The irony is that most of the chips made by Nexperia comes not from Nexperia in Netherlands or elsewhere, but from its Nexperia subsidiary in China, which the Chinese Government has now cut off from exporting. What the Netherlands did is a perfect example of cutting the nose to spite the face. It was a disaster in the making that the Europeans are now finding out.
I now want to talk about Mongolia also cutting its nose to spite its face. Mongolia has huge deposits of copper ores and planned to develop them to rewind its economy by opening up the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine to investors. When Mongolia first broached the idea, it specifically insisted that China should have no part to play in the copper mining ventures, a move to please the USA. But globally, no one outside Mongolia was much interested in investing in such a risky venture knowing that Mongolia is totally landlocked with transport infrastructures almost non-existent.
So, in comes Australia's Rio Tinto, hoping to make a killing for the company by selling the copper to China on its mind. It invested several US$ billions into the project. The first shock for Rio Tinto came when the Mongolian Government refused to allow Rio Tinto to run the mines by using cheap Chinese energy. It was to force Rio Tinto to build its own power generating plant, all in all investing about US$15 billion into whole project. The second shock came when the Mongolian Government stipulated that the copper extracted cannot be sold to China. That literally killed off the whole project, as Rio Tinto was all the time leveraging on selling to the Chinese market. These are all hurdles placed by the Mongolian Government just to please the USA. Now the whole project lies idle and the dream of jobs for the Mongolian people smashed.
This is not the only nose cutting job to spite the face made by the Mongolian Government. The oil pipelines supposed to run through Mongolia carrying Russia oil, the Power of Siberia 2 has now skirted Mongolia, which would have enabled Mongolia to earn transit fees for hosting the pipelines. China and Russia felt that Mongolia is too much under USA influence and not trustworthy and may sabotage the project when it is completed. Think of Nord Stream 2 and you will realize the magnitude of the risk.
Anonymous
PS. China can take back Outer Mongolia anytime without firing a bullet, and with the concurrence of Russia. Outer Mongolia is another sick Mickey Mouse intoxicated by American whisky.
Actually, China and Russia, decades ago, were on different sides of the geopolitical divide, with Russia in the G8 and not on good terms with China.
ReplyDeleteMongolia provides a natural buffer zone between China and Russia, although now it serves not as that necessary buffer, with China and Russia on good terms. The USA is now trying to use Mongolia to counter China.
China or Russia should have little trouble taking control of Mongolia, but that would have been demonized as expansionist and against International Norms. The seizure of sovereign states can only be monopolized by the Anglo-Saxon Whites based on historical precedents, they would claim, LOL.
Now people like Lindsay Graham are using the right of seizure against Venezuela and Colombia, using the same modus operandi argument that previous Presidents like Ronald Reagan had also done that before.
Many people are warning that the USA is sleepwalking into another Vietnam if it thinks Venezuela and Colombia are pieces of cake. These are vast countries, covered by thick jungles and mountainous, the exact replica of Vietnam. Go Donnie, go, and find out the hard truth.