On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 8:12 AM Lennart Sorensen < [email protected]> wrote:
Of course China has 1.5 billion people. Actually, not of course. It's 1.28 and shrinking, being officially bypassed this year by India as the world's most populous country. Credible research suggests that under average models it will shrink to under 750M by 2100. And that's based on official figures; some demographers don't trust those figures, and say it's much worse -- that India actually surpassed China as early as 2014. The one-child policy is long-gone, but nobody is having kids and nobody's moving there. > A decent number of them are well educated and of course quite a lot of > them are very smart. Indeed, enough of them travel abroad to study that countries are loathe to put restrictions on enrolment because universities have come to depend on their tuition income, at rates far higher than locals pay. But priorities and focus seem to be changing. I've had the fortune to go to China a number of times; in the end, I'd concluded that the risk to my employer was not worth the benefits of being there, given the partnership deals offered by the government agencies. My last trip was to speak at a FOSS conference in Shanghai. At the end of the session, the Q&A focused not on Linux or code or jobs, but obsessed with why my organization was perceived to treat Taiwan as a country. It was devastating and depressing, not a single tech question. Everything there (that I could see) was getting politicized, far more than I'd encountered elsewhere. And, as you know, most Western media is banned there, so we have access to their goings-on -- at least what people are able to say -- but not the opposite. An ICANN conference I attended in Beijing attracted double the normal volume of registrations -- not because locals are more interested in the DNS, but because attendees got access to uncensored wifi. I don't think such export limitations are going to buy you that many years > of delay before they are doing it all by themselves. The jury is out, and not all measures have been implemented. IE, there are no restrictions yet on RISC-V and it may not happen. Meanwhile any retaliazion from China is likely to be much more effective I > would think. > It's already started. The fact you haven't heard about it much may speak to its effectiveness. China has targeted exports of specialty metals used in manufacturing of chips, batteries etc. but companies are so far having little trouble finding other sources (including Canada, which is ramping up production). The rest of the world needs China's production more than they need us I > would think. > Of course limiting trade hurts all parties, but the above assertion is a mistake IMO. Yes, the world has come to see China as its manufacturing plant, but the country also needs to import core necessities such as energy, food and fertilizer, without which it would have widespread famine. And given China's population decline, labour costs there are now higher than in neighbours such as Vietnam. One of the last holdouts, Apple, is moving significant production from China to India. - Evan
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