China Tells Government Offices To Remove All Foreign Computer Equipment (theguardian.com) 127
China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and software be removed from government offices and public institutions within three years, the Financial Times reports. hackingbear writes: The government directive is likely to be a blow to US multinational companies like HP, Dell and Microsoft and mirrors attempts by Washington to limit the use of Chinese technology, as the trade war between the countries turns into a tech cold war. The Trump administration banned US companies from doing business with Chinese Chinese telecommunications company Huawei earlier this year and in May, Google, Intel and Qualcomm announced they would freeze cooperation with Huawei. By excluding China from western know-how, the Trump administration has made it clear that the real battle is about which of the two economic superpowers has the technological edge for the next two decades. This is the first known public directive from Beijing setting specific targets limiting China's use of foreign technology, though it is part a wider move within China to increase its reliance on domestic technology.
Linux (Score:3)
Interesting. Is the Linux kernel considered "foreign"?
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Does Finnish count as foreign enough origin?
Does the international nature of the project make it stateless?
If stateless, do they plan on using a RESTful API?
Also, don't worry--they're only removing DCE, not DTE.
Re:Linux (Score:5, Funny)
"Does Finnish count as foreign enough origin?"
I had a Scandinavian girlfriend once, not sure which nationality, but not from Finland because she always yelled during sex: 'Im not finish!'
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They can copy Linux all they want, so long as they comply with the GPL license. Getting cooperation from Google for proprietary add-ins would be tough.... and the firmware needed would have to be re-thought.
Or, they could used BSD licensing, which permits them to do any possible imaginable thing they want with the BSD code.
This, however, further removes China from the rest of the world, and is more of a trade barrier. One of the benefits of FOSS is that it's improved across the world so long as you adhere t
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The GPL license is a legal document in Western courts. Good luck making it apply inside China. An "illegal" license restricting what the CCP does probably doesn't hold water.
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Consider how this affect exports. Where do 85% of smartphones and PCs come from now, vs how many after they attempt to compromise the GPL? Isolationism never, ever works in the long term.
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They could ignore the GPL if they wanted to with some problems due to the international nature of copyright - but why? There's no logical reason to do that.
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You could ask the same about the hundreds of western companies that blatantly ignore the GPL when shipping their products. The consequences of doing so appear to be basically zero for all those companies, so why not China as well?
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They can copy Linux all they want, so long as they comply with the GPL license.
ORLY?
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"ORLY?"
No, Le Bourget.
Cooperation from Google (Score:3)
Getting cooperation from Google for proprietary add-ins would be tough
Not at all. They already forgot every human right just to earn a few bucks in China.
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Year, right. China and honoring licenses.
Re: Linux (Score:3)
...so long as they comply with the GPL license
Did you miss the part where it says "China??"
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China has to export for a living. GPL litigation harms their big pride moments, like big hyperscale computing, and more. Their ability to export given lots of judgments against them means they can use their own stuff, but not export it. China is in the business of exports. They'll stifle their own gains.
If they remain GPL compliant, anyone can use their code. Then the "edge" is back to labor and logistics in exports. Think about it. Anyone can fork Linux or its derivative, Android. So long as that person co
an court in china will just say the license dead (Score:2)
an court in china will just say the license is dead in china and close the case
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It said foreign software AND hardware.
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Probably not, at least when you use a Chinese distro. The interesting question is what do do about an office-suite and a web-browser. Is LibreOffice or FireFox "foreign"?
I expect this will just result in a Chinese Linux distro (may already exist) with all the usual stuff you need. Let's face it, while MS stuff is easier initially, they do not have anything special anymore anyways. Also, there are enough competent developers in China to at least do "forks" with minimal changes and a Chinese support team for
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Let's face it, while MS stuff is easier initially, they do not have anything special anymore anyways
They're one step ahead on that one. See WPS Office. [wps.com] The Chinaclone MS Office that's at least as compatible as LibreOffice. They have ports for Windows and Linux.
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Let's face it, while MS stuff is easier initially, they do not have anything special anymore anyways
They're one step ahead on that one. See WPS Office. [wps.com] The Chinaclone MS Office that's at least as compatible as LibreOffice. They have ports for Windows and Linux.
Interesting. So they have one major component already in place.
Re: Linux (Score:2)
VLC is French (Baptiste)
GStreamer is Spanish/Dutch (Taymans)
Konquerer/KHTML is German (Knoll)
I can go on...
The point is, there is no reason China should not use Linux. And frankly Deepin is damn good. I mean, way better than any other desktop Linux attempt so far.
Oh... and China has their own office suite which is actually pretty good.
I do not think China will have much trouble making Huawei computers running Deepin happen. Their only real shortcoming at the moment is GPUs and if
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I think anyone who underestimates the Chinese in 2020 will find egg on their faces.
Indeed. The only thing that happened here was that some development that was going to happen anyways got accelerated.
Well SELinux certainly makes it a foreign threat. (Score:4, Insightful)
It was literally written by the NSA, you know?
And if you believe that means nothing because "many eyes"... Yeah, they said that about OpenSSL too. Underhanded backdoors is a thing. It even has a contest.
Also, remember how the NSA assured us before. About DES, RSA, etc. It is kinda their game.
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There are already Chinese government versions of Linux which are presumably certified. I heard that they do things like adding their own crypto because they don't trust AES.
Re:Well SELinux certainly makes it a foreign threa (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard that they do things like adding their own crypto because they don't trust AES.
I'm sure that's the public explanation, and frankly the NSA provided the beard for it with the whole elliptic curve mess. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese government really wants their own crypto in place for the same reason the NSA pushed the likely-hacked EC algorithms - they already have a backdoor.
Re: Well SELinux certainly makes it a foreign thre (Score:2)
Also, remember how the NSA assured us before.
I only remember them trying to. What; did you fall for it??
Re:Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly is x86 considered foreign? Are there any Chinese companies making x86 CPUs or are they planning to move to a different architecture?
It could give a massive boost to whatever architecture they pick, and create a viable ecosystem outside of x86 for desktop... And maybe even outside of ARM for mobile.
Or maybe it's just part of the on-going trade war, and a serious attempt to boost security. Or maybe it's both.
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Exactly. Might be interesting.
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Well there's VIA and Zhaoxin. China also has the Longsoon MIPS chip, which I believe has a Linux port.
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They are already prepared to stop using X86 if they are forced to, this is why Trumps strategy is myopic and short term. The China has developed it's own architecture having used home grown MIPS chips for military applications for some time. See this article https://news.cgtn.com/news/201... [cgtn.com]
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Re:Linux (Score:4, Informative)
More importantly is x86 considered foreign? Are there any Chinese companies making x86 CPUs or are they planning to move to a different architecture?
China managed to license first-gen Zen [wikipedia.org] CPUs from AMD, while that's probably not a long term solution they have a stopgap measure there.
Architecture vs implementation (Score:2)
An architecture will not harm security as it is a high-level on paper design that can be easily verified. An implementation would allow NSA inserted backdoor.
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Why bother with x86 though? Presumably Windows is out so there is little reason to stick with it now.
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More importantly is x86 considered foreign?
No, but it is patent protected. No chance to export anything without a license and they just lost the licensing for a lot of the stuff which they were cooking under the joint venture of AMD with their silicon foundry people.
The Chinese have their own MIPS derived designs, but they are ~ 5 years behind Intel and 7 years behind Ryzen/Threadripper performance wise. They are still more than fast enough for a clerk typewriter running a local version of Linux in some god foresaken local government office though
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I can well understand this... (Score:2)
...as both a counter move and as a way to reduce the possibility of US spying.
But the real question is, how much of it is really possible to replace, as China definitely lags behind in quite many key areas of computer tech.
To be fair, they have made great strides in many of them and even lead in some related tech, but still overall they are behind and I doubt three years is enough time.
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moving from Windows to Linux within 3 years would be possible I guess. But moving away from Intel and AMD to Chinese CPU makers? That sounds more unlikely. Even their Kirin mobile SoC is based on a foreign ISA (ARM).
Re:I can well understand this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux is based on a foreign design too, but they have the complete source code and sufficient resources to thoroughly audit it (assuming they havent already)...
The same is true of ARM, it's a specification on paper and they can create their own implementation of the spec.
There are also MIPS based processors already being produced by china, and nothing stopping them adopting Risc-V.
All of these architectures can run linux, and virtually all linux application software is already available for them or is just a recompile away. The actual user does not care what architecture the underlying hardware is, so long as the applications they use can run on it.
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you forget the part where they would have to throw away millions of perfectly good working PCs just because they have an Intel or AMD CPU.
Installing Linux is easy compared to that.
Of course they can design a replacement CPU. But have it working, and deployed in all China in 3 years is not realistic.
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Well in the space of 3 years many organisations do indeed throw away and replace all their machines... They will just have to ensure that the replacements are chinese.
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yes, starting now. So, what computer to you suggest?
Its OK if the tech started out foreign ... (Score:2)
moving from Windows to Linux within 3 years would be possible I guess. But moving away from Intel and AMD to Chinese CPU makers? That sounds more unlikely. Even their Kirin mobile SoC is based on a foreign ISA (ARM).
It doesn't matter if the tech originated from foreign sources. All that matters is that current and future designs as well as manufacturing is domestic. Consider how much of their current domestic jet engine design and production is originally from foreign sources.
Plus Intel/AMD CPUs are so overpowered for what most people do at home, school or work that it would not matter if a purely domestic design was behind in performance. Few users would notice. And again the domestic design will probably start wit
Re: I can well understand this... (Score:5, Funny)
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It's true that US has very little by way of tangible goods that China wants. In fact the rest of the worlds doesn't have that much that China wants, short of raw resources and food. This has always been true for years, going back to the opium wars, which forced China to accept the only thing Britain had really to offer at the time: hard drugs. To this day China still feels resentment over this disastrous trade that destroyed so many chinese lives.
So there's not a lot that the west has that China needs by
Re: I can well understand this... (Score:4, Informative)
China is in a precarious position pivoting from low-value to high-value manufacturing. The advanced equipment for manufacturing the quality products for export is still mainly produced by foreign companies. They have tried to overcome this through forced tech transfers, but that all died down once it was clear that the CCP regime wasn't planning to play by the rules and started exporting high-speed rail technology they acquired from foreign companies supplying their HSR expansion.
In terms of cultural exports, China is low down on the list due to the lack of freedom of expression and overall stifling media landscape. That's not going to change in the short-to-medium term.
In term of consumer imports, foreign luxury brands dominate precisely because of the point above.
The US is acting on self-interest, for sure, but that doesn't mean that China and the CCP regime is equal in moral standing or in economic strength. The truth is that the CCP growth model is unsustainable in it's current form, precisely because of its inability to integrate 'harmoniously' with its neighbours and the western world (South Korea and Japan among them).
Re: I can well understand this... (Score:2)
To this day China still feels resentment...
Nations are constructs and constructs don't have feelings. Oh, you meant Chinese people?? Just like us, most of them are too busy struggling to have time for "resentment" over abstract events from the past.
Don't anthropomorphize geopolitics.
Re: I can well understand this... (Score:5, Insightful)
You should actually go to China and talk to people. It's not really uncommon to have them bring up the era of British imperialism. It is very much a part of their cultural knowledge and upbringing. They even have a name for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In most cases, geopolitics don't really concern the average citizen. This is not one of those cases.
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It's easy to find a small seller for a small quantity of goods...
If you want huge quantities of goods at a decent price it's much harder. China already has the infrastructure in place, while other countries may take years to reach that point if they're trying to fill the void.
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I read on slashdot that China doesn't need the US at all and is only do us a favor by trading with us. Any day they want they can crash the US economy and don't need anything at all from the US.
Stopping trade would hurt China badly too. But unlike the US Winnie the Pooh doesn't need renewed support every four years, so it's easy to send the arrows pointing down when it hurts the most. And any democratic candidate who takes over will find that China doesn't care it's under new management. That's been one of their most basic plays, we are offended and will stay offended until you apologize on behalf of the US. By playing politicians out against each other they often get concessions from one to fix t
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But the real question is, how much of it is really possible to replace, as China definitely lags behind in quite many key areas of computer tech.
I thought China made most of our electronics these days.
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But they don't design the IP. And yes, they may copy the current gen but it takes a wealth of knowledge and man-power just to get a microchip up and running, let alone working with the OS and software stack.
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>> I doubt three years is enough time.
They are much faster than you think.
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So, it's just going to affect Microsoft. Everything else is made in China.
I understand this as part of the plan all along (Score:2)
I can well understand this as both a counter move and as a way to reduce the possibility of US spying.
And those who have studied or been paying attention to China's economic and industrial policies for the last few decades would understand that this was the goal all along. They routinely do this sort of thing. Use foreign tech to gain experience and capabilities and reverse engineer (or better yet force a technology transfer) and at some point domestic tech will offer a compatible or equivalent capability. For example in aerospace, partner with aircraft and engine manufactures to develop domestic capabiliti
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In "Player of Games", Iain Banks imagined a game of such nuance that to understand it was to understand life itself.
That game is not Civ VI.
Re: I can well understand this... (Score:2)
...Iain Banks imagined a game of such nuance that to understand it was to understand life itself.
I've read the book two or three times and I suspect those are your words, not Banks'
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I'm pretty close I think. The society being dealt with thought that skill in the game translated to skill at life, which is why your level of play determined your place in society. The ending implies that they were correct and that even cheating wouldn't save an inferior player.
This is Win/Win!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that China will have to deal with all the crap Chinese products that that I have to deal with then Xi will be forced to purge all of those bottom feeder manufactures and the overall quality of Chinese products will improve! And that will spur Western manufactures to im prove *their* game!
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Except they will keep the good stuff for themselves, and export their garbage, as long as we continue to demonstrate that we're willing to buy it.
Not gonna happen. Like that. (Score:2)
What's gonna happen is (should this nonsense actually take place, instead of everyone just pretending to obey by slapping a "Made in China" sticker on their laptops and servers) - China will ramp up its industrial espionage efforts.
Except that is not the same as growing your own development capacities. Or even copying the production process.
Oh... they may end up flooding the market with cheap Chinese knockoffs of Intel and AMD and Samsung and Micron products but they will simply never be as good as the real
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American components, Russian components...Chinese? (Score:4, Insightful)
China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and software be removed from government offices and public institutions within three years.
Should be easy. They're all made in China anyway.
Important question though: does China consider equipment made in Taiwan to be domestic, Chinese produced equipment or foreign equipment?
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Important question though: does China consider equipment made in Taiwan to be domestic, Chinese produced equipment or foreign equipment?
Brilliant question.
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China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and software be removed from government offices and public institutions within three years.
Should be easy. They're all made in China anyway.
Important question though: does China consider equipment made in Taiwan to be domestic, Chinese produced equipment or foreign equipment?
No I don't believe they do because most of the Taiwan manufacturers are heavily influenced by the USA. My former company has a fab in Taiwan and China forced our executive team to build another in China because of this.
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Russian components
So, everything with vacuum tubes has got to go?
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My opinion ...
The basic design about what is a computer or an operating system is there, no surprises, and a lot of people everywhere with enough knowledge to create them from scratch. The main problem is that to do such type of things requires a huge quantity of time, particularly if things must be well made and secure.
However ... how much in the government service must be there? We must forget about to mimic an occidental office, as it is full of trashware and not needed features together with a lo
Such as? (Score:2)
Isn't everything Chinese inside, nowadays? ;)
But frankly, what do they expect? if the CIA swaps one of their chips for an exact copy that merely has a dopant-level hardware backdoor (and yes, that is a thing), what are they gonna do? How would they even tell?
I'm sure they have the same capabilities, so they must know.
Is this purely political posturing then? "I don't love you either anymore!"?
Chinese Chinese telecommunications company Huawei (Score:3)
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Make Recursion and MRMGA Great Again!
Windows is greatly affected (Score:5, Funny)
We already do this to the Chinese (Score:2)
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Not all US government agencies are banned from using foreign products. Only a select few (which require secret clearance) does.
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China's fears "silicon curtain" (Score:1)
The South China Morning Post reports: China stockpiles US chips amid fears of worsening trade relations. [scmp.com] Imports of US computer chips risen strongly in the past three years, as the risk of a "silicon curtain" descending looms over tech firms.
China is stockpiling US computer chips, a sign that tech companies there are preparing for worsening trade relations that could lead to being cut off from American technology.
As US President Donald Trump's tariff war with China morphs into a more general confrontation
"Let China Sleep" (Score:1)
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"Let China Sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world," (Napoleon Bonaparte)
Sounds like a good reason to keep her up.
Linux and X86/64 situation (Score:2)
Many posters asked if Linux is considered a US component or not. Well, the linux kernel is opensource and born in finland, but linus is now a USoA citizen, and much of the development since the late 90s has occurred under american companies. Same with many other parts of a distro. Having said that, the bar of "nationality" for linux in most other cases where this has become an "issue", is at the distro level, rarely at the individual component level. So, on servers RedHat is a definitive no-no, while Suse i
Where can we read the full text of this directive? (Score:2)
I RTFA'd I cannot find a link to the text of this directive. Does it exist? Can we see it?
Foreign made?
Foreign owned?
Foreign designed?
Foreign IP?
Do they have to stop using iPhones or stop using all current CPU designs?
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When Donny the Fraud was lying, cheating, and stealing his way into the White House, he made a lot of promises to make America great again, can anyone say ANY way in which he actually DID?
The people who voted him in, did it to make liberals cry tears. So long as the liberals are crying tears, they are happy. Nothing else matters. Not rule of law, not democratic principles, not the US Constitution, nothing. Getting liberals upset are all that matters.
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Well said. Mod parent up.
Good (Score:2)
The rest of the world shouldn't sell the Chinese any technology either, until they stop the human rights abuses and the nightmarish dystopian social credit scoring.
Good for China. Now, when will the West get smart? (Score:2)
But the west, needs to require that ALL computers used in the governments and public places use only parts from allied sources.
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Hmmmm (Score:2)
I don't know how that'll work in China, but in the US it would be impossible to remove all foreign gear and still keep the lights on. The US would crash to a halt and probably never fully recover.
Some differences (Score:2)
In the West, you have to rent the software because the companies have gotten too lazy to write compelling upgrades and have too much overhead to be able to afford to sell it to you outright. In the West, you have a very hard time finding a manufacturer that's willing to make 10 of something. They're only interested in you if you want thousands of something. In China, you will find tiny companies willing to make or modify something and do very small quantities. In China, something like injection molding
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Re:Japan, Korea, German, Finnish, Canadian, Etc.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is a symptom. Things were already changing for the worse, that's how Trump was able to happen.
That he is also a disease doesn't change that.
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Trump is a symptom. Things were already changing for the worse, that's how Trump was able to happen.
That's right. That's what happens when the Democrats cheat their candidates, and the news media and big tech is complicit as their propaganda arm instead of being a reliable fourth estate. Elitists who are eager to sell out this country to the likes of China piss on ordinary people and tell them it's raining, and then have the nerve to clutch their pearls and act incredulous when people vote for an alternative.
That he is also a disease doesn't change that.
He exposes the Democrats and the media for what they really are, and it's funny just how much they
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Calling a politician or celebrity your enemy is kind of weird. He probably doesn't think of Trump like that. People can be called a "disease" and all sorts of other things if you hate them, but enemy is a special status best reserved for people we can actually affect.
Rhetorically speaking, who are you? If you are to have enemies, you should like them to know about it and maybe be a little bothered by it. In order for that to happen, you have to be somebody to them.
Considering what Trump does and gets away
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Evolution typically requires mutation and chaos to progress. The orange guy certainly fulfills that role.
That being said, China has been growing increasingly dominant such that these kinds of conflicts were inevitable. Actions that were not a notable problem when they were small are now magnified, perhaps without China fully realizing it, like child who doubles in size in 2 years and knocks stuff over without notice because their
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To be honest, Kissinger is the one who shook the box and put everything in motion.
Fixed that for you. So many people with long term memory loss on Slashdot these days.