Secretive Chinese Committee Draws Up List To Replace US Tech (bloomberg.com) 101
China is accelerating plans to replace American and foreign technology, quietly empowering a secretive government-backed organization to vet and approve local suppliers in sensitive areas from cloud to semiconductors, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter said. From a report: Formed in 2016 to advise the government, the Information Technology Application Innovation Working Committee has now been entrusted by Beijing to help set industry standards and train personnel to operate trusted software. The quasi-government body will devise and execute the so-called "IT Application Innovation" plan, better known as Xinchuang in Chinese. It will choose from a basket of suppliers vetted under the plan to provide technology for sensitive sectors from banking to data centers storing government data, a market that could be worth $125 billion by 2025.
So far, 1,800 Chinese suppliers of PCs, chips, networking and software have been invited to join the committee, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. The organization has so far certified hundreds of local companies this year as committee members, the fastest pace in years, one of the people said. The existence of the Xinchuang white-list, whose members and over-arching goals haven't been previously reported, is likely to inflame tensions just as Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping wrapped up their first face-to-face virtual summit. It gives Beijing more leverage to replace foreign tech firms in sensitive sectors and quickens a push to help local champions achieve tech self-sufficiency and overcome sanctions first imposed by the Trump administration in fields like networking and chips.
So far, 1,800 Chinese suppliers of PCs, chips, networking and software have been invited to join the committee, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. The organization has so far certified hundreds of local companies this year as committee members, the fastest pace in years, one of the people said. The existence of the Xinchuang white-list, whose members and over-arching goals haven't been previously reported, is likely to inflame tensions just as Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping wrapped up their first face-to-face virtual summit. It gives Beijing more leverage to replace foreign tech firms in sensitive sectors and quickens a push to help local champions achieve tech self-sufficiency and overcome sanctions first imposed by the Trump administration in fields like networking and chips.
Freedom, one IP at a time. (Score:2)
Step up the "liberating foreign IP" and they'll be well on the way towards their goals.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... I think it's the time pressure that produces bad FPs, though at least yours touches on, or even spans, several interesting points.
One aspect is the various senses of "freedom". One of the misleading minor senses of "free beer" in my definition of "freedom" is the stolen beer someone poached. Yeah, the thief can play word games and claim the beer was "liberated", but I think the notion has limited applicability here because IP is mostly based on reality, which is a second crucial aspect of the topic.
Re: (Score:1)
During the Cold War the Russians stole a lot of technology from the West. It wasn't that hard as the West wasn't really all that secretive. (You can read about it in 'The Mitrokhin Archive' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive [wikipedia.org]) and, to some extent, I think it diminished their own ability to develop technology. There was and is pressure to be secretive and not communicate between groups working on tech. I think this happened during the Manhattan Project and some of the top scientists had to re
Re: (Score:2)
Basically concurrence and the Russian example is good. I think Xi is actually trying to play it both ways. It is cheaper to steal IP when you can, but it's also important to roll your own. In Stalin's Russia it was much more important to agree with Stalin than to study reality, and heaven help you if the reality you were studying disagreed with Stalin. In Xi's China, it seems like he mostly just encourages the troublemakers to go to Africa.
Re: Freedom, one IP at a time. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Immorality doesn't turn on a dime even in a surveillance society.
Re: (Score:2)
China will not and cannot out produce the USA. Their communist government prevents that. Even with such a population advantage they struggle to keep up. They have such a fucked up government that there are rumors of a food shortage. All those people and all that land and they can't even feed themselves? That's not the sign of a technological powerhouse.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure , they can. But China has patience. If you are arrogant enough to beli[e]ve China needs you, China will let you become dependent on them. Then when you have fully compromised yourself, China knows no matter how much shit you talk, you depend on them for everything, and can't afford to go to war without creating immediate sympathy toward the enemy. A disgruntled people only distracted from uprising by baubles and beads revolt when the baubles cease.. And that what the majority of the US has become
Basically a good point, almost invisible, and no help from the moderators, so I'm quoting you. If a moderator is watching, I suggest mod parent up, not this one.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Freedom, one IP at a time. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
NAK.
Didn't I ask you to ignore my comments? If not, then please regard this as such a request. Though I cannot recall if we have had any prior exchanges, I already categorize you as some sort of fool and don't need to read any more of your braying as brought to my attention by the Slashdot notification system. You have already sufficiently established your identity as one worth ignoring. You would need to stop acting like a jackass for a long time before I would be likely to reconsider my dismissive evaluat
Re: (Score:2)
This is a public forum, if you don't want people to reply then don't post in the first place. If you don't like what's in my posts then don't read them. Replying to me is only inviting me to post again, it's not going to discourage me. I rarely even look at who made the post as that has no merit on the value of what was written, so the best way to get me to not reply is to post things I agree with.
One more time, this is a public forum, it's not your place to tell me I cannot reply to you.
So now we're into netiquette? (Score:1)
Looking more closely at the abortive discussion, I see that I made a mistake and on general principles I should acknowledge my mistakes and apologize for them. (So many mistakes, so little time. (But they are learning opportunities!)) Your vacuous and incorrect attack on China wasn't in a reply directly to me, so even if I had correctly identified you as a racist authoritarian (or worse) in a previous encounter and had asked you to ignore my comments, then I shouldn't have added an accusation of personal ru
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If one looks at the number of Chinese in Tech in the USA what do you find I wonder?
I find a lot of smart people leaving China so they can live in a nation with greater freedom.
China is slowly bleeding talent. People leave China to get an education and/or make money. Once they make some money they might go to China to make more money, by selling products to a new market.
You might also consider what the normal distribution of IQ means when comparing the populations of the USA and China.
I have considered that. The people that escape China to the USA are going to be those with a high IQ.
That's the slow bleed of talent I mentioned above. This has been going on for a long time. The Chinese communist gove
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Partial concurrence? I think the available resources also matter. From that perspective, the biggest threats to America are the sheer numbers of competent engineers and (hard) scientists being educated in China and India (and Europe, for that matter).
Re: (Score:2)
I see plenty of STEM students from India and China in the USA for school, just how many Americans go to India and China to study STEM? My guess is that the number is quite close to zero. There's quantity and then there's quality, although quantity has a quality all its own.
China isn't a big threat to the USA. They are a threat, just not not a big one. China can't even maintain control of Taiwan, just how much of a threat can they pose to the USA?
China distancing itself from trade with outside nations is
Re: (Score:2)
NAK.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your metaphor seemed strained, but I think I mostly concur with your intention (if I understand it).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Why the bias? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Well being that it is on Slashdot, I doubt it is really that Secretive or top secret, perhaps just not advertised.
Isolationist policies are generally bad for everyone, however they are hard to successfully stop and turn around back to the way that things use to be.
US, UK for the past few years have had a lot of Tit for Tat issues when trying to isolate themselves, where they tried to cut trade with China so China cut trade with them. Where for China the US and UK use to be reliable trading partners had beca
Re: (Score:2)
Chinese companies are allowed to get FIPS validation.
The US in principle operates on the utterly failed theory of capitalist peace and globalism, with the occasional small exception. China operates on the principle of mercantilism and national security autarky, with the occasional exception. There is no symmetry.
Expected behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I'm no fan of the CCP—very much not a fan, in fact—but if you're a (burgeoning) superpower, isn't this move expected? Cut out your reliance on foreign tech and look internally to develop the expertise, skills, and necessary lines to make production happen? It's one thing to rely on foreign tech when you're a growing economy, but as you increasingly look like you'll be in a position to compete with those foreign powers, the last thing you want is to be beholden to them.
I have no doubt that the CCP will put this tech to nefarious purposes, but I'm not going to fault them for doing exactly what we'd expect any other global power to do when it comes to achieving and maintaining technological independence. Fault them for how they use it? Absolutely, but not for merely pursuing the tech.
Re: (Score:2)
it's more than that. the trump era technical vetoes and embargos amid accusations of espionage and malpractice were just domestic propaganda, but not only was it futile in trying to hide/hamper china's growing supremacy, it even accelerated china's emancipation from western tech and production lines. this was easy to see, we predicted this much right here more than a year ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically expressing concurrence, and think this would have been a better FP thread, though the Subject is still on the weak side. However my reply (or contribution?) would be similar to the longer comment I already wrote about the actual FP. (When I first saw the story, it was the only comment.)
But I guess I can add that "communist" has become a huge source of confusion for the topic. It looks like bad branding, but it's actually become a kind of disguise or camouflage. The CCP actually has a hard and prag
Re: (Score:2)
OP here, and I agree that yours would have been a far more interesting FP. I rarely aim for FP, and I wasn't looking to do so here, but I felt like the slant on the summary was practically begging for a response like mine.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I do not want the "responsibility" of FP, though I wish there were constructive solutions to get better FPs. I haven't rigorously collected the data, but I definitely feel that many potentially interesting discussions are basically destroyed or sabotaged by destructive FPs. The data that should be collected would involve assessing the "quality" of discussions and looking for correlations with the FPs. Assessing the quality of the discussions and categorizing the FPs are both difficult, though there
Part of long term move to high tech and domestic (Score:2)
... it even accelerated china's emancipation from western tech and production lines ...
I'm not sure there was much acceleration. Such tech was already considered strategic and moving to domestic production for strategic items has been a part of even publicly stated policy for a while. These items going on the current todo-list seems more a factor of increased expertise than anything else. Through acquisition of IP (both the products themselves and the tooling needed for their manufacture) and the manufacturing of such western tech we have been training them for their next step for decades. T
Re: (Score:2)
What is expected is a new cold war, what we're getting is a cold war where one side is hardly fighting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Huawei will share source with foreign governments. Companies like Red Hat can point to their products being open source. It's possible to build trust.
For a lot of consumer stuff it doesn't even matter. The Chinese can trust an Intel CPU enough for non-government/infrastructure stuff.
The problem is not trust. The problem is trade wars and sanctions.
Re: (Score:2)
It's possible to build trust. [...] The Chinese can trust an Intel CPU [...] The problem is not trust. The problem is trade wars and sanctions.
I'd suggest that the core problem is actually an over-reliance on tech provided by foreign rivals. There are a number of knock-on problems that result from that core issue, such as the trade wars and sanctions you mention, but they're hardly the only ones, hence why why I spoke about "reliance" as the problem and never once mentioned trust or those other issues.
Re: (Score:1)
but if you're a (burgeoning) superpower, isn't this move expected? [i.e.] Cut out your reliance on foreign tech and look internally to develop the expertise, skills, and necessary lines to make production happen?
this is a respectable goal of anyone, not just superpowers.
Re: (Score:2)
this is a respectable goal of anyone, not just superpowers.
Certainly so, but it isn't necessarily expected, which was the word I carefully chose. Most countries are subject to economic, logistic, and natural constraints that keep them from spreading themselves that thin, so we don't expect them to do so, even if it might be a respectable goal.
They already licensed VIA and AMD CPUs (Score:2)
China has already licensed VIA and AMD CPUs to be produced domestically.
Hygon is a joint venture with AMD.
Zhaoxin is a joint venture with VIA.
Re: (Score:2)
China has already licensed VIA and AMD CPUs to be produced domestically.
Actually, high-end fab stuff is all done in Taiwan though they have been throwing money at the problem for decades trying to catch up.
Hygon is a joint venture with AMD.
Zhaoxin is a joint venture with VIA.
The Hygon chips are actually super interesting because they replaced the cryptographic functions with their own ones. It's mandated that government computers only rely on cryptography they have developed (a logical choice) so all government computers use Hygon chips. Hygon's first chip was more or less a clone of Ryzen chips but they have since made larger modifications. I
The West needs to break dependency on China (Score:5, Insightful)
Being dependent on an authoritarian, even genocidal, country is not great for Western democracies. We need to start cutting our dependence on China, which is far more damaging to us than China's dependence on the West is to it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:The West needs to break dependency on China (Score:5, Interesting)
I have serious stability doubts about China. Apart from the inherent political dysfunction, there is economic dysfunction.
Too much of the country's government and economy is predicated on an unceasing state of rapid economic growth; even regional government functions are funded by selling land to feed a terrifying real estate bubble. Culturally it feels safer to put your money into a real estate scam rather than trusting businesses that are weakly regulated by the government or may even be shielded by political connections. So money that should be going into further capitalizing China's very real and immense productive capacity is diverted into the construction of ghost cities and useless, shoddy "tofu dregs [wikipedia.org]" development projects that fall into ruin [youtube.com] before they ever get used. And local governments are dependent upon this for operating funds.
A mild business cycle builds resiliency into an economy, but modern China has never known an economic downturn, officially speaking not since around 1990. COVID was a brutal shock to the country, and cracks are showing. The country is trying to grow its way out of the economic hit, but it has capped electricity prices to avoid criticism, resulting in rolling blackouts. China has been phasing out its smaller coal mining operations, so this spike in electricity demand comes at a bad time. China could get through this by importing coal in the short term, but Australia called for an investigation of China's handling of COVID, resulting in an unofficial ban [cnbc.com] on Australian coal. This is causing brutal heating fuel shortages in Northern China.
The regime will do what it has to to get through this, but the political stress will inflame its tendencies toward paranoia and touchy, narcissistic sensitivity. This could further disrupt China-dependent supply chains in the US, and we should also be concerned about Taiwan.
Re: The West needs to break dependency on China (Score:2)
America's economy, and every other corporatist economy, is also based on endless growth. Nobody wants to settle down and just be competent and conscientious. The market does not reward that. We need to unfuck the stock market and take away the incentive to make cynical trades or the west will go down the same toilet.
Re: (Score:2)
Endless when averaged, sure; but not incessant. It really doesn't matter what the market "wants"; occasional mild downturns cull the weak. Decades of uninterrupted growth in China means that there may be a breadth of vulnerability unlike anything we've seen.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, and would add that China is dependent on other countries (largely the USA) for food. I presume this is one reason they're attempting various desert reclamation research projects. No sandworms yet though.
Ghost cities and central planning (Score:2)
The conventional wisdom is that ghost cities are due to the "central planning" nature of China's government. To be sure, there is a demand for more housing in China, but not in the locations where the central planners dictated. So large apartment towers go unoccupied.
If the construction had instead been funded by private investors, said investors tend to do due diligence to make sure there is a demand for the new building at the proposed location. Do you disagree?
By the way, even as China publicly pledge
Re: (Score:2)
Actually these ghost cities *are* being funded by private investors. It's a bubble mentality that local governments have become dependent upon for revenue. People are buying investment properties sight unseen because of FOMO and distrust of more sensible investment vehicles like stocks and bonds.
Re: (Score:2)
If so, those private investors are not doing due diligence to ensure there's a demand for the buildings that are being constructed.
Hard to have sympathy when investors like that lose money...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Freedom from sanctions (Score:5, Insightful)
In many ways this doesn't seem to be much different from US and European countries ensuring they don't use technology from Huawei, and other companies considered close to the Chinese government. The main difference is that this is China not using technology from anyone who isn't China, becoming more insular.
There are some who feel Trump would have taken the same approach of not allowing non-USA made products, but the challenge here is that so much is still manufactured in China, due to cost reasons.
China and Russia are two nations that are slowly becoming more isolated with their policies and attitudes. I am just glad the US didn't allow the last administration to take it too far in that direction, but there is still a risk that a new administration will allow nationalism to damage it.
Re: (Score:2)
In many ways this doesn't seem to be much different from US and European countries ensuring they don't use technology from Huawei, and other companies considered close to the Chinese government. The main difference is that this is China not using technology from anyone who isn't China, becoming more insular
It might be more accurate to say anyone not close to the Chinese government if not outright state owned to some degree. Especially for anything on the strategic item list.
Re: (Score:2)
How does self sufficiency inflame tensions? (Score:1)
Sounds like another opinion piece, the real source of the inflammation.
Self sufficiency is a good thing. Maybe we should pick up on the idea, but, finance says differently, they prefer dependency.
Re: How does self sufficiency inflame tensions? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
You should always a have a backup ready. Peace is fleeting
Re: How does self sufficiency inflame tensions? (Score:2)
China has not become more peaceful due to our commercial relationship, but they have become more powerful. Your faith in capitalism is ridiculous.
Re: (Score:2)
Self sufficiency is a bad thing, interdependency strengthens peace.
Interdependence becomes dependence once one side decides they don't like being dependent on another nation. Once this interdependence is lost war is inevitable.
Once China decides they don't want to maintain this interdependence then what should leadership in the USA and other nations do? About the only thing they can do is distance themselves from China as quickly as they can. This is China declaring war. It might not be a shooting war, not yet and maybe not ever, but it is a war. We can't force China
This is hardly (Score:5, Interesting)
So, both sides are drawing up plans to do less business with the other. While I'd personally rather continue to have trade flow, if there's gonna be a separation, everyone should work to make sure the divorce goes smoothly. We'll all be poorer for it, since world trade has made almost everyone better off, at least there will be less chance for war if things are carefully considered and planned.
And, just for the record, I'm pretty sure this whole process will result in a western world being slightly poorer, and China being a LOT poorer. Dictatorship/oligarchy governments just don't have a great economic track record in the long run. We had Trump, it's true, but we only had to deal with him for 4 years before the voters booted him out. Our system is noisy but self-corrects. Maybe I'm wrong. I think it's highly unlikely, but if China truly surpasses us, I'll be the first in line to learn Chinese.
Re: (Score:2)
The west is nowhere near ready to let go of capitalist peace theory and globalism. Look how much pushback Trump got for a more nationalist approach to trade.
All sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals are targeted (and thus relatively easily evaded) that's not going to change any time soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
China and the west are mutually disengaging. Both sides want this. China wants to be come a world of it's own, and the west has decided to stop enabling.
That's only half true. Both sides want the other side to continue buying their stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I'd like to correct your statement. China ASSEMBLES a lot of stuff including electronics, and they make quite a few of the simpler components. There are exceptions - some Chinese companies are absolutely top-tier (eg. DJI). But overall Chinese companies don't do much original design, and they certainly don't manufacture
"to vet and approve local suppliers" (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Hackers (Score:2)
I wonder if the Chinese Hacking Army has a core of actual hackers who grew up playing with foreign tech and finding zero days. Now if China gets their way, wouldn't it mean that their billions of kids will grow up with only Chinese tech to hack on and find zero days? Somehow I see this as a positive.
TSMC (Score:1)
I wonder... (Score:2)
China makes and Trenton takes (Score:2)