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Xi Jinping has warned against a return to cold war-era tensions in the Asia-Pacific, urging greater cooperation on pandemic recovery and the climate crisis.

Amid growing tensions with the US over Taiwan, the Chinese president said all countries in the region must work together on joint challenges.

“Attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geopolitical grounds are bound to fail,” he told a virtual business conference on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

“The Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the cold war era.”

Xi’s remarks were an apparent reference to US efforts with allies and partners in the region, including the Quad grouping with India, Japan and Australia and the new Aukus alliance, to blunt what Washington sees as China’s growing coercive economic and military influence.

Voisi katsoa peiliin ennenkuin syyttää muita.

“China has changed its posture - that’s the truth,” Albanese told the Nine Network when asked to respond to Keating.
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ys-its-status-not-a-vital-australian-interest
“They’re far more forward-leaning. Australia is right to speak up for our own values. China is the nation that’s changed in terms of their attitude towards Australian imports, for example, and Australian businesses are suffering.”

Keating, who served as prime minister from 1991 to 1996, said Beijing was “in the adolescent phase of their diplomacy” and had “testosterone running everywhere”, but Australia had no alternative but to engage with an increasingly powerful China.

Reprising a mantra from when he was prime minister, Keating told the National Press Club the Morrison government was wrongly “trying to find our security from Asia rather than in Asia”.
 
China has taken another step toward semiconductor independence with Alibaba announcing the design of a 5-nanometer technology server chip that is based on Arm Ltd.'s latest instruction set architecture.

But, impressive as that feat is, an even more significant chip design development by the Chinese tech giant may be making available the source code to a RISC-V CPU core its own engineers designed. This means other companies can use it in their own processor designs—and escape architecture license fees. (The company made both announcements at its annual cloud convention in its home city of Hangzhou last month.)

The Chinese government is funding a lot of startups that are designing a variety of chips. The number of newly registered Chinese chip-related companies more than tripled in the first five months of 2021 from the same period a year ago. And the biggest Chinese technology companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Huawei are developing their own chips rather than banking on those from Intel, Nvidia, and other United States-based companies.

"These flagship technology companies like Alibaba can help jumpstart the semiconductor industry by building very advanced chips," said Linley Gwennap, a semiconductor consultant.
Alibaba said the SoC achieved a score of 440 in SPECint2017 (a standard benchmark for measuring CPU integer processing power), surpassing that of the current state-of-the-art Arm server processor based on Armv8 by 20 percent in performance and 50 percent in energy efficiency.
But true semiconductor independence will require China to develop its own extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, required to etch microscopic circuits on silicon. SMIC, China's main chip foundry, can't provide anything smaller than 14 nm. SMIC claims to have mastered the 3nm chip process in the lab and is trying to buy the EUV lithography machines necessary for production from ASML, the Dutch company that currently has a monopoly on the critical equipment. But the United States is intent on blocking the sale. (3 nm refers to the next reduction in minimum semiconductor feature size and tighter spacing to allow an increase in transistor density, but does not refer to the actual size of transistor gates or other features on the processor.)
Jos niiden ei tarvitse välittää piiritehtaista ja niiden kunnosta niin invaasio on siltä puolen helpompi.
 
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Jos niiden ei tarvitse välittää piiritehtaista ja niiden kunnosta niin invaasio on siltä puolen helpompi.
EUV litografia kehitettiin jo 20v sitten Lawrence Livermore laboratorion johdolla USA:ssa. Eiköhän Kiina ole vakoilun kautta saanut tietoonsa suurimman osan tarvittavasta teknologiasta.
 


Jos niiden ei tarvitse välittää piiritehtaista ja niiden kunnosta niin invaasio on siltä puolen helpompi.

Ajattelin vain, että nuo piirit on aika helppo kieltää markkinoilta, joten jäävät pitkälti kiinan sisäiseen käyttöön. Syitä kieltämiseen on helppo ajatella ja esim. "kun niissä voi olla takaportti" on aika helppo perustelu.
 
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Jos niiden ei tarvitse välittää piiritehtaista ja niiden kunnosta niin invaasio on siltä puolen helpompi.

Ketä sitä uskoisi? Nikkein mukaan:

The Chinese government's goal of meeting 70% of its semiconductor needs through domestic supply remains a long way off, private-sector research shows, with an estimated self-sufficiency rate of 16% last year despite an all-out government push to boost production.
...
With the global semiconductor shortage showing no sign of abating, China's low domestic supply is causing headaches for the world's top auto-producing country. "The auto industry sources less than 5% of its semiconductor supply domestically," said Ye Shengji, deputy secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.


As U.S. lawmakers look to invest $52 billion in the American chip industry, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. calls the plan far too small for rebuilding a complete supply chain in the country.

Morris Chang, an American citizen who founded the company that is now the world's most valuable chipmaker, says it would be impossible for the U.S. to have a full chip supply chain onshore even if it spent far more -- and that such a move may not be financially desirable in any case.

"If you want to reestablish a complete semiconductor supply chain in the U.S., you will not find it as a possible task," Chang told a tech industry forum in Taipei on Tuesday night. "Even after you spend hundreds of billions of dollars, you will still find the supply chain to be incomplete, and you will find that it will be very high cost, much higher costs than what you currently have."


Eli Kiinan oma tuotanto on lapsenkengissään; vain 5% maan autoteollisuuden tarvitsemista puolijohdesiruista valmistetaan siellä. Ja johtavan sirufirman perustajapomo pitää mahdottomana tehtävänä jenkeille kasata koko piirituotantoketjua maahansa. Vaikea nähdä että tehtävä olisi sen helpompi Kiinalle.

Ja Taiwanissa on lähes koko maailman sirutuotanto edistyneimmissä alle 10nm siruissa (92%)


Elikkäs meikäläisen järjellä mikäli Kiina hyökkää Taiwaniin, niin joko hyökkääjät tai puolustajat tuhoavat jossain vaiheessa sirutehtaat ym ja sen jälkeen noita edistyneimpiä siruja ei saa kukaan missään. Ja kaikella todennäköisyydellä myös muu puolijohdepiiriteollisuus halvaantuu melko totaalisesti, se kun jos mikä on globaali ala ja tuotantoketjut ympäri palloa, joten sodasta syntyvä epäluottamus on täyttä myrkkyä tuotannolle.

Jo nyt puolijohdeala on solmussa koronan aiheuttamien markkinahäiriöiden johdosta:
- ensin tilaajat vähensivät tilauksia odottaessaan että pandemia vähentää kysyntää
-> tuottajat vähensivät tuotantoa tilausten vähentyessä
-> tilaajat tajusivatkin, että pademian myötä kysyntä kasvaa
-> tuottajat pyrkivät vastaamaan tilauksiin, mutta tietysti olivat myöhässä tuotannon palauttamiseen edeltävään tasoon, joka ei sekään tietysti riitä, kun kysyntää tulikin enemmän kuin ennen pandemiaa
-> tilaajat havaitsivat pian sirujen saannin vaikeuden ja kasvanut ja odotettavissa olevan kysynnän kasvu mielessään tilasivat kaiken mahdollisen ja pyrkivät saamaan varastoja itselleen
-> kilpailijat keskenään tajusivat, että pulaa on, joten varmistaakseen etteivät toiset saa niin tilaavat ja hamstraavat yhä enemmän
-> pula tuotteista on hyvin suuri.

Eikä ratkaisu ole ihan helppo. Tuotannon supistaminen kysynnän oikeasti kasvaessa koko ajan luo jo oman viiveensä; menee hetki aikaa, että tuotanto saadaan ylös saati sitten kasvatettua entistä suuremmaksi. Ja etenkin tuo tuotannon kasvattaminen aiempaa suuremmaksi on ongelmallista; tehtaita ja tuotantolinjoja ei tuossa bisneksessä ihan kuukausissa väsätä vaan aika lasketaan vuosissa.

Toisekseen ei ole ollut eikä kait vieläkään kovin helppoa arvioida mitä tuotetta nyt oikeasti tarvitaan jatkossakin lisää; ilmeisesti hamstrausta on oikeasti tapahtunut ja ei ole selvää missä kaikkialla mitäkin varastoja on. Saattaa siis käydä niin, että kun markkinahäiriö on ohi, niin huomataankin, että näitä ja näitä siruja onkin nyt tarjolla 30% liikaa kysyntään nähden. Yksi tuotantolaitos kun kustantaa miljardeja, niin tuollaiseen tilanteeseen ei kukaan investoija halua, joten ei niitä investointipäätöksiä hetkessä tehdä.

Ja jos käykin niin, kuten ilmastokokoukset ym näyttävät suuntaa, että oikeasti aletaan pallon autokantaa vaihtamaan sähköisiin ja uusitaan muutenkin energiainfraa ja kiihtyvällä tahdilla digitalisoidaan maailmaa, niin puolijohteiden kysynnän kasvu vain kiihtyy. Eli sitä tuotantoa pitäisi lisätä ja paljon. Ja se voipi olla melkoinen savotta. Sellainen, johon konttipulat, lockdownit, matkustusrajoitukset, hamstraamiset, oman tuotannon turvaamiset jne saattavat jo itsessään olla riittävät tekemään pyrkimykset puolimahdottomiksi.

Puhumattakaan, että poliittiset jännitteet kasvavat koko ajan niin Kiinassa, Taiwanissa, Koreoissa, Intiassa, Jenkkilässä, EU:n rajoilla jne. Avoin sota Taiwanissa olisi takuuvarma jääkausi oikeastaan kaikille edellä mainituille puolijohdetuotannonkin suhteen. Vaikea nähdä, että siitä olisi mitään muuta kuin haittaa Kiinallekaan, joten sellainen olisi mielestäni täysin järjetöntä. Mutta toisaalta eihän näissä suurten johtajien päätöksissä liiemmin aina tolkkua olekaan, kuten naapurissakaan Krimin ja Ukrainan suhteen, joten kait kaikki on mahdollista.
 
What would European Union do? :unsure:


If China Attacks Taiwan, What Will Europe Do?​


Any decisions made in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan are likely to determine Europe’s place in the world for decades to come.



By Joris Teer and Tim Sweijs

October 28, 2021
If China Attacks Taiwan, What Will Europe Do?

A Chinese J-16 fighter jet aircraft flies in Taiwan’s ADIZ on October 4, 2021.

Credit: Republic of China (ROC) Ministry of National Defense
Image the following scenario: It’s April 10, 2024 at 2:30 a.m. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte convenes his cabinet to discuss an emergency request from the United States. After years of provocations, President Xi Jinping has acted: China is attacking Taiwan. President Joe Biden backs Taipei and sends the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait.

The risks are great. The situation is different from the crisis in 1996, when Bill Clinton ordered two carrier battle groups – at the time, the symbol of U.S. military dominance – sail through the Taiwan Strait to deter China. Beijing could do nothing but watch from the sidelines. This time, China has a home game advantage with its sophisticated missile arsenal threatening to sink U.S. aircraft carriers.

The United States invokes the AUKUS Pact, the three-year-old defense treaty between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Biden asks the British aircraft carrier group to execute a relatively low-risk operation: a blockade of the Malacca Strait to throttle China’s oil supply and trade. The Dutch air defense frigate Zr.Ms. Evertsen is part of the British squadron. A nearby French aircraft carrier group and a German frigate receive the same request.

The British join in. Do the Dutch, French, and Germans follow?

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

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Rutte speaks with relevant ministers and security advisers and tries to reach the leaders of France and Germany. Beijing is expected to consider a blockade to be an act of war. Can European ports and gas network withstand massive cyberattacks in retaliation? Are European ships sailing in the combat range of the Chinese army base in Djibouti and/or ships of the People’s Liberation Army Navy? Will Dutch, German, and French nationals in China stay safe? How will the Netherlands and Europe still get rare earth metals and essential goods from China?

On the other hand, if the Dutch, French, and Germans deny the request, the American reaction will not be kind. Will Biden maintain the U.S. security guarantee to Europe? Will the more than 60,000 American soldiers remain on the European continent? Given the deplorable state of European forces, there are concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin could pounce on the discord within NATO to again create a fait accompli on Europe’s eastern borders, like Russia did with the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

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In short: the decisions that The Hague, Paris, and Berlin take in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan are likely to determine Europe’s place in the world for decades to come.

The Taiwan Scenario: Capabilities and Intentions

A direct confrontation between two nuclear great powers is the geopolitical doomsday scenario of our time. It is uncertain whether China will attempt to use force to annex Taiwan, warnings from U.S. Admiral Philip Davidson that this threat will manifest sometime in “the next six years” notwithstanding. It is also not entirely clear that the Americans would intervene.

Wars, however, seldom appear as thunderbolts from a clear sky; they are usually preceded by expressed intentions to use force if necessary, combined with the steady build-up of military capabilities. There is no question that China is becoming increasingly assertive on the global stage and increasingly aggressive in its own region, while the U.S. is increasingly taking initiatives to counter China.

Both sides place a special emphasis on the fate of Taiwan. “Reunification” with Taiwan is Xi’s top priority, directly linked to his mission to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” During the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan, Biden spoke of the United States’ “sacred commitment” to Taiwan, in the same breath as the United States’ security guarantees to NATO, South Korea, and Japan. Last week, Biden explicitly said the United States would intervene if Taiwan came under attack.

Then there are China’s rapidly expanding military capabilities. Faced with U.S. military dominance during the 1991 Gulf War and the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, China began to modernize its military apparatus. At the 19th National Party Congress in 2017, 2035 was officially established as the moment to achieve this goal, with China to be a “world leading military power” by 2050. The main goal: to be able to win a war in China’s own backyard.

In the last 10 years in particular, this process has taken off. Beijing invested heavily in the mechanization and mobility of its ground forces and developed the most sophisticated missile arsenal in the world. China now has a robust anti-access and area denial capability, which is military jargon for the ability to deny adversaries (read: the United States and its allies) access to a region (read: the Taiwan Strait). Finally, China’s unparalleled industry provides the foundation for rapid further expansion of its capabilities. In 2020, China built 40 percent of all ships worldwide, while the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany together accounted for less than 1 percent.

Implications of This Scenario: Policy Recommendations for Europe

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How can Europe prepare for this diabolical dilemma? First of all, its leaders must recognize that hard competition between the great powers is again one, if not the most important, characteristic of the international system, just as it was during the Cold War.

Europe must define what collective defense would look like without the United States, especially now that the U.S. is no longer able to carry out a “Two-War Strategy,” the simultaneous waging and winning of wars against two great powers on different continents. A two-track policy should be pursued with regard to Russia. On the one hand, investments must be made in conventional deterrence of Russia. In concrete terms, this involves increasing the military preparedness of units, accelerating troop movement initiatives, purchasing long-range artillery, and strengthening command and coordination structures to direct operations even without the Americans. On the other hand, another European effort should be made to ease tensions with Russia, as French President Emmanuel Macron also suggested. Ultimately, conflict can only be resolved through political means.

Unlike in the Cold War, the world is economically and technologically intertwined. Europe cannot change China’s intentions. Xi’s levers of influence over Europe can, however, be reduced. Expanding export controls and investment screening regimes targeting dual-use goods and new technologies will help prevent the People’s Liberation Army from filling fundamental flaws in its capabilities using European resources, such as anti-submarine warfare and fighter jet technology. Dependencies on China in strategic sectors must be reduced. Caps, trousers, and sofas can still be imported from China in 2024. Nuclear technology, 5G networks, and police drones cannot. In addition, Europe must also prevent a next generation of dependencies within critical infrastructure from coming into being through the energy transition. Geopolitical analysts should participate in climate policymaking to prevent generating such dependencies.

Even if the Netherlands and Europe take all these measures, the choice between either supporting the United States or staying away from confrontation will affect Europe’s security and prosperity for decades. A decision on this must therefore be taken long before a crisis erupts, with broad political and social support, and should be coordinated by European states. As a first step, this subject must be included on the European Council agenda in the near future. A decision of this magnitude is too important to be left to politicians in the middle of the night.

This article expands on a piece previously published in the Dutch newspaper NRC.
 
Tie sotaan:


What Will Drive China to War?​

A cold war is already under way. The question is whether Washington can deter Beijing from initiating a hot one.
By Michael Beckley and Hal Brands
A hand reaches out to grab various flags.

Ben Hickey
November 1, 2021

About the authors: Michael Beckley is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where his research focuses on U.S.-China competition, and is an associate professor at Tufts University. Hal Brands is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US foreign policy and defense strategy, and is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
President Xi Jinping declared in July that those who get in the way of China’s ascent will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” The People’s Liberation Army Navy is churning out ships at a rate not seen since World War II, as Beijing issues threats against Taiwan and other neighbors. Top Pentagon officials have warned that China could start a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait or other geopolitical hot spots sometime this decade.

Analysts and officials in Washington are fretting over worsening tensions between the United States and China and the risks to the world of two superpowers once again clashing rather than cooperating. President Joe Biden has said that America “is not seeking a new cold war.” But that is the wrong way to look at U.S.-China relations. A cold war with Beijing is already under way. The right question, instead, is whether America can deter China from initiating a hot one.

Beijing is a remarkably ambitious revanchist power, one determined to make China whole again by “reuniting” Taiwan with the mainland, turning the East and South China Seas into Chinese lakes, and grabbing regional primacy as a stepping-stone to global power. It is also increasingly encircled, and faces growing resistance on many fronts—just the sort of scenario that has led it to lash out in the past.

The historical record since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 is clear: When confronted by a mounting threat to its geopolitical interests, Beijing does not wait to be attacked; it shoots first to gain the advantage of surprise.

In conflicts including the Korean War and clashes with Vietnam in 1979, China has often viewed the use of force as an educational exercise. It is willing to pick even a very costly fight with a single enemy to teach it, and others observing from the sidelines, a lesson.

Today, Beijing might be tempted to engage in this sort of aggression in multiple areas. And once the shooting starts, the pressures for escalation are likely to be severe.

Numerous scholars have analyzed when and why Beijing uses force. Most reach a similar conclusion: China attacks not when it feels confident about the future but when it worries its enemies are closing in. As Thomas Christensen, the director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University, writes, the Chinese Communist Party wages war when it perceives an opening window of vulnerability regarding its territory and immediate periphery, or a closing window of opportunity to consolidate control over disputed areas. This pattern holds regardless of the strength of China’s opponent. In fact, Beijing often has attacked far superior foes—including the U.S.—to cut them down to size and beat them back from Chinese-claimed or otherwise sensitive territory.

Examples of this are plentiful. In 1950, for instance, the fledgling PRC was less than a year old and destitute, after decades of civil war and Japanese brutality. Yet it nonetheless mauled advancing U.S. forces in Korea out of concern that the Americans would conquer North Korea and eventually use it as a base to attack China. In the expanded Korean War that resulted, China suffered almost 1 million casualties, risked nuclear retaliation, and was slammed with punishing economic sanctions that stayed in place for a generation. But to this day, Beijing celebrates the intervention as a glorious victory that warded off an existential threat to its homeland.

In 1962, the PLA attacked Indian forces, ostensibly because they had built outposts in Chinese-claimed territory in the Himalayas. The deeper cause was that the CCP feared that it was being surrounded by the Indians, Americans, Soviets, and Chinese Nationalists, all of whom had increased their military presence near China in prior years. Later that decade, fearing that China was next on Moscow’s hit list as part of efforts to defeat “counterrevolution,” the Chinese military ambushed Soviet forces along the Ussuri River and set off a seven-month undeclared conflict that once again risked nuclear war.

In the late ’70s, Beijing picked a fight with Vietnam. The purpose, remarked Deng Xiaoping, then the leader of the CCP, was to “teach Vietnam a lesson” after it started hosting Soviet forces on its territory and invaded Cambodia, one of China’s only allies. Deng feared that China was being surrounded and that its position would just get worse with time. And from the ’50s to the ’90s, China nearly started wars on three separate occasions by firing artillery or missiles at or near Taiwanese territory, in 1954–55, 1958, and 1995–96. In each case, the goal was—among other things—to deter Taiwan from forging a closer relationship with the U.S. or declaring its independence from China.

To be clear, every decision for war is complex, and factors including domestic politics and the personality quirks of individual leaders have also figured in China’s choices to fight. Yet the overarching pattern of behavior is consistent: Beijing turns violent when confronted with the prospect of permanently losing control of territory. It tends to attack one enemy to scare off others. And it rarely gives advance warning or waits to absorb the initial blow.

For the past few decades, this pattern of first strikes and surprise attacks has seemingly been on hold. Beijing’s military hasn’t fought a major war since 1979. It hasn’t shot at large numbers of foreigners since 1988, when Chinese frigates gunned down 64 Vietnamese sailors in a clash over the Spratly Islands. China’s leaders often claim that their country is a uniquely peaceful great power, and at first glance, the evidence backs them up.

But the China of the past few decades was a historical aberration, able to amass influence and wrest concessions from rivals merely by flaunting its booming economy. With 1.3 billion people, sky-high growth rates, and an authoritarian government that courted big business, China was simply too good to pass up as a consumer market and a low-wage production platform. So country after country curried favor with Beijing.

Britain handed back Hong Kong in 1997. Portugal gave up Macau in 1999. America fast-tracked China into major international institutions, such as the World Trade Organization. Half a dozen countries settled territorial disputes with China from 1991 to 2019, and more than 20 others cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan to secure relations with Beijing. China was advancing its interests without firing a shot and, as Deng remarked, “hiding its capabilities and biding its time.”

Those days are over. China’s economy, the engine of the CCP’s international clout, is starting to sputter. From 2007 to 2019, growth rates fell by more than half, productivity declined by more than 10 percent, and overall debt surged eightfold. The coronavirus pandemic has dragged down growth even further and plunged Beijing’s finances deeper into the red. On top of all this, China’s population is aging at a devastating pace: From 2020 to 2035 alone, it will lose 70 million working-age adults and gain 130 million senior citizens.

Countries have recently become less enthralled by China’s market and more worried about its coercive capabilities and aggressive actions. Fearful that Xi might attempt forced reunification, Taiwan is tightening its ties to the U.S. and revamping its defenses. For roughly a decade, Japan has been engaged in its largest military buildup since the Cold War; the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is now talking about doubling defense spending. India is massing forces near China’s borders and vital sea lanes. Vietnam and Indonesia are expanding their air, naval, and coast-guard forces. Australia is opening up its northern coast to U.S. forces and acquiring long-range missiles and nuclear-powered attack submarines. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are sending warships into the Indo-Pacific region. Dozens of countries are looking to cut China out of their supply chains; anti-China coalitions, such as the Quad and AUKUS, are proliferating.

Globally, opinion polls show that fear and mistrust of China has reached a post–Cold War high. All of which raises a troubling question: If Beijing sees that its possibilities for easy expansion are narrowing, might it begin resorting to more violent methods?

China is already moving in that direction. It has been using its maritime militia (essentially a covert navy), coast guard, and other “gray zone” assets to coerce weaker rivals in the Western Pacific. Xi’s government provoked a bloody scrap with India along the disputed Sino-Indian frontier in 2020, reportedly out of fear that New Delhi was aligning more closely with Washington.

Beijing certainly has the means to go much further. The CCP has spent $3 trillion over the past three decades building a military that is designed to defeat Chinese neighbors while blunting American power. It also has the motive: In addition to slowing growth and creeping encirclement, China faces closing windows of opportunity in its most important territorial disputes.

China’s geopolitical aims are not a secret. Xi, like his predecessors, desires to make China the preponderant power in Asia and, eventually, the world. He wants to consolidate China’s control over important lands and waterways the country lost during the “century of humiliation” (1839–1949), when China was ripped apart by imperialist powers. These areas include Hong Kong, Taiwan, chunks of Indian-claimed territory, and some 80 percent of the East and South China Seas.

The Western Pacific flash points are particularly vital. Taiwan is the site of a rival, democratic Chinese government in the heart of Asia with strong connections to Washington. Most of China’s trade passes through the East and South China Seas. And China’s primary antagonists in the area—Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines—are part of a strategic chain of U.S. allies and partners whose territory blocks Beijing’s access to the Pacific’s deep waters.


The CCP has staked its legitimacy on reabsorbing these areas and has cultivated an intense, revanchist form of nationalism among the Chinese people. Schoolchildren study the century of humiliation. National holidays commemorate foreign theft of Chinese lands. For many citizens, making China whole again is as much an emotional as a strategic imperative. Compromise is out of the question. “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors,” Xi told James Mattis, then the U.S. secretary of defense, in 2018.

Taiwan is the place where China’s time pressures are most severe. Peaceful reunification has become extremely unlikely: In August 2021, a record 68 percent of the Taiwanese public identified solely as Taiwanese and not as Chinese, and more than 95 percent wanted to maintain the island’s de facto sovereignty or declare independence. China retains viable military options because its missiles could incapacitate Taiwan’s air force and U.S. bases on Okinawa in a surprise attack, paving the way for a successful invasion. But Taiwan and the U.S. now recognize the threat.

President Biden recently stated that America would fight to defend Taiwan from an unprovoked Chinese attack. Washington is planning to harden, disperse, and expand its forces in the Asia-Pacific by the early 2030s. Taiwan is pursuing, on a similar timeline, a defense strategy that would use cheap, plentiful capabilities such as anti-ship missiles and mobile air defenses to make the island an incredibly hard nut to crack. This means that China will have its best chance from now to the end of the decade. Indeed, the military balance will temporarily shift further in Beijing’s favor in the late 2020s, when many aging U.S. ships, submarines, and planes will have to be retired.

This is when America will be in danger, as the former Pentagon official David Ochmanek has remarked, of getting “its ass handed to it” in a high-intensity conflict. If China does attack, Washington could face a choice between escalation or seeing Taiwan conquered.

More such dilemmas are emerging in the East China Sea. China has spent years building an armada, and the balance of naval tonnage currently favors Beijing. It regularly sends well-armed coast-guard vessels into the waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku Islands to weaken Japan’s control there. But Tokyo has plans to regain the strategic advantage by turning amphibious ships into aircraft carriers for stealth fighters armed with long-range anti-ship missiles. It is also using geography to its advantage by stringing missile launchers and submarines along the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch the length of the East China Sea.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-Japan alliance, once a barrier to Japanese remilitarization, is becoming a force multiplier. Tokyo has reinterpreted its constitution to fight more actively alongside the U.S. Japanese forces regularly operate with American naval vessels and aircraft; American F-35 fighters fly off of Japanese ships; U.S. and Japanese officials now confer routinely on how they would respond to Chinese aggression—and publicly advertise that cooperation.

For years, Chinese strategists have speculated about a short, sharp war that would humiliate Japan, rupture its alliance with Washington, and serve as an object lesson for other countries in the region. Beijing could, for instance, land or parachute special forces on the Senkakus, proclaim a large maritime exclusion zone in the area, and back up that declaration by deploying ships, submarines, warplanes, and drones—all supported by hundreds of conventionally armed ballistic missiles aimed at Japanese forces and even targets in Japan. Tokyo then would either have to accept China’s fait accompli or launch a difficult and bloody military operation to recapture the islands. America, too, would have to choose between retreat and honoring the pledges it made—in 2014 and in 2021—to help Japan defend the Senkakus. Retreat might destroy the credibility of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Resistance, war games held by prominent think tanks suggest, could easily lead to rapid escalation resulting in a major regional war.

What about the South China Sea? Here, China has grown accustomed to shoving around weak neighbors. Yet opposition is growing. Vietnam is stocking up on mobile missiles, submarines, fighter jets, and naval vessels that can make operations within 200 miles of its coast very difficult for Chinese forces. Indonesia is ramping up defense spending—a 20 percent hike in 2020 and another 16 percent in 2021—to buy dozens of fighters, surface ships, and submarines armed with lethal anti-ship missiles. Even the Philippines, which courted Beijing for most of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term, has been increasing air and naval patrols, conducting military exercises with the U.S., and planning to purchase cruise missiles from India. At the same time, a formidable coalition of external powers—the U.S., Japan, India, Australia, Britain, France, and Germany—are conducting freedom-of-navigation exercises to contest China’s claims.

From Beijing’s perspective, circumstances are looking ripe for a teachable moment. The best target might be the Philippines. In 2016, Manila challenged China’s claims to the South China Sea before the Permanent Court of Arbitration and won. Beijing might relish the opportunity to reassert its claims—and warn other Southeast Asian countries about the cost of angering China—by ejecting Filipino forces from their isolated, indefensible South China Sea outposts. Here again, Washington would have few good options: It could stand down, effectively allowing China to impose its will on the South China Sea and the countries around it, or it could risk a much bigger war to defend its ally.

Get ready for the “terrible 2020s”: a period in which China has strong incentives to grab “lost” land and break up coalitions seeking to check its advance. Beijing possesses grandiose territorial aims as well as a strategic culture that emphasizes hitting first and hitting hard when it perceives gathering dangers. It has a host of wasting assets in the form of military advantages that may not endure beyond this decade. Such dynamics have driven China to war in the past and could do so again today.

If conflict does break out, U.S. officials should not be sanguine about how it would end. Tamping or reversing Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific could require a massive use of force. An authoritarian CCP, always mindful of its precarious domestic legitimacy, would not want to concede defeat even if it failed to achieve its initial objectives. And historically, modern wars between great powers have more typically gone long than stayed short. All of this implies that a U.S.-China war could be incredibly dangerous, offering few plausible off-ramps and severe pressures for escalation.

The U.S. and its friends can take steps to deter the PRC, such as drastically speeding the acquisition of weaponry and prepositioning military assets in the Taiwan Strait and East and South China Seas, among other efforts, to showcase its hard power and ensure that China can’t easily knock out U.S. combat power in a surprise attack. At the same time, calmly firming up multilateral plans, involving Japan, Australia, and potentially India and Britain, for responding to Chinese aggression could make Beijing realize how costly such aggression might be. If Beijing understands that it cannot easily or cheaply win a conflict, it may be more cautious about starting one.

Most of these steps are not technologically difficult: They exploit capabilities that are available today. Yet they require an intellectual shift—a realization that the United States and its allies need to rapidly shut China’s windows of military opportunity, which means preparing for a war that could well start in 2025 rather than in 2035. And that, in turn, requires a degree of political will and urgency that has so far been lacking.

China’s historical warning signs are already flashing red. Indeed, taking the long view of why and under which circumstances China fights is the key to understanding just how short time has become for America and the other countries in Beijing’s path.
 

Yle toimittajan mukaan: Kiina hyökkää Taiwaniin vuoteen 2049 menneessä. Eli silloinkun Taiwan täyttää 100 vuotta. ”Kiina on kokonainen”
 
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will hold a virtual summit on Monday intended to stop, or at least slow down, the downward spiral in US-Chinese relations.

The two leaders have talked twice by phone since Biden took office in January, but this video conference will be their most substantial discussion so far.

It comes days after the two countries surprised analysts by agreed to boost climate cooperation in Glasgow. But it also comes at a time of increasing friction over Taiwan – the most dangerous potential flashpoint between the two countries.
 
“It is utterly amazing that it's taken so long for the supply chain to rebound after the global economy came to a halt during Covid,” says Brian Matas, vice president of market research at IC Insights, an analyst firm that tracks the semiconductor industry.

For one thing, the sheer scale of demand has been surprising. In 2020, as Covid began upending business as usual, the chip industry was already expecting an upswing. Worldwide chip sales fell 12 percent in 2019, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. But in December 2019, the group predicted that global sales would grow 5.9 percent in 2020 and 6.3 percent in 2021.

In fact, the latest figures show that sales grew 29.7 percent between August 2020 and August 2021. Demand is being driven by technologies like cloud computing and 5G, along with growing use of chips in all manner of products, from cars to home appliances.

At the same time, US-imposed sanctions on Chinese companies like Huawei, a leading manufacturer of smartphones and networking gear, prompted some Chinese firms to begin hoarding as much supply as possible.

The surge in demand for high-tech products triggered by working from home, lockdown ennui, and a shift to ecommerce has only continued, taking many by surprise, says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School who previously served on the board of Intel.

Chipmakers didn’t appreciate the extent of the sustained demand until about a year ago, Yoffie says, but they can’t turn on a dime. New chip-making factories cost billions of dollars and take years to build and outfit. “It takes about two years to build a new factory,” Yoffie notes. “And factories have gotten a lot bigger, a lot more expensive, and a lot more complicated too.”

This week, Sony and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract maker of chips, said they would invest $7 billion to build a fab capable of producing older components, but it won’t start making chips until the end of 2024. Intel is also investing in several cutting-edge new fabs, but those won’t come online either until 2024.

Yoffie notes that only one company, ASML of the Netherlands, makes the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed for cutting-edge chip-making, and ASML can’t produce the machines quickly enough to satisfy demand.

Another issue is that not all chips are created equal.

Vaihtoehto on kasari teknologia taikka vuosituhannen vaihde, mutta jälkimmäinen käyttää enemmän piirejä kuin kasari teknologia.
 
Xi Jinping warned Joe Biden in a virtual summit that China was prepared to take “decisive measures” if Taiwan makes any moves towards independence that cross Beijing’s red lines.

Xi also warned the US president that any support for Taiwanese independence would be “like playing with fire”, according to a Chinese state media account of the summit, adding that “those who play with fire will get burned”.

The language represented stock Chinese nationalist rhetoric, given extra potency by being delivered in person at the most extensive talks to date between the two leaders.

In response, Biden said the US remained committed to the “one China policy” that recognises only one sovereign Chinese state, and that Washington “strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”.
 

Mitähän mahtaisi tehdä niin? Eiköhän Kiinan tasavallan olemassaolo eurooppalaisille valtioille ole ollut yhdentekevä asia sitten vuoden 1971 päätöksen YK:ssa.

Asiassa ei ole yksi toimija Kiinan tasavallan ja KKP:n lisäksi: Yhdysvallat.
Kyllä, eikä USAkaan mitään tule tekemään jos/kun Kiina hyökkää Taiwaniin. Jos yli miljoona kuolee niin ehkä Kiina suljetaan pois jostain urheilukilpailuista ja vedetään hetkeksi suurlähettiläät kotiin jne.

Länsimailla olisi ollut mahdollisuus tunnustaa Taiwanin itsenäisyys jo vuosikymmeniä sitten mutta sitä ei tehty. Ennen Kiinan atomipommeja se olisi tietenkin ollut viisaampaa mutta kuten täälläkin on usein todettu: suurvalloilla ei ole ystäviä vaan ainoastaan omia etuja ajettavanaan ja usein ne edutkin ovat hyvin lyhytnäköisiä pidemmässä juoksussa jopa niille itselleen haitallisia, etenkin USA tapauksessa. Mitään parempaa moraali on varsinkin aivan turha odottaa.
 

Intialainen uutiskanava, missään muualla ei ole uutisia.
Xi Puh hallintoineen yrittää esittää yhtenäisen kansakunnan mediassa. Kaikki menee kuten kommunistihallinto suunnittelee ja kaikki on tyytyväisiä. Sisäinen terrorismi joka on oire tyytymättömyydestä hallintoa kohtaan ei oikein istuisi kiiltokuvaan.
 

China’s nuclear build-up: ‘one of the largest shifts in geostrategic power ever’​


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Over the last two decades, China has stunned Washington with the relentless pace of its conventional military build-up, ranging from fighter jets and bombers to submarines and warships. Its navy is now by far the largest in the world. But the combination of the hypersonic test and the warhead warning has now focused attention on a potentially dramatic shift taking place in Beijing’s nuclear posture.
 
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