TSMC Will Cut Off Supply to Huawei In September

GenericUser said:

I'm no geopolitical expert in the matter, but the last I've understood of the situation with Taiwan, is that it's a mess. Essentially, Taiwan acts as if it was its own country, and I believe would prefer to continue to operate that way, but China disagrees and claims that Taiwan is part of their own sovereign territory. Most of the world tends to keep some level of policy of "deliberate ambiguity" regarding the matter so that they can treat Taiwan as it's own separate country as far as relations go, but without explicitly calling it such and drawing the ire of China.

Someone more well versed in the matter though feel free to clarify/correct me.

Nothing's ever that simple ya know.

Wikipedia has a great article on Taiwan. I'll summarize key dates below:

~6000 years ago Taiwan settled by what we consider 'indigenous' people (not part of China)
1683 - Annex by China
1895 - Ceded to Japan
1945 - Part of China after Japan was defeated in WW II (note that China was in a civil war at this time)
1949 - ROC flees to Taiwan

From what I can tell, there were battles related to their civil war still being fought up until 1960 :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960%E2%80%9361_campaign_at_the_China%E2%80%93Burma_border

gg83 said:

Taiwan also known as Republic of China, I guess isn't part of the Peoples Republic of China? Maybe someone knows more about the political status.

That's exactly the point. China has no jurisdiction over Taiwan - their only means of influence is what coercive tactics they can use, similar to the US. However, Taiwan is just a couple hundred miles off the coast of China and many thousands of miles from the US. So, Taiwan has to play a delicate balancing act not to upset China too much.

gg83 said:

Do Western counties do everything they can to prevent Taiwan from becoming part of a communist Country?

You've got it backwards. If Taiwan wanted to be formally part of China, it would happen in a heartbeat. Taiwan is the one that wants to maintain its independence from China, especially after watching the history of Hong Kong, since its handover from the British.

Since you're interested enough to voice an opinion on the matter, I think it'd be well worth your while to spend a few minutes brushing up on Taiwan's history and origins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan

mamasan2000 said:

What about the brain drain from asian countries the US is responsible for?
Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, so american names, right?

I don't really get your point. There are also lots of Chinese that attend Western universities and go right back to China, or maybe a while after working for a while. There are even Chinese-educated who emigrate to work elsewhere. That's what happens when you have free movement of people. They're free to pursue their own interests, be it educational, professional, political/personal freedom, or otherwise. Even Chairman Xi Jinping briefly studied in the US state of Iowa.

It's simply not related to this issue, in any way.

The question readers should be asking themselves is this: What's the long game?
China is a master of the long game. No doubt, this will hurt them in the short term. At best, it could give Trump some negotiating leverage, in trade talks. But those are completely stalled, for now. China will likely wait and see how the US election turns out, before returning to the negotiating table. Even if/when they do, I still don't expect them to cave.

In the long run, I foresee this hurting TSMC, hurting the US tech industry, and only serving to accelerate China's development of its own domestic semiconductor manufacturing capability. On the US side of the ledger, Trump has presided over a widening of the trade deficit than he started with, meanwhile US businesses and consumers have paid billions of dollars to the US Treasury Dept in tariffs (which are just another name for taxes). The US economy has been carried by tax cuts that added trillions of dollars to the federal debt, which we can't keep doing forever. The US is not winning the long game.

bit_user said:

The question readers should be asking themselves is this: What's the long game?
China is a master of the long game. No doubt, this will hurt them in the short term. At best, it could give Trump some negotiating leverage, in trade talks. But those are completely stalled, for now. China will likely wait and see how the US election turns out, before returning to the negotiating table. Even if/when they do, I still don't expect them to cave.

In the long run, I foresee this hurting TSMC, hurting the US tech industry, and only serving to accelerate China's development of its own domestic semiconductor manufacturing capability. On the US side of the ledger, Trump has presided over a widening of the trade deficit than he started with, meanwhile US businesses and consumers have paid billions of dollars to the US Treasury Dept in tariffs (which are just another name for taxes). The US economy has been carried by tax cuts that added trillions of dollars to the federal debt, which we can't keep doing forever. The US is not winning the long game.

Thing like this, and certain other events, make me pause and think: What's so great about this country again?
There are so many annoying and stupid things going on over here, I'm frankly sick of it - it's why I seldom watch TV and avoid most social media outlets; it gets depressing.

People in other countries have their circumstances, I'm sure, but to want to come over here: Are you sure about that?
Ireland seems like a nice place to live...

Phaaze88 said:

Thing like this, and certain other events, make me pause and think: What's so great about this country again?
There are so many annoying and stupid things going on over here, I'm frankly sick of it - it's why I seldom watch TV and avoid most social media outlets; it gets depressing.

People in other countries have their circumstances, I'm sure, but to want to come over here: Are you sure about that?
Ireland seems like a nice place to live...

Seriously? You may have seen too much CCP propaganda, it comes from the western media too as our corporate overlords want to appease China to gain access to what appears to be a large market. I use the word appears deliberately.

Whatever you think you see in the USA, how does it compare to this :

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/china-credibly-accused-of-organ-harvesting-atrocity/
"Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China issued its final report concluding that China engages in the systematic human-rights atrocity of killing political and other prisoners and harvesting their organs. (I wrote about the preliminary report here.) It is a horrific account about which woefully inadequate attention has been paid.
...
According to the report, beginning at page 415, there are four methods by which China kills prisoners and harvests their organs.

Organ harvesting from prisoners incompletely executed by shooting;

Organ harvesting from prisoners after lethal injection;

Execution by organ explantation (killing by organ harvesting);

Organ harvesting under the pretext of brain death (taking organs from people not really dead).

The question becomes, what, if anything, will be done about it? So far, the depressing answer is, “Not much.” Oh, the U.S. has imposed certain sanctions. But, as the old saying goes, that and six bits will buy you a cup of coffee."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/11/16/china-covers-up-killing-of-prisoners-to-harvest-organs-for-transplant-new-report/#562865102ec7
"China has said that the practice has been outlawed, replaced with a system of voluntary donations. But a new report, published on November 14 in the BMC Medical Ethics journal, has refuted this, alleging that those claims of reform are being supported by the “systematic falsification and manipulation of official organ transplant datasets in China.” "

The above is largely part of ethnic cleansing, and if true it dwarfs the Jewish holocaust of the 1930s and 40s.

But we just gotta have our cheap Chinese stuff, right.