for all the comments related to china vs taiwan, i can assue you it will happen.
and mostly likely xi will do it. it will be his most great achievement.
There are many influencing factors that foreigners may not necessarily be aware of. In fact, this has little to do with TSMC. Rather, it is that China’s domestic public opinion environment has undergone major changes.
Over the past several decades, domestic public opinion was generally pro-American and pro-Western, and it deliberately emphasized the positive side of Taiwan, while providing Taiwan with substantial economic support. But in recent years the situation has changed dramatically. One reason is that Taiwanese public opinion has spread widely through platforms like Xiaohongshu, VPNs, and other channels(Like the Japanese, they pray for the Three Gorges Dam to collapse and drown large numbers of Chinese people, and they celebrate when natural disasters happen in China.). People have gradually realized that Taiwan is not what we once expected it to be; many people there are pro-Japanese, and economic support from mainland China would only have the opposite effect.
This has actually happened many times in history. There is an old saying: some people only fear force and do not respect virtue. In addition, drastic changes in the international situation, and especially Trump coming to power, have profoundly changed the perceptions of the Chinese people. One can say he was the most critical factor. From that point on, the pro-American camp within China has had very little room to speak. He tore off the so-called fig leaf of democracy and helped the Chinese people establish confidence in their own system.
Regarding the Taiwan issue, mainstream public opinion almost universally supports resolving it through force. Hong Kong has already demonstrated the drawbacks of resolving issues through non-violent means. In many matters, it is actually the Chinese people who are pushing the Communist Party forward, while the Party instead needs to restrain public sentiment and act rationally. Everyone wants to fight and to resolve the issue completely through swift action. If TSMC is destroyed, it does not matter; we cannot use it anyway, and high-end chips have long been embargoed against us. The ones affected will not be us, but others.
Of course, based on my frequent experience using the PTT forum, Taiwanese young people themselves are also deeply divided. Many people have seen China’s progress and are not that hostile, but many others are still trapped in indoctrination. The most ironic thing about democracy is that, in many cases, it controls people’s thinking more severely than so-called non-democratic countries, especially in small states. But none of this is important, because the overall trend is set and unstoppable.
(It seems that no one is paying attention to the fact that China is imposing its most severe embargo on Japan, because the United States has just invaded Venezuela and is threatening Greenland. The United Kingdom and France have just bombed a certain country. You see, when Western countries are doing bad things themselves, they feel embarrassed to accuse others)
Personally, aside from Russian literature, I now prefer American literature, which I think is underestimated in China. I really like that film adaptation, but what the film expresses is something else, not the same as the novel’s core theme.
My own understanding is that American literature has at least three themes that are very distinctive and different from Europe(or other countries). One is the depiction of desolation and human loneliness before the American continent was developed into a prosperous land. Another is the pursuit of the American Dream, where people achieve success through relentless struggle. The third is what this novel expresses: what happens after success? Money and career cannot solve all problems; people need more to fill an entire life.
I think this kind of contradiction is expressed most clearly in American literature and is also most worth articulating within the American cultural context. This is because its commodity economy and social transformation have been too successful, and it lacks the kind of historical entanglements that Europe has to dilute these problems. As a result, this sense of emptiness stands out even more sharply and demands a more urgent response.
I don’t know if there are horror films like this, but I once saw something similar in the TV series WandaVision. She creates an illusion in which she and Vision are a standard middle-class couple, well-fed and well-clothed, with the visuals in black and white. This made it feel like a horror story to me. Why? Because you feel as if they lack nothing, yet they seem like empty shells: their lives are filled with commodities, and all their actions seem stripped of a spiritual dimension.
Of course, I don’t think that America’s secular success means it has no spiritual world; rather, the former has been so successful that the latter has been greatly neglected. The purpose of American literature should be to depict, under the success of this commodity economy, what people’s inner lives have actually become, and what they ought to pursue. This, to me, is its most distinctive quality.
Though no longer pertinent explicitly, the original sin of America is a potent literary force. We still feel it's sting in our African American literature nearly axiomatically. Almost by definition, any southern gothic literature will revolve around the effects of slavery, which includes some of our greatest novels.
Per the Great Gatsby, the story itself is one of the most powerful arcs out there: The Hero arc with a disillusionment ending. It's not exactly a negative change arc for the protagonist (Nick), but it's meant to feel like one. Nick is physically better off than he starts out, but his opinions and feelings about the world at large are negative. He has grown up, fought the dragon, healed the sick king, beaten the bully, encouraged the coward, and gotten the damsel. But Fitzgerald adeptly makes them all hollow. It's a great and quick read. A really tight plot and good prose.
Yes. I’ve probably only read Gone with the Wind and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Still, it feels like a fair share of American novels touch on this theme to varying degrees.
I've read thousands of books. There are good novels everywhere, and no country has the exclusivity of any theme.
> One is the depiction of desolation and human loneliness before the American continent was developed into a prosperous land.
Of course, classical European literature didn't focus on the American wilderness.
Though the most famous book on this theme is probably Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. And I enjoyed T.E. Lawrence' Seven Pillars of Wisdom which most people know through the film; the Arabian desert was a good place for loneliness in the wilderness.
> Another is the pursuit of the American Dream, where people achieve success through relentless struggle.
Like wise, the American Dream is an American myth, which is rarely the focus outside of the USA. But searching success through relentless struggle is a frequent theme. For instance, Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir or Maupassant's Bel-ami. These are from two of the most famous classical French authors, but there are many novels about hard-working people that reach success.
> The third is what this novel expresses: what happens after success? Money and career cannot solve all problems; people need more to fill an entire life.
As you like Russian literature, I suppose you've read Goncharov's Oblomov and Chekov's theater, especially Uncle Vania. That theme is central in one of the most famous French novel, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The excellent Italian writer Alberto Moravia also has many novels about this, the most famous being Il disprezzo and my favourite being Gli indifferenti. I also like D'Annunzio's Il piacere much more than The Great Gatsby. I would argue that variations of this theme are universal, with old writings like the Bibles's Qohelet and even more Sumer's Gilgamesh.
I think what you said makes a lot of sense, and my earlier comment wasn’t very rigorous. More accurately, the most interesting thing about the United States is that it has almost stripped away all other influencing factors—no deep history, no influence from classical literature. If we set aside the atrocities committed against the Native Americans, it’s as if the country started from an untouched, resource-rich continent and rapidly evolved into the most advanced capitalist society. This makes the contrast between material wealth and the spiritual world especially stark and easy to observe.
Balzac is quite fantastic. And also not great for you if you have too much empathy for the characters but decide to read 10 of his books/stories in a row.
I know Zola, but I don't know why I haven't read his works yet. Just by reading the introduction, I know I would probably love all his works. Maybe it's because I've been reading more history and less fiction in recent years.
There are some subtleties in Gatsby that most people miss, and isn't even addressed in the article.
Jay Gatsby (James Gatz) is probably Jewish.
Nick Carraway is probably gay, but at least bisexual.
Both of these traits forced people into lower castes this era in high-status society. To me the lens of the book is repeatedly the failure of "if only I can win them over" slowly becoming the unsatisfying "these people were always assholes." Whether it's parties, a potential spouse, or important friends, the entire concept of class structure is poison. If people are good people, it shouldn't matter how they present themselves... that's just what I've always taken away from it. It seems like a theme that someone with Fitzgerald's background would want to convey, especially someone with that background who enjoined the company of people like Hemingway. And I think that's been a theme of American culture since reconstruction.
As a Chinese-American, in my humble opinion the Great Gatsby is the 1920's version of "On the Road", "American Psycho" and "Liar's Poker". In another words, it is about the American spirit to chase money/success/glamour in spite of the protagonist's preconceived understanding that doing so would end up ultimately futile and empty.
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgasmic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... And one fine morning- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." IMHO, the green light is the dopamine rush of the American spirit.
Your notion of the American inner life that it somehow does exists I agree with but it is imho a far cry from stereotypical notion of inner life of quiet contemplation, familial and communal obligation in the European or Chinese manner. You can look no further than in this forum where people talk about accumulating material wealth whether by pursuing a well-paid tech job at a BigTech company or raising money or bootstrapping as an "indie". And people here will have read great books and understand the notions that "money do not buy happiness" or that "family is everything", but put the same people under your so-called WandaVision test of illusions of two choices - they will, 9/10 times choose a morally compromising job BigCo, business pursuit AdTech or AI Slop that favors material accumulation at the expense of true self-actualization (Gatsby vs. Nick).
IMHO the pursuit of "the green light" for the "orgasmic future" IS the American inner life, whether it be from the pioneers going West, to Italian immigrants in Brooklyn to Jersey Shore/Soprano's, to the rich Chinese Fu-Er-Dai shopping/clubbing fashion in Manhattan to the Indian immigrants going West again to switch job from WiPro to FAANG E6, the pursuit of accumulation and glamour is the inner life, dare I say "it's not even about the money" - but a spiritual pursuit of a lifetime of running to make one feel whole like Gatsby did . And that we can't help ourselves - like "boats against" rolling bubbles and crashes of the American stock markets or TikTok trends, thinking "but this time it's different", but "borne back ceaselessly" into our past selves of emptiness that we were trying to fill up with wealth and social status in the 1st place.
I recently read an American novel that gave me a deeper insight into what you were saying. I don’t know its English title, but roughly translating the Chinese title back, it’s California Gold. It’s about the son of a miner who dreams of striking it rich; step by step he becomes a wealthy man in California. The story has some moral sense, too. It was probably a very popular novel in the U.S. at one point.
But I felt the ending was rather unsatisfying, because it simply stops after he succeeds—lacking the kind of depth we usually expect from a great novel. Yet I also think that’s part of the charm of American fiction: it’s simple, rough, and fun to read. Kind of like the original Godfather novel. Of course, the deeper aspects require other literary works to explore. I haven’t read much, so I’m not sure who in America does it best—maybe Faulkner? On the Road, The Great Gatsby… I read those in college, and even after all these years, the impression they left on me is unforgettable.
> I don’t know its English title, but roughly translating the Chinese title back, it’s California Gold. It’s about the son of a miner who dreams of striking it rich; step by step he becomes a wealthy man in California. The story has some moral sense, too. It was probably a very popular novel in the U.S. at one point.
Based on the author's name being more prominent than the book's title, from what I picked up while working at a library I don't think there was anything special about this book. He probably wrote a lot and had a reliable set of readers who looked for his name, akin to Nora Roberts or a few others I can half-remember.
> But I felt the ending was rather unsatisfying, because it simply stops after he succeeds—lacking the kind of depth we usually expect from a great novel.
I find this a lot with American TV and movies (not so much with books as I tend to read non-fiction).
Tying up all ends, sequentially and perfectly. It makes it all very unsatisfying.
I just thought of a perfect example: The Graduate. Many people like that uncertain ending—although they eloped, the camera keeps rolling, and we see them shift from initial happiness to confusion. A beautiful, simple ending is certainly nice, but an ending like this is far more unforgettable.
German filmmaker Christian Petzold often gets some flak for his ambiguous endings, but it's amusing that he actually follows European cinema tradition. It's his audience (even in Europe) that got more used to neat, fully wrapped endings from American media.
"Orgiastic future" - Fitzgerald simply assumed the word "orgiastic" existed, as a more clinical word for "orgasmic". His editors pointed out it did not, but he liked it more and insisted it be used.
I think there’s a nuance. Chasing the low millions, and therefore financial security and comfort, is not the same as chasing billions, which would be Gatsby territory
Banality of evil. Promotion-driven/mortgage driven development. NIBMY. But don't mind me, I'm guilty of this more than most people but IMHO I think at least it's important to acknowledge the culpability of the affluent 10% people vs. the 1%. IMHO, we are worse than the 1% for enabling this society.
They don't chase money, success, or glamour. In fact, they're chasing the complete opposite of what Gatsby was chasing: spirituality. Their relationships are honest. They have no desire for money to influence.
In fact, on most spectrums, American Pyscho and On the Road are on totally opposite ends.
Sure, they share some themes like disillusionment and emptiness, but their core messages couldn't be farther apart.
Mi Mexicanito, sinceramente de este chinito, "On the Road" is imho about all about these gringo's chase for cultural/spiritual accumulation - just with beatnik fashion/prose than with a briefcase.
>Teresa (who is from Mexico/o la conquista sexual temporal de nuestro supuesto héroe en "busca de la verdad") didn’t want Sal to leave, but he told her that he had to. He had sex with Teresa in the barn his last night in the area, and the next morning Teresa brought him breakfast. They agreed to meet in New York whenever Teresa could get there, though Sal says they both knew this wouldn’t happen. Sal left and hitchhiked back to L.A., arriving in the early morning. There, he bought a bus ticket to Pittsburgh and spent most of his remaining money on food for the trip.
My reading of "On the Road" is Jack Kerouac's ultimate realization that their restless wandering is really a pursuit of narcissism of sex, jazz and drugs to fill up their empty inside. Look at the real personal lives of the Beatniks and Kerouac's later readings (e.g., Dharma Bums) for the confirmations or disconfirmations. Or look to the spiritual children of the Beatniks, the Western backpackers or the spiritual seekers to Mexico or Thailand (privileged, naive and ultimately exploitative and conformist when the chips are down).
/ My reading of On the Road is Jack Kerouac’s ultimate realization that their restless wandering is really a narcissistic chase—sex, jazz, drugs—to fill an inner void.
I don’t think the novel supports “narcissism” as a central answer that explains everything. The book is much more about restless hunger for experience and living in the moment. And jazz in particular isn’t framed as a symptom of emptiness; it functions as an aesthetic ideal that they’re trying to model their lives on.
Also, there is no ultimate realization in the book. There's ambivalence and fascination with Dean and the road, as well as increasing awareness of the costs and disappointments that life can bring, but it's not an ultimate indictment on it.
> Or look to the spiritual children of the Beatniks, the Western backpackers…
I'm not really interested in how it was interpreted later by various groups of people.
> privileged, naive and ultimately exploitative and conformist…
Conformity is neither something they desire not something they end up doing. In fact, their defining trait is the refusal of conventional stability.
Thank you for your response. My last word is one of my favorite film is "Y tu mamá También" where my favorite character de la película es Mexico, life is like foam, so give yourself away like the sea. Puedes vivir el momento, pero tu posición social es para siempre. Hope you have a great day/year.
> Because you feel as if they lack nothing, yet they seem like empty shells: their lives are filled with commodities, and all their actions seem stripped of a spiritual dimension.
This is exactly the situation I am in. I really really don't know what to do.
For me, I often have similar feelings. However, I have enjoyed reading since I was a child, so I usually know how to pass the time. There are countless excellent works, both novels and nonfiction, that one could never finish reading.
I am always a strong advocate of doing volunteer/nonprofit work.
Folks on HN have some truly valuable skills that could make a huge difference. NPO work also brings together passionate, like-minded people. It’s an automatic community.
Figure out what is important to you. Just listen and don't force it. Don't feel guilty or shameful of where you are; it's ok. Be present in your feelings including the difficult ones.
> My own understanding is that American literature has at least three themes that are very distinctive and different from Europe... Another is ... relentless struggle
> In my limited experience of Russian literature, the struggle doesn't lead to success!
There is a meme comparing different countries’ literature:
France: “I would die for love.”
England: “I would die for honor.”
America: “I would die for freedom.”
Russia: “I will die.”
The harsh climate and scarce resources in Russia prevent it from producing something like the American Dream. People there seem to be more pessimistic.
What now??? Russia is one of the most resource-rich countries on the planet! They are just very inefficient in doing anything with it. The country and all its people should all be among the wealthiest on the planet.
The impression of Russia as a resource-rich nation didn’t really take shape until after World War II. The widespread use of oil and natural gas only spans about a century, which hasn’t been enough time to fundamentally alter the literary essence of Russia.
And USSR is really not good at produce normal goods…
From the perspective of an otaku, that's an ironic conclusion. The confusion regarding the neglected interiority was a conscious decision by the mainstream in the beginning was it not?
That's perhaps not to say that the otaku lifestyle as is today is preferable, but it always more about the transcendent experiences they were reaching for, an activity labelled childish by their peers. Meaning was never an issue, just actualization.
Also that the "spiritual world" (i.e. religion) in America has been colonized by money, consumption and commodities as well, which has drained all the spirituality from it. Religion in America is as desolate of meaning and sustenance as the American Western Frontier. You have to be a heretic to find spirituality that's worth anything here.
Ancestral Americans really do not have a "spiritual world," in my opinion, as acquisitiveness and power games suffuse even our churches, spiritual movements, and fraternal societies. The emptiness you delineate is very integral to the long-term American experience. As a reaction, addictive and manic personalities are endemic.
You reminded me of that experiment a social media influencer did earlier. American Christian churches refused to provide her with help, but other religions did.
Those churches referred her to food pantries that were funded and operated by donations and volunteers from multiple churches.
They help people so often that there are entire subsets of organizations dedicated to different areas of need. Food, housing, disaster relief, clothing, rehab, women’s shelters.
One church in North Carolina that wasn’t involved with a local food pantry did just help her directly.
In order to ignore all that you’d almost have to think that the social media influencer was just trying to get attention…
I think the saying is "missing the forest for the trees.[1]"
Referring someone to another food bank or resource is not addressing or owning the immediate problem, which is what the experiment showed. Those organizations failed at their primary objective and instead of re-evaluating why they failed they hid behind process and procedure and how they were being tricked since it wasn't a "real" problem.
There was a proper way to handle this situation as anyone who has worked or called into customer service or tech support where their issue was addressed no matter what the internal structure of the organization was.
That sounds like a one-off anecdote. For my anecdote, when the government was shutdown and people on food stamps needed help, I counted 8 churches in my neighborhood serving meals to an influx of people, which aligns with my experience throughout my entire life. Maybe some churches don't help people as much as they should, but that seems to go against a core philosophy of the church and my experience with dozens of churches across America.
meanwhile my BYD stock didn't go up... Hope 2026 this will change.
For China, this is ultimately a good thing. BYD employs a large number of workers and has factories in many developing countries such as Brazil and Central Asia..., creating numerous job opportunities. Many of BYD's factories in China are located around non-first-tier cities, where workers may earn only around 5,000 to 6,000 yuan. However, considering China's extremely low cost of living and deflation, this salary is sufficient to support a family and drive more consumption in the market.
The stock market is forward looking. If people already expected that BYD would sell 4.6M vehicles in 2025, it was already accounted for in the stock valuation. For the stock to go up in price, they need to do even better than people expect.
I genuinely suspect that they might suddenly launch an attack during some future military exercise. Yesterday I was discussing investments with friends, and both China and the United States are competing for and stockpiling non-renewable resources. As long as a war does not actually break out, this kind of hoarding will not stop. So I bought some non-ferrous metals funds.
comes a long way.. they have some pc models sell in china but i guess only IT dev people would give it a try. china is pushing the state-owned companies and civil servant to use linux (some linux distro build by china company and replace windows and all America product) and the china-build CPU, but LooongArch also seems is not the #1 choice. I hope they can chooose LoongArch and built some debian based OS to use. This would be a 100 millon user market..
Also seems russia is interested to do some stuff based on LoongArch
just found one on JD: 14inch, LoongArch 3A6000, 16G mem, 512G storage, 4G GPU storage, sold for 6499RMB around 920USD
There are many influencing factors that foreigners may not necessarily be aware of. In fact, this has little to do with TSMC. Rather, it is that China’s domestic public opinion environment has undergone major changes.
Over the past several decades, domestic public opinion was generally pro-American and pro-Western, and it deliberately emphasized the positive side of Taiwan, while providing Taiwan with substantial economic support. But in recent years the situation has changed dramatically. One reason is that Taiwanese public opinion has spread widely through platforms like Xiaohongshu, VPNs, and other channels(Like the Japanese, they pray for the Three Gorges Dam to collapse and drown large numbers of Chinese people, and they celebrate when natural disasters happen in China.). People have gradually realized that Taiwan is not what we once expected it to be; many people there are pro-Japanese, and economic support from mainland China would only have the opposite effect.
This has actually happened many times in history. There is an old saying: some people only fear force and do not respect virtue. In addition, drastic changes in the international situation, and especially Trump coming to power, have profoundly changed the perceptions of the Chinese people. One can say he was the most critical factor. From that point on, the pro-American camp within China has had very little room to speak. He tore off the so-called fig leaf of democracy and helped the Chinese people establish confidence in their own system.
Regarding the Taiwan issue, mainstream public opinion almost universally supports resolving it through force. Hong Kong has already demonstrated the drawbacks of resolving issues through non-violent means. In many matters, it is actually the Chinese people who are pushing the Communist Party forward, while the Party instead needs to restrain public sentiment and act rationally. Everyone wants to fight and to resolve the issue completely through swift action. If TSMC is destroyed, it does not matter; we cannot use it anyway, and high-end chips have long been embargoed against us. The ones affected will not be us, but others.
Of course, based on my frequent experience using the PTT forum, Taiwanese young people themselves are also deeply divided. Many people have seen China’s progress and are not that hostile, but many others are still trapped in indoctrination. The most ironic thing about democracy is that, in many cases, it controls people’s thinking more severely than so-called non-democratic countries, especially in small states. But none of this is important, because the overall trend is set and unstoppable.
(It seems that no one is paying attention to the fact that China is imposing its most severe embargo on Japan, because the United States has just invaded Venezuela and is threatening Greenland. The United Kingdom and France have just bombed a certain country. You see, when Western countries are doing bad things themselves, they feel embarrassed to accuse others)
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