I was in Hokkaido many years ago for work and loved it. Compared to the rest of Japan, indoor/outdoor spaces are wider, food is better, and people are friendlier. I never could swing another work visit, so I dream about spending time there in retirement.

I could imagine, though, that companies might have trouble attracting quality talent to Hokkaido, because people see more opportunities in the big cities down south. I suppose it's like if you were trying to build a tech hub in Montana.

> Hokkaido seems like a great place to relocate and start a life for young aspiring workers.

I taught English in Tokachi (Obihiro, Makubetsu-cho, Satsunai, Ikeda) a few decades ago and it was absolutely a dream.

It's pristine farmland and country filled with crystal clear rivers and surrounded on all sides by snowcapped mountains. Fields that stretch forever. Hot springs. The freshest food. Fishing. Low cost of living.

You could look up at night and not only see all the stars, but watch dozens of meteors by the minute during showers.

Just Google for photos of Tokachi. It's gorgeous.

Everything is so relaxed, it's almost the complete opposite of Tokyo. It's very easy to meet friends. People work hard, but they take time to enjoy life and nature.

There are matsuri (festivals) almost twice a month. There are carts with whistles that beckon you to buy hot yellow sweet potatoes. There are fireworks and bonfires and sports and hiking and climbing. You can make an hour long trip to the ocean and see black pebble beaches that look like an alien world.

There are more parks than you can imagine. A park on every block. And some of them are huge and feature giant art installations you can climb on. 500-ft working clocks, rolling hills of recycled rubber you can bounce on, tall dinosaurs you can climb. And don't let that lead you to believe there aren't an incredible amount of plants and flora. It's an ecological paradise and was without question the inspiration for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

Everyone is so friendly. The store owners know you by name and call to you. The children all want to get their photo taken with a white guy. They're adorable and they want to talk English to you. The old ladies will smile and wave.

One time I was at a lake nestled in the mountains, and a guy in his late 40's or early 50's overheard that I lamented not having a camera (pre-smartphone era). He not only spent an hour taking pictures, portraits, etc. for me with his Nikon, but he printed them and sent them to me with a postcard.

The teachers at Kohryo High School (which was sadly shut down) even gave me lucky money.

Hokkaido is a magical place.

If you're a talent manager in AI space and looking for an engineer (EU) to relocate to Hokkaido, kindly contact me.

Fun fact, there's more precedent to Russia successfully invading Paris than Japan. Although to be fair, they had help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Sixth_Coalition

The PRC and Japan is not a remotely comparable situation to the PRC and Taiwan.

The most the PRC could do is potentially sabotage production in Hokkaido, but if they can sabotage production in Hokkaido, they can sabotage it in Arizona.

Imagine HN was Japanese and everyone was talking about how the US was threatening to invade Greenland on a topic about a new plant in Montana.

Let me contribute my Europeanist sentiment by pointing out that the harmonious design of the fab is pure tatemae.

The Japanese professional class care fuckall about PFAS and environmental issues have always been low on the list of priorities. Sorry. I love the Hokkaido produce.

https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-america/chemi...

>I've noticed they tend to have a weird mix of orientalist sentiment along with a "Europe should be able to do this too".

Is it wrong for people in Europe to wish for more cutting-edge/high-margin opportunities in their back yard, especially given the currently atrocious state of the job market?

Like you read news how TSMC's cutting edge chips are made in Taiwan and US fabs, then you looks at European fabs and the most cutting edge are 16/12nm.

People are seeing the lag with their own eyes and wish for some change.

"Everyone except for me is an -ist. I'm an enlightened non-ist."

How much human labor is needed to run a semiconductor fab? This isn't exactly a new shipyard being announced. It seems like the perfect investment for an aging society, and might pay dividends in helping to support the automation of other industries.

Japan also already supplies a lot of critical materials for semiconductor fabrication, and has a lot of experience in the sector. They also have a well-developed domestic mechatronics supply chain. It seems like a fairly straightforward thing.

>The Japanese population trend is unsustainable with long term growth.

There are plenty of people in Tokyo/Osaka who can come to Hokkaido. If the jobs pay well, they will. Japan owes it to an entire generation who were left out in the "employment ice age." Japanese are very smart, can be trained, and should get first shot at the jobs.

>Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration.

According to western media. I (a gaijin) marched in the "anti-immigrant" rally recently myself. I was welcomed to do so. Nobody here wants to see foreigners coming in that destroy vending machines and just start building shanty towns on other peoples' property. Good gaijin are welcomed, bad ones need to leave.

>So unless they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going to be hard.

That's not going to be a problem simply based on the crazy property prices in Kita Hiroshima next door to Chitose. People are obviously coming.

> I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about this

This is a top-level issue within Europe as well.

When the Biden admin began the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS ACT, France, Germany, and the entire EU began a massive lobbying campaign that verged into a trade war [0][1][2].

I went to school with a number of people who became senior EU and EU member state civil servants and leaders, and my college always hosted European dignitaries on a daily basis (along with a yearly gala/bash where all the major EU and EU member state dignitaries would attend with students and professors [3]), and what I saw was the best and brightest remained in the US, and those who climbed the ladder the fastest in EU and EU member state governments tended to have some familial background or network they heavily leveraged. Or they lucked out and joined the right student union during the right election cycle. There is a chronic lack of vision, and more critically - a chronic disinterest to take hard decisions, because the incentive structures are completely misaligned, with MPs essentially overriding careerist technocrats all for the sake of electoral needs, and unlike Asia, businesses are kept at arms length aside from those that are quasi-state owned like Volkswagen, EDF, or Leonardo SPA.

It's almost as if the worst aspects of private sector capitalism morphed with the worst aspects of state capitalism into a legalistic quagmire.

[0] - https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/real-reason...

[1] - https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/en/schadet-der-us-inflation...

[2] - https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/how-europe-should-answe...

[3] - https://euroconf.eu/

China is already catching up. They have a desktop-sized 14nm EUV machine, and Xiami is setting up a 3nm manufacturing line, both entirely with local tech. Thanks USA for the export ban.

Europe cannot actually do a whole of monopolization with ASML without incurring the wrath of its only armed forces, the United States of America. Europe is essentially a military junta controlled by a foreign power. They perceive themselves to be a country because they get to do elections and stuff. Cute

Not that Japan is much different

There are issues with Europe, no doubt. But this kind of comment is ridiculous.

You mean, like America is doing right now while simultaneously destroying its international position and quality of life?

While it may be true that cost advantages are in that specific quartz, it is not some irreplaceable product. It absolutely would be possible to use other quartz, which would require more processing and increase costs.

Do you have any actual examples of things which could not be in sourced into Europe? I am very aware that for many reasons, among them costs, semiconductor fabrication is spread globally. But is there an actual reason why it would be impossible to have every single one of these pieces in some capacity in Europe?

Europe is continually moving further apart politically from both the US and China. Relying on the US for supplies and betting on Chinese, Taiwanese peace seems increasingly foolish. How can Europe secure itself in such an environment, without its own semiconductor supply chain?

Small point worth bringing up, that quartz doesn't go into the ingots that get sliced into wafers (and then doped and diced into chips). It's used to make the crucibles that the ingots are grown in.

It's the one exception in the semiconductor supply chain where Europe is still leading. For all other parts of the value creation Europe is either a niche player at best or completely absent, well into the actual application layer.

And the bits that go into those machines are themselves globally distributed.

Nah, according to Hacker News Europe does nothing except exist and make up rules by 'bureaucrats'.

I think chinnese already made their own "ASML"

This is so grim. What a stark difference to Japan. On one side there is a government setting up a new company, with the aim of competing at the highest end of the most complex technological process in existence. Meanwhile the EU is setting up bureaucrat managed funds to keep the remaining companies, currently suffering from the decline of the German auto industry, alive. Oh and they also paid TSMC to set up a factory, how pathetic.

I don't think that's right. They make one of the many machines you need for semiconductor manufacturing. The NXP fab in Nijmegen makes simple components on a outdated 140nm+ process with 200mm wafers. Unless there is another fab that is making actual modern chips?

Yeah. Who wants to be a military superpower or a manufacturing superpower, when they could be a regulatory superpower.

Imagine a government that considers its people more than tools for the wealthy to use and discard as they see fit! So many regulations meant to protect the plebes!

Universal healthcare? Vacation time you can actually use? Data privacy laws?

What a bunch of losers! Next you’ll tell me they actually give parents time off to raise their kids instead of dumping them into daycare after a month of drudgery and try to call it bonding !

Some of the regulations make sense, like PFAS (correlated with chip manufacturing because HF is needed to etch Silicon and so fluoro-organics make great complements) And they seem to be sincere about it.

https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-america/chemi...

As for the Japanese professional classes, environmental issues are always an afterthought. Don't let the "harmonious" design philosophy of the fab fool you..that's tatemae. (Remember Jobs and pancreatic cancer? There's the price to pay for the shiny toys)

I wont be eating from Hokkaido if this pans out (their milk is overrated imho, but the seafood is top)

Maybe I'll get to eat more Austrian millet in the near future..

Let's be real, it's not America's fault that the EU is dysfunctional in these regards. I'm sure that America does little to actually help, but the biggest problem the EU faces comes from their own internal corruption. Nothing gets done in Europe unless it can be restructured by their corrupt bureaucrats to pay all their friends and relatives, and the process of negotiating how to spread the graft around is highly political and takes many years. This is why the ESA is so dysfunctional despite Arianespace starting from a position of almost commercial launch market dominance at the end of the millennium. They're locked into Ariane 5 development even though it was obsolete on arrival and it will probably take them 20 years to negotiate the corrupt deals that will allow them to design and build something new. This cultural and political dysfunction in European society is entirely the fault of Europeans. India will send people to space before Europe.

non sense

Google deepmind headquarter is located in Europe, US tech dominance just that good to attract talent all of europe

You can see list of AI researcher that comes from europe+asia

Isn't Taiwan also seismically active? They are reports of earthquakes affecting TSMC fabs in january 2025 and april 2024.

Apparently these were not huge blows to their fabs, otherwise we would be talking about that day-in-day-out, but there's always a risk of that happening.

That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first.

Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I guess it depends on what sort of monetary damage the typical Hokkaido earthquake would have on a fab - just result in a bad batch of chips perhaps, or also damage equipment? Obviously it's known that the region is very seismically active (159 earthquakes in Hokkaido so far this year!), but Japan are used to having to build to minimize earthquake damage.

https://earthquaketrack.com/p/japan/hokkaido/recent

China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.

There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.

China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.

I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.

The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]

[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3333468/ch...

China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.

That's a fair point if you only start the clock in 1949, but it's not scaremongering. It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.

The territory we now call "China" is the product of relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own justification is usually "they were Chinese all along" (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute). That's the same logic every empire has ever used.

Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most successful conquest dynasty in human history.

For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not because it lacked capability or ambition.

Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven" belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).

So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook. Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even starts.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges

These do not have a non-hostile invasion purpose. China could have used these peacefully as some sort of "Look at how peaceful we are" PR in getting aid into Palestine, like the US's floating piers, and likely had better results, but they didn't, because these are war machines for invading Taiwan.

Almost all other military buildup China has done can be validly called protecting itself from a US blockade and maintain an ability to protect shipping, but these barges cannot be considered anything else.

>What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon?

China has publicly declared their intentions to take back Taiwan, and publicly declared their intent to be militarily competitive with the United States, and publicly bitches and moans whenever anyone treats Taiwan as the independent country it is.

Stop squeezing your eyes shut.

US needs China to have something for us to rally against, otherwise focus might be on the asset owners vs workers, which would cripple us.

We need to win the AI race! The implication being that there can not be more than one winner…

since WW2: Annexation of Tibet, Taiwan Strait Crisis, Sino-Indian War, Sino-Vietnamese War.

There's heavy investment in spreading lies about China. HackerNews consumes that shit just like american teenagers consume tiktok.

For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia

> How many wars has China started?

In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India completely unprovoked over some border territory. China’s aggression continues unabated even into present day - they’ve been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure on India. That has been China’s way of negotiating all their borders - through violence first. More can always be said but here’s a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.

Here you are defending China when I bet you’d be hard pressed to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken’s Neck on a map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously claiming you don’t know of the Nine Dash line and the violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime claims?

“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?” -Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, directed at Japan

Is that not a threat?

I don't know. China is pretty successful so far in "solving Ukraine" by propping up the moth infested bear pelt USSR animatronic that is Russia.

Taiwan just the last remnant that the losing faction of the China civil war still holds. I don't think that China wants to conquer korea or japan. Having a vassal is usually cheaper than outright conquest and occupation. They just want the US vassals to switch to being China's

“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?”

- Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, in reference to Japan

> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.

Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the legitimate democratic ROC government then.

> That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it

China was happy to invade Tibet and assimilate it's population.

Hard to believe that a government who claims all of South China sea, large parts of India (Arunachal Pradesh) does not want to expand.

Or do you think people of Arunachal Pradesh are also Chinese?

For those unfamiliar with the history, Taiwan’s (ROC) own constitution says it is part of China. Its dispute is with the CCP, not China itself.

Conflating the PRC vs ROC conflict with a China vs Japan conflict is just ignorant.

> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.

"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.

> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”

Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.

Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.

In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.

I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory. It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be "liberated" from Japan.

Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.

> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.

How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.

(Or maybe it could happen through some longer and slower political process. And the country as a whole should agree, with a lot more than 50% agreeing, to a unification.)

> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”

Like above, I hope you're not implying that a culturally similar people in another country #2 somehow gives country #1 power over it's sovereignity.

The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China.

Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.

So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.

> No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.

I don't think what you claim the people want matters (if even true). Look at Tibet and Xinjiang

> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it […]

Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.

[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.

Invasion is one thing, unfavorable trade deals, deindustrialization, and political coercion is more realistic outcome yet all the more undesirable. Imperialism after all often didn't spread spread by outright conquest.

While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown): Nationalistic fervor.

From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.

And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.

And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time

> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port

What, does the Pearl River freeze over in winter?

The CCP has demonstrated that it’s not above killing tens of millions of its own citizens to achieve its political aims. I doubt they’d see ‘pacifying’ an occupied population as much of an issue.

The Ukraine invasion is the biggest boost to China's Taiwan invasion plan ever.

If the world reacts to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan the way we have reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, China will consider that a great victory, and might be able to take Taiwan.

If the US, Japan, and Korea do not commit fully to naval interdiction and blockading China from attacking Taiwan, Taiwan is likely to fall eventually.

China is not Russia. Xi somehow is not as utterly isolated from reality as Putin is. Putin didn't even know that Ukraine would resist, and was entirely convinced that Ukrainians would welcome them. China can build new equipment, and new modern equipment at that. Russia can barely manage to bring ancient tank hulls up to 2000s level and send them to the front line. They are also running out of old hulls to do that with.

China has a sizeable and meaningful air force, modern battlespace management that was shown effective by Pakistan's use in their recent conflict.

Is the current US admin actually competent enough to protect Taiwan even if they want to?

Can you clarify this for me: the Soviets don't exist, so how can they possibly take the whole of Japan - in some future?

If you mean Russia, then no.

Japan defeated the Russian navy in 1905. I guess that means that the Empire of Japan can trivially defeat the Russian Empire if such political entities cared to exist anymore and if the result of a past confrontation was a true benchmark of the current capabilities of the respective armies and economies.

They already are investing in the JSDF. The JS Chokai is in San Diego right now being equipped with Tomahawk cruise missles, but AFAIK the plan is to equipped all 8 Kongo class destroyers with those missles.

And that's just one part of the expansion. But the short version is that the JSDF isn't staying a defensive only institution.

This is more of a humorous take. We already have trouble with one chip nexus is right next to China, and now we build another one? "ha ha". We is humanity. The collective we probably doesn't want a lever of the future controlled by a totalitarian communist ehnostate.

But yes, I agree Japan, Indonesia (as was intended), etc should wise up.

Imagine if China built one base in Mexico or the Caribbean. People would be treating it like a declaration of war. Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as bellicose in any way.