Beijing's 'Manhattan Project': China Close to Cracking Code of EUV Lithography(timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Beijing's 'Manhattan Project': China Close to Cracking Code of EUV Lithography
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/beijings-manhattan-project-china-close-to-cracking-code-of-euv-lithography-system-tech-that-controls-the-world/articleshow/132206529.cms
4 comments
China famously also invested in the ability to precisely manufacture balls for ballpoint pens, despite there being no restrictions on importing them. So you can skip the international politics: a major manufacturing economy will tend to invest into expanding their manufacturing.
A different approach to negotiations would have changed little, since Chinese industrial policy isn't just a reactive mirror of the policies of other countries. As usual, everyone just did what they were mostly going to do anyway.
A different approach to negotiations would have changed little, since Chinese industrial policy isn't just a reactive mirror of the policies of other countries. As usual, everyone just did what they were mostly going to do anyway.
I think strategic market intervention in ballpoint pens would be about product dumping, not about the actual utility of a pen. It would be a sign the Chinese market in pen inputs had already exceeded the US capacity to compete. I don't think that is true in VLSI.
I think there is a distinction between an economy which was happy to host VLSI investment without seeking to directly compete with TSMC, and an economy which is suddenly excluded from market access to TSMC high scale product, and which almost immediately invests in the $billions to become self-reliant. "suddenly" isn't the word because the Chinese had been requesting access to ASML tech and being denied for ages, what ramped up was the response. It had been happening more slowly in my opinion.
I don't think the latter is a response to "you are now excluded from the ball point pen manufacturing sector on global security grounds" and I think the nature of capital investment to make ball point pens, trade wars over ball point pen prices and extreme EUV VLSI lithography is chalk-and-cheese. This is not just "trade war" this is in my opinion a much more politicized vision of what China might represent as a threat, if given the tech being used in the west to make chips. And the Chinese response "we can do it, and we will do it, and we can probably wind up doing it better" is hardly surprising which to me at least begs the question "what did the people calling for a ban expect?" -Because presumably it was about some goal: how long did they expect the advantage in tech to last? A decade? (btw I don't think they will wind up "doing it better" but I am sure inside China thats the view)
I agree with you more nuanced foreign policy would only have held off the inevitable. In more prosaic trade over wool, dairy and wine with Australia, China has been very clear that it expects to promote it's own Sheep, Cattle and Wine industry development and Australia was happy to help, supplying genetics and training. Did it ultimately cap the market in exports? Possibly, but there continues to be a very large component of import to China from Australia across the board.
China was extremely grumpy about being told Huawei was excluded from markets for strategic supply of domestic communications. They had invested heavily in the market, they had paid top (former) Australian politicians to take board spots on Australian Huawei JV companies, they thought it was cool.
I think there is a distinction between an economy which was happy to host VLSI investment without seeking to directly compete with TSMC, and an economy which is suddenly excluded from market access to TSMC high scale product, and which almost immediately invests in the $billions to become self-reliant. "suddenly" isn't the word because the Chinese had been requesting access to ASML tech and being denied for ages, what ramped up was the response. It had been happening more slowly in my opinion.
I don't think the latter is a response to "you are now excluded from the ball point pen manufacturing sector on global security grounds" and I think the nature of capital investment to make ball point pens, trade wars over ball point pen prices and extreme EUV VLSI lithography is chalk-and-cheese. This is not just "trade war" this is in my opinion a much more politicized vision of what China might represent as a threat, if given the tech being used in the west to make chips. And the Chinese response "we can do it, and we will do it, and we can probably wind up doing it better" is hardly surprising which to me at least begs the question "what did the people calling for a ban expect?" -Because presumably it was about some goal: how long did they expect the advantage in tech to last? A decade? (btw I don't think they will wind up "doing it better" but I am sure inside China thats the view)
I agree with you more nuanced foreign policy would only have held off the inevitable. In more prosaic trade over wool, dairy and wine with Australia, China has been very clear that it expects to promote it's own Sheep, Cattle and Wine industry development and Australia was happy to help, supplying genetics and training. Did it ultimately cap the market in exports? Possibly, but there continues to be a very large component of import to China from Australia across the board.
China was extremely grumpy about being told Huawei was excluded from markets for strategic supply of domestic communications. They had invested heavily in the market, they had paid top (former) Australian politicians to take board spots on Australian Huawei JV companies, they thought it was cool.
> Had negotiations not fixated on a belief only zero sum winner-loser negotiations exist
This is also belief of Putin, which I suppose is not surprising given the orange man is admiring him.
This is also belief of Putin, which I suppose is not surprising given the orange man is admiring him.
Surely the point here is that we might see some useful competition between VLSI sources?
Aside from military uses, this tech is capable of making China a lot of money. Had negotiations not fixated on a belief only zero sum winner-loser negotiations exist, we might be talking about this differently.