To say that China is not capable of moving to more high
end chip production or making more sophisticated lithograhy machines is
just denying the inevitable. Anything made by men, can always be
replicated or invented by other men. It is just a question of taking the
time.
As an example, why are they forcing Iran not to produce
nuclear bombs? It is not because Iran does not have that capability. In
fact countries like Brazil and even South Africa are perfectly capable
of doing that as well.
The big question is if China succeeds in
making high end lithography machines en masse, what is that going to do
to ASML? And what if China could produce lithography machines as cheaply
as they touted, like washing machines, what do you think will happen to
those companies making lithography machines in Netherlands, Japan and
South Korea and who will they be competing against? Do not say it will
not and can never happen.
Decades ago, a copying machine was the
size of a car, cost a bomb and very few companies could afford that.
Rank Xerox was at its pinnacle together with IBM in that sector. Now, a
printer cum copying machine costs less than S$200 and is the size of an
attache case, or even smaller. Did people thought this was possible
then?
Or did anyone foresee fifty years ago that China could ever
rise to what it is today? Poverty strickened, fraught with natural
calamities like floods, earthquakes and civil unrest, who could have bet
on China becoming the second largest economy today. Cooks, laundrymen
and farmers they were, completely brushed aside as irrelevant and
ignored as a perennial basket case by the West. They only see the
potential of China's cheap labour and invested in China, reaping all the
benefits, fabricating all the lies, exporting all their pollution,
consuming 20% of all the food produced in the world with only about 4%
of the global population. That is just food alone, not to consider
consumer products, all in exchange for pieces of toilet paper.
Anonymous
3 comments:
South Korean Lawmaker Warns US of Damaging Relations with Asian Allies, Countries Could Form Anti-US Alliance
An influential South Korean lawmaker has strongly criticised Washington’s interventions in the global semiconductor industry, in a sign of the disquiet in Seoul over US efforts to corral Asian allies into its economic security agenda.
Yang Hyang-ja, who chaired a ruling party committee on South Korea’s semiconductor competitiveness until early this year, said that measures to curb China’s ability to access or produce advanced chips risked damaging relations with its Asian allies.
“If [Washington] continues to try to punish other nations and to pass bills and implement ‘America First’ policies in an unpredictable manner, other countries could form an alliance against the US,” Yang said.
“The US is the strongest nation in the world,” she added. “It should consider more of humanity’s common values. Appearing to use its strength as a weapon is not desirable.”
The US has passed legislation offering tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to non-Chinese chipmakers to increase semiconductor production in the US, in exchange for restrictions on their ability to upgrade or expand their facilities in China.
The Biden administration has also imposed sweeping export controls on critical chip manufacturing tools to China and prohibited US nationals and companies from offering direct or indirect support to Chinese companies involved in advanced chip manufacturing.
But there are concerns in Seoul that the US measures will provoke a backlash from Beijing, disrupting finely calibrated supply chains and threatening profits.
Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea’s leftwing opposition Democratic party, has accused the conservative Yoon Suk Yeol government of harming the country’s economic and security interests by siding too closely with the US and Japan against China and Russia.
Yang said: “The more the US sanctions China, the harder China will try to make rapid technological progress. China will provide more national support for the goal. Then it will pose a crisis to South Korea, given China’s abundant talent and raw materials.”
“The US should abandon its current approach of trying to get something out of shaking and breaking the global value chain,” she said.
Yang added that the US had benefited from South Korean and Taiwanese expertise in manufacturing memory and processor chips respectively, saying it was “trying to demolish the status quo through sanctions”.
The biggest long-term threat to South Korea’s semiconductor industry, analysts said, was not supply chain disruption but the rise of state-backed Chinese rivals such as YMTC, which has made rapid progress in closing the technological gap with leading Korean chipmakers in the Nand flash-memory sector.
Troy Stangarone, senior director at the Korea Economic Institute of America, notes that US tech giant Apple had considered using YMTC’s Nand flash-memory chips for the current iPhone 14, until political pressure from US lawmakers forced it to abandon the option.
“The Apple-YMTC episode demonstrated both how far the Chinese have come in the Nand memory sector,” said Stangarone.
Yang accepted that the US-China tech war had bought South Korea time to develop its own technologies but added that the country’s semiconductor industry was in a “very precarious situation”.
The USA not only wants to kill off the Chinese chip making industry, but is in fact killing two birds with one stone by indirectly dragging Taiwanese, Japanese and South Korean chipmakers right into the Chinese retaliatory moves. Remember that TSMC, Samsung and numerous other Japanese chipmakers are also competitors moving up against the USA chip manufacturing 'monopolisation' move.
By forming the Chip Alliance, it dragged chip manufacturers in those countries to also bear the consequences of China's retailiation. China's restriction of essential rare earth elements not only affects the USA, albeit less disastrously, but affects Taiwanese, Japanese and South Korean chip manufacturers most signigicantly.
The South Koreans are now realising the danger of forcing China going all out to be totally self reliant in chips supply in time to come, and what does that leave South Korean chip makers? Who are they going to do business with? It is going to be a losing proposition for them to follow the USA.
That even Apple is thinking of using YMTC's flash memory chips is testament to how far China's memory chip innovation has improved in such a short span of time. The USA may force Apple to decline using YMTC's Nand flash memory chips, but China can always put the same restrictions on other competing foreign memory chip makers operating in China, and being used in Apple's manufacturing hub in China, like what it did to Micron. 'National Security Issue' is a wide ranging weapon to be used for anything under the sun.
I am going to see ASML swallow their words proclaiming that even if they give the Chinese the blueprints for their EUV machines, the Chinese would not be able to produce them. Such was their arrogance.
Just like Chen Zhen (made famous by Bruce Lee) beating up the Japanese in their dojo and forcing them to eat the piece of paper with the writing branding China as 'The Sick Man of Asia'.
I want to see China doing the same to ASML, making them eat the blueprints themselves. That would be a sight to behold and real news to relish.
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