stephenthinkpad posted:

I would say the first major turning point was China started reinforcing the reefs in SCS in 14. The island was built so fast in a 2 years window it didn't give the US any time to react. You can argue the US started it with the pivot to asia strategy.

crepeface posted:

why does yospos have a china politics thread

do we really need a third (fourth?) racist china thread

fart simpson posted:

the park nearest to my apartment has every single tree tagged, i dont know if all the parks are that well covered or not. but also most of the trees on the roadside are tagged too. so here's two trees from the street outside my office

you can see the little qr code tied up to the trunk:


i scanned the code and it pulls up this tree's profile page. it has:
a picture of the tree
the tree's identification number
the type of tree it is
the scientific name of the species including the latin binary name, family and genus
the category of tree this the shenzhen government classifies it as (in this case it's a roadside tree)
the category of the "green space" it's in (in this case, roadside green space)
the trunk diameter
idk what the next one is referring to and it seems like its always empty
age of the tree
height of the tree
the growth state (in this case, "normal")
the management department responsible for this tree (in this case it's the "nanshan district urban management and comprehensive law enforcement bureau)



here's another tree near my office that i like. a 9.5 meter tall, 41 year old chinese banyan with a healthy 36cm trunk

mawarannahr posted:

they're probably not that good at it and I would not be surprised if most Americans are taking drugs manufactured as generics in Asia, as well as American companies outsourcing to factories in Asia.

'Shocking' conditions at Tylenol plant ( 2010)

Employees at plant that ruined millions of J&J Covid vaccine doses failed to shower, change clothes (2021)

Baltimore plant with contaminated Johnson & Johnson vaccines had multiple failures, unsanitary conditions, FDA says (2021)

Drug company quietly shut down COVID-19 vaccine plant last year: report (2022, factory in Netherlands)

Johnson & Johnson set to lay off 57 as it closes Greenfield plant (2023)

quote:

TSMC predicts delays, less advanced chips at second Arizona fab

President Joe Biden's plan to expand America's command of the global chips market hit another setback Thursday when Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Chairman Mark Liu announced that he anticipates significant delays at the company's second chips plant in Arizona.

This news follows previous delays announced last year at TSMC's first chips plant, which Liu partly blamed on US workers lacking specialized skills. At Thursday's news conference, Liu "reiterated" those complaints, Bloomberg reported, claiming that TSMC is still struggling to hire skilled workers in Arizona.

According to Liu, TSMC's second Arizona plant—which is supposed to become the most advanced facility in the US—likely won't start volume production of advanced chips until 2027 or 2028. That's potentially two years longer than initial projections suggesting that production would start in 2026.

Such lengthy delays, Bloomberg noted, might be "time enough for semiconductor tech to advance by one generation." If that's the case, one of the country's biggest foreign investments ever might result in the US still lagging behind foreign chips competitors.

Liu also suggested that the second plant, even with delays, might not start producing the 3-nanometer chip that TSMC had earlier stated would be possible in 2026. This 3-nm chip is "among the most advanced" chips manufactured today, The Wall Street Journal noted, but Liu said that until TSMC could calculate "customer demand and government incentives," the chipmaker wouldn't be able to determine "the specific chip type" that the second plant would begin producing as late as 2028.

TSMC's delays could be due to a lack of Chips Act funding, Bloomberg suggested, pointing out that none of the leading chip manufacturers ramping up efforts in the US today have been approved for funding yet by the Department of Commerce.

Last month, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo confirmed that the US had not yet awarded grants to commercial semiconductor facilities like TSMC because selecting a defense contractor first "was meant to emphasize the administration’s focus on national security," The New York Times reported. By funding BAE Systems, the Biden administration was likely moving quickly to decrease reliance on China-based chip supply chains for military purposes amid growing tensions between the two countries.

“When we talk about supply chain resilience, this investment is about shoring up that resilience and ensuring that the chips are delivered when our military needs them,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said last month.

If the US announced funding for TSMC, that could ensure that the second Arizona chips plant would be operational by 2027 rather than 2028. According to Bloomberg, TSMC announced it was building a "more modest plant" in Japan that's on track to launch operations this year after the Japanese government promptly provided funding.

In December, Raimondo promised that "much larger grants for major semiconductor manufacturing facilities run by companies like Intel, Samsung," or TSMC would be announced "in the coming months." She also confirmed that the "pace" of announcing awards would speed up in the first half of 2024.

Liu said that TSMC is in “consistent communication with the US government on incentive and tax credit support” in Arizona, the Journal reported.

TSMC struck deal with union workers

Liu also said that TSMC is "constantly communicating with the local labor union" to cope with the plant's alleged hiring challenges, Bloomberg reported.

Last month, TSMC reached a deal with the Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council (AZBTC), "a coalition of unions with 3,000 members" working on the Arizona plants, Bloomberg reported.

That agreement followed a spike in tensions between TSMC and Arizona union workers who accused TSMC of lying about hiring challenges as an "excuse" to bring in lower-paid Taiwanese workers to take jobs funded by American taxpayers. Workers also cited numerous safety concerns, The Guardian reported, including lack of enforcement of safety protocols, delayed responses from required medical providers, health issues from chemical exposures, and workers "probably" getting sick from using limited portable toilets that "were never properly cleaned or stocked with toilet paper and soap."

At that time, TSMC disputed workplace safety issues were a problem, while AZBCT President Aaron Butler said that TSMC had "not informed us of skills our workers are allegedly lacking or what training these Taiwanese workers will provide to our workers."

Workers speaking anonymously to protect their contracts told The Guardian that, in their opinion, one reason for construction delays was mismanagement at sites. They accused main contractors of constantly shifting the project's priorities, "making it impossible to complete tasks" and adding to delays.

“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” one worker told The Guardian. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”

The deal that TSMC reached with unions required that TSMC meet quarterly with AZBTC representatives, develop a training program for workers, and maintain transparency about worker safety issues. TSMC also agreed to hire local workers, except when "circumstances may require” TSMC to bring in foreign workers with “specialized experience,” Bloomberg reported.

Brian Harrison, president of TSMC Arizona, told Bloomberg that “AZBTC union members have the critical skills necessary to help us complete our two advanced-chipmaking fabs, and we look forward to embarking together on a new chapter of partnership and collaboration.”

Butler called the deal "a win for Arizona workers," telling Bloomberg that the union workers had pushed to ink the agreement before TSMC received Chips Act funding. In an op-ed, Butler also confirmed that his talks with Biden officials and TSMC executives suggested that TSMC's Arizona plants will "especially" "benefit from CHIPS Act funding" during later stages of construction.

Ars could not immediately reach TSMC or AZBTC for comment.

Mandoric posted:

There's also the factor that just as China could only enforce maximalist goals in a conventional total war by an absurd presence in California and opening a wide front while cutting off critical materials, America could only enforce maximalist goals in a conventional total war by an absurd presence in Siberia and opening a wide front while cutting off critical materials. The entire point of US foreign policy from Kissinger on was to prevent Eurasia from being just as secure a continental island as we are, and in the past two years we've blown that completely--I always hated he was still alive, but in retrospect I'm glad he lived to see his life's work burned in the name of Hillary's honor and reflexive anti-Slavism by his equally evil but significantly dumber disciples.

this allusion meant posted:

https://x.com/collinrugg/status/1750519357023895875

gradenko_2000 posted:

as long as the UI/UX is properly designed

PhilippAchtel posted:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1752761046593401197

[Asia/Oceania] Have you ever been a member of the CCP? Senator, I'm Singaporean. No.

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1752540711415906457

taliban ftw

crepeface posted:

wtf

euphronius posted:

Comcast is selling 10g service already.

BitcoinRockefeller posted:

Ars Technica comments on any China story are fantastic

BULBASAUR posted:

doubt China will do anything rash, but it certainly has the potential to get spicy

fart simpson posted:

deflation is bad for the economy because many people will go hungry today on the chance that food might be slightly cheaper tomorrow

genericnick posted:

Personally I'll eat today, but only because food might be more expensive tomorrow.

GlassEye-Boy posted:

CNBC host has a brain aneurysm at the thought that growth in China is not linked to the stock market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RpWMzWz1M

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1757794091587559814

biden is doing a roundabout way of sending future reefs instead of guarding prosperity

Spergin Morlock posted:

Guam is US territory, not a country

Spergin Morlock posted:

same with the Marshall islands. who the gently caress made that thing?

dead gay comedy forums posted:

I cannot emphasize enough how the quinquennial is a great "unit" of planning. Five years is enough time that a lot of stuff can get done to have structural effect, while powering hard into historical longitude - two five-year plans into an industry sector is a decade of deliberate political economic effort, which is a lot (seriously a lot) in terms of centralized planning.

As productive capacity and capability grow and develop, the power of directed economic effort also increases. One reason China has a critical advantage is that the state basic industry delivers guarantee of basic price - Huawei and all others who deal with the commercial end buy input materials from the state at even cost. The PRC gets it back through capital control and dividends. All those industries (and mines and farms and what not) were built up from five-year plans

crepeface posted:

are there any other channels that cover the two sessions?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42fx4aYv5SA

• some interesting stuff about debt and funds. sounds like they're going with more centralisation of the budget and they're aiming for 5% growth
  
• proposal to increase vacation days with a side effect of boosting internal tourism
  

Danann posted:

mila kunis posted:

its just a matter of time. it'd be criminally incompetent if they weren't working on a way to wean everyone completely off reliance on american software

Second Hand Meat Mouth posted:

yeah but I keep falling asleep trying to watch it

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1768024485775442091

I don't think the cpc needs that much help figuring out how many crises the us is going through when they can read the news and twitter too.

edit: now this is agitprop

https://twitter.com/luo_yuehan/status/1767820789544259747

Jose posted:

I account for half of this

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1768230593459114026

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

It's when you go from MCM to M-M,

mawarannahr posted:

skill issue

quote:

So farewell, Hong Kong. The vibrant, pulsating city-state that grew, under British rule, into one of the world’s great financial, business, cultural and tourism hubs has finally been brought to heel. Browbeaten, abused, silenced. Trust Xi Jinping, China’s dementor president, to suck out all the joy. Last Wednesday was the UN’s International Day of Happiness. But it was a sad, bad day for Hong Kong.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

I wonder if the blockade of the Red Sea will decrease tensions in the SCS now that US sailors realise it sucks when people shoot back at you.

stephenthinkpad posted:

The US military was talking about using nuke against China in one of the Taiwan strait crises in the late 50s, just a few years before PRC tested their first nuke. So the only thing that can prevent the US use nuke is expedite warhead stockpile and reach near nuclear parity against the US.

crepeface posted:

why does xi even bother to talk to biden? he'll just forget the conversation and call him a dog faced dictator in 2 days





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImILaOPn4C8

Cerebral Bore posted:

this article seems to be about the world's biggest economy though?