[GTALUG] "RISC-V technology emerges as battleground in US-China tech war"

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Nov 02, 2023 at 01:29:43PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 8:12 AM Lennart Sorensen <
> lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca> 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.

At least the values you get if you search google says it is at 1.412
billion and growing at 0.1% as of 2021 (not negative).  Forecast that
it might drop to 1.31 billion by 2050, so the slowing growth is likely
to continue.  India is very close to it at 1.408 billion, so highly
likely to surpass it.

> The one-child policy is long-gone, but nobody is having kids and nobody's
> moving there.

Yeah you don't hear of too many people moving there.

My cousin's daughter moved there recently to study and live with her
boyfriend there.  I wonder how she will find life there.  She is in
Hangzhou.

> 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.

It does sound like setting up companies in China is not trivial and you
don't actually get to fully be in control.

> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.

Well it will be interesting to see what happens.  It may not be good,
but definitely interesting.

-- 
Len Sorensen