[HN Gopher] The rise of the U.S., the rise of China
___________________________________________________________________
The rise of the U.S., the rise of China
Author : hunglee2
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-11-01 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| YouWhy wrote:
| What a great topic for a great blog.
|
| I wonder what this perspective can tell us about the new wave of
| Chinese expansionism, which becomes somewhat akin to the US's
| abandonment of isolationism and the resultant war with Spain
| (1898) and joining the two World Wars.
| fjdjshsh wrote:
| The USA was never non expansionist: they either took over the
| native Americans or the Mexicans.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| you can argue that the Monroe Doctrine was also a bit of
| expansionist policy, essentially warning all European
| colonial powers that the Americas was the U.S.A's sphere of
| influence.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep the endless
| European wars, which at that time were not wars of
| nationalism but of monarchy, out of the Western Hemisphere.
| In North America, the French and Indian War and the
| American Revolution itself were aspects of larger
| monarchical wars taking place in Europe.
|
| it was a sensible doctrine in 1823, and we see 40 years
| later in 1864 the French under Napoleon III still attempted
| to install a Hapsburg as Emperor in Mexico.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| That ended over well over an hundred years ago, and was when
| the country was explicitly in expansion mode.
|
| And "the Mexicans" in this context were an expansionist
| Spanish colonial empire too.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > That ended over well over an hundred years ago
|
| What do you mean by this? The Philippine War started in
| 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. If you're
| dating expansion over the continent as overlapping with
| that (which you should) you're _agreeing_ that there was
| unbroken expansionism.
|
| edit: and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do
| with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it
| doesn't make me not a burglar. The question was whether the
| US was expansionist, not a moral judgement about the people
| who controlled the places it expanded to. You can't say
| that we weren't expansionist and also that they deserved
| it.
| thimabi wrote:
| At the time of the Mexican-American War, in 1846, there was
| no Spanish colonial presence in Mexico. In fact, the
| country had become an independent monarchy, soon followed
| by a republic, more than two decades before.
|
| Spain lost the vast majority of its empire in the 1820s.
| Just a few possessions, like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
| Philippines, remained in Spanish hands until the end of the
| nineteenth century.
| not2b wrote:
| A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual
| property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign
| copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to
| produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens
| was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime
| from American publishers, who could just take and print his
| works.
|
| Likewise the Chinese often ignore foreign copyrights and patents,
| though not as much as the US did back then.
| _Microft wrote:
| Something similar was said about Germany's 19th century
| development:
|
| "No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial
| Expansion?", https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-
| copyright-...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes and I believe that at the time the UK also restricted the
| emigration of engineers to the US so as to limit technology
| transfers...
| WalterBright wrote:
| The guy who developed the textile industry in the US
| memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating
| to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to
| find.
| mmooss wrote:
| It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power
| conflict: [0]
|
| In every political system, the existing rules are created to
| preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come
| from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there
| are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement
| which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all
| wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the
| signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired
| outcome.
|
| Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They
| are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual
| property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of
| intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers
| might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable.
|
| If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the
| status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP
| transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong
| IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those
| countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war
| - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example).
|
| [0] "International relations analysts often differentiate
| between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states
| favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and
| norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit
| structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status
| or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign
| entities, and more."
|
| https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/ac...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting
|
| And up is up unless it is down :-)
| mmooss wrote:
| I'll try to keep my sentences shorter for you. :-)
|
| It's not that _' wars must end, otherwise they keep
| fighting'_, but that there is _' a political settlement
| which satisfies enough participants to create stability ...
| otherwise they keep fighting'_. [0]
|
| I will stipulate that the sentence could have parsed more
| clearly. :-(
|
| [0] It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Warfare is politics
| conducted by other means.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Famously the West stole tea and silk cultivation secrets from
| the Chinese and I'm pretty sure they never paid any
| royalties...
| mywittyname wrote:
| They also fought the Opium Wars over tea (well, trade
| imbalances resulting from the tea trade).
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| What's the royalty on tea cultivation?
| kiba wrote:
| America's economic strength doesn't rely on something as easily
| copyable as intellectual property.
|
| Look at SpaceX. What they had perfected isn't going to be
| easily available in patents, homeworks for other people to
| copy, especially the Chinese. What they are willing to do is
| what other companies and organizations aren't willing to do.
| When SpaceX steadily made progress, people kept dismissing them
| until it's too late and now SpaceX is pushing ahead anyway.
|
| It's a form of false strength, and there had been discussion
| about how detrimental patent laws are to innovations.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My grandfather filed patents on his method of forming large
| halide crystals. However, all attempts to duplicate his
| process have failed to produce those crystals, and he's long
| dead.
|
| He apparently wished to both protect his process and keep it
| secret.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Germany ignored patents and copyrights in the 19th century, and
| their economy rapidly industrialized.
|
| The free software movement has shown that freely distributing
| IP is quite workable.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to
| ensure the originator gets his rent? Copyright is more than
| paying "fair share," the enforcement apparatus puts a large
| opportunity cost which is ordinarily unaccounted for. I am less
| likely to innovate and iterate if I have to navigate patents
| and copyright compliance, as all of that is administrative cost
| and the legal risks are well and above R&D costs. I argue it
| creates an environment of not bothering, when one has to tip-
| toe on egg shells to avoid massive liabilities in suits coming
| out of nowhere from trolls and such.
|
| If I built a binary Linux distro, you know damn well ZFS will
| be in the kernel, it will be hosted on only .onion and .i2p,
| and all Linux Foundation and Oracle Corp C&D emails will be
| published with sensibly witty lampooning comments.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It sounds like one party is getting all the advantage of a
| piece of IP without having to make any investment in it's
| generation, which is a competitive advantage.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Or that you can't squat ideas and memes, and you actually
| have to materially produce to get [super]wealthy.
| m463 wrote:
| I think the same thing happened with movies.
|
| Edison basically pirated "A Trip to the Moon" and showed it in
| the US:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| TFA discusses exports, but doesn't seem to mention anything about
| ease of blockading ports; I guess the War of 1812 (or the
| midcentury CSA experience?) might have some evidence along those
| lines for the 19th Century U.S.?
| contingencies wrote:
| China is _nothing like_ the 19th century US.
|
| While it has invested infrastructure, the scale of its investment
| does not equate to the US - it vastly, vastly overshadows it. The
| nature of its infrastructure investment: centralist planning
| under socialist leadership, is also nothing like US robber-baron
| driven development. Modern China's urbanization has been nothing
| less than the largest human migration in history. The
| infrastructure went from the odd railroad with a few urbanized
| cities to fiber optic internet, 5G data, high speed trains and
| airports everywhere in the country within ~30 years. 1.4 billion
| people have cell phones, flatscreen TVs, instant messaging,
| e-vehicles and streaming movies.
|
| But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are
| closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of
| technical integration, cutting headcounts. The educated youth are
| unemployed. International investment has dried up. Rumours abound
| that the party leadership is in crisis with factional schisms and
| high profile coverups, and the national pension fund has been
| emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape by moving their
| families overseas. The specter of the party looms over remnant
| private industry seeking a tax to aide its flailing coffers.
| Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to
| send their kids overseas. A fledgeling venture capital industry,
| once buoyant, has seized, and while domestic remittance is ~free
| and ~instantaneous international financial remittance is heavily
| regulated. But everyone can watch the latest Hollywood, Bollywood
| or Chinese content. Wealthy young Chinese can obtain information
| from across the country in seconds and access drugs like cocaine,
| ecstasy, ketamine, and marijuana, drive Teslas or Ferraris and
| wield iPhones. Everyone in the cities has a VPN on their phone to
| get foreign content. AI's potential to accelerate further change
| looms large.
|
| How is this _anything_ like the US _in the 19th century_ , an era
| before even broadcast media? This to me seems a frankly
| ridiculous assertion. Modern China is nothing like anything that
| has ever happened before, in terms of technology, political
| ideology, or economy. At best, weak parallels can be drawn along
| constrained axes, but the big picture is totally unknown to
| history. I only hope for the people's sake the current situation
| can be resolved without civil war. And indeed such wishes should
| be extended globally, as in the current era, the UK, the US,
| parts of western Europe and even my native Australia could be
| said to have the socioeconomic preconditions for civil war. Let
| us not see another world war in our lifetime. Let us not be
| blinded by nationalism.
|
| _Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind_ -
| Einstein, who also incidentally, it should be highlighted, was
| himself a globalist-humanist and turned down the presidency of
| Israel considering Zionism a self-destructive political
| ideology...
| architango wrote:
| This seems extremely negative on China, and echoes a lot of web
| content that frankly smacks of anti-Chinese propaganda. To be
| clear, I'm not accusing you of being a propagandist and in fact
| I believe you are 100% sincere, and I'm glad you've provided
| your opinion here. But the similarity of your description to
| the various China-bashing outlets is striking and makes me
| question the sources of it.
| contingencies wrote:
| My opinions are my own, based on decades of experience since
| first living in China in 2001. I last lived there in 2022. I
| actually run businesses, and my social networks consist of
| disparate experiences, which probably means my view of things
| is more nuanced and rationally founded than fly-in
| journalists or those watching only the statistics, albeit
| necessarily only a "partial truth" (nobody knows exactly what
| is going on across the country, not even the government).
| Perhaps if you raised concerns regarding a specific point it
| would be possible to respond more fully.
| architango wrote:
| You clearly have a wealth of expertise that I don't, and
| because of that, I again thank you for your original
| comment. It's probably better for me to simply consider
| your point of view rather than try to question it using
| second-hand data.
| Prbeek wrote:
| 1.6 billion dollars for propaganda is a lot of money.
| https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| That's not nearly the impression that I got from reading the
| GP comment. Did you mean to reply to a different one?
|
| If anything, it seemed rosy; for example I was under the
| impression that China had cracked down on VPNs. But if GP
| says they're still widely accessible, then it leaves me with
| the impression that China has more free access to information
| than I previously thought.
| sdwr wrote:
| "High profile coverups, the national pension fund has been
| emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape overseas. The
| education system is terrible."
|
| The picture being painted is of a doomed, sinking ship.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| It strikes me as a picture filled with both positives and
| negatives, and the point being made is not that China is
| a doomed sinking ship, but that the challenges it is
| dealing with aren't analogous to the ones faced by the US
| in the 19th century. (I don't know if wealthy 19th-
| century Americans did or did not aspire to move their
| wealth to Europe or send their kids abroad for school,
| but at least, the argument being made by the poster
| suggests a belief that they were not).
| t-3 wrote:
| Not a great picture, but also not really any different
| than the US or other western countries.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > anti-Chinese propaganda
|
| Please tell me you're kidding. There is _way, way more_ pro-
| Chinese propaganda online than anti-Chinese. So overt at this
| point that you 'd have to be willfully blind not to notice.
| architango wrote:
| I don't use TikTok, which might explain the discrepancy.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Either do I, as I was born a few decades too late for
| that. But there is a lot on Reddit and other popular
| forums. And on HN, even in this very discussion.
| somelamer567 wrote:
| And why do you suppose these ostensible 'China bashers'
| believe what they do? Do you believe that people just wake up
| one morning and say to themselves: 'I'm going to go online
| and hate on China today' for absolutely no reason at all?
| pessimizer wrote:
| They're literally inundated with the message in all media.
| The US government spread rumors about Chinese vaccines it
| knew to be safe to convince people not to take them. The US
| has budgeted 1.6 _billion_ dollars for propaganda activity
| against China.
| zxilly wrote:
| Based on my experience with China, access to drugs is very
| difficult, or impossible
| haccount wrote:
| Considering the amount of research chems and hyper-fentanyls
| they export it definitely exists in abundance within their
| borders.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| This is closer to truth
|
| China is on its own league. The nation has repeatedly claim the
| largest nation under the same culture heritage and political
| evolution, and economy development for over 2000 years, non-
| stopping. And among the time, claimed the longest period of
| time among the most powerful nations as well.
|
| China's transformation since 1840, is a 200 years turmoil that
| repeated before in that 2000 years history. When Xi Jinping
| proclaimed that now is the juncture of major-changes-unseen-in-
| a-century, the idea is that China was already in a changing
| period that unseen in thousands of years, which was proclaimed
| by Li Hongzhang.
|
| You see, China as a nation understand her own heritage and
| destiny.
|
| Her role is to be the manifestation of the Mandate of Heave, to
| build the great harmony that everyone under heaven can life
| peacefully together.
|
| That's different than western heritage, which is built upon
| dominance and hierarchy.
|
| Both are powerful systems that align with some of the most
| fundamental aspects of human nature. And each of these 2
| systems also internally manifested the counterpart. For
| example, Chinese system emphasize hierarchy from the
| Confucious, and a spirit of rebellion ignited by Chen Sheng &
| Wu Guang's line of "Are kings and nobles given their high
| status by birth?". West system emphasis harmony in Christian
| teaching.
|
| [1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-
| gran...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > to build the great harmony that everyone under heaven can
| life peacefully together
|
| Do the Taiwanese feel comforted by statements like that?
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Or the other countries like the Philippines and Vietnam
| that dispute China's excessive maritime claims. That claim
| isn't really surprising in light of the rest of their
| comment which is essentially repeating the PRC creation
| myth.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Perhaps "harmony" is a polite word for what remains after
| you subtract all dissonant sounds.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Looks like you only read the first paragraph of their
| comment.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the bar for 'like' does imply there are still
| many things that are not alike. The title is not 'how China and
| 19th century US are exactly the same'.
|
| I think the US raised interest rates in part to put the breaks
| on Chinas economy but the US was unable to keep high rates for
| longer without tanking it's own economy. That China and the US
| have bubble ponzi economies is one way I do think they are
| alike. I'm in disagreement with the Peter Zeihan with his
| predictions of a population bust with aging. I do agree there
| will be some population decline but Chinese old people are
| vastly cheaper than US old people and if they have to will work
| right up until the point they keel over. I really don't know
| which country is in a worse state but most people I know do not
| believe the US can continue in it's current state for much
| longer. Compared to that China does not seem that bad - but
| that could just be because I'm too far removed to see it's
| warts.
|
| The traditional way of managing civil discontent is by
| exporting it with a war, so as much as I hope China does not
| have a civil war I would rather they have a civil war than
| intentionally trigger an international war.
|
| Not sure how you square the US support for Israel as part of
| the global-humanist effort by the US. A nationalistic US would
| not support a nationalistic Israel.
| contingencies wrote:
| Not sure I mentioned the US, and I certainly didn't give an
| opinion on US support for Israel, a subject which has in many
| people's view become impossible to discuss openly. I believe
| you refer to the Trump election outcome with regards to
| claims of cessation of support for foreign conflicts. I do
| not follow US politics to any depth but my uninformed
| impression was that he perhaps wants to dethrone or
| progressively de-fund the defense industry who have
| historically backed various political or business rivals.
| Probably this is a part truth.
|
| But yes, the US is certainly in a difficult position with its
| socioeconomic trajectory, and the current election is a
| powder keg.
|
| A somewhat popular meme in the expat community in China has
| long been that the US and China are just converging on the
| same future from different paths. Those who have lived for
| extended periods in both places can see the truths behind
| this suggestion.
|
| It has been said that "Our true nationality is mankind", but
| I think it better to state "Our true nationality is
| Eukaryote". We should care more about the environment and
| other species' outcomes, not obsess over monkey-squabbles.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| You're talking about nation support for Zionist Israel and
| that's pretty much just the US. The US is the worlds
| current hegemon and it's current policy of exporting
| liberal democracy is part of the globalist effort to
| instill and maintain a rules based world order. I consider
| that to be globalism and the opposite of nationalism.
|
| Trump is merely wearing the cloak of nationalism in order
| to get elected which I guess is why it gets confusing -
| Zionism is a wedge issue in the culture war and an ability
| for the right wing to take part in grievance politics.
| Evangelicals have also been thoroughly brainwashed to
| support Zionist Israel but those are dying out and the new
| ones are smaller in number and have a net negative view of
| Israel. Support for Israel was already on a demographic
| timer which has only just gotten much shorter since Oct
| 7th.
|
| We're going to see some weird things in the near future.
| contingencies wrote:
| In a spirit of share the wealth if you still actually
| believe the _export_ part, you might benefit from reading
| more Chomsky and maybe _Confessions of an Economic
| Hitman_. Religious fervor is associated with low
| standards of education, and organized religion with
| politics. One good takedown is
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRcYaAYWg4
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion but I've already read both of
| them. You and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum, you
| have an affinity with eukaryotes and I barely share an
| affinity with most of humanity. I'm interested in knowing
| things for curiosity sake and my general support for
| humanity, specifically the unthriving middle class, is
| for my own comfort and desire to live in a nice society.
| I see religion is just another form of politics and
| politics is inherent to people, to hate religion is to
| hate people. I don't particularly like religion but I
| don't particularly like people either. Given the inherent
| constraints of people I'm not sure how I would design a
| nice society without religion. It appears to me that
| those who try to stamp out religions often end up
| creating new ones complete with articles of fait, heresy,
| and excommunications.
| yonisto wrote:
| Unfortunately for you Einstein supported Zionism, while his
| views shifted on how should be implemented by 1947 he certainly
| tried to persuade world leaders to support Israel
|
| [0] -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Albert_Ei...
| contingencies wrote:
| It seems you are questioning only the "...considering Zionism
| a self-destructive political ideology" final part of the
| final sentence, a necessarily concise summary of a whole
| person's lifetime views which is obviously skipping nuance.
|
| Well, hey, I'm the first to admit I never met the guy. I have
| also read that wikipedia page, which is probably not
| impartial or complete. My limited understanding is that he
| didn't want an Israeli state - "I should much rather see
| reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living
| together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state".
| Later, he initially supported Israel (as did many fleeing
| Europe, including my own family), but never Israel-for-the-
| jews-to-the-exclusion-of-others. Later he was disgusted at
| the political leadership of this bent he saw emerging to
| dominate the political reality in the fledgling nation, which
| is what my GP comment referred to. He would without doubt be
| critical today, though it seems he wisely tried to stay out
| of politics where feasible. Probably I should have said
| "militant exclusionary Zionism" or some other phrase, but it
| seems everything is a loaded phrase these days in discussions
| touching on Israel.
|
| Edit reply to child: I can see clearly that quote must be
| taken out of context quite often. Perhaps you should imagine
| if you had lived somewhere for generations and then a bunch
| of foreigners show up from Europe and start altering the
| status quo, how exactly you the residents might feel about
| it. It seems peaceful protest and strikes had been carried
| out in living memory but the results were violence. So you
| can see what sort of tinderbox that would be. I don't think
| deploying historic quotes out of context in an attempt to
| allocate blame and transfer that to a modern context is in
| any way shape or form constructive, valid, useful or
| intellectually honest.
| yonisto wrote:
| Are you sure you read the page?
|
| "He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a
| television appearance commemorating the state of Israel's
| seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did
| not live to complete it. In the draft he speaks about the
| dangers facing Israel and says "It is anomalous that world
| opinion should only criticize Israel's response to
| hostility and should not actively seek to bring an end to
| the Arab hostility which is the root cause of the tension."
|
| I hope it helps
| cyberax wrote:
| > But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories
| are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of
| technical integration, cutting headcounts.
|
| China has been suppressing domestic private consumption, it
| stands at just 40% of the GDP. For comparison, the US is at 68%
| and Germany is at 53%.
|
| This was probably done to prevent the appearance of the true
| middle class. China has no problem controlling a fairly small
| percentage of rich people, but the Party is afraid of large
| population strata that might start asking for political
| representation.
|
| But it does give them a _lot_ of leeway for easy growth. They
| just need to make the country more business-friendly at the
| lower end.
| 39896880 wrote:
| > But it does give them a _lot_ of leeway for easy growth.
| They just need to make the country more business-friendly at
| the lower end.
|
| Consumption-led growth is all but over. The population is
| shrinking, manufacturing is fleeing as fast it can, and the
| number old people exceeds young -- China got old before it
| got rich, which has never happened before
| cyberax wrote:
| The old population will also need to consume stuff and
| services. And the younger people can make it.
|
| China's fundamentals are fine. They just need to allow more
| low-level business activity. It's easier to start a factory
| compared to a neighborhood cafe.
| 39896880 wrote:
| Peak consumption for a population is 45-54, when income
| is highest and people are having their 1 kid. Once
| retirement hits income is generally fixed as people rely
| on pension or savings. They also depend more on state
| services like healthcare. In China, this also means
| depending on their 1 child.
|
| It's not really possible to say "China's fundamentals are
| fine" because China's fundamentals look like nothing the
| world has ever seen. It's not clear they have the
| leadership to navigate it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 19th century US invented its technology. China simply copied it
| - which enables much faster growth until one runs out of things
| to copy.
| klelatti wrote:
| Not really. As the top voted comment here says
|
| > A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with
| intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not
| respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British
| machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial
| revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author
| in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers,
| who could just take and print his works.
|
| I mean where was the railway invented for example.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yes, the US copied from England for some things. But the
| electric power industry, for example, came from Edison.
| tivert wrote:
| > Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and
| seeks to send their kids overseas.
|
| Is that so? My understanding is the Chinese education system is
| pretty cutthroat, and lot of the Chinese kids studying overseas
| are the ones with rich parents who could not compete
| academically. So a rando foreign degree is not looked on as
| highly as it once was, and many domestic schools are more
| prestigious than they used to be.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I
| think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in
| which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today
| our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too
| big to ignore.
| yazzku wrote:
| Why is it unsettling?
| burnished wrote:
| A common refrain in american homes and schools is about
| american superiority over all other countries, especially
| their rivals like china.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Is that perception why everyone online constantly shits on
| America and proclaims that every other country is superior?
| For as much as people like to accuse Americans of being
| "'Merica, fuck yeah!" the truth sure looks like it is
| mostly _other_ countries with the arrogant attitude.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Capacity for self criticism is part of what lets America
| reinvent itself.
| dingnuts wrote:
| yes and it's deeply ironic that you just quoted an
| American film which was satirizing that attitude twenty
| years ago!
|
| if anything I feel like Americans have become extremely
| self loathing in the passing generation since the release
| of Team America: World Police
| r14c wrote:
| Americans may feel that way, but "Team America: World
| Police" still applies to US foreign policy in 2024.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Interesting that the self-loathing seems to be associated
| with waging unpopular and losing wars. I didn't live
| through it but the Vietnam War seemed to have some
| similar impact that persists to this day with the utter
| loathing of conscription. It seems to be the same
| underlying cause: that bad leadership essentially
| permanently burned credibility for their country for no
| gain for their country.
| soperj wrote:
| Lots of gain for those in charge, and their cronies.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Stop playing dumb, superiority is everything.
| typon wrote:
| Xenophobia
| uses wrote:
| China - under Xi specifically - doesn't have rule of law,
| acts as an agent of chaos on the world stage, doesn't care
| about international order, bullies its neighbors, and
| critically, has become a 1-man dictatorship in the past ~10
| years. Under Xi, it's an aspiring evil empire that considers
| all humans of Han ancestry to belong to it, and genuinely
| doesn't care about the rest. Pre-Xi, China was on a positive
| trajectory. Post-Xi, hopefully that'll return.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Unlike several other authoritarian regimes, this is very
| much _constitutional_ in China. Every institution pretty
| much reports to the CCP.
| juunpp wrote:
| Your first sentence is exactly what the US has done since
| the Cold War through recent history. Why is it different
| when China does it, which it also hasn't to the scale that
| the US has?
| heroprotagonist wrote:
| Because of how they treated Hong Kong.
|
| The way they curb free speech, even projecting that
| internationally.
|
| Their announced intention to become the world's superpower
| and displace the US militarily, technologically, and
| economically, and the risks to US interest which tie to that.
|
| Their active pursuit to enact that claim, specifically with
| rapid military technology development, and international
| organization of BRICS.
|
| Their aggressive tendencies towards US allies.
|
| Their aggressive spying on US military and industrial
| facilities.
| missinglugnut wrote:
| Well for starters, Xi Jinping being the most powerful person
| on Earth is probably a bad sign for democracy.
|
| In their time as the dominant world power, the US hasn't
| always used their influence for good, but at least its a
| democracy with some form of constitutionally protected human
| rights in charge. I much prefer that to having a country with
| a permanent ruling party where critics go missing being the
| dominant force in world affairs.
| soperj wrote:
| > the US hasn't always used their influence for good
|
| This is a bit of an understatement for anyone in latin
| america.
|
| > but at least its a democracy with some form of
| constitutionally protected human rights in charge
|
| as far as i can tell, those only apply to US citizens, not
| humans in general.
| juunpp wrote:
| If you want to see how much the US cares about democracy,
| read Noam Chomsky's How The World Works. Or just look down
| south to Latin America.
| 0x457 wrote:
| America only cares about spreading democracy if some
| country they have beef with isn't democratic. America had
| no issue replacing democratic (and sometimes secular)
| goverments with dictatorships if dictatorship was more
| friendly to the US.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The US thinks of Chinese prosperity as a threat in and of
| itself. The US wants to call the shots, and the reason it has
| been able to since WWII is because it is wealthy (due to its
| innovation of not being a country in Europe during WWII.)
| It's not simply racism, though. The US also thinks of
| _European_ prosperity as a threat.
|
| These sentiments are not hidden. They are openly spoken
| during policy discussions and in policy papers. Fake concerns
| about the nature of Chinese governance have nothing to do
| with it - the problem the US has with Chinese governance is
| that China is not governed by the US. The US is _jealous_ of
| China 's tools for censorship and the tight top down
| political control.
|
| edit: the US government is not at all concerned about the
| citizens of China. It also did not invade Afghanistan for
| women's rights, and it is not helping Israel to preserve gay
| rights. These are barely even serious pretenses. It is not in
| Ukraine because it cares about the freedom of 2/3rds of the
| population to suppress the other third. These are stories for
| children.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm not as concerned about them advancing technologically as I
| am about their demographics. I just hope the resolution does
| not involve war, as it often has throughout history.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| China will have fewer people in 75 years than the US.
| pton_xd wrote:
| Source? Wikipedia predicts US population of ~425 million,
| China ~632 million in 2100. Still a dramatic decline either
| way.
| tivert wrote:
| >> China will have fewer people in 75 years than the US.
|
| > Source? Wikipedia predicts US population of ~425
| million, China ~632 million in 2100. Still a dramatic
| decline either way.
|
| Also, assuming current trends continue for a ridiculously
| long time. The Chinese government has the ability to be
| _massively_ coercive if it wants to. It 's been less than
| a decade since they ended the one child policy. I
| wouldn't be surprised if that's deployed in the next 75
| years to increase birthrates (e.g. "hey women under 35,
| you're fired unless you have two kids, kthxbye"). They
| already have a youth unemployment problem, and it
| probably wouldn't be too big of a deal for them to make
| sure all those unemployed youth are women having babies,
| and slot unemployed men into any jobs that are opened up.
| haccount wrote:
| As a European I've already come to terms with the fact that
| we're a consumer group dependent on china.
|
| A huge sector or our commerce can be summarized as "Alibaba but
| with expensive middle men".
| janalsncm wrote:
| Amazon is similar. Their service is essentially to make
| buying the random, weirdly-named products from China as
| "safe" and convenient as possible. (By "safe" I mean a bare
| minimum of having a generous return policy. Not that they are
| actually vetting safety.)
|
| I would place Temu, Alibaba, and TikTok shop somewhere on
| that same spectrum of safety.
| eastbound wrote:
| It's incredible how unsafe our products are. They are
| practically unvetted, and even when they are, Amazon sells
| counterfeits under the same SKU comingling. And risks
| nothing because the product was technically sold by
| "INXBDBA".
|
| Having been to Armenia, which has practically no laws
| because it's not part of the EU, I wonder what would happen
| "naturally", if EU laws didn't exist in the EU. Maybe we'd
| get exactly the same quality of products.
| nothacking_ wrote:
| Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies
| to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the
| crappiest thing people will buy.
| tivert wrote:
| > Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing
| companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather
| then the crappiest thing people will buy.
|
| If by "better," you mean "crappier but even cheaper." IMHO,
| we're kind of in a race to the bottom with product quality.
| You can't really tell what's good and what's bad online, so
| people gravitate the what's cheapest to minimize the risk of
| getting really taken advantage of. A lot of the stuff that's
| still good quality has massive luxury premiums tacked on, and
| a lot of the stuff that used to be good quality has been
| debased by some bean counter trying to convert goodwill into
| cash money.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| Visiting East Asian countries and then returning to the US, I'm
| always struck by how behind and slow we are with large
| infrastructure projects.
| tivert wrote:
| > Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I
| think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways
| in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands
| today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends
| are too big to ignore.
|
| Yes. I think there's _a lot_ of lazy thinking happening in the
| West vis-a-vis China, which will serve to delay hard decisions
| until it 's too late.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's a well written article, but a lot of it appears to be based
| on a flawed interpretation of Yuen Yuen Ang's "China's Gilded
| Age".
|
| Ang's argument is that there are 4 types of corruption - Petty
| Theft (eg. policeman takes a bribe), Grand Theft (eg. a Governor
| embezzles from the state pension fund), Speed Money (eg. business
| pay bribes to speed up processing of a permit), and Access Money
| (eg. pay bribes to get access to the bureaucracy).
|
| Ang's thesis posits that China's comparative ability to somewhat
| temper Speed Money corruption was the primary driver for China's
| economic growth (eg. via SEZs and allowing foreign corporate
| structures to leverage Hong Kong).
|
| This is not meant to be treated as a positive though. Ang points
| out that China still has an active problem with Access Corruption
| due to the chumminess between regulators and politically
| connected firms which can lead to systemic risks (eg. Evergrande
| Crisis):
|
| "China provides a sharp illustration: by enriching capitalists
| who pay for privileges and rewarding politicians who serve
| capitalist interests, access money perversely stimulates
| transactions and investment, which translates into GDP growth
| (Ang 2019; Ang 2020, chapter 5).
|
| Yet this does not mean that access money is "good" for the
| economy--on the contrary, it distorts the allocation of
| resources, breeds systemic risks, and exacerbates inequality. The
| harm of access money only blows up in the event of a crisis: for
| example, America's first great depression of 1839 (triggered by
| risky public financing and state-bank collusion) (Ang 2016,
| chapter 7; Wallis 2000, 2001), the 1997 East Asia financial
| crisis (Kang 2002), and the 2008 US financial crisis (Baker 2010;
| Igan, Mishra, and Tressel 2011; White 2011; Fisman and Golden
| 2017; Fligstein, Brundage, and Schultz, Forthcoming)"
|
| - "Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on
| Corruption", Yuen Yuen Ang 2019
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481412
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Anyone who thinks Chinese science isn't catching up extremely
| fast is dreaming. In my own area accepted papers at top
| conferences from china have gone from a negligible amount to
| about 50% in the space of 15 years. It's only a matter of time
| before the top prizes mentioned will follow in my opinion.
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