The Future, Made in China

25 points | by littlexsparkee an hour ago

16 comments

  • jalev 8 minutes ago

    The article is exactly what you think it's going to be: "China is moving ahead, but at what cost?" and the usual breathless Sinophobia that comes with it. At the very least when this happened in the early 80s with Japan's "oh shit they're going to outdo us technologically!!!" we got really cool fiction out of it for the next two decades.

  • PaulKeeble 8 minutes ago

    China's dominion as the worlds super power is going to be quite different to the US, EU and UK. They have a very different culture towards intellectual property, product versioning and quality control.

  • feverzsj 6 minutes ago

    Export-oriented economy is never sustainable, especially when it's built upon low human rights.

  • ricardobeat 39 minutes ago
  • recursivedoubts 29 minutes ago

    Maybe we shouldn't have moved the entire supply chain to asia.

    "we"

      dominotw 6 minutes ago

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123374

      i dont know why this is such a sensitive topic that it gets immeditely flagged and considered some sort of hate speech.

      china gets massive advantage from western ideas that even benigh thing like 'lets not depend on china' is automatically considered hate speech and racism.

      derelicta 12 minutes ago

      Luckily for the rest of the world, your elites have made that mistake.

  • bell-cot an hour ago

    Long-winded, as anyone familiar with the New Yorker would expect. But still very good.

    Whatever its other weaknesses, China has the enormous advantage that the people really in power are focused on raising China to global dominance. Vs. those really in power in America are, at best, worried about their personal status and wealth at the end of the next fiscal quarter.

      WhyComboNadir 18 minutes ago

      What you said about "next fiscal quarter" is exactly right, and goes along with us (in the US) only thinking politically in 4 year cycles... which means on average we are thinking only 2 years ahead.

      China is the master of the long-game. It's shortest cycles are 5 year tactical plans. Their strategic plans go far beyond.

      I don't know what the solution is in the US (and West in general) to be able to think 25+ years ahead, as no material incentive would do the job; only cultural/society/civilizational goals make someone think that far ahead (religion does too).

      If the US can't think that far ahead for the same reasons as China, maybe we need to find things we care about long term and tie economic development to that (family, religion, and even our potential extreme longevity).

        tw04 9 minutes ago

        > I don't know what the solution is in the US (and West in general) to be able to think 25+ years ahead, as no material incentive would do the job

        Eliminate share buybacks. Raise the top tax bracket to 95% on earnings over $10m. Executive shares cannot be exercised until retirement if you really want to get aggressive.

        The nuclear option would be stocks cannot be used as collateral for loans, it would shore up 90% of the nonsense overnight and have 0 negative impact on 99.99% of the general public.

      bojan 31 minutes ago

      The Chinese leadership realized one doesn't exclude the other.

      Also, a leadership that is so enormously autocratic simply has to juggle fewer balls at the same time.

        bell-cot 7 minutes ago

        > ...one doesn't exclude...

        Yes, but I don't see that realization as noteworthy. Does history record a nation which never found its own advancement hobbled by the scheming of its petty local officials?

        > ...has to juggle fewer balls...

        When things aren't going so well, trying to stay in power adds more balls (to juggle) than being an autocracy takes away. And "things aren't going so well" usually indicates that less-competent autocrats are in power - meaning that they are less able to juggle any number of balls.

      altmanaltman 10 minutes ago

      China had an enermous corruption problem, what are you talking about? Xi has been on an anti-corruption campagin since 2012 and they are just getting rid of top leaders like just last month. And I am sure his "anti-corruption" campaign is totally not ignoring some aspects.

      While Trump might be an outlier in how obvious the grift is, that doesn't make China suddenly the good guys who only care about their country or the people when they are not busy bulldozing them into drains like they did in 1995.