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US-China relations
OpinionLetters

Letters | US tech sanctions on China are a failure to learn from history

  • Readers discuss past and present US embargoes and Cathay Pacific workers’ industrial action

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A researcher plants a semiconductor on an interface board at Tsinghua Unigroup’s research centre in Beijing. Photo: Reuters
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I was recently given an old copy of Life International, dated December 7, 1959, featuring what was a new series on the great cities of the world. Han Suyin wrote about Hong Kong, which had to grapple with a stream of refugees from China and embargoes. Many said Hong Kong was doomed. Here is a short excerpt:

“The US placed an embargo on Hong Kong, and it worked both ways: it prohibited Hong Kong from sending goods to China, but it also prohibited Hong Kong from accepting goods from China or North Korea for re-export to the US. That was when the refugees stepped in. ‘Instead of buying these goods from China,’ they said, ‘we shall set up factories and make these things right here in Hong Kong.’ Factories were built.”

My take is that history is repeating itself. With its microprocessor and other embargoes against China, the United States hasn’t learned the lessons of history. Its embargoes are futile, China will develop its own advanced technologies and build its own factories, and then the Intels and Microns will have lost considerable market share worldwide.

Michel Demuynck, Discovery Bay

Hong Kong doesn’t need industrial action

As Hong Kong shakes off the shackles of Covid isolation, it is unacceptable that the Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants Union is using this moment to implement its “work-to-rule” industrial action. Their selfishness is reflected in their demands for more rest time and their puerile Facebook post, “Don’t rush me”.
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