Appreciate your article. Knowing that the US has propaganda aimed at discrediting China, the opposite is probably true. China has many technological and social advances that way exceed the US. The current human rights violations are becoming horrific in our country. The media is tainted with political propaganda. Half the country thinks all of this is good as long as we disenfranchise women, people of color, and lgbtq populations. The idea that we are somehow morally better is a complete lie.
Another comparison might be privacy (EU's GDPR) or attitude towards copyright (cf moral rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights). Because these are not respected by SV who need to ingest massive cultural artifacts to train AI, they are interpreted as trade "barriers" rather than standards of dignity.Technology might have made the world flatter but doesn't close value gaps.
China is ruled by a notably nasty autocratic regime, with a long history of executions, human rights abuses and, most recently genocide?
Only Fox News supports such nonsense. Our own regime, even here-Trump, is much more autocratic. Thanks to popular pressure, China still executes moral monsters, a practice I heartily endorse.
China beats us 27-3 in the 30 human rights enumerated in the UN Declaration of Universal human rights and, China has never followed out example set by our many massacres and genocides and never committed a single massacre–though American agents certainly tried to get a few going there.
Kudos to some very insightful analysis here! I think the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (still the capital city of Yugoslavia at that time) was probably the starting point of China's long-term plan for techno-independence and supremacy. It takes some time for this resolve to "never suffer such a humiliation again" to percolate down to the general population. The 2013 Snowden Affair just sealed Chinese conviction about US.
Your graphs should track Chinese industrial and R&D pivoting as a consequence of
tRump1.0/Biden/tRump2.0 restrictions on key hardware/SW intermediates...we read just recently of Chinese innovations in GPUs, as directed toward AI development, and how crimping Nvidia exports to China stimulated home-grown substitutes.
Quite honestly, China is gaining the upper hand here, and the suspension of rare-earth and rare-earth-based magnet exports will hurt the Americans even more...poke the bear, and all that.
I grew up in a time when women were second class citizens. I needed my husband’s signature to get a credit card, to get a mortgage despite the fact that I had a job and he was still a student etc. Now we have a president who wants to disenfranchise anyone who disagrees with him, especially women and minorities. He is destroying US economy, any government program that doesn’t put money in his pocket and anyone who speaks out against him and his acolytes. We are all to kiss his ass and bow before him. He wants to be worshipped as a dictator. He wants to be the American Putin.
Interesting data. The conclusions are hard to square with much of the literature showing that Chinese leaders aggressively pursued technological self-sufficiency well before this period (e.g. stressing the importance of national techno autonomy, defining domestic technical standards that precluded interoperation with foreign products, building and requiring government purchase of domestic versions.) This summary implies a significant turning point from a more open past, but it’s not clear that ever existed except as a way to gain domestic capabilities. I wonder how much of these findings are tied to the rise of specific language of network security, and etc.
Building capacity to do more complex value-add manufacturing can look a lot like self-sufficiency if you squint, but it might also just be about making more money. But cancelling contracts to build your own replacements (that you can't quite do yet) looks a lot more like self-sufficiency than anything else.
I’m bowled over by the articulation of a security dilemma (but for control of global economics) that I assume will shape statecraft in this century.
Listening to Friedman on Klein yesterday describe China’s national strength in tolerating massive inequality, corruption, and redundancy and reaping the benefits of long-term competition benefits, I was struck by a grim picture of a “realist” “mercantilist” future, civilization-states seeking to maximize security by swallowing as much of the global economy as they can (or the states through which supply chains run). DOGE as an idiot savant’s first stab at “riding the shoggoth,” unambiguously and pointedly seizing and directing the processes.
The CCP techno-authoritarian experiment as almost a 21st century version of 20th century totalitarianisms: the “new,” the terrible first step toward the new leviathan which might only be tamed/liberalized after it kills a LOT of people; in the meantime, exciting, maybe even “democratic,” to commentators — after a long period of bureaucratic facelessness, at least we know with whom the buck stops.
As long as I’m rambling, cruel joke that doge is once again the name for the prince of a merchant-republican empire.
I recommend giving the episode a listen because I am not a good messenger. The idea is not that corruption is good or the thing driving growth. The point he was making is that China has successfully built a lot of very capable industries and advances in many areas because, unintuitively, a system in which everyone jumps on the new trend to follow the party and benefit from govt action is also one in which you have a lot of (long term) competition and natural selection. Of course, it’s preferable to have this environment without all the inefficiency. And as Klein points out, this system also benefits from China’s awful conditions for workers of many types.
But it used to be the case that we had politicians going around saying China was incapable of innovation except via theft, and that’s no longer the case.
My thinking is that once we are in a fully-post-neoliberal moment, in which we return to seeing global economics as a matter of state power and security, this sort of “national fitness gym” mindset will appear more attractive than the U.S.-led model of international giants. I’m sure it will not be great for global economics growth!
Not that intuitive sense should substitute for data analysis, but there is something profoundly satisfying in knowing that if you threaten somebody, they react. It seems, well, predictable. And according to this, countries act the same.
Appreciate your article. Knowing that the US has propaganda aimed at discrediting China, the opposite is probably true. China has many technological and social advances that way exceed the US. The current human rights violations are becoming horrific in our country. The media is tainted with political propaganda. Half the country thinks all of this is good as long as we disenfranchise women, people of color, and lgbtq populations. The idea that we are somehow morally better is a complete lie.
There's also the cultural aspect. It's been argued that China is a civilisation state (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_state) and not expansionary expire (cf manifest destiny). As such the Great Firewall makes sense as a cultural firebreak ... Google was permitted to operate but they refused to apply for a media content license (with restrictions https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/googles-license-renewal-in-china-victory-defeat-or-stalemate/).
Another comparison might be privacy (EU's GDPR) or attitude towards copyright (cf moral rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights). Because these are not respected by SV who need to ingest massive cultural artifacts to train AI, they are interpreted as trade "barriers" rather than standards of dignity.Technology might have made the world flatter but doesn't close value gaps.
This might be an unreasonable lift to answer, but can you see the Snowden shock in European government language?
China is ruled by a notably nasty autocratic regime, with a long history of executions, human rights abuses and, most recently genocide?
Only Fox News supports such nonsense. Our own regime, even here-Trump, is much more autocratic. Thanks to popular pressure, China still executes moral monsters, a practice I heartily endorse.
China beats us 27-3 in the 30 human rights enumerated in the UN Declaration of Universal human rights and, China has never followed out example set by our many massacres and genocides and never committed a single massacre–though American agents certainly tried to get a few going there.
Kudos to some very insightful analysis here! I think the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (still the capital city of Yugoslavia at that time) was probably the starting point of China's long-term plan for techno-independence and supremacy. It takes some time for this resolve to "never suffer such a humiliation again" to percolate down to the general population. The 2013 Snowden Affair just sealed Chinese conviction about US.
Your graphs should track Chinese industrial and R&D pivoting as a consequence of
tRump1.0/Biden/tRump2.0 restrictions on key hardware/SW intermediates...we read just recently of Chinese innovations in GPUs, as directed toward AI development, and how crimping Nvidia exports to China stimulated home-grown substitutes.
Quite honestly, China is gaining the upper hand here, and the suspension of rare-earth and rare-earth-based magnet exports will hurt the Americans even more...poke the bear, and all that.
I grew up in a time when women were second class citizens. I needed my husband’s signature to get a credit card, to get a mortgage despite the fact that I had a job and he was still a student etc. Now we have a president who wants to disenfranchise anyone who disagrees with him, especially women and minorities. He is destroying US economy, any government program that doesn’t put money in his pocket and anyone who speaks out against him and his acolytes. We are all to kiss his ass and bow before him. He wants to be worshipped as a dictator. He wants to be the American Putin.
Interesting data. The conclusions are hard to square with much of the literature showing that Chinese leaders aggressively pursued technological self-sufficiency well before this period (e.g. stressing the importance of national techno autonomy, defining domestic technical standards that precluded interoperation with foreign products, building and requiring government purchase of domestic versions.) This summary implies a significant turning point from a more open past, but it’s not clear that ever existed except as a way to gain domestic capabilities. I wonder how much of these findings are tied to the rise of specific language of network security, and etc.
Building capacity to do more complex value-add manufacturing can look a lot like self-sufficiency if you squint, but it might also just be about making more money. But cancelling contracts to build your own replacements (that you can't quite do yet) looks a lot more like self-sufficiency than anything else.
Mao, among his many achievements, made China a world technology power.
As someone who visited China and it’s leading universities in the early 80’s I find your comment amusing
I’m bowled over by the articulation of a security dilemma (but for control of global economics) that I assume will shape statecraft in this century.
Listening to Friedman on Klein yesterday describe China’s national strength in tolerating massive inequality, corruption, and redundancy and reaping the benefits of long-term competition benefits, I was struck by a grim picture of a “realist” “mercantilist” future, civilization-states seeking to maximize security by swallowing as much of the global economy as they can (or the states through which supply chains run). DOGE as an idiot savant’s first stab at “riding the shoggoth,” unambiguously and pointedly seizing and directing the processes.
The CCP techno-authoritarian experiment as almost a 21st century version of 20th century totalitarianisms: the “new,” the terrible first step toward the new leviathan which might only be tamed/liberalized after it kills a LOT of people; in the meantime, exciting, maybe even “democratic,” to commentators — after a long period of bureaucratic facelessness, at least we know with whom the buck stops.
As long as I’m rambling, cruel joke that doge is once again the name for the prince of a merchant-republican empire.
Friedman on Klein described China’s national strength in tolerating massive inequality, corruption?
China's Gini is lower than ours and falling fast while ours rises relentlessly, while 90% of them own their homes and have 4x our median net worth.
Corruption? Whatever corruption there was never affected national policy making, while most of our corruption does.
I recommend giving the episode a listen because I am not a good messenger. The idea is not that corruption is good or the thing driving growth. The point he was making is that China has successfully built a lot of very capable industries and advances in many areas because, unintuitively, a system in which everyone jumps on the new trend to follow the party and benefit from govt action is also one in which you have a lot of (long term) competition and natural selection. Of course, it’s preferable to have this environment without all the inefficiency. And as Klein points out, this system also benefits from China’s awful conditions for workers of many types.
But it used to be the case that we had politicians going around saying China was incapable of innovation except via theft, and that’s no longer the case.
My thinking is that once we are in a fully-post-neoliberal moment, in which we return to seeing global economics as a matter of state power and security, this sort of “national fitness gym” mindset will appear more attractive than the U.S.-led model of international giants. I’m sure it will not be great for global economics growth!
And who’s Pepe Silvia anyways??
Not that intuitive sense should substitute for data analysis, but there is something profoundly satisfying in knowing that if you threaten somebody, they react. It seems, well, predictable. And according to this, countries act the same.