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As The U.S. Wages War On It China Reacts With Defiance
Just as U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo returns from China her department issues new restrictions on chip deliveries:
The United States has broadened restrictions on the export of high-performance artificial intelligence chips by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), extending them beyond China to other regions, including some countries in the Middle East, amid rising concerns about Beijing’s access to critical AI resources.
Reuters reported Thursday that a regulatory filing by Nvidia stated that its state-of-the-art A100 and H100 chips, which speed up machine learning on AI apps such as ChatGPT had been put on a “no-export” list.
The attempt is to prevent 'leaks' of chips from countries like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia to Russia and China. But, as I noted yesterday, China is already making chips of equal capacity:
Huawei's compute GPU capabilities are now on par with Nvidia's A100 GPUs, Liu Qingfeng, founder and chairman of Chinese AI company iFlytek, said at the 19th Summer Summit of the 2023 Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum (via IT Home).
Liu Qingfeng stated that Huawei has made significant strides in the GPU sector, achieving capabilities and performance comparable to Nvidia's A100 GPU.
China is not only autarkic in making chips but now also in making the delicate machines needed to make chips:
China’s etching equipment giant Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) has reported hefty growth in earnings and revenue in the first half of 2023 thanks to strong demand for local tools as a result of US tech export controls, the company’s founder and CEO Gerald Yin Zhiyao said on Friday.
…
AMEC’s market share of China’s capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) etching equipment market is expected to reach 60 per cent in the near future from 24 per cent last October, Yin said. In the inductive coupled plasma (ICP) tool market, Yin said its share could rise to 75 per cent from almost zero after once-dominant Lam Research from the US saw its share drop sharply.
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As China deepens its semiconductor self-sufficiency drive to include chip-making equipment and key components, Yin said that 80 per cent of restricted, imported parts at AMEC can be replaced domestically by the end of this year, with 100 per cent replacement following in the second half next year.
The New York Times resume of Secretary Raimondo's and other's trips is somewhat amusing:
U.S. Officials Are Streaming to China. Will Beijing Return the Favor?
Batteridge's law responds with "No!" There were obviously no 'favors' from either side:
When Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, left China this week, it marked the end of a three-month diplomatic blitz by the Biden administration to try to stabilize ties with Beijing and arrest a free fall in the relationship that had raised concerns about the risk of conflict.
President Biden had bet that high-level dialogue could help manage an escalating rivalry over trade, technology and the status of Taiwan. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was the first to make the trip to the Chinese capital in June, followed by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and the presidential climate envoy, John Kerry, in July.
After logging all those miles, the question now is whether China will reciprocate by sending senior Chinese ministers to Washington.
The people Biden sent on visits in China had nothing to give and were given nothing. The U.S. attempt to deceive China by holding useless talks while it ramps up its cold war cordon around China have failed.
As long as that policy continues there is nothing of substance that China could gain by sending people to Washington DC. Holding talks just to keep talking about nothing does not make sense. So evidently no Chinese envoy will come.
Patrick Lawrence is trashing Biden's strategy as he finds that the travels to China are not designed to talk with Chine but to deceive Americans:
Proposing to conduct routine business while sabotaging China’s competitive position in advanced technologies is prima facie a ridiculous idea.
…
The Biden administration’s China strategy comes down to parrying, in a word. All the pointless talk is intended to obscure a concerted effort to undermine China’s economy because the U.S. cannot compete with it in various strategic sectors, while — part two — buying time to move maximum U.S. military hardware as close to the mainland as possible under the program the Defense Department named a few years ago the Pacific Defense Initiative, the PDI.
…
The Chinese know this and have said so many times. I no longer think Blinken, Yellen, et al. have any thought of persuading them otherwise on these journeys. That only looks like their intent.
Their true purpose is in the way of theatrical, and Americans are their true audience: They must make sure Americans do not understand Gina Raimondo’s efforts to punch the Chinese, well below their belts, for what they are: an uncompetitive nation’s attempts to hold back a rising economic power.
…
The Biden regime is buying time as it remilitarizes the western end of the Pacific.
The only people who are supposed to understand otherwise are Americans, who are not supposed to watch as Washington provokes and prosecutes Cold War II. Americans are supposed to watch as U.S. officials — reasonable, constructive, well-intended —make all efforts to talk to the Chinese in the face of their stubborn reluctance to cooperate.
This is my revised take on the Blinken–Yellen–Kerry–Raimondo cavalcade across the Pacific. These people are not clods. They are purposefully malicious and, it should go without saying, are making the world even more dangerous than it already is.
Peter Lee has just come back from a visit to China. He is reporting of of a new, someone snobby to hostile attitude towards Americans. It is justified:
After all, America and Americans are suspect for good reason.
As I’ve pointed out on my twitter several times, US aggression against the PRC, misleadingly packaged as US-China tensions, is a virtual full-spectrum assault, only stopping short, for now anyway, of direct military action. The US is determined to degrade the PRC’s military, economic, and international security and domestic social and political stability in all available dimensions. Concessions are tactical; attacks are strategic.
…
The CCP perhaps hopes Western failure in Ukraine will slake the G7 thirst for anti-authoritarian jihad and hopes economic relations and foreign direct investment with China will recover but hope is not a plan. Not with the United States pumping hundreds of billions of dollars to finance global anti-PRC economic, military, diplomatic, political, soft power, and media initiatives.
I believe this increasingly plausible worst-case scenario is driving a lot of PRC decision-making (and drives the barrage of resentful criticism of PRC policy choices in the Western media).
…
Will the CCP succeed?
The product it’s pitching to its citizens and to the world—that’s multilateralism via economic engagement—is fundamentally more attractive to a lot of countries than the deficit driven global War to Save Democracy that the US is peddling. Given money, perseverance, luck, and time the PRC might be able to thread the needle.
But … there’s that “time” thing. There’s the rub.
My opinion is, if the CCP is succeeding, in other words if it shows significant progress in establishing a robust parallel international order that can shield it from US economic aggression, the US will start a hot war to see if it can truly f*ck China up.
Because the only US response to failure is escalation.
And that’s why my profile says “pessimist”.
As Peter had noted last year China's government has for quite some time prepared for this.
Well, let's hope that it does not come to another war.
But Peter is right. The U.S. is typically willing to double down in its aggressions.
It continues to play dirty games in Asia to get what it wants (h/t Carl Zha).
On August 24 the Defense Minister of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, visited the Pentagon. After the meeting the U.S. issued a:
United States DoD and Indonesia MoD Joint Press Statement
Minister Prabowo and Secretary Austin agreed that the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific and the United States' Indo-Pacific Strategy share fundamental principles, such as a commitment to maintaining peace, security, stability, and prosperity in the region through ASEAN Centrality, and that we should work alongside partners who share these goals and a commitment to an open, inclusive, and rules-based order. They shared the view that the People's Republic of China's (PRC) expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea are inconsistent with international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
That however has not been Indonesia's position. China noticed that the Pentagon was lying. It protested:
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The Chinese Embassy in Jakarta has objected to the press statement issued by the United States Department of Defense regarding the defense cooperation with Indonesia in the South China Sea. The press statement stated that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto both agreed that China's expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea were inconsistent with international law.
"After comparing the US press statement with the press statement released by the Indonesian Ministry of Defense, the sentence that accuses and corners China only appears in the US Ministry of Defense press release," said the objection response signed by the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, Monday (28/8/2023)."
Today the Indonesian defense minister confirmed that the U.S. 'Joint Press Statement' is fake (machine translation):
Jakarta, KOMPAS – Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto confirmed that there was no joint statement with the US Defense Ministry when he met US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin last week. Prabowo said that Indonesia is in principle friendly to all countries and adheres to a free and active foreign policy.
“Indonesia's position is very clear. We are non-aligned. We are non-aligned, we are friendly with all countries. So I think that's what matters, " Prabowo said after handing over an electric trail bike for the TNI and Polri at the Ministry of Defense, Thursday (31/8).
Prabowo stressed that there was no joint statement with the US Defense Ministry. The Pentagon said in a joint statement that the two ministers shared similar views on China's maritime claims and expansionist actions in the South China Sea. In this regard, in line with the principle of active freedom, Prabowo again emphasized that Indonesia has good relations with China, the United States and Russia.
The Pentagon's diplomatic faux pas, issuing a 'Joint Statement' when none had been agreed upon, may well become costly. Indonesia and other will surely take note of it and will be prepared to loudly dismiss any recurance.
Here’s a piece I wrote at the time of Pelosi’s adventurous trip to Taïwan (with the probable phrasing mistakes):
IN THIS $IGN THOU SHALT CONQUER / TAÏWAN MON AMOUR
Trump, a candidate in the Republican primaries, recently made a joke about his atypical haircut that was very telling: « What’s the difference between a wet raccoon and Donald J. Trump’s hair? A raccoon doesn’t have seven fucking billion dollars in the bank! » In the land of Almighty Money, what could be more natural than wars waged in its name? $ : in hoc signo vinces, in this sign thou shalt conquer. Every religion has its wars.
Those of the hegemonic dollar, according to Oleg Nesterenko, President of the CCIE in Paris, began more than twenty years ago when sovereign nations questioned their submission to the imperial currency: because Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were considering breaking away from the monetary straitjacket imposed on world trade by the United States, Iraq and Libya were destroyed and then plunged into chaos, and both were brutally murdered.
Economist Michael Hudson argues that « The only possible way for history really to end would be for the American military to destroy every nation seeking an alternative to neoliberal privatization and financialization.»
But today the modus operandi has changed.
After the Afghan fiasco, the unpopularity of distant wars, whose justifications are increasingly abstruse and whose underlying lies are more and more obvious, is growing among the American people. In turn, the US military is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit cannon fodder that is less willing to fight and die for uncertain causes. American patriotism no longer appeals and cohorts of veterans physically and psychologically mutilated by years of service to the flag live on the sidewalks of major American cities.
Now that Russia is the target, Ukraine serves as the sacrificial lamb.
The Ukrainians are in a way inaugurating a new way for Uncle Sam to wage war, until it is fully automated. It is based on two main axes: the overthrow of legitimately elected governments that resist hegemonism, thanks to the support of fierce pro-Western oppositions, fruits of long-term influence peddling – in Ukraine, neo-Nazi groupuscules – and the use of an extra-territorial military force, both local, trained, financed and equipped from outside, but also international, in this case NATO, teleguided from Washington and subject to its desires.
NATO, that soulless monster born of the Cold War, embodies by nature and definition the will to crush all resistance to US domination of the world. Dormant since its creation, and although it should have died a natural death in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it was reanimated the following year in the former Yugoslavia and began its expansion across Europe, moving ever closer to the Russian borders.
The Russian-Ukrainian war is in fact the culmination of this cold latent war between two blocs: the « collective » West gathered under the Atlanticist banner, against Russia, the first pole of resistance to the economic diktats of the United States on the world.
Ukraine has already lost the war, yet it is undeniably a half-victory for Washington: relations between the European Union and Russia have been cut off cleanly, Ukrainian blood is flowing from the wound, and soon that of the Western proletariat, which will also end up suffering from the industrial and economic ruin provoked by the suicidal herd instinct of its leaders.
But behind Russia looms another target: China.
——————————————————————————————-
The incessant anti-China campaigns patiently distilled in the Western press, media and social networks are a sign of a progressive shift of the US sights from Ukraine to the China Sea, the seat of the White House’s new tricks.
Now, when one wonders who will lead the new proxy war, the recent American gesticulations seem to point to the « beautiful island » of Taiwan, which has been the object of claims by the People’s Republic of China for more than 75 years, and which is treated by the West as a nation in its own right, even though it is not recognised as such by the UN: as usual the West is not sparing with small pleasures when it wants to irritate those who resist its appeal.
But will the Taiwanese people have the same take on it? Nothing is less certain. The interweaving of factors that in Ukraine led to the current conflict does not exist in Taiwan.
There is no fratricidal dispute between Taiwan and China. Although China claims the island as an indisputable part of its territory, it has never, in more than three-quarters of a century, initiated the slightest violent action to regain possession of it, even though the island lies a few fathoms off its coast. On the contrary, it has always favoured patience and peaceful influence games to tip the balance towards a future self-determinated return to the mainland. Of course it has made regular displays of force in the Taiwan Strait, but mostly as a warning to any nation inclined to meddle in its local affairs, foremost of which, of course, is the United States of America, which has military bases totalling more than 100,000 troops in China’s immediate vicinity, including 50,000 in Japan, 30,000 in South Korea, and 15,000 on the island of Guam and the Philippines. Can you imagine 100,000 Chinese troops surrounding the United States?
In Taiwan, there are no viscerally anti-Chinese paramilitary groups advocating the outright disappearance of China and calling for the killing of Chinese people, as was the case in Ukraine before the start of the conflict against the Russian-speaking population. The Minjindang (Party of the Advancing People) or DPP ( Democratic Progressive Party) is, in the Taiwanese political sphere, the most virulent opposition to China. This pro-Western and pro-independence party, which is also close to the Japanese government and has been in power since 2016, is the stepping stone for the American interference strategy. However, encouraged by Washington to strengthen the militarisation of the island in anticipation of a supposedly imminent Chinese attack, the DPP is showing a laissez-faire attitude that risks costing it power. In 1972, in the Shanghai communiqué, the US made it clear that « [it] recognizes that all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait hold that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The US government does not dispute this position. » So much for keeping one’s word. But we’re beginning to know that. China, through its consular offices, described Nancy Pelosi’s visit as « nothing to do with democracy. Rather, it is a political stunt and a serious provocation that undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, goes against the will of more than 1.4 billion Chinese and challenges the international consensus on One China. » Just two months later, the DPP, the party of incumbent President Cài Yīngwén, lost the municipal elections.
It is not very difficult to connect the dots between Cài’s admission in 2021 that there were some twenty American military trainers on the island, Pelosi’s visit, the Chinese sanctions that followed and the DPP’s score in the municipal elections. Taiwan’s industrial sector, which, like everywhere else, is decisive in the choice of leadership and whose main economic partner is currently China, accounting for an overwhelming majority of trade, is hopefully not as profoundly stupid as the leaders of the largest Western European nations who have just scuttled their economies for the sole purpose of pleasing the master in Washington.
Depending on Taiwan’s next presidential elections in 2024, the dark designs that an unpredictable America has for the small island are rather fragile or at least hazardous. If the current president of Taiwan is at great risk of losing these elections, it remains to be seen whether it will be to the advantage of the Guomindang, which favours reunification with China, or to that of the outsider William Lai, who has a harder line on independence.
If the intention of the United States, determined to maintain its hegemony and that of its currency, is always to provoke the Chinese giant, to push it into error and thus destabilise its economy, in which direction, in the event of the defeat of the DPP, is it then likely to turn to find a substitute in Taiwan capable of carrying out this mission?
Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that.
Which state has been held on a short leash by the United States for almost 80 years without ever having questioned this servitude? Which nation has obeyed its master’s every word despite the worst atrocities the latter has inflicted on it? Which country has just announced its massive remilitarisation despite Article 9 of its Constitution stating that it « forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation. » ?
Japan. A country where anti-Chinese ultra-nationalism is still very much alive, encouraged even by the highest leaders of the state, where the latter shamelessly continue to honour the war criminals who operated during the occupation of China, especially in Nanjing.
A rearming Japan is as good news for China as a rearming Germany is for France.
Time will tell.
Posted by: xiao pignouf | Sep 2 2023 10:52 utc | 275
Here’s a piece I wrote at the time of Pelosi’s adventurous trip to Taïwan (with the probable phrasing mistakes):
IN THIS $IGN THOU SHALT CONQUER / TAÏWAN MON AMOUR
Trump, a candidate in the Republican primaries, recently made a joke about his atypical haircut that was very telling: « What’s the difference between a wet raccoon and Donald J. Trump’s hair? A raccoon doesn’t have seven fucking billion dollars in the bank! » In the land of Almighty Money, what could be more natural than wars waged in its name? $ : in hoc signo vinces, in this sign thou shalt conquer. Every religion has its wars.
Those of the hegemonic dollar, according to Oleg Nesterenko, President of the CCIE in Paris, began more than twenty years ago when sovereign nations questioned their submission to the imperial currency: because Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were considering breaking away from the monetary straitjacket imposed on world trade by the United States, Iraq and Libya were destroyed and then plunged into chaos, and both were brutally murdered.
Economist Michael Hudson argues that « The only possible way for history really to end would be for the American military to destroy every nation seeking an alternative to neoliberal privatization and financialization.»
But today the modus operandi has changed.
After the Afghan fiasco, the unpopularity of distant wars, whose justifications are increasingly abstruse and whose underlying lies are more and more obvious, is growing among the American people. In turn, the US military is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit cannon fodder that is less willing to fight and die for uncertain causes. American patriotism no longer appeals and cohorts of veterans physically and psychologically mutilated by years of service to the flag live on the sidewalks of major American cities.
Now that Russia is the target, Ukraine serves as the sacrificial lamb.
The Ukrainians are in a way inaugurating a new way for Uncle Sam to wage war, until it is fully automated. It is based on two main axes: the overthrow of legitimately elected governments that resist hegemonism, thanks to the support of fierce pro-Western oppositions, fruits of long-term influence peddling – in Ukraine, neo-Nazi groupuscules – and the use of an extra-territorial military force, both local, trained, financed and equipped from outside, but also international, in this case NATO, teleguided from Washington and subject to its desires.
NATO, that soulless monster born of the Cold War, embodies by nature and definition the will to crush all resistance to US domination of the world. Dormant since its creation, and although it should have died a natural death in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it was reanimated the following year in the former Yugoslavia and began its expansion across Europe, moving ever closer to the Russian borders.
The Russian-Ukrainian war is in fact the culmination of this cold latent war between two blocs: the « collective » West gathered under the Atlanticist banner, against Russia, the first pole of resistance to the economic diktats of the United States on the world.
Ukraine has already lost the war, yet it is undeniably a half-victory for Washington: relations between the European Union and Russia have been cut off cleanly, Ukrainian blood is flowing from the wound, and soon that of the Western proletariat, which will also end up suffering from the industrial and economic ruin provoked by the suicidal herd instinct of its leaders.
But behind Russia looms another target: China.
——————————————————————————————-
The incessant anti-China campaigns patiently distilled in the Western press, media and social networks are a sign of a progressive shift of the US sights from Ukraine to the China Sea, the seat of the White House’s new tricks.
Now, when one wonders who will lead the new proxy war, the recent American gesticulations seem to point to the « beautiful island » of Taiwan, which has been the object of claims by the People’s Republic of China for more than 75 years, and which is treated by the West as a nation in its own right, even though it is not recognised as such by the UN: as usual the West is not sparing with small pleasures when it wants to irritate those who resist its appeal.
But will the Taiwanese people have the same take on it? Nothing is less certain. The interweaving of factors that in Ukraine led to the current conflict does not exist in Taiwan.
There is no fratricidal dispute between Taiwan and China. Although China claims the island as an indisputable part of its territory, it has never, in more than three-quarters of a century, initiated the slightest violent action to regain possession of it, even though the island lies a few fathoms off its coast. On the contrary, it has always favoured patience and peaceful influence games to tip the balance towards a future self-determinated return to the mainland. Of course it has made regular displays of force in the Taiwan Strait, but mostly as a warning to any nation inclined to meddle in its local affairs, foremost of which, of course, is the United States of America, which has military bases totalling more than 100,000 troops in China’s immediate vicinity, including 50,000 in Japan, 30,000 in South Korea, and 15,000 on the island of Guam and the Philippines. Can you imagine 100,000 Chinese troops surrounding the United States?
In Taiwan, there are no viscerally anti-Chinese paramilitary groups advocating the outright disappearance of China and calling for the killing of Chinese people, as was the case in Ukraine before the start of the conflict against the Russian-speaking population. The Minjindang (Party of the Advancing People) or DPP ( Democratic Progressive Party) is, in the Taiwanese political sphere, the most virulent opposition to China. This pro-Western and pro-independence party, which is also close to the Japanese government and has been in power since 2016, is the stepping stone for the American interference strategy. However, encouraged by Washington to strengthen the militarisation of the island in anticipation of a supposedly imminent Chinese attack, the DPP is showing a laissez-faire attitude that risks costing it power. In 1972, in the Shanghai communiqué, the US made it clear that « [it] recognizes that all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait hold that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The US government does not dispute this position. » So much for keeping one’s word. But we’re beginning to know that. China, through its consular offices, described Nancy Pelosi’s visit as « nothing to do with democracy. Rather, it is a political stunt and a serious provocation that undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, goes against the will of more than 1.4 billion Chinese and challenges the international consensus on One China. » Just two months later, the DPP, the party of incumbent President Cài Yīngwén, lost the municipal elections.
It is not very difficult to connect the dots between Cài’s admission in 2021 that there were some twenty American military trainers on the island, Pelosi’s visit, the Chinese sanctions that followed and the DPP’s score in the municipal elections. Taiwan’s industrial sector, which, like everywhere else, is decisive in the choice of leadership and whose main economic partner is currently China, accounting for an overwhelming majority of trade, is hopefully not as profoundly stupid as the leaders of the largest Western European nations who have just scuttled their economies for the sole purpose of pleasing the master in Washington.
Depending on Taiwan’s next presidential elections in 2024, the dark designs that an unpredictable America has for the small island are rather fragile or at least hazardous. If the current president of Taiwan is at great risk of losing these elections, it remains to be seen whether it will be to the advantage of the Guomindang, which favours reunification with China, or to that of the outsider William Lai, who has a harder line on independence.
If the intention of the United States, determined to maintain its hegemony and that of its currency, is always to provoke the Chinese giant, to push it into error and thus destabilise its economy, in which direction, in the event of the defeat of the DPP, is it then likely to turn to find a substitute in Taiwan capable of carrying out this mission?
Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that.
Which state has been held on a short leash by the United States for almost 80 years without ever having questioned this servitude? Which nation has obeyed its master’s every word despite the worst atrocities the latter has inflicted on it? Which country has just announced its massive remilitarisation despite Article 9 of its Constitution stating that it « forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation. » ?
Japan. A country where anti-Chinese ultra-nationalism is still very much alive, encouraged even by the highest leaders of the state, where the latter shamelessly continue to honour the war criminals who operated during the occupation of China, especially in Nanjing.
A rearming Japan is as good news for China as a rearming Germany is for France.
Time will tell.
Posted by: xiao pignouf | Sep 2 2023 10:52 utc | 276
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