>> Western FDI constituted negligible part of PRC domestic investment as % of GDP... US made it geopolitically difficult to invest in PRC

Foxconn leaving at apples behest (and the Foxconn owner getting vocal with the prc in a rare move). The banking exoudus from Hong Kong (now deep into its 2nd year). And the impact to the GDP... its a literal house of cards with the failure of ever grand with country garden hot on its heels...

Meanwhile the retail apocalypse has hit china. High end luxury brands. Out. Grocery chains, shutting down.

Finally the iron bowl, the local government workers are getting pay cut. (because land sales are a shitty source of funding)...

Post pandemic there was going to be a realignment of global supply chains to be multi source and closer to home. Chinas covid zero policy just accelerated a decisions already made.

>> Every component has domestic ventures to replicate.

These have been facing up for decades. Without EUV they have no path forward. There is no EUV without Zeiss and ASML. Meanwhile unless your TSMC with their knowledge your going to have dismal yeilds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQGnwKBxAKk Probably one of the best high level insights into tech mfg in Asia.

>>PRC hard tech sectors have exploded in employment and compensation. Broad unemployhment 5% which means new graduates get jobs eventually. There's new youth unemployment stats to discount students in tertiary like west, it's fine at ~20%.

Youth?

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-stop-releasing-you...

Tech sector:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538

https://www.thinkchina.sg/big-tech-changing-china-and-so-are...

The decline of Chinese tech from stem to stern has been in process since 2000. Again the pandemic was a blast of orders for them but it was the last one.

> Meanwhile you have sea turtles / skilled talent from abroad going back to PRC

This has always been the case, they go home with any trade secrets that aren't bolted to the floor. https://www.smics.com/en/site/news_read/4334 << there's SMIC stealing its "progress" from TSMC.

> PRC's has operationalized domestic MIC for 10+ years now.

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20230811PD215/5g-china-huawe...

This is tech that was hardly new and sexy when the first iPhone came out, china JUST joined this party. This isnt pzrticlulary hard silicon issue but it is process intensive... Again, based on how they did it likely stolen IP.

>> This this was reference to attack last year that damaged active patriot batteries. RU haven't used them more because they don't have good ISR/fast kill chains for how mobile patriots are

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/17/patriot-missile-sys...

The damage was minor enough to be repaired locally, the battery was not rendered inactive by this attack (read they did not destroy it). Per later reports the damage was not from one of the missles fired at it rather it was from an Iranian drone shot down in a separate intercept (oops). The reason that Russia does not have good intel on the patriots is NOT their mobility, it's their reliance on human intel (never change Russia).

Do not that even AlJazer wont call the Russian attacks "effective" and hints at US shoot downs (that no one is gonna confirm publicly, because its bad politics).

PS: This guy, locked up cause his missles dont work as promised, not because of china sale of info. https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-hypersonic-scientist-a...

>>> Really shotting down primitive single digit clusters of cruise missiles is not even a useful live stress test.

No one has seen the new block of Patriot missiles, ship board, be effective...
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/25/u-s-deploys-addition...

SO yes seeing them work in this context regardless of target size is saying 'look we did and we can'.

>>> Many reports on PLA rocketforce expansion...

https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/online-analysis/2023...

This is the only credible source for their expansion into this territory... And again most of the leadership is gone, and did they or didn't they have to buy missile tech from the Russians. Meanwhile the bigger threat is in theater ICBM's with MREV's ... https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a34702702/...

We have a lot of carriers, and have managed to keep pouring money into tech that will keep them safe (as they are large, slow, expensive targets).

> ends in a nuclear exchange

China invades tawian, china gets the blockade. People starve or china does something dumb that ends in nukes. It's a zero sum game for them and they know it. Same bluster from them since Nixon...

>> PRC has magnitude more missile inventory and missile defense

To be clear: the US navy (just the navy) has more Tomahawk's than all of the theater (medium and larger) missiles of the rocket force. Chinas combine anti missile systems (unproven) are enough to stop an attack from Taiwan (who has about half the missles of chinas rocket force). At a 50% shoot down rate, the rocket force would have to commit a significant amount of its inventory to overwhelm that defense. Thats a very precarious position to put yourself in if you expect the US to respond....

>> PRC semi doing fine, catching up faster than anticipated, remember how they were suppose to be capped at 28nm.

Nothing of the sort, see above, see the current state of china semi... They have had DUV for a long time (5 ish years from asml). They used it for 14nm, to get 7nm and can get down to 5nm.... Can isnt volume, can isnt yeild.

>> Meanwhile, they're still climbing up on the supply chain ladder, displacing more and more high tech from west, growing in S&T/innovation indexes.

The only people making this claim are china state propaganda. This is right out of the little pinks hand book. There is over a decade of court cases (both civil and criminal) for theft of intellectual property... Copying by theft isnt innovation. Meanwhile they can barely make the filters for 5g (see above, mems, 20 year old tech at this point, brand new in china). That isnt catching up, that's isnt even keeping pace... it's throwing money and espionage at a problem. China cant make camera lenses, they cant clone DU, how are they going to get to EUV (all for litho for chips).