the
| state, such as Tencent and Ant Financial. The classic big ones,
| such as Baowu (steel), Cosco (shipping), and China Railway
| Group (obvious), are directly state-owned. There are also large
| companies owned by provinces, regions, and cities. Most small
| and medium sized companies, though, are not state-owned. State
| ownership of almost everything was tried during the Mao era,
| and it didn't work.
|
| The CCP insists on being the only major center of power in
| China. They're willing to tolerate capitalism until it
| generates companies big enough to push back. Those get taken
| over or converted to state ownership.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| China hasn't made any power plays beyond currency manipulation.
| Greedy US/European CEOs handed the PRC the keys to the castle
| for short-term gains.
| scythe wrote:
| PRC has made irredentist claims to parts of Tajikistan
| (Pamir), India (Ladakh), Vietnam (Paracels) and of course
| Taiwan. They invaded Vietnam in 1979 when the latter
| overthrew the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (PRC
| supported KR) and have provided support to both the Burmese
| and North Korean dictatorships. Granted, they haven't done
| nearly as much meddling as the United States, but they
| nonetheless demonstrate a willingness to turn a blind eye to
| the worst sorts of atrocities when it suits them, and a
| generally expansionist ethos.
| l332mn wrote:
| Who's the main currency manipulator? The US, and its many,
| many trillions of dollars in debt which other countries are
| forced to purchase in order to participate in the global
| market. As long as the dollar remains the world reserve
| currency, i.e. as long as the US monetary hegemony lasts, the
| US will remain the leading currency manipulator. They've
| shamefully printed about 10 trillion dollars the past couple
| of years.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Naive question here: why China is able to close its market to
| foreign companies? Same thing for trade sanctions on Iran which
| impacted European companies but not China (if I'm not wrong).
| Seems they don't play by the same rules as anybody else.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _why China is able to close its market to foreign
| companies?_
|
| Why shouldn't they? It's their market. Do you propose we do
| like the British, which bomb them and opened it by force to
| have them buy opium?
|
| For perspecive, and to answer the "seems they don't play by
| the same rules as anybody else", part, the US has
| historically had tons of tarrifs on its own, it's how it got
| big - they only switched to "free trade" when Europe was
| devastated from WW II, and the US was already top dog
| dictating this "free" trade terms:
|
| "The United States pursued a protectionist policy from the
| beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th
| century. Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest
| average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world."
| [1].
|
| Even so, US still has tarrifs and protectionist policies in
| many areas, not to mention the whole "yield the power of our
| military and diplomatic power to enforce favorable deals
| making a mockery of the free market we pay lip service to"
| thing.
|
| Not to mention selectively targeting countries they don't
| like to close their markets via embargos, and using their
| force to force adherence to those embargoes to other
| countries around the world, something which no country dares
| do back (and can't anyway). Talk about "not playing by the
| same rules as anybody else".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_United_States_his
| tor...
| notabanker wrote:
| What's different in China's case compared to other
| protectionist countries is they can get away with being
| protectionist.
|
| How can they get away with it? They have powerful people
| lobbying with foreign governments on China's behalf. Take
| Apple for example: they contract out iPhone manufacturing to
| Foxconn in China. Due to the low cost of manufacturing they
| are able to generate astronomical profits.
|
| Every measure against China will directly or indirectly
| impact some US multinational corporation and it's natural for
| the corporation to lobby Western governments to put the
| brakes on such measures.
|
| On the contrary, if you look at Iran or Russia, multinational
| corporations don't have a similar deep-seated interest or
| supply chain infrastructure as they do in China. How did this
| come to be? A lot of it can be attributed to Deng Xiaoping's
| setting the tone for China's relationship with the West:
| "stabilize the position, observe calmly, take all in stride,
| never take the lead, and hide our capacity to bide our time."
|
| More on that in this essay:
| https://www.hoover.org/research/china-us-relations-eyes-
| chin...
| wonnage wrote:
| There aren't any real rules, it's just whatever you have the
| power to get away with.
|
| Also it's not like there's some supreme world government that
| can actually enforce these rules...
| toast0 wrote:
| China can control its market without serious reprisal because
| there aren't any serious reprisals available that are
| palettable.
|
| As an individual country, blocking or tarrifing imports from
| China isn't very effective because it hurts consumers and
| industry that rely on importing products and raw
| materials/commodities/industrial inputs from China more than
| it hurts China who can often export to other countries
| instead.
|
| Blocking exports to China is tricky because one the one hand,
| China doesn't import too many things, but on the other hand,
| for those things they do import, they're a large portion of
| the global market, so a country that cuts off those exports
| will leave their exporters will a large surplus, often of
| perishable goods, that will be difficult to deal with.
|
| So, trade controls are tricky. Most western countries don't
| have much in the way of laws that could restrict foreign
| ownership of land or businesses except in exceptional cases.
| And military intervention would be wholy inappropriate and
| probably disasterous. Really just not a lot of options.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > palettable
|
| palatable
|
| From "palate", roof of the mouth, and by extension taste.
| kazen44 wrote:
| Because china, unlike most of the other countries in the
| world, has a massive population and resources to get atleast
| partially self sustaining.
|
| Also, the fact that exporting manufacturing to the east let
| to a lot of short-term profits for western companies.
|
| The question is at what costs, looking at climate change, the
| current shortage of nearly anything manufactured right now
| and the destablisation of society thanks to the dropping of
| quality of life of many people in the west.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why China is able to close its market to foreign
| companies?_
|
| Because we assumed that prosperity would lead to liberal
| democracy. That underwrote complacency while profit
| motivations took root.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Or that capitalism was an inextricable part of democracy,
| and bringing the former would inevitably lead to the
| latter.
|
| A quite foolish assumption given the 20th century
| counterexamples of capitalism + authoritarianism - Nazi
| Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan.
|
| In the 90s, Wall St. and corporate America bankrolled the
| largest ever lobbying campaign to open US markets and the
| WTO to China, and got it by 2000.
|
| Just two decades later and the result is massive
| inequality, a decimated middle class, vulnerable supply
| supply chains, and rising authoritarianism again.
|
| The US has stupidly snatched defeat from the jaws of
| victory in the Cold War.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that capitalism was an inextricable part of democracy,
| and bringing the former would inevitably lead to the
| latter_
|
| This was never argued by anyone of prominence in the
| debates on China's WTO accession. Raising living
| standards through trade was the pitch. The faulty
| assumption was wealthier Chinese would demand more
| freedom. That didn't happen.
| TomAbel wrote:
| Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan practiced
| corporatism[1] rather than capitalism
|
| [1]https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm
| pjlegato wrote:
| Fascism is not a capitalist economic model. It is a
| "third way" socioeconomic system that proposes an
| alternative to both capitalism and socialism where both
| capital and labor are regulated by an all-powerful stern
| father figure Leader, who mediates and subordinates their
| petty squabbling to nationalistic interests.
| cbnotfromthere wrote:
| By definition fascism is non-Marxist socialism.
| gandalfian wrote:
| It's not over yet.
| pstuart wrote:
| But was that the driver or was it cheap labor for immediate
| quarterly profits?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Let me spell it out: Chinese companies are extensions of the
| state. They are tools of Chinese foreign and trade policy. What
| cooperation you think US companies provide the US government,
| it is nothing in comparison._
|
| I'm not so sure. It just goes through a few more mediators and
| more roundabout ways.
|
| In the end, the fruit companies that turned Latin American
| countries into banana repubics, for one example, had big
| support from the state and vice versa. Ditto for oil,
| telecommunications, social, and so on.
| wonnage wrote:
| The McCarthyism will continue until capitalism improves
| ggm wrote:
| An underrated comment I intend stealing and reusing without
| attribution. Flogging/morale riff, well done.
| colechristensen wrote:
| We buy peace with China by maintaining strong economic
| codependence. There is a huge cost, but not necessarily one not
| worth paying.
|
| Economic isolation would mean war.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| There is no economic tie between US/Soviet and nothing
| happens. 40 years of trade with China had propelled China to
| the number 2 economy in the world while sacked American
| manufacturing some projected China will surpass US in the
| near future. middle class American suffered and they voted
| Trump. is gig economy all that's left for middle class? while
| rich get even more rich from US/China trade.
|
| American reap what they sow i guess.
| torstenvl wrote:
| We have war already. It just isn't a very hot one.
| Dotnaught wrote:
| There are better words for a conflict that's not currently
| active warfare. The US and China can disagree and take
| action that isn't mutually beneficial without it being a
| war. How we talk about things reflects how we think about
| them and limits the solutions we consider.
| trynewideas wrote:
| I get a strong sense that SoftBank is maybe just... not very good
| at this whole investment side of things?
| jbhouse wrote:
| It's almost like China wants to make sure nobody ever lets them
| near useful IP again. This just seems counterproductive for them
| in the long run, though if you understand geopolitics better than
| I do, please help my understand how this is a good long-term
| strategy for China
| audunw wrote:
| China is closing off and turning inwards. It's a fundamental
| political drive due to their communist party structure. They
| can't continue to let the wealthy get richer because it
| threatens their grip on power, so you see Xi reverting to
| traditional socialist policies and cracking down on everyone
| that threatens him and his supporters.
|
| So basically they're just rushing to steal and copy all the
| technology they can, so they can make everything they need for
| themselves internally. Their goal isn't to compete
| internationally, just to be self-reliant enough to have a
| reasonably good economy while maintaining absolute political
| control.
|
| China probably doesn't care that they can't access IP from
| other countries again. They've mostly gotten what they need.
|
| The alternative is that the party gradually loses its power,
| and that liberalisation eventually makes the whole system
| collapse. It's the exact same forces that made the Soviet Union
| collapse and it's well known that this is Xi's biggest fear.
| xtian wrote:
| "Closing off and turning inwards"?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
| nucleardog wrote:
| As long as there's a chance to eek out some more money,
| companies will continue to do it. This isn't remotely a new
| thing.
|
| There's a pretty reasonable chance part of the downfall of
| Nortel was a lot of their data being extracted by the
| government and provided to Huawei.
|
| After Nortel shut down, the Canadian Department of National
| Defense picked up their headquarters to move into, but the move
| was delayed for years because the building was chock full of
| listening devices.
|
| This started almost 20 years ago. But here we are still willing
| to gamble that they'll respect our IP because maybe we can make
| a few bucks.
| [deleted]
| mokus wrote:
| This article repeats "An Mou Ke Ji " so many times but as far as
| I can tell, doesn't mention even once how I might attempt to
| pronounce it or recognize when anyone else mentions it in the
| future. Can anyone at least provide a transliteration?
| tiberiusteng wrote:
| "An Mou " just rhymes with "ARM", so that's ARM Technologies in
| Chinese.
| kazinator wrote:
| Mou is the simplified form of Mou , which kanjidic has
| meanings like "conspire, cheat, impose on, plan, devise,
| scheme, have in mind, deceive".
|
| One Japanese word for conspiracy is in Yin Mou (inbo):
| conspiracy (lit: hidden plan); Yin Mou Lun (inboron) means
| "conspiracy theory".
|
| The "Peacefuly Scheming Technology" company.
| prewett wrote:
| It's Chinese, though, not Japanese, and the Japanese meanings
| borrowed in the Tang dynasty are no longer modern Chinese.
| (Common words like "to eat" is Shi in Japanese, but in
| Chinese now that means "foodstuff" and is a noun, not a verb.
| The common Chinese word for to eat is Chi . There are a lot
| of these.)
|
| Mou appears to mean more like "plan" as a neutral word.
| Obviously you could have hidden plans and devious plans as
| well as ambitious plans, public plans, wise plans, and
| helpful plans. I don't think anyone would name their company
| "Cheatful Scheme", even if that was actually their intention.
| And Mou is modified by An (peace, safety, good health). So
| it'd be more like "Wholesome-safe plan".
| kazinator wrote:
| > * Mou appears to mean more like "plan" as a neutral
| word.*
|
| So do a number of Japanese words like Zhi Mou (chibo):
| ingenuity, resourcefulness, or Shen Mou (shinbo):
| eliberate; careful; thoughtful; deeply laid plan.
| at_compile_time wrote:
| Google Translate comes up with Ammou Technology
| cylinder714 wrote:
| deepl translates it as "AnMou Technology."
| prewett wrote:
| "anmou keji"
|
| https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=...
| nabla9 wrote:
| This is why China can never be a global financial hub or have a
| global reserve currency.
|
| Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes, and other shady characters
| would never move their money to China for safekeeping. No matter
| how friendly they are with the Chinese. Move only enough money to
| do business in China, all extra is moved elsewhere.
|
| Without independent courts, separation of powers, ownership is a
| political privilege.
| viking1066 wrote:
| China is "Hotel California" for investor money!
| president wrote:
| Don't forget that many federal pension funds and 401ks are
| invested in Chinese holdings. We are investing in our
| adversaries!
| mikkelam wrote:
| Isn't it a matter of time before these licensed ISAs are dead
| anyway? With the advent of RISC-V is this really a problem?
|
| Obviously this way of doing business is not acceptable though
| tambre wrote:
| Having a license for the architecture isn't worth much if you
| aren't playing by the rules anyway. The IP and expertise for
| the best implementations? That's useful.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > of the Century
|
| It's only 2021. There's bigger and better to come. Guaranteed.
| klelatti wrote:
| If the current course continues this seems likely to lead to a
| bifurcation of the Arm ecosystem - presumably with Arm customers
| outside of China competing with incompatible products exported
| from China based on Arm China designs.
|
| I don't have any insight into the quality of the Arm China team
| but isn't one possible outcome that there is strong competition
| between the two ecosystems. So we could be in an Arms race
| (sorry!)
| cm2187 wrote:
| IANAL but I would assume they would infringe many Arm patents
| if sold outside of China.
| klelatti wrote:
| Presumably Arm China would claim all legal and licensed to
| Arm China under Chinese law?
| jaywalk wrote:
| That's fine within China, but you specifically mentioned
| exports. They aren't exporting this stuff to any country
| outside of a small handful.
| klelatti wrote:
| Arm China is presumably licensing to Chinese SoC
| designers / manufacturers whose products are then
| included in devices that are exported.
| kelnos wrote:
| They could try that, sure, but the "real" Arm would
| likely sue to stop imports at as many destinations as
| possible. And they'd probably win those court cases.
| klelatti wrote:
| As I've said elsewhere:
|
| These are not counterfeit goods though. Where has the law
| been broken in a way that gives Arm the power to act?
| Probably IP licensed under Chinese law and Arm China will
| probably get its way in Chinese courts.
| dylan522p wrote:
| Author here. They specifically said they are not working with
| foreign companies. While they have exclusive rights to arm
| architecture in china, they cannot do anything outside china.
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| You can put your hands on Zhaoxin boards in the west
| despite those also ostensibly being China only as well.
|
| And software bifurcation is the real problem, and would be
| handled at layer not exclusive to China.
| dylan522p wrote:
| Chips themselves can be sold, yes. The IP cannot be
| licensed to non Chinese based semi firms.
| jhgb wrote:
| "Chips themselves can be sold, yes"
|
| How would even that be possible? Surely ARM's laywers are
| not interested in ripoff products being sold in the West.
| dylan522p wrote:
| Arm does not manufacture chips. They license IP for per
| chip or blanket fees. The model of many of these licenses
| is irrevocable. I've seen a couple different Arm
| licensing contracts and they're all very different so
| hard to make blanket statements. The Chinese entity has
| the right to license to all Chinese semiconductor firms
| who have the right to sell their chips.
| jhgb wrote:
| I'm aware of how ARM operates. I just find it incredible
| that ARM would allow some entity to license its designs
| contrary to ARM's own intentions, or generally do
| anything that entity wanted to do with them, and ARM
| would just consent to it in places where law is enforced.
| I mean, shredding counterfeit imported goods has been a
| traditional pastime in the west.
| klelatti wrote:
| These are not counterfeit goods though. Where has the law
| been broken in a way that gives Arm the power to act?
| Probably IP licensed under Chinese law and Arm China will
| probably get its way in Chinese courts.
| monocasa wrote:
| As dylan522p is saying, it depends very heavily on the
| actual agreement. Which unfortunately isn't public and
| has historically been very different in each case so we
| can't even look at similar agreements for guidance.
|
| That being said, it wouldn't be totally out there for a
| clause in the agreement that doesn't allow export of
| chips with this IP, and that would probably be enforced
| as ITO judgements allowing seizing chips and end devices
| at ingress points. The ITO would essentially treat them
| as counterfeit if all of those assumptions hold true,
| similar to how how remanufactured and ghost shift iPhone
| replacement parts famously get labeled as counterfeit
| legally.
| klelatti wrote:
| dylan522p says above:
|
| > Chips themselves can be sold, yes. The IP cannot be
| licensed to non Chinese based semi firms.
|
| I'd be astonished if licenses to Chinese SoC designers
| prevented products with those SoC's being sold outside
| China. So RockChip, Spreadtrum etc would be cut off from
| the rest of the world? Or forced to license separately
| with Arm UK for chips for products that are to be
| exported? Seems very unlikely.
|
| Plus I'd expect we'd have seen action taken already if
| they really had broken the terms of the licensing.
|
| Agreed that we're all speculating to some extent though!
| a9h74j wrote:
| Alternate title: When one arm doesn't know what the other arm
| is doing.
| amacbride wrote:
| Or, "Arm Wrestling"
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Are there examples of mainland-grown IP/technology breakthroughs
| that resulted from such "transfers"?
|
| It seems so far that this does enable China to further catch up
| and massively expand the use of the captured technology, but are
| there instances of them qualitatively surpassing it?
|
| I'm sure China has enough resources for advancements beyond
| replication, as much as it's capable of showcasing something to
| the rest of the world equally valuable of "transfer".
| nabla9 wrote:
| China repeats Japan 1950-1980. Focus on incremental innovation,
| instead of big leaps.
|
| They started at the bottom rung of the quality chain. They are
| constantly climbing it up but the speed seems slow. Then
| suddenly they are in par or little ahead.
|
| Chinese are already within a spitting distance in most
| technologies. Semiconductors have some technology bottlenecks
| like EUV machines that are hard to replicate. Chinese firms are
| already in a position where they don't need joint ventures.
| They hire directly senior engineers from South Korean and
| Taiwanese firms to work for them.
| comrade-hn wrote:
| Some of the most competitive products in some categories are
| from China, for example in drones.
|
| It's only a matter of time until they work their way up the
| chain.
|
| Remember the Tim Cook quote how it's difficult to fill a room
| with machinists in US, while in China you can fill 3 football
| fields with them.
| bigphishy wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, the biggest innovation out of China in
| the past 300 years has been the face-kini.
|
| Seriously though, has this country produced any new
| invention? I would expect a country with 1.5 billion would
| come up with something novel. I can think of nothing unique,
| only modification of existing inventions.
| croes wrote:
| Have you an example of a western invention not based on
| existing technology?
| jhgb wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "existing technology". Do
| electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state
| materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor
| industry. What about exploiting the behavior of charge
| carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube
| industry. Etc. etc. Before these things existed, nothing
| even remotely similar was being utilized by human
| civilization in our technological ventures at the very
| least in these two cases (or at least nothing did that
| readily comes to my mind, but considering the physics
| involved, it seems unlikely).
| kragen wrote:
| > _Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid
| state materials count? There you have the whole
| semiconductor industry._
|
| That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh,
| who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky
| diodes in 01894. Of course, he didn't understand the
| quantum effects, but then, semiconductor diodes were in
| wide industrial use (mostly in the rich West) for decades
| before Shockley's Equation in 01949.
|
| The quantum theory was largely a Western discovery during
| those 55 years, but also included significant
| contributions from non-Western people like Shinichiro
| Tomonaga, Yoshiro Nishina, Leo Esaki, Tsung-Dao Lee,
| Hideki Yukawa, and Hantaro Nagaoka, and of course since
| 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation
| dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware,
| there have been significant improvements in solid-state
| electronics since 01949, including full-color LEDs that
| permit LED lighting (due to Shuji Nakamura) and the
| switch to MOSFETs (due to Mohammed Atalla and Dawon
| Kahng, who were not _from_ the West but were _in_ the
| West) which eliminated the power consumption barrier that
| restricted 01960s electronics to dozens of transistors on
| a chip.
|
| China in particular has had a pretty bad couple of
| centuries, in between being invaded by the US, England,
| Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium,
| the Austro-Hungarian empire, Russia (twice), and Japan
| (three times), having two of the most ruinous civil wars
| in human history, and having the worst famine in human
| history. So it's been innovating a bit below par, though
| it seems to be doing okay now.
|
| > _What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers
| in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube
| industry._
|
| It does seem that the whole cathode-ray thing was a
| Western discovery, but it was built on the Hindu
| ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation that formed
| the basis for Arabic and then Western alchemy (necessary
| for the Sprengel pump, which was for decades the only
| source of a hard enough vacuum); also, building the
| apparatus drew on the Mesopotamian techniques of
| glassmaking, which are usually considered to hail from
| Asia Minor, though some believe they originated in Egypt.
|
| (It's possible that the Hindus imported the techniques of
| mercury distillation from China, but that is far enough
| back that it's difficult to know. At any rate, the
| Europeans got them from the Arabs, who got them from the
| Hindus.)
| chillacy wrote:
| As they say: "All art is derivative"
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That is confusing cause and effect. Because companies move
| their manufacturing operations to china it becomes harder to
| manufacture in the US. They did not initially move to China
| because of a lack of dometic skilled workers, but because of
| lower costs. The result of that move was, after a delay, the
| de-skilling of the US labor force, creating the lack of
| domestic skilled workers we have now. To recover from that
| would require a reverse migration of manufacturing activity
| which would, after a delay, create more skilled workers in
| the US.
|
| Skills follow activity, they do not lead activity. You learn
| by doing.
|
| If you want to develop good bridge building skills, then
| build a lot of bridges. As a result of that process, you
| will, after a delay, have a labor pool that knows how to do
| it well, and the bridges you build later on will be higher
| quality than the bridges you started out building.
|
| You do not wait for the labor pool to sprout up like
| mushrooms spontaneously from the ground, so there are all
| these bridge builders standing around with nothing to do, and
| then you decide that you'll have them fill up a few rooms and
| and hire some of them to build a bridge.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It's not just a lack of domestic skilled workers. I'm not
| really sure there is much of a lack. It's just that US
| labor is so much more expensive compared to earning power.
| US workers can't pay other US workers.
|
| Getting parts CNCed in China may be 10x less than the cost
| in the US, and materials are a tenth the cost as well (in
| small qty) as they haven't been transported yet. You can
| get roughly the same throughput in the US if you want to
| pay for it, but it will be vastly more expensive.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > US workers can't pay other US workers.
|
| That is just logically false. It's not even a question of
| measurement, it is false by definition. The income paid
| to produce is by definition always sufficient to purchase
| the output that has been produced. But remember that
| income paid to the factors of production includes both
| labor and capital income, because both the owners of
| capital and the suppliers of labor purchase the products
| that are created by the combining of labor and capital to
| produce output.
|
| What is unsustainable is running persistent trade
| deficits overseas. E.g. by allowing foreign capital
| inflows, we have allowed the foreign sector to distort
| prices in an unsustainable manner.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The buyer of US labor is the government and capital.
| Taxes on all US economic activity and coffers filled with
| worldwide profits are what purchases comparatively
| expensive US labor. This is why, e.g., most people can
| not afford new housing construction -- excess money has
| been dumped into it from the stimulus, driving costs up.
| Similar things have happened on a longer timescale for IT
| and engineering.
|
| Take what I said with some restrictions, like "US workers
| can't afford skilled or semiskilled US labor" which is
| afaict true. I work in production automation, life
| sciences, and software; my hobby projects in these area
| are unfortunately quite expensive due to US labor costs.
| As much as possible I must avoid using US labor if I want
| to get anything done.
| ticviking wrote:
| Depends on the region. In the Midwest and southeast most
| towns have several "jobshops" that keep the local industry
| running.
| sennight wrote:
| I remember when bitcoin miners were transitioning from FPGA to
| ASIC... I nearly threw out my back from laughter when the Chinese
| deceitfully copied the masks with abandon, while also delaying
| fulfillment with longer and longer burn in tests.
| bserge wrote:
| I don't get it, all current ASIC miners are from China.
| sennight wrote:
| lol, gee - wonder how that happened? There have been a few
| non-Chinese sourced chips decapped that predate the Chinese
| offerings, but as soon as some idiot uploaded his design to a
| Chinese fab in an attempt to undercut the competition...
| webmaven wrote:
| _> [...] delaying fulfillment with longer and longer burn in
| tests._
|
| Ha! "Burn in tests" indeed, that _is_ pretty funny.
| sennight wrote:
| Funnier still is the fact that the network's aggregate
| hashing power can easily be calculated by anyone logging the
| rate and difficulty of solved blocks, and that anyone would
| still bother trying to lie. But then the whole Craig Wright
| debacle hadn't yet gone down... so I guess they might have
| been visionaries when it came to leveraging the power of
| self-delusion to defeat cryptographic guarantees.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > but it is clear that SoftBank's short sighted profit driven
| behavior has caused a massive conundrum.
|
| I think the entire West has had short sighted profit driven
| behavior with respect to China for the past 40 years.
| ItsTotallyOn wrote:
| This article is entirely misinformed. Arm China already makes all
| these products, and has for years. This is a rebrand of existing
| products.
| FredPret wrote:
| Rebranding in the original, cattle-branding, ownership
| indicating sense.
|
| China simply stole an entire business division.
| xmly wrote:
| I wish the author can learn some Chinese before writing this
| article. And the related Chinese news was already there last
| year.
|
| The thing is the pure ARM internal political conflicts.
|
| ARM China CEO WU, a US citizen, claimed that he reported few
| high-level managers' corruptions and then he got fired by the ARM
| Softbank. ARM Softbank united with all board directors, including
| all Chinese investors, to fire Wu.
|
| But when Wu franchised ARM China, he signed a voting agreement
| with large shareholders to make sure he can not be fired for no
| reasons. So he claimed the board voting was illegal and Chinese
| shareholder violated the voting agreement. So even Chinese
| shareholders want him gone, but he refused to leave.
| dylan522p wrote:
| The last part of the article was not here last year. The last
| part and images are from an event they held recently. Notice
| the
|
| "Before we get to the event they held and the significance of
| it, let's do a recap."
|
| He refuses to leave and he has the stamp. The 7-1 vote was even
| mentioned.
|
| I would love if you could find those images from the event last
| year. You would need a time machine for that.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| That represents an interesting twist in the story, but I don't
| seeing it affecting the conclusion - ARM has lost all control
| over their subsidiary (at least until the China judicial powers
| intervene). This couldn't have happened in a western country.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Sources? Those are extraordinary claims.
|
| In english please
| wonnage wrote:
| You might need to learn Chinese if you're interested in
| following Chinese business drama.
| [deleted]
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I take your point, but wouldnt categorize what looks like
| on paper the largest ever theft of intellectual property in
| the history of the world as "drama"
|
| I would expect some western sources to back those claims.
| Otherwise they look like run of the mill chinese propaganda
| barrkel wrote:
| This is the standard Chinese operating model, as I understand it.
| Accept foreign subsidiary investment on condition of 51% Chinese
| ownership, transfer the technology, then turn around and compete
| with the parent. It was a similar story with maglev trains.
| sp332 wrote:
| -
| adriancr wrote:
| Softbank _sold_ 51%
|
| > Arm Holdings, the SoftBank subsidiary sold a 51% stake of
| the company to a consortium of Chinese investors for paltry
| $775M.
| njarboe wrote:
| Softbank held 49%. "SoftBank subsidiary sold a 51% stake of
| the company to a consortium of Chinese investors for paltry
| $775M."
| Proven wrote:
| Of course it was sold for a paltry sum.
|
| Does anyone think they were not nudged to sell to local
| state-designated champ and had one serious candidate (with
| the CCP pulling the strings behind the scene)?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Softbank was also in the middle of the failed WeWork IPO
| at the time, and probably needed to make a quick sale to
| raise cash.
|
| Any time you're in a hurry to buy or sell, and the
| counterparties know that, you're gonna get taken to the
| cleaners.
| klelatti wrote:
| Interesting that it's not the 51% (and I think some of the 51%
| may be held by non Chinese investors) that has been key but
| rather Allen Wu having the seal - so even without control of
| the board he's still been able to get control of the company.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Allen Wu having the seal_
|
| For those of us not familiar with Chinese business practices,
| is this an actual seal? Like someone would use to frank
| documents, or squish into hot wax to seal documents? Or is it
| a symbolic seal, like a legal document, or something else?
| prewett wrote:
| These days it's a round plastic handle with a carved rubber
| bottom that pairs with a spongy red-ink filled bottom.
| There's a picture and an explanation at [1]. It basically
| functions the same way as the signature of an authorized
| representative of the company does in the West.
|
| Presumably it comes out of personal seals which are a fun
| item to get if you're in China. I never interacted with
| someone who used them, but it's cool. See pictures at [2]
| and history at [3].
|
| "Chop" is also frequently used instead of "seal". I assume
| its not onomatopoedic, but that is a fair description of
| the "thunk" sound produced to when the seal is quickly
| pounded against the document on the table.
|
| [1] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/company-chops-in-
| china/
|
| [2] https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/culture/chi
| nese-...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)
| ithkuil wrote:
| In Japan seals/stamps (hanko) are still widely used as
| signatures.
| monocasa wrote:
| It's a thing in the US too. Just formed a C-Corp and power
| to create a seal that serves as the company's official
| signature is one of the parts that needs to be figured out
| in bylaws. You can specify that the current Chairman or
| CEO's signature counts as a seal, but you legally need some
| seal entity so that .gov knows what's legally binding. We
| elected to have an actual seal just for the kitsch value of
| it. Why make a company if you can't have a little fun with
| it?
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Yes, there are corporate seals in the USA as well.
| Sometimes it is an embosser, others an ink stamp.
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| I don't quite understand this either, isn't this something
| where you could make a new seal with the same design? Does
| the original seal have something specific that's not
| supposed to be copied? Or is this like the copyright
| ownership of the company's seal?
| dylan522p wrote:
| Author here, there is a Singaporean investor as well, but
| they have deep Chinese ties. I agree with your assessment.
| Allen Wu is an American citizen too, but loyal to China with
| deep CCP contacts.
| jlduan wrote:
| You can't throw out accusations like that without evidence,
| what deep CCP contacts Allen Wu has? Elon Musk has a
| factory in Shanghai, is he "loyal to China with deep CCP
| contacts" too?
| baq wrote:
| This is China, deep contacts with the CCP are expected.
| You can be sure that neither Musk nor Tesla has full
| control of the factory.
| jlduan wrote:
| i agree. the problem i have with the author's comment is
| "loyal". I think we need to distinguish people from
| justing trying to make money (apple, microsoft, tesla)
| and being CCP agents.
|
| The author clearly suggests this American CEO is a "loyal
| CCP" agent. I am just curious how did she/he spot him?
| wonnage wrote:
| Basically every large corporation in existence has deep
| government ties, but CCP bad
| anm89 wrote:
| Last time I checked the US wasn't harvesting organs,
| running concentration camps, blatantly committing
| genocide and ethnic cleansing.
|
| Yes, CCP bad.
| klelatti wrote:
| Thanks for an interesting piece. Presumably Wu wouldn't
| have done this if he didn't have (or think he has) CCP
| approval? Also Son with his long term business interests in
| China probably thought he would be OK. Someone has
| miscalculated badly?
| cwizou wrote:
| Since you are the author, there's a near duplicated
| paragraph below the CPU/XPU pictures, the paragraphs starts
| with "Besides standing out and calling themselves".
|
| Very interesting content otherwise, I remember the seal
| issue being something very controversial too when other
| companies went there (I believe it was regarding Intel,
| that was maybe 15 years ago). To this day it still is a
| pretty prevalent issue when doing local branches in China.
| dylan522p wrote:
| Thanks, I messed up when copying to from the actual site
| to the Substack, which is the one being shared here.
| Thanks!
| leephillips wrote:
| Did he register with the US gov. as a foreign agent? If
| not, he should be apprehended next time he enters the US.
| nzmsv wrote:
| Go look up the actual requirement for FARA before spewing
| nonsense.
| leephillips wrote:
| The FARA act covers a person who "solicits, collects,
| disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or
| other things of value within the United States" while
| acting in the interests of a "foreign government, a
| foreign political party, any person outside the United
| States ... and any entity organized under the laws of a
| foreign country or having its principal place of business
| in a foreign country."
| slim wrote:
| Not really. The key here is that he needed to maintain
| legality, by contesting the ruling of the board and suing, he
| can now argue he is still the boss and keep the seal till
| chinese justice deliberates.
| jlduan wrote:
| the rogue ceo allen wu is american.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| And?
| ur-whale wrote:
| > is american.
|
| on paper.
|
| where is loyalties actually lie is another story.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Seems to be going on for decades if the book Poorly Made in
| China is to be believed. Western corporations deliver their
| intellectual property to chinese factories on a silver platter.
| downrightmike wrote:
| And cellular and networking and and and
| fnord77 wrote:
| so, the Tesla subsidiary in china is 51% chinese owned?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the story around maglev but it is
| certainly true for conventional high speed rail in China. See
| stories detailing blatant IP theft and deceptive partnerships
| such as
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704814204575507...
| or https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/alstom-
| and-s...
|
| I wonder how this happens. Is it the naivety of leadership at
| western corporations, or is it simple greed because those
| leaders may show short term results that boost their
| compensation? And of course, I have to wonder why western
| governments don't restrict their corporations from risking
| their economic and military sovereignty in the future through
| these terrible partnerships.
|
| The same thing is happening in aerospace and it isn't even new.
| For example China tried cloning a Boeing jet it acquired way
| back in 1980 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1
| 980/05/09/c...). China's more recent attempts are much more
| successful (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47689386) and
| although they rely on western avionics and engines, I am sure
| they're busy trying to clone those as well.
|
| EDIT: found an article detailing IP competition and theft
| relating to HSR broadly, including maglev
| (https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/26/heading-track-
| impac...)
| glandium wrote:
| Note, you say "leadership of western corporations", but in
| the case of high speed rail, Japanese companies are involved
| too, and have fallen to the scam just as well.
| wazoox wrote:
| And Airbus. An incredible number of people working at Airbus
| Tianjin factory went to work at Comac.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| This gets overblown a lot in the same way that we used to
| discredit Soviet scientific advancements by claiming they stole
| all the important bits from the Americans.
|
| Yes, China does steal US technology and industry and yes, it
| has happened on a number of occasions with concrete
| documentation. However, that _does not_ mean that China is not
| capable of innovation or shrewd business moves and it should
| not be assumed to be the norm.
| denverkarma wrote:
| The fact that they are more than capable of innovation and
| shrewd business is the entire reason that casually stealing
| whatever they want on top of things is problematic.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> The fact that they are more than capable of innovation
| and shrewd business is the entire reason that casually
| stealing whatever they want on top of things is
| problematic._
|
| Hardly casual. The theft is thoughtful, deliberate,
| careful, and strategic.
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| Maybe the West woruld come to realization that they could
| abolish paw protections of trade secrets and patents, and
| not lose much, but boost local innovation?
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Maglev trains, and also with McDonnell Douglas/Boeing and
| airframes.
|
| https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-bill-clinton-and-amer...
| seg_lol wrote:
| > As part of the emphasis on the Chinese market, SoftBank
| succumbed to pressure and formed a joint venture. In the new
| joint venture, Arm Holdings, the SoftBank subsidiary sold a 51%
| stake of the company to a consortium of Chinese investors for
| paltry $775M. This venture has the exclusive right to license
| Arm's IP within China.
|
| Somewhere between a hard fork and rebase force push. There is
| even less value in Arm, but RISCV will face a slightly harder
| time, Arm China will be tough to compete against.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Examples like this lend credence to the belief that there is no
| rule of law in China.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| https://www.eet-china.com/d/file/news/2021-08-26/20c9205f1af...
|
| from EET China, this image look interesting. It look like ARM
| China plan to add additional features into ARM or is it to build
| different chip on top of ARM?
|
| Question about ARM China's exclusive rights for the China market:
|
| 1. I assumed ARM China can only sell their IPs to their Chinese
| customers. what about the add-on? the article say they going to
| develop its own IPs. Can they sell those outside of China?
|
| 2. Can a product made in China use ARM China's IPs then sell it
| outside of China?
|
| 3. How can ARM China build its own IPs if they are based on top
| of ARM UK's IPs?
| justinzollars wrote:
| Seems to me everyone is willing to sell out for a 49% stake in a
| Chinese company, for access to the Chinese market.
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