Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Asianometry" channel.

Really, in a way, what has happened in South Korea with the Chaebol in the 1980s-1990s, is a microcosm of what happened in Japan with the Zaibatsu in the 1930s-1940s, with their similar corrupt influence on their national governments (except that Japan had colonized Manchuria and the Zaibatsu wanted a slice of that pie). The difference being that the Zaibatsu was partially forcably broken up immediately after WW2 by the Supreme Commander Allied Powers (of Japan), and the Chaebol had not faced such an imposition from losing an international war in the mid-20th century. Both have played a leading role of the elites in these countries, and their political and economic effect of these mega-company industrial combines (controlled by a small number of families and very wealthy individuals) is both beneficial to their countries (in their growth phase), but also malignant in stifling small to medium business competition and growth and hence employment of Koreans long-term, as well as skewing national politics to their own conservative interests. Particularly, since like Japan, Korea is undergoing an aging population demographic crises since 2000, with low immigration to offset that economic malaise.
189
Essentially correct with another caveat; Australia's ancient soils are poor in nitrogen and phosphorus and sometimes acidic (strangely). Coupled with regular droughts makes inland farming in Australia a real food production challenge, even for experienced farmers. It's a dry continent with ancient depleted soils (only exceeded in dryness worldwide by Antarctica) with about 10 already named dryland deserts from West to East, South to North covering two thirds of the landmass which have only 3% of Australia's population within them. The deserts are not agriculturally useless; only marginal carrying capacity for dryland cattle and sheep ranching (which is contraversial because hard hoof animals like cattle and sheep damage the duricust and cause erosion).
46
South Africa was a mixed developed economy in the past. The whites had privileges, and relative comfort, but the black townships were poor and dangerous. However, since especially the liberalization of South Africa in the 1990s and the end of Apartheid, South Africa became far from improving or staying the same. South Africa is becoming a failed state based on radical violence and theft. The ANC is still radicalized and in charge of government. They are now racially targeting whites, but this is far from the end of their problems. The criminality and nepotism of SA members of government is sucking the wealth out of SA. To distract their growing opposition over their nepotism, these politicians project racism towards whites as a kind of scapegoat. Nevertheless, SA is becoming increasingly dangerous and lawless for most people. This does not help the efficient running of public utilities, such as power generation. Coal turned into sludge because these mines were not properly drained or the coal tested and dried before attempting to combust it. See my point about nepotism and corruption inefficiencies in SA.
19
Vietnam is far from a paradise (it does not exist anywhere), but Vietnam is a lovely country scenically. Furthermore, Vietnam has not gone down the dictatorship road; causing the violent and destructive excesses in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cambodia. I don't quite understand how and why Vietnam has avoided this, but it's modern (and ancient) history does have a singular focus which may be a function of it's political stability; kick out all armed invaders (this is not a statement of religious or racial xenophobia that has blighted the history of many other nations), but an application of political independence. This history of resistance is still quite recent in Vietnam, i.e. the Vietnam War (which the Vietnamese may have a different title), finished only 50 years ago, and was singularly devastating is the nicest way i could describe it. Furthermore, coupled with the productive work ethic of the average Vietnamese, the lack of theocratic threats that plague the Middle East and the high social standing of education, gives Vietnam a definite edge in current times. Vietnam, if governed quite well as it seems to be, even without meaningful democracy, looks to have quite a bright future.
11
Cheap Australian high quality pit coal, may have had a hand in decline of the UK's collieries in general.
11
It's a bit depressing, the incompetant hand of governments and of bad business management by foreign owners. Manufacturing is as much about skills and good management, and to loose all that is near irrecoverable. Again a turgid story of winners and loosers, businesses and countries economically failing as much as succeeding at high cost to standard of living, wealth and education. This commentator, intelligent and well researched as his topics are, is inclined to report as much on the failures as the sucesses.
10
"A little bit of a cash crunch", is equivalent to saying; "a volcano that erupted quietly". It's a massive understatement. Methinks China is one giant powder keg in the property market.
8
Central planned economies and socialism leads to famines. For example, famines occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s with forced collectivization and Stalin's war against the Kulaks (well-off peasant farmers in the Soviet Union who resisted the central collectivization and seizure of private property), leading to the Holodomor in the Ukraine. Mao Zedong caused famines in the 1950s (infamously the Great Leap Forward) via a similar forced collectivization scheme of mainland Chinese farmers coupled with falsified or exaggerated crop yeilds on the farm communes, with the added burden of the insane mania of making backyard steel, which took away further agricultural labour and deforested the hills as the people hacked down trees to feed the backyard furnaces. Sparrows were also hunted in the tens of thousands with another erronoeus proclimation by Mao that sparrows were eating grain, whose presence actually was controlling insect pests in grain crops, such as locusts. The combined result was catastrophe. Similar collectivization and autarky schemes in Cambodia in the 1970s under the Khmer Rouge lead to famine and starvation there. While famines did occur elsewhere (notably Ethiopia in the 1980s), which could not be attributed to collectivization (instead due to overpopulation and severe doughts there), the majority of severe famines in the 20th century occurred due to socialist (mainly Communist) centralized governments deploying forced agricultural collectivization.
7
You're interconnected to global demand energy supplies, whether you like it or not. Even if boring to you, you can't escape it even if you decide not to own a car when living in an inner city area because of ample available public transport. Most urban public transport in Australia is subsidized anyway, except the state government doesn't tell you that. So a bus or train ride requires energy (either provided by diesel, natural gas or electricity grid). Yes, your emissions are lower per capita than if you drive a car (per kilometre) or got rideshare, but it's not zero. Also, buying your food from the supermarket (even if you walk to one); how did it get to there? How much energy and fossil fuel did the farmer invest (in diesel and fertilizer) to grow your food? All modern cities would collapse within a week without the energy and food input network.
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Venus actually comes in 5th for difficulty landing on any planetary body in the solar system (you mentioned the sun, which is a star not a planet). Try "landing" on any of the gas giants; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune :-)
5
Just as well HK did not develop a leading-edge electronic industry, or the CCP would have it all now. Electronics or the size of your chip components (in nanometres), are all important. That's why Taiwan should not be the next domino allowed to fall to the CCP.
4
Well researched & interesting topic. Many houses and apartments globally are over-leveraged (meaning too expensive). The value of property against (average) wage earning capacity is now over 2.5 times more than my parents had in the 1960s and 1970s. Meaning that overall (average, not high end) property prices is now over 2.5 times more expensive than its repayment capacity, than it was 40 years ago. We call this "progress". Yes, for the banks and real-estate agents until the property bubble bursts.
4
With you last statement, when the "Chinese government", I assume you mean the CCP. And build technology, I assume you mean becoming leaders in chip design, which seems unlikely now but let's assume the CCP succeed with their "thousand talents program" and become leaders in chip design in 5 to 10 years; what about the rest of the world after that? This will not be (unlike Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) about selling technology without political strings attached. The CCP attaches political strings particularly to trade, so the awful realization that the CCP could be controlling a company, similar to the current Taiwanese TSMC in 10 years, fills me with dread on how the CCP will eventually totally control the global trade of smart phones, mobile networks, laptops and computers, setting benchmarks and bottlenecks in trade in electronics as it sees fit. And furthermore wage war with impunity, with similar chip technology going into leading edge missile guidance. Any good to come out of that???
4
First time i heard of a major CEO or business owner committing suicide over the failure of his business and to his workforce (Vebjørn Tandberg). I'm not ferocious, but let's see that happening with more corporate leaders, instead of lquidating their businesses and running off to live in tax-free havens, hence avoiding their responsibilities to long-term workers and shareholders alike.
4
I love the way that the phrase, "people's democratic republic", belongs to dictatorships across the globe. Like Voltaire said of the Holy Roman Empire (that it was not holy, nor Roman, nor an empire), a similar vein can be made of "people's democratic republic"; that's it's not a democracy nor for the people (but a clique of powerful ideologically driven un-elected individuals, which treat the property of the state as their private estate). As for a republic (a Western idea); it's half right. The Politburo in Beijing is indeed a senate of sorts, but the officials arrive there through Byzantine-like back room deals, reeking of cronyism, and it's a rubber-stamp body for the dictator.
3
Australia has lost the technology and skills to manufacture cars and tens of thousands of jobs as a result, not just in the main automobile manufacturing plants, but auto parts makers supplying them as well. The wretched pollies, bureaucrats and economists plotting this decline ought to be kicked repeatedly in the shins (or higher) for letting the Australian car industry crumble away, probably forever. If you say; "Australia is small with higher wages", Sweden is even smaller with even higher wages and still been able to retain Saab and Volvo. Hockey was the grave digger and Abbot delivered the funeral eulogy of the Australian car industry.
3
Xi Jinping, like Adolf Hitler, aims for industrial autarky (particularly in chip design, chip fab and in advanced microprocessors). You might question the obsessive aims that Xi has for this goal, which are highly likely to be very nationalistic and not to free market norms which now dominate in the international world of electronics. This technology is always changing and advancing anyway, so it's a singularly difficult thing to do under favourable political and economic circumstances, particularly under autarky. China governed by the CCP faces additional technology advancement challenges, more acute than under free market democracies, and that's in it's political environment of oppression at home and abroad, a copycat culture that downplays and undermines R & D, and corruption more acute than experienced in a political system with fair legal courts (democracies again). While it's true that the Soviet Union (under a similar government as China's) advanced further for a decade and a half in rocketry and space exploration in the 1950s and 1960s than competing democratic powers, this was mainly due to the exceptional technocratic powress of talented individuals such as Sergei Korolev (he languished 10 years in a gulag before his rocketry expertise was finally utilised by the Soviet government under Khrushchev). This is unlikely to ever happen under CCP China where the current high end chip technology is implemented by a complex technology supply chain, involving a number of democratic countries (e.g United States, the Netherlands and Taiwan) from the chip design to the chip fab.
3
Good economic theories, except no one, repeat no one, tests or even tries to gauge the effect on the overall economy from corruption (political kickbacks, classes of politically favoured people, paying to skirt around the law and so on). This is a under-studied element of political-economic culture. Note that Taiwan is generally good in curbing corruption, wheras mainland China is the opposite in this regard. I belive that the level of systemic corruption is a function of rule of law, and independant judiciary, which mainland China lacks and must have a deeply negative economic impact.
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Hence, it was bad timing and lack of nimbleness by Siemens in a middle of a semiconductor falling price crises. North Tyneside and Northumberland, probably, have a lasting bitter taste about the collapse of the Siemens fab. I doubt the UK electronics industry can recover, without massive government support which goes against the grain of UK government policy, particularly to revitalize industry and jobs in the North-East.
2
This guy likes to reveiw sinking or obliterating Western businesses in comparison with Asian ones (Kodak's short sightedness does deserve it's fate though). With the exception of the Soviet Union, whom he seems to like (space exploration excepted, which was really interesting and leading for a while), this large mainly totalitarian state which had little business acumen anywhere except in making international arms sales (until Ukraine invasion) and in selling petroleum products (likewise). It is interesting to hear the history of Asian business and how mega corporations rose to prominence. Furthermore, in sharp competitive tech businesses like electronics and imaging for example, todays heros are zeros in two decades time, while the reverse is true; a little know company today under dynamic and insightful technology design and market management becomes tomorrow's giant.
2
You forgot the political dimension, and hence economic effects. Huawei is intricately connected to the CCP. Despite all the efforts to supress information at home and abroad, the CCP's moral turpitude is leaking out into the mainstream Western media. The majority of human beings don't like criminality, so the CCP and Huawei are now battling uphill against a darkening corporate image problem (shared together; Huawei's cost of being close to the CCP or CCP Inc.) which will probably long-term curtail their consumer market outside China, at least in North America, Japan and the EU. At home in mainland China, because of rising political tensions against the West and nationalism, Hauwei may get more market share as Chinese people buy less Apple and Samgsung products etc there (but this is likely to be short-term unless the CCP outright clamps down on these companies). So, i agree. Huawei will adapt to this TSMC chip ban and shrinking overseas markets, but i now doubt that it will someday overtake and supplant Apple or Samsung outside China as it's dream.
2
The federal Australian Labor Party was out of power for 23 years; 1949 to 1972. Not 32 years.
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Good one, although environments hate the idea of "fossil fuels", even like natural gas that has less carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and soot emissions than coal combustion. Note that the majority of the world's electricity is still produced by thermal coal burning, particularly China's which is now the most polluting country in the world (in most areas but notably with electricity production) with scant environmental emissions controls. Particularly, compared to other developed Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Natural gas is used for more than electricity production. It is also used for glass making, making of ceramics, transport, domestic gas mains (and bottled) supplies for cooking and heating and so on. Note that environmentalists love EVs, and there is a massive opening market for such automobiles, but without at least a quarter of their large electricity consumption provided for battery recharge provided by renewable electricity supply from the power grid, they are not "green energy; their CO2 output is comparible with efficient modern ICE light automobiles, particularly diesel power and hybrid engines.
2
I hate to catagorize what is an enormous population of people with very diverse backgrounds and histories, but the "Asian" (or East Asian) concept of filial or obedience to your parents bothers me, because it reeks of authoritarianism which to me seems like a midwife assisting the birth to eventual feudalism and tyranny (we can't escape politics even in the family). The effect is psychological in children, but can lead to long-lasting cultural effects because this carries on in adults to the next generation excetera. The political acme of authoritarianism is to "do what you are told or to heed authority". Exactly what the collective works of free thinkers in history, such as Albert Einstein, Socretes, Confucius and Mencius fought against. So in the past, East Asian people brought forth free thinkers in less authoritarian times as well.
2
I respect this guy's commentary on chip and electronic advancement, but this promotion of the recent 7nm Huawei Mate 50 Pro phone is a fairly transparent propaganda plug for the CCP. Don't buy Huawei anything if you don't want to be spied on by the biggest and richest totalitarian government of the world that commits ethnic and religious crimes against humanity. That goes for ZTE or any CCP corporation.
1
Bitcoin is decentralizing crypto-currency (yes currency; any token or algorithm holding a monetary value). It enables direct fungible digital transactions nationally or internationally, without needed banks or financiers, or the government (who take their cut of transactions in fees and taxes). Wheras digital RMB is anti-cryptocurrency. Every transaction is funnelled and recorded tbrough the Central Bank of China (which is directly controlled by the CCP). This enables the CCP to monitor and tax all digital transactions, and the find anyone whom they deem "hostile to the state", for holding anti-CCP values or to be pro-democracy for example, as the digital RMB will contain metadata, like your location when transacted. These "naughty" individuals then can get frozen out of the economy of all China by having all their transactions frozen (including any day-to-day transaction to buy food, energy, accomodation and medicine) and have all their digital assests (illegally) seized by the state, including their bank account, with no guarentee of any of it returning. This is what socialism means. There are no private property rights in China. Whereas, in the West the police can track you (if you have committed a felony), by the use of your credit card (if in your name), or by your mobile phone. However, unless the prosecution lawyers can prove that most of your property was acquired through criminal activity, the state cannot confiscate your private property and bank account (unlike the CCP who mostly does), and which has to be returned to you once you've served your sentence.
1
I'm not strong on numismatics, but the Japanese coinage, both in the past & current day have (square and circular) holes punched in the coin, legitimately & legally. I think that was from a time when Japanese treasury coinage metal supply, such as bronze (copper), silver and gold were in short supply so they saved more metal by "debasing" the coinage with holes. Note that originally coinage was supposed the represent the precious and semi-precious metal value, and removing metal from the coin, is debasing, also by mixing with less expensive metals for example, mixing more silver in gold coins. Now, of course, nearly all money (cash in hand) has token value only, and does not relate so the value of the metal in it (gold minted coins and collectable coins excepted).
1
That's CBM Basic on a Commocore 64! It's clunky with no reserve variables or standard libraries or functions and with line numbers, but it brings back pimple popping memories to me.
1
The Australia on the West Island "map" is too small, but you are right about half the Kiwis being over here & the other half swimming across the Tasman because they can't afford to fly over here because of their fantastically low wages over there
1
Because in Cassegrain optics, or in a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, the final light path needs to pass through the centre of primary mirror with a curved secondary mirror. The improved image resolution over Newtonian mirror optics is a real improvement though. Unfortunately, unlike the Newtonian telescope, you probably don't have the finesse to grind the secondary mirror to the required grade.
1
Governments don't act like individuals. For one, many governments are basically shameless, where this can be the antithesis of Eastern shame culture which places a lot of emphasis on the individual gaining face and huge avoidance on losing it (the Westerner's psyche is more determined by the personal guilt culture, where face is less important and social control therefore acts in different ways). The CCP is particularly amoral in this regard, so it's hypocrisy (an important faux-pas in guilt culture), is less important than impression for the CCP, I.e. form rather than substance. The stupid and acquisitive are thus both shame and guilt morally bankrupt and flourish in the CCP.
1
The fortification of island atolls in the South China Sea (or the West Philippines Sea) is clearly and directly aimed at the blockade of Tiawan by the CCP. This is still a huge threat, now not only to Taiwan, but to Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam (three important countries that are now implacably hostile towards China). This more recent development can be firmly laid by the diplomatic failure of the CCP and Xi Jinping, which pales into insignificance any angst Deng Xiaoping felt when directly dealing with the United States during the Cold War . Both Japan and the Philippines' sovereignty is firmly supported by the United States (also towards South Korea, although this country's government likes to fence-sit), and so China has affected an energetic and growing diplomatic and military alliance against itself in the South and East, where this always counted geopoliticallly for China in the modern sense (no more northern horsemen sweeping into China from the Northern steppes). The CCP has firmly kicked it's own goal in this regard, where diplomatically and with improving military security (both internaly and externally) Taiwan is set to gain more and more with it's neighbours and with powerful friends and allies. As for face-saving, these predictable turn of events is also disasterous for the CCP (a facet of great importance in Eastern shame culture).
1
The CCP totalitarians didn't get the Australian strategic resources what they wanted, so they spat the dummy and arrested the messenger Stern Hu (an Australian citizen) on trumped-up charges. That was the beginning of the rot between the Australian government, large strategic resource Australian (UK) corporations (such as Rio Tinto), and the CCP. In 2020, in response to a question about investigating the origin of the Covid outbreak by then PM Morrison, the CCP acted like 12 year old spoiled bullies and threw back multi-sector Australian export sectors to China by high tarrifs and bans (Australian iron ore exports was not touched by this, the China economy needs it too much), but this eggregious bureaucratic act only had mild medium-term effect on most of the targeted commodities (as most commodities were sold to more rational countries, and generally they were good quality products), but a severe effect on the small but quality Tasmanian rock lobster industry ensued. Incidentally, the Australian coal ban action was poorly planned in China because blackouts occurred across Northern China in the winter of 2020-21, as China power stations could not make up the shortfall due to a sudden loss of Australian thermal coal stocks. To summarize, CCP China is a predatory ideological power with fiat ideas of trade, and rudimentary understanding of market economy. It's internal fiat political decision making and 180 degree reversals on trade deals make it difficult to deal with. The Taiwanese have discovered this as well. If they can't play the trade game like grown ups, as a French Queen (Marie Antoinette) once allegedly remarked; "let them eat cake".
1
It's a positive renewable energy mega-project (not too positive; the majority of solar panels are now made in China, plus manufacturing solar panels is a polluting business). There is more than the environmental costs of making the components. The DC power connector cable runs over much sea and ocean bed which comprise unstable tectonic plate boundaries (especially in Indonesia, which is the majority of the length of it). Seeing that the Bass Strait is much shorter than the proposed route (about 1/10 as long), plus the Bass Straight is not at unstable tectonic plate boundaries, there is a lot that could go wrong with such a long sea cable. Why not put solar panels on pontoon barges at sea, away from shipping lanes, but not far from Singapore? Singapore is near the equator and outside the cyclone zone (within 3 degrees North or South of the equator).
1
There is far better proposals to harvest fresh water, locally. Perth has a rainfall about 800mm per annum annually, and thie rainy season there is primarily in Winter and Spring (June to November in the Southern hemisphere, just check the climate data for Perth). A lot of water gets wasted; getting sluiced away from streets using storm water drains and into the Swan River etc. Perth also has quite a lot of porous limestone (it's a Mesozoic basin), so harvested storm water could be pumped into porous limestone and sandstone aquifers for storage into drier seasons, and so on.
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You don't read everything ;-)
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Rich Malaysians just benefitted by what the rich Britishers were doing for over a century earlier, and the social elite wonder why aggressive socialist political parties (mainly targeting them), won't go away? Anyway, tough s**t to the actual workers of the plantations it seems. An actual change of ownership means nothing to those hapless workers. True justice only ever comes the way of the inbred and acquisitively mercantile every few hundred years or so. Without political reform in favour of the masses, it will eventually come again at the point of a gun.
1
"A little bit of a cash crunch", is the same as saying that World War 2 was a little bit bad: An oxymoron. Evergrande and the CCP and all their other indebted real estate companies in China are falling like dominos. The 30 year real estate debt bubble collapse might reach the debt level of 30% of the entire GDP of China. That's the same percentage fall as the Great Depression of 1929-1930 in the US, for China just in the real estate sector.
1
I don't know if 7-11 or other convenience stores use gig economy to do local grocery deliveries. E.g. grocery delivery on the back of an electric scooter. With an aging population in Taiwan (the elderly are affected by personal mobility issues), this could expand the business model of convenience stores,
1
Well, the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere (a Showa government political-bureaucratic propaganda jargon) seemed to work better in Taiwan than anywhere else during the Pacific War, scarred as that was by hellish battlefields and the brutal criminal mass-extermination of tens thousands of hapless human beings (everywhere else in the Pacific I mean. Like the Bataan and Sandakan death marches). Taiwan will no get so lightly off when the next totalitarian power (the CCP), arrives uninvited in force.
1
Other than the second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars (which have consequences still to this day), Japan has been a somewhat fortunate country in the past century, particularly as it stagnated by two and a half centuries of forced isolation (under the Tokugawa Shoganates), before it started opening up.in the 1860s, and it avoided the aggressive colonialization out of Europe and North America from the Victorian era (approximately 1830s to 1900), like Thailand (Siam). Unlike what is happening in China, Japan overall grew rich before it stagnated again in the 1990s. However, although there are now richer nations in Asia, some with better social programs than Japan, this country still is the world's third largest economy.
1
Hong Kong faces a bleak future. Not just because the CCP has taken.it over and clamping down on freedoms, making lifestyle choices there, indistinguishable from Shenzhen, without a dynamic electronics industry to boot. As China is descending into a long, deep recession then Hong Kong will inevitably be dragged down with it.
1
Typical political jerrymandering, particularly from the unimaginative, conservative and crony ridden Nationalist Party (coalition with the Liberals), helped create the white elephant which is the Ord River Scheme. The area is underpopulated, so little in the way of transport infrastructure (e.g. roads and rail) are there, let alone large towns. In comparison, with the North Queenland coastal strip (South of Cairns), where sugar cane farming, banana, mango and pawpaw planations are long established, ongoing and profitable and the area (for north Queensland) is quite well populated with established roads, rail networks (for the sugar cane as well), substantial towns and a large commericial port at Townsville. That makes all the difference in costs for the primary producers. The mantra for the Ord River Scheme was; "build it and they will come". Well, it was built but comparatively few people wanted to take up land for cultivation in such a remote place; so they didn't come.
1
The enthusiam for EUVs are misplaced. These vehicles are designed to replace ICE vehicles as global warming becomes a concern. However, global warming comes from many sources, not just out of the exhaust of ICE vehicles. Most electricity is still generated globally by thermal coal, which changes the batteries on EUVs, and electricity generation is the leading industrial CO2 emission, not ICE vehicles. Secondly, one half of all global petroluem fuel supply goes into pushing ships around the oceans. EUV's, like mobile phones, have a global supply chain so much of their parts are shipped. Thirdly, petroluem costs at the pump are stil competitively cheap comparison to battery power (by weight) or battery replacement, and there remains plenty of commercial fuel outlets and a lack of convinient EV charge stations in many countries. Forthly, manufacturing EVs consumes more resouces than ICE vehicles and is even more polluting to manufacture. For example, in an average EV there is 40kg of copper wiring in comparison to 1kg in ICE vehicles and, besides making copper more expensive which is great for copper miners, mining exposes sulphides to the environment which causes acid ground water and heavy metal pollution. Additionally, there is not enough lithium globally to supply the growth of EVs over the next ten years, unless the battery primary element changes.
1
Why not use X-ray lithography? You get the etching capilities down well below sub-nanometre size. Just doing some quick math, X-rays range from 10nm to 0.01nm; up to 100 times smaller than UV etching. Of course, X-rays are much more penetrative than UV light and the ionizing potentially goes much deeper into the silicon xstal lattice (so why not expose it for a shorter time). So maybe why X-ray lithography is not seriously deployed to wafer manufacturing just yet. Anyway, very likely that ASML has already designed X-ray lithography etching anyway, or is working on a prototype.
1