Saturday, December 03, 2022

Taiwan holds all the chips in US–China tech showdown

3 December 2022

Authors: Bo-jiun Jing, Institute for Security and Development Policy, Flavia Lucenti, University of Bologna, Giulia Sciorati, University of Trento, Wei Luo, University of St Andrews and Jie Yang, University of Cambridge

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August 2022 touched on the island’s sovereignty — a controversial, historical ‘red line’ in China’s foreign relations. The visit resurfaced numerous unresolved issues between the United States and China with modern-day technological competition at its centre.

Two chips are on display at the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute (TSRI) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, 11 February 11 2022 (Photo: Reuters/Ann Wang).

Both China and the United States have directly involved the island’s semiconductor industry in this latest ‘Taiwan crisis’. China retaliated by imposing tariffs on sand exports to Taiwan to restrict a core chip production component and send a political message to President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration.

August 2022 also saw Washington adopt the controversial ‘CHIPS Act’ to boost domestic semiconductor production, though its full implications are yet to determined. The US Department of Commerce ’s Bureau of Industry and Security sought to tighten restrictions in October on China’s import of semiconductors.

Despite these trade disruptions, future escalation remains unlikely as China relies heavily on Taiwan’s chips. Beijing needs this technology to gain a competitive edge over the United States in the global technology competition. China also needs this industry to support its economic growth and shift into higher-value production to ensure the legitimacy of President Xi Jinping’s third term.

China’s trade flow data for 2021 shows that the country’s semiconductor imports amounted to more than US$430 billion in 2021 — 36 per cent of which came from Taiwan. China relies on the world’s largest foundry — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) — to provide cutting-edge semiconductors for its consumer electronics industry.

In 2022, TSMC’s global market share will grow from 53 per cent to 56 per cent by revenue. The company holds more than 60 per cent of the world’s manufacturing capacity for the most advanced semiconductors. Given TSMC’s dominance, China has little incentive to restrict chip trade with Taiwan and risk damaging its economy.

On the contrary, TSMC is less reliant on China. Though the foundry’s exposure to China rose to 20 per cent between 2018 and 2020, this figure plunged to 10 per cent in 2021. During the same year, 65 per cent of its revenue came from North America.

China’s decline in TSMC’s portfolio can be mainly attributed to former US president Donald Trump’s 2020 ‘Huawei ban’. The policy banned TSMC from supplying Huawei with chips developed using US technology, driving the Taiwanese chip giant to shift its capacity elsewhere.

China is aware of the risks of relying on foreign chips and promoted the ‘Made in China 2025’ strategy in 2015 as a response. The project highlights semiconductors as one of ten high-tech priority sectors, aiming to increase China’s chip self-reliance from below 10 per cent to 70 per cent by 2025. The target was later increased to 75 per cent by 2030 as the self-sufficiency rate only reached 16 per cent in 2020.

Beijing’s objective is to become a dominant technology power by 2049 — the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing is set to pour well over US$150 billion into its domestic semiconductor industry by 2030, providing subsidies and incentives for building semiconductor factories and developing research and development units.

Despite these efforts, China’s semiconductor sector still lags behind its competitors by a decade or two. While China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) developed a ground-breaking 7nm process in October 2020, TSMC continues to have the upper hand with 3nm chips.

Poorly defined and implemented strategic plans, corruption, human capital deficit and export controls hamper China’s chip industry growth. The country will remain reliant on Taiwan’s supplies while developing its domestic industry. So Beijing may not restrict the flow of semiconductors from Taipei in the short run to avoid hurting its national economy or intensifying its competition with the United States.

Restricting semiconductor imports will exert pressure on the economy on which the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy still hangs. The collapse of crucial domestic semiconductor companies in 2022 already reveals some weaknesses in the slowing China economy.

The new US challenge over Taiwan and its impacts on semiconductors will make it harder for Beijing to maintain growth. China has also emerged weaker from the recent confrontation with the United States. While in Taiwan, Pelosi met with Chinese dissidents, an action seen as a gesture of disrespect in Beijing.

The semiconductors competition shows how national and international factors are highly intertwined in China’s policy considerations. Establishing China as a global power and an ever-growing economic powerhouse has ensured the CCP’s legitimacy for decades. As the party looks for ways to maintain growth, semiconductors are crucial in ensuring advanced technology and political stability.

Though Beijing will not take any drastic measures to constrain Taipei’s semiconductors in the short term, this overreliance is becoming a concern in China’s escalating competition with the United States. China is contemplating new and more sophisticated contingency plans in the long run. The ‘Made in China 2025’ and the 14th Five-Year Plan launched in early 2022 suggested a nationwide mobilisation of resources to improve semiconductor innovation, research and development, and education.

During its 20th Party Congress, the CCP leadership reiterated the importance of supporting scientific research and industrial technology to strengthen the country’s centrality in the international arena. China has also put forth innovative methods for financing innovation and incentives for attracting global talent.

Yet China’s technological disadvantages may make it more open to international cooperation in semiconductors. In this sense, the battle for semiconductor supremacy is unlikely to change China’s policies on the United States or Taiwan.

The authors are members of the 2022 cohort of the Chatham House-Korea Foundation Next Generation Policy Expert Network.

Bo-jiun Jing is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy and PhD Candidate at King’s College London.

Flavia Lucenti is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna.

Giulia Sciorati is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Trento and Associate Researcher at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

Wei Luo is a PhD Candidate at University of St Andrews.

Jie Yang is a PhD Candidate University of Cambridge.

In memoriam: Rosalind ‘Roz’ Wyman, youngest person ever elected to L.A. City Council

The Trojan alumna was a driving force behind Dodgers moving west.

BY Grayson Schmidt

DECEMBER 2, 2022

To some who knew Roz Wiener Wyman, she was a trailblazer. To others, she was a stalwart, a go-getter and even an icon. But perhaps most importantly, to her son Bob Wyman, she was simply “Mom.”

“Looking back, I was probably in college when I realized how different my experience was and the extent of what Mom did,” Wyman said. “As I got older, I had a broader perspective from outside the house that this was a remarkable woman.”

Rosalind “Roz” Wyman, the youngest person — and second woman — elected to the Los Angeles City Council, died on Oct. 26 in her Bel-Air home at age 92. The USC alumna spearheaded the Dodgers’ move to L.A. during a time when few major professional sports teams played on the West Coast and brought a wave of other professional sports teams west.

But her contributions to sports only tell a fraction of her story. A dedicated public servant, Wyman served on the City Council for more than a decade before becoming an influential voice in the Democratic Party, serving as chair and chief executive officer of the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

In a public statement, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Wyman “a godmother of the Democratic Party” who “nurtured young people, mentored candidates and helped elect dozens of women to office.”

One of those women is former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, who served California’s 36th congressional district from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011.

“Iconic is such a great word for Roz, iconic to the city and iconic to women,” said Harman, Presidential Scholar-in-Residence at the USC Price School of Public Policy and an honorary USC trustee.

“Back in the day, it’s hard to imagine how a woman could have done what she did. I can’t imagine another woman that I know, including the most powerful, that at age 22 could have done what she did.”

Roz Wyman: Early life, path to USC and political career

A native Angeleno, Wyman attended Los Angeles High School, where she was a student government leader. She became well known by the vice principal for regularly presenting “crazy ideas,” like bringing lonely students together for lunch mixers and hosting school dances for those who couldn’t afford country club gatherings.

After high school, Wyman ’52 majored in public administration at what was then called the USC School of Citizenship and Public Administration. She was elected to the L.A. City Council the year after she graduated at only 22 years old, making her the youngest elected legislator in a major U.S. city.

While running for office as a student at USC, Wyman recruited numerous student volunteers and used her own living room as her campaign headquarters. That early experience would prepare her for not only her role on the City Council, but also when she served as acting mayor of L.A. She then led a campaign to create more parks in the city and became the first woman to run a national political convention.

“Roz was a force of nature: breaking down barriers for women in California politics, while forging new ways to bring people together through politics, the arts, and baseball,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Her leadership helped draw her beloved Dodgers to Los Angeles — and my Giants to San Francisco — so that California families could experience the thrill of America’s pastime.”

According to Wyman’s son Bob, that love for baseball was engrained in his mother from the moment she was born. The story goes that his grandmother, originally from Chicago, asked the doctor one question when Roz was born: “What’s the Cubs score?”

“I assume that’s where my mother’s love of baseball was inherited,” he chuckled.

Bringing pro sports to L.A.

One of her biggest campaign promises when she first ran for office was to bring major league sports to L.A., during a time when the West Coast was still an untapped market.

“She always felt that major cities needed major sports,” her son said.

She contacted then-Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, who initially refused to speak with a young city council member from across the country.

“I didn’t quit,” Wyman told USC News in 2018.

Ultimately, Wyman was able to convince O’Malley to visit L.A., where during a helicopter tour of the city the latter saw the perfect site for a baseball stadium. O’Malley moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn, and the team played its first game in L.A. on April 18, 1958. A year later, construction began on the new stadium — not without controversy from the surrounding community — and in 1962 Dodger Stadium opened to fans.

O’Malley and Wyman remained lifelong friends, and when the former died in 1979, his family — at his request — gifted Wyman a key that fits into every door at Dodger Stadium.

“Tommy Lasorda would yell at Mom from the dugout,” Bob Wyman said. “That’s a pretty cool experience for a young kid.”

Her efforts also had a ripple effect that saw the New York Giants move to San Francisco in 1958. Two years later, L.A. received another pro franchise when the Lakers moved into town from Minneapolis, another project Wyman had a hand in.

Remembering L.A. icon Roz Wyman

In addition to Pelosi, other well-known political figures and celebrities paid their respects to Wyman on social media.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein called Wyman a friend and “someone who made a real difference for Los Angeles and for Democratic politics.”

“Roz was a real force of nature whenever she set her mind to something,” Feinstein said in a statement. “Whether it was politics or dragging a baseball team 3,000 miles across the country, Roz had a passion that was infectious, and she really got things done.”

Tennis legend and activist Billie Jean King took to Twitter to pay respect to a friend and source of inspiration.

“One of my Sheroes has passed away,” King said in a tweet.

“Roz Wyman was the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council, at age 22, in 1953 and the reason we have the @Dodgers in LA. May she Rest in Power. Thank you, Roz.”

Harman hopes that Wyman’s impact can continue into the next generation of women in politics, and that Los Angeles remembers the icon it lost.

“She was my role model in politics,” Harman said. “She was just the North Star, not just to me, but to so many people.”

Los Angeles City Council unanimously votes to ban oil and gas drilling

Dec 2, 2022

PBS NewsHour

By — Drew Costley, Associated Press

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Friday to ban drilling of new oil and gas wells and phase out existing ones over the next 20 years.

The vote comes after more than a decade of complaints from city residents that pollution drifting from wells was affecting their health.

“Hundreds of thousands of Angelenos have had to raise their kids, go to work, prepare their meals (and) go to neighborhood parks in the shadows of oil and gas production,” said Los Angeles City Council president Paul Krekorian, one of the councilmembers who introduced this measure. “The time has come …. when we end oil and gas production in the city of Los Angeles.”

Two engineers with Yorke Engineering, a California-based company that does air quality and environmental compliance review, spoke in opposition to the ordinance. They said a ban and phase out will have a negative effect because oil and gas operators will abandon wells. They said this is being underestimated by the city. If they walk away, that will mean increased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, they said.

But Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said these claims are “not credible,” citing a review by Impact Sciences, another California-based firm that performed an environmental analysis of the ordinance for the city.

Los Angeles was once a booming oil town. Many of its oilfields are now played out but it still has several productive ones.

According to the city controller’s office there were 780 active and 287 idle wells within city boundaries in 2018. An idle well is one that is not operating, but neither has it been permanently sealed, so it could be brought back into production.

Near Long Beach there’s the very prolific Wilmington oil field, which yielded more than 10 million barrels of crude oil in 2019, according to state records.

Hundreds of the still active wells in that field are concentrated in Wilmington, a predominantly Latino part of Los Angeles. Several clusters of the active wells, located near homes, ballfields and childcare facilities, are operated by companies like E&B Natural Resources Management Corporation and Warren Resources.

Warren Resources CEO and president James A. Watt said in a statement to The Associated Press that the company has invested $44 million in its oil and gas operations. “We intend to use all available legal resources to protect our major investment from this unlawful taking,” he said.

Many more wells lie just outside Los Angeles city limits, in Carson, Inglewood and Long Beach.

Some studies look at the possible effects of pollution emanating from the city’s existing oil and gas wells.

Researchers from the University of Southern California in a study in 2021 found that people living near wells in two Los Angeles neighborhoods — University Park and Jefferson Park — reported significantly higher rates of wheezing, eye and nose irritation, sore throat and dizziness than neighbors living farther away. Both of those communities are predominantly non-white with large Black and Latino communities, according to the U.S. Census.

The push to ban drilling in the City of Los Angeles is part of a region-wide effort to shut down oil and gas extraction throughout the county of Los Angeles, with similar measures covering Culver City and unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County passed in 2021.

“In Los Angeles, we sit on the largest urban oil deposit in the world,” said councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson ahead of the vote. “So if Los Angeles can do it, cities around the world can do it.”

Across the US, Native Americans are fighting to preserve sacred land

‘It’s important that we unify, and we work together, and share the teachings to protect our sacred areas because once God, once our sacred and holy places are gone, we will no longer exist. Our religion will be gone forever,’ said one Native American activist.

Aerial shot of the Valley of the Gods in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo courtesy of Bureau of Land Management/Creative Commons

November 29, 2022

Alejandra Molina, Emily McFarlan Miller

(RNS) — In what they call a “holy war” to save their sacred site in Arizona known as Oak Flat, the Apache people have gathered in prayer with other Native American tribes, even those they’ve historically been pitted against, such as the Akimel O’odham, or River People, of the southwestern United States.

They’ve formed a coalition of Native peoples named Apache Stronghold and bonded with Christians and other religious leaders as they seek to stop the land from being transferred to Resolution Copper, a company owned by the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto

Now, at a three-day meeting beginning Wednesday (Nov. 30), Apache Stronghold is hoping to unite its cause with other similar Native American groups that are working to preserve land they deem sacred.

The Sacred Sites Summit in Tucson, Arizona, will offer sessions on Native religion and spirituality, the history of colonization and capitalism, and the destruction mining wreaks on a landscape. The summit will also highlight the efforts tribes are making to protect areas from the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah to Quechan Indian Pass in California.

Among the summit’s listed speakers are Anna M. Rondon, an advocate for Native communities impacted by uranium mining; Shawn Mulford, who’s Diné, and who’s been outspoken about expansion plans of an Arizona ski resort up in the San Francisco Peaks; and Faron Owl, a councilman of the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe that halted an attempt to build a gold mine, but have initiated another effort against a proposed project on the land the tribe considers sacred.

Vanessa Nosie, of Apache Stronghold, said the summit was the vision of her father, Wendsler Nosie Sr., who leads the coalition.

His vision, she said, was to unite people to “not only learn from what the Apache Stronghold has done in this fight, but also to stand together and bring awareness of all the issues that are happening throughout Indian country, because it doesn’t just affect the Indigenous people, it affects all people.”

Native American tribes are increasingly choosing to fight encroachment by mining and other corporate developers not only as environmental causes but spiritual ones.

Most recently, a 2016 fight to protect water on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation from the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline brought new public attention to Indigenous peoples’ concerns about how land is used, according to Rosalyn R. LaPier, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But those concerns stretch back years, said LaPier, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.

Many Americans prize land they consider beautiful, dramatic or awe-inspiring, but Indigenous people view it not only through a physical lens but a spiritual lens. LaPier said Indigenous scholars like herself often are asked, “Why is this place in the middle of nowhere that’s an ugly hill with a rock on it — why is this like a sacred place?”

Several hundred people took part in a prayer walk on Sept. 14, 2016, from the Oceti Sakowin camp near Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to the site up the road where Dakota Access began digging over Labor Day weekend for construction on a nearly 1,200-mile pipeline project. RNS photo by Emily McFarlan Miller

Some places may be a pilgrimage site, some a traditional backdrop for a ritual or ceremony. “When we’re protecting a natural space, we’re also protecting the supernatural space,” she said.

But because many Americans don’t recognize Indigenous beliefs as a real religion, and because dominant European American religions are not tied to a specific place on the landscape, they don’t always understand that Indigenous beliefs are “place based,” according to LaPier.

“You can’t move the mountain. You can’t move the river. You can’t move these places that are part of the sacred areas that different Indigenous religions think are important,” she said.

Vanessa Nosie told Religion News Service: “It’s important that we unify … and share the teachings to protect our sacred areas because once God, once our sacred and holy places are gone, we will no longer exist. Our religion will be gone forever.”

Here are a few efforts by Native Americans to protect sacred sites that have grabbed headlines in recent years and where they are now.

OAK FLAT

In 2014, Congress approved the transfer of this 6.7-square-mile stretch of land east of Phoenix to Resolution Copper as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in exchange for 6,000 acres elsewhere.

Wendsler Nosie Sr., former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and leader of Apache Stronghold, has likened Oak Flat to Mount Sinai in the Jewish faith — “our most sacred site, where we connect with our Creator, our faith, our families and our land.” An attack on Indigenous religion, the oldest religion of this part of the world, he maintains, is a threat to all religions.

This file photo taken June 15, 2015, shows the Resolution Copper Mining area Shaft #9, right, and Shaft #10, left, that await the expansion go-ahead in Superior, Arizona. The mountainous land near Superior is known as Oak Flat or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel. It’s where Apaches have harvested medicinal plants, held coming-of-age ceremonies and gathered acorns for generations. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

The mine, Nosie said, will swallow the site in a massive crater and render “long-standing religious practices impossible.”

In early 2021, Apache Stronghold sued the government in federal court, arguing among other things that destruction of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, as Oak Flat is called in Apache, violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the government could proceed with the transfer of Oak Flat, determining that Apache Stronghold failed to show a substantial burden on its religious exercise.

“There’s been this kind of stubbornly persistent hostility to the claims involving the preservation and use of Native American sacred sites,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, a legal nonprofit representing Apache Stronghold.

But in mid-November of this year, the 9th Circuit announced it would rehear their case, this time in front of a full 11-judge court instead of the original three-judge panel.

In this July 22, 2015, file photo, tribal councilman Wendsler Nosie Sr., right, speaks with Apache activists in a rally to save Oak Flat, land near Superior, Arizona, sacred to Western Apache tribes, in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Molly Riley, File)

In addition to that turnabout, Goodrich said he’s encouraged by the enforcement of RFRA in recent high-profile rulings such as the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the arts-and-crafts chain did not have to obey a mandate in the Affordable Care Act to provide birth control to employees through their health benefits.

“It’s past time for the same protections in RFRA to catch up and do the work they should have been doing all along for Native Americans and sacred sites,” Goodrich said.

MAUNA KEA

Historically, Indigenous communities have been “on the end that has less power in decision-making,” said Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, which works to preserve native Hawaiian cultural traditions.

But things appear to be changing for those fighting to preserve Mauna Kea. Native Hawaiians believe Mauna Kea is the first creation of the Earth Mother, Papahānaumoku, and the Sky Father, Wākea. At 13,803 feet above sea level, it is also a prime location for astronomers. With a dozen observatories already crowding the summit, activists have protested plans to build the much bigger Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea.

Activists have been camped near an access road to Mauna Kea in Hawaii. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

Activists camp near an access road to Mauna Kea in Hawaii in 2019. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

A state law that passed this summer has made way for the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority, consisting of university officials and native Hawaiian cultural practitioners, including Wong-Wilson, charged with managing Mauna Kea’s summit.

Wong-Wilson said the new authority will look at the number of observatories that should be on the mountain. To Wong-Wilson, “an imbalance takes place” when resources are artificially changed. “It changes nature, the way water flows and disrupts the cycle of life,” she said.

In 2014, a group of Native Hawaiians interrupted a groundbreaking ceremony for the new telescope, arguing that building more structures on the mountain will further desecrate a place they deem sacred. Demonstrators blockaded construction crews in March 2015, setting in motion a lengthy legal dispute that ended with Hawaii’s Supreme Court clearing the telescope for construction in 2019.

But on the first scheduled day of construction, protesters blocked the access road at the base of the mountain, joined by a group of kupuna, or Native elders. Police arrested nearly 40 people, primarily the elderly kupuna.

Activists who oppose the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, who prefer the term “protectors,” perform traditional Hawaiian dances at the base of Mauna Kea in Hawaii in 2019. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

This time around, Wong-Wilson hopes to “work together to find solutions … rather than just fighting and resisting and always having to take positions, even though they’re nonviolent.”

“It’s still wearing on everybody and it’s unfortunate that we have to do that,” she said.

BEARS EARS

Bears Ears National Monument in Utah was created by President Barack Obama in 2016 at the request of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, a group of five tribes that consider sites within the monument to be sacred. It was drastically reduced in size by President Donald Trump in 2017, then restored by President Joe Biden in 2021.

Hank Stevens, who represents the Navajo Nation in the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, describes the land in one word: “Panacea.” It’s medicine that can heal all divides, all difficulties, all diseases.

Clergy take photos during a gathering with Native American leaders in November 2017 at Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Photo courtesy of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation

The land spans 1.35 million acres of desert punctuated by dramatic rock formations “where tribal traditional leaders and medicine people go to conduct ceremonies, collect herbs for medicinal purposes, and practice healing rituals stemming from time immemorial, as demonstrated through tribal creation stories,” according to the coalition’s website.

What Indigenous people consider as sacred isn’t all that different from what the Western world does, said Stevens. He recognizes a tree as something spiritual. Others might recognize a Bible or another holy book, he said. But what are those books printed on but paper, made from trees?

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the five tribes of the Bears Ears Commission formalized a partnership to co-manage Bears Ears National Monument. The tribes include the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and Ute Indian Tribe.

The Bureau of Land Management said at the time that it hoped the partnership would serve “as a model for our work to honor the nation-to-nation relationship in the future.”

The Cedar Mesa Moon House at Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons/Bureau of Land Management

Stevens said there’s still work to do. Treaties between the U.S. government and Indigenous peoples have been broken before. People still need to be receptive to co-management and collaboration, to open their minds to understand the world around them.

But the agreement at Bears Ears is part of what he sees as “continuous improvement,” he said.

“I do believe that we, as human beings, have the ability to actually sit down and actually collaborate on a new course of action and continue to improve what we have and try to make the best of it for the next generation.”

National Reporter Jack Jenkins contributed to this report.

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