modernpink

>If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours.

In particular this sentence demonstrates a näive credulousness.

Kissinger would be laughing.

Taiwan can be economically squeezed by western derisking and moving sensitive tech out of Taiwan or it can continue to be militarily squeezed by China if it continues to be the single point of failure in the western technology chain. The former appears to be the better choice than the latter.

>enjoy a mix of Chinese, Malay, Indian cultures

Apart from the food, what specifically about these cultures is enjoyable?

London's population is almost double all of Ireland. Dublin is not an alternative at all. The annual production of new STEM graduates in the UK is half the population of Dublin alone.

Everything is a status symbol.

Considering the advances in computational hardware over the past few decades plus the corresponding (and not unrelated) real increase in developer salaries, it is unreasonably cheap.

That sounds like efficient market allocation of resources. There is no inherent reason you deserve to live in luxury as most do in the West unless you've contributed to society.

Taken to its logical conclusion, companies offering WFH would then be morally justified in replacing US workers with cheaper third world options. UK salaries in tech for example are about 1/4-1/3 of US levels.

China is the greatest civilisational threat to the West we have seen since Persia or the Umayyad Caliphate. The fact that the West has allowed letting China grow as much as it has done will be seen as one of the most fatal mistakes in grand strategy in history. That strategy had a purpose for defeating the Soviet Union, but after it had collapsed China had served its purpose for us and should have been isolated by the international community again.

Exactly, the West can bring to bear its might on Vietnam if they step out of line, especially since they themselves are not much fans of the Chinese and will be more than happy to work with the West.

For Western consumers and companies we have learnt the lesson that if we want to keep the flow of cheap products, we need to diversify the pool of labour we draw upon and to keep them dependent instead of building them up to be competitors in the supply of products as well as competitors as consumers of those products.

The crucial moment in the China strategy was in 2008 when we should have started on/friend shoring rather than leaving it until now. Instead with the West facing economic calamity at the time, we wanted the economically easy solution of letting China continue its integration into the global supply chain.