this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
194 points (93.7% liked)

World News

39000 readers
2391 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Amid heightened tensions between China and Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping told a former Taiwanese president who supports unification that the countries “belong” together.

“Differences in systems cannot change the fact that both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to the same country and nation,” Xi said.

“External interference cannot stop the historical trend of reunion of the country and family,” Xi said, in comments reported by Taiwanese media and published by Reuters.

Beijing claims the independent island of Taiwan is a Chinese province and has threatened to use force to achieve unification. China frequently sends warplanes and naval vessels to circle the small island democracy and has been mounting an increasing number of military drills over recent years.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I think there are two differences between Taiwan and Ukraine: Putin is fucking insane and might actually use nukes if attacked directly by a NATO nation, but I don't think Xi would do that (I could be wrong on both assessments). And Ukraine doesn't really have anything the world wants, while Taiwan (like you correctly pointed out) is about the only place that makes high performance computer chips and nobody wants China to have a world-wide stranglehold on that product.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Ukraine has 24% of the world's supply of noble gasses used in computer chip manufacturing, along with 35% of the remaining helium on the planet.

I think the Russians want this very much and that is why Russia is even in Ukraine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

I think Putin is out of touch and lives with a completely different world view than you or I, but I don't think he is insane or suicidal. Look at how far away he stayed from people during COVID.

I think we do ourselves a disservice by bowing down to his sabre rattling every time he reminds us he has nukes. We know, and he also knows the second one will drop on his head if he tries it. It's just posturing to get people likrnus arguing and making his land grab seem more legitimate, like there's nothing we can really do.

He will always have nukes, and if we alwuas back down because not them he will always get his way.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

but not to european and US, and that's what matter

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think, before any chip maker in Taiwan is taken by chinese forces, their factories and laboritories might explode for some reason or another. I don't think that China can take them without catastrophic loss of very expensive and sensitive equipment that requires very specialised workers they don't have. All of these things can't be replaced in a reasonable time frame, especially at war.

If China follows through with an invasion, they might be after something else.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

That something else is: Taiwan is an important geographic location. A separate Taiwan prevents China from having full easy access to the Pacific Ocean. If China holds Taiwan, China will be able to project its naval powers much further into the Pacific and the US does not like it.

This has always been the case since the KMT fled to Taiwan, way before Taiwan became a high-tech chip producing country. Way before Taiwan democratized. (Remember, Chiang Kai-Shek himself was a authoritarian asshole that has killed many earlier migrants to Taiwan.)

It's nice to have TSMC producing high-tech chips, but Samsung and Intel can also do so, perhaps only a process node (or half) behind TSMC, but Intel CPUs are no slouch compared to AMD's despite being a node behind. And Samsung have been producing some of nVidia's GPUs so they're not out of the game. But TSMC does need to be recognized and I don't really think it can be reproduced in the US. Taiwan has a very highly educated and underpaid engineering work force. I really don't think you can reproduce the same results in the US at the same costs. Its going to cost 5-10X more to move to the US.