When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All | Hacker News Reader

When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All

backchannel.com

277 pointsdwaxe264 comments

The West and China are playing a global chess game and have been for some time. An impoverished China was not in the West's interests and so they agreed to buy all kinds of lowish tech Chinese made goods. In return most jurisdictions enforced a balance of trade with China, with the exception of the US.

On their end China insisted on joint ventures and technology transfer to the extent Western companies would comply. Western companies were reluctant to give up their best tech so China ended up with last generate tech which, still, was way better than it had. This was a status quo that benefited both sides enough that it worked well enough for 20 to 30 years.

Now the stakes are getting higher. China wants to level up by buying foreign tech companies with, essentially, state capital and the West naturally doesn't see that to be in their interests and so they block those purchases.

The West wants to enter China with their latest internet block busters and China doesn't see that in their interests and so they block that but, more often in a soft way. They open the door, allow foreign companies to enter and train locals in the technology and then slam the door when they gain traction.

Both sides are well aware of the stakes and the situation what's evolving are the techniques and strategies of the competitors. It's a big boy's game for large nation states and if you're not that big you're likely to take some bruises. If you're a fan of raw capitalism though pull up a chair and a beer and watch the game.

> China ended up with last generate tech

we are way past that point. China has leap frogged pretty much everyone else in every aspect. It took China less than a year to build the worlds fastest supercomputer (unclassified) after US placed restrictions on related technology exports to China.

China was building components for supercomputers over the past decade, they would show case a network, a small processor, cooling system etc individually. No one and I say again, NO ONE, expected they would build a full system at such a capability in such a short time.

Owning the fastest supercomputer in the world is mostly irrelevant these days, because the entire thing just gets partitioned into smaller chunks in actual use. It's just never in anyone's interest to run a job that utilizes all the resources.

At the end of the day, most of these computers are just a pissing contest and are rarely cost effective, and are almost always a huge pain in the ass to use.

You're missing the point. The fact that they could achieve this so quickly is the impressive part.

The political will in the West is lacking to move fast in recent decades and really support these kinds of projects. The CCP has something to prove, though, and right now they'll displace entire communities, disappear anyone who objects and destroy historic sites if that's what it takes for certain projects to get built.

That doesn't mean this isn't impressive. What's your point?

I think his point is that there are some boundaries over which we do not go, at least not easily. Meanwhile the disregard of Chinese governments for Chinese citizens can fill volumes :)

If you think the US government or industry haven't then it's because you've never read any history.

I've read plenty and the casualties are an order of magnitude bigger on the Chinese side.

Tens of millions versus a hundred million, what a fucking victory for humanity...

They are running in startup mode. Things can be done very quickly as long as red tape doesn't hinder the speed of development. With having experience building everything for everyone, it's not surprising that they can build very quickly.

They have ridiculous manpower at their factories working 24/7 to make billions of phones, utilizing that type of experience to fabricate couple hundreds of thousands of chips to build a super computer can probably take a couple of months. Assembly is probably another couple months and getting the software in order is probably another couple of months.

Now if it was a US gov't contract, it would probably take a decade...

If they want to do it very inefficiently, and have near infinite sums of money to throw at it, yes.

China does not have semiconductor fabs capable of producing anything close to a current generation Intel 14nm process Core i7 or Xeon CPU.

As folks have mentioned, the evolution of the Top500 shows that "world's fastest supercomputer" is no longer an EE feat: it's an infrastructure feat, and not much of one, either.

If you think the Chinese military is going to be using quantum computers before the American military, then you've got my attention.

I think that's an entirely realistic possibility.

China plans to launch a satellite named QUESS to perform quantum encryption and communication experiments later this month. They also have some other quantum computing projects that seem to be going well.

Many of them are assembled and then quickly disassembled so that their parts can be used elsewhere. That's pretty much how IBM rolls.

Says you. I have whole-system simulations that need running.

It's so irrelevant, that the US embargoed China over that.

You're looking at the PR, look at the actual technology.

Anyone can build a big enough supercomputer if you throw enough money at the problem. This high level of spending is getting hard to justify, however, because most of the problems you want to solve can't be solved just by throwing another order of magnitude of computing power at the problem. Building a supercomputer becomes a bit of a boondoggle, a public-relations move.

But China can't build the components for those supercomputers. Nobody can build all of them, but China can't fab the processors. Search for "list of semiconductor fabs", find a table, sort by node, and then scroll down until you find a Chinese node that does something other than just churn out flash memory. You'll find SMIC with a couple 40nm or 45nm fabs. That's not just the last generation of tech, that's three generations old (14 [current] => 22 => 32 => 45).

By comparison, the market is flooded with cheap 32nm Xeons being dumped from our data centers.

TSMC have two 16nm fabs and are building a 10nm fab.

TSMC fabs are mostly in Taiwan, not China.

And Taiwan would never let those fabs go to China, they have plenty of laws against that. Only oldish fab tech can be exported to the Mainland.

Taiwan is not China. Where in China is TSMC building cutting edge semiconductor fab?

The Republic of China is not recognised by the UN. It is no more a state than Transnistria or South Ossetia.

Comparing Taiwan, which has been functionally independent of the PRC and under control of the ROC since 1945, to South Ossetia or Transnistria is absolutely ridiculous. Just because Taiwan isn't widely recognized by the international community doesn't mean that it isn't an entirely separate socioeconomic entity. A brief glance at the last two decades of politics in Taiwan will show you as much.

The UN is totally irrelevant here. Taiwan operates as an independent country in every practical way. (So does Hong Kong, kinda, but Taiwan even more so.)

To clarify, by "China" I mean People's Republic of China, not Republic of China (which is usually called Taiwan).

This. China built that supercomputer as a pure PR/face move. It isn't very interesting otherwise, and the west stopped building those kinds of things a long time ago because it moved on to more detached distributed computing.

You need to look deeper into the latest system. It's not a pr machine. Even the pervious one tianhe-2 isn't. If you think it is, you're looking at the wrong sources.

And no, we have not moved away from supercomputers or building bigger ones.

SMIC is down to 28nm now[1]. I agree this isn't competitive yet, but they are working on 14nm[2] with some reasonably credible partners (including Qualcomm), scheduled to be delivered by 2020.

That would close the gap to Intel/Samsung/TSMC to one generation.

[1] http://www.smics.com/eng/press/press_releases_details.php?id...

[2] http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326948

It will be interesting. I'd call that about one and a half generations, if 10nm ships in 2017 like Intel says. Of course, it is anyone's guess whether SMIC will ship 14nm on time, or whether Intel will ship 10nm on time.

> Anyone can build a big enough supercomputer if you throw enough money at the problem

That statement shows you have no idea what's involved in developing one.

The west's critical flaw is that it believes its own propaganda.

The "Washington Consensus" believed that no country could develop or resist the temptations of the "superior" culture and understanding of the western financial system and industry. That the countries that they were moving into were hopeless without their intelligence and guidance and would quickly fall in line and become dependent and helpless without their western overlords. They believed that they would always have a military advantage, that they would always get to set the rules. The financial crash, predicted for the last 10 years, didn't happen. The political transformation, predicted for the last 10 years, didn't happen. The internet liberalization, predicted for the last 10 years, didn't happen. Now the Chinese are catching up technologically and them actually getting ahead of us which, from a socio/political perspective, is akin to negative interest rates. It's a discontinuous transformation that inverts all the equations of western thinking.

Let me give you a quick example to illustrate this. Recently, I was in the pacific northwest. I was talking to a developer who was pointing at a lot that was basically a clean hole in the ground. He said that a Chinese developer was going to build a 5 story building their in two weeks and the entire structure was manufactured in China with ducts, plumbing, wiring all up to American code and all the floor units just had to be unloaded, placed with a crane and snapped together. (Look up "Broad Sustainable Building Group", among several companies in China doing this, if you want to learn more about this technology). The local developers were mystified. As if you told someone in 1990 that calling people anywhere in the world would be free over the internet. I think we're going to be seeing more and more of that: stuff coming out of China that will mystify us because we didn't invent it. The first mystifying innovation was the financial system that never crashed. The rest are coming.

Was that anything like the hotel in San Antonio? http://www.modular.org/htmlPage.aspx?HtmlPageId=400

That was 202 working days to build a 21 story building. Broad built a 57 story building with 800 apartments at the speed of 3 floors per day: http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/broad-sustainab... . So the same concept, but built 30x faster. The whole building is basically built at a factory and each segment is hauled in and snapped together.

You are right about the arrogance of the Western Consensus. It is group-corporate-narcissism, that group being the 'leaders' in politics, business and elsewhere.

I think that group-narcissism got the better of Uber. Is Uber likely to be headed up by high-functioning narcissists? Well, let's start with the name, dictionary definition being:

'Uber - denoting an outstanding or supreme example of a particular kind of person or thing.'

Then there is the idea that they can just waltz in to the China market (where most people were riding Flying Pigeon bicycles not so long ago) and make a success of it, spending investors money as if it was water. All they have for that money is an easily copied app. Uber have no local knowledge, no appreciation of local ways, just ego and arrogance, all said in the name and it is no surprise that it went pear shaped.

Facebook, Twitter, those things are where narcissists go to get likes. This works well in the West where everyone is a special snowflake, but China is not like that so it is no surprise that, technical hurdles aside, our social media is different to their social media...

Every company wants to be the best and we all want to work for the best companies, however, the leadership does not have to be a small in-group of ultra-narcissists. For instance, HN darling Tesla seems devoid of narcissism and is more about altruism. Google seems wired that way too. If Google and Tesla take over the world and outer space I will be happy with that. If the corporate narcissists such as Uber run the show then they will not last, arrogance will get the better of them and our new Chinese overlords will replace them.

It's hard to compete when the government sets the rules against you. The reason Western firms have failed in China is because they allow just enough entry to transfer technology, then promptly stack the rules against foreign firms when a local competitor arises. It's not the technology, its the fact that the rules are stacked against them

Talk about believing propaganda. You're falling for Chinese propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Broad Sustainable Building Group is basically one giant propaganda machine propped up by government loans.

They've been talking about building the world's tallest building in only 90 days for years, but they recently dropped the idea because it was never a serious proposal. Buildings of this height need rigidity from huge amounts of steel and concrete. That much concrete that can't cure in the time frames they're talking about, and hooking modular sections together they way they're doing it isn't rigid enough.

The technology is so far away from doing what they said they would that it's laughable.

But prefab building technology on the scale they are actually building, as opposed to what they say in they're press releases, isn't "mystifying."

A US company could also raise a prefab 50 story building in 2 weeks. If the government loaned them hundreds of millions of dollars, allowed them to ignore worker safety and environmental laws, and they ignored any long term maintenance considerations.

It wouldn't be profitable, just like it's not profitable China. And it wouldn't last 40 years, just like the buildings in China won't last 40 years.

Not to mention that almost everyone believes they are fudging the numbers on the total prep time.

Ever been to a hackathon where teams technically built a product in 2 days but spent a month rehearsing what they were going to do once the clock started?

There's plenty of speculation that's exactly what Broad Sustainable Building Group is doing. Not that the state run media is ever going to allow any of their critics to talk openly.

I'll leave you with a word from the company themselves. "Sustainable Building Group's prefab technology is] the most profound innovation in human history." Really? You're buying this?

>They've been talking about building the world's tallest building for years in only 90 days,

I didn't say they built the tallest building in the world. They built a 54 story buildings and five story buildings are certainly realistic.

>A US company could also put up a 40 story building in 2 weeks. If the government loaned them hundreds of millions of dollars, allowed them to ignore worker safety and environmental laws, and they ignored any long term maintenance considerations

The whole "they cheat" meme is part of every criticism of China. China actually makes stuff though. The funny part about IKEA and other western retailers opening in China is that they had a very hard time competing because the locals just copied theit designs and sold them cheaper down the street. Unlike other markets they operate in, the locals can make things at a competitive cost. If you don't actually make anything you can demand all this abstract perfection. Most of the products that Americans buy in stores are made in China, including the cell phone or computer you are reading this on.

>It wouldn't be profitable, just like it's not profitable China. And it wouldn't last 40 years, just like the buildings in China won't last 40 years. Sure the government gives out lots of money, but that's communist central planning in action. Seems to be working better than the McMansion bubble.

The Chinese are not an inherently superior civilization to the Americans, thus the Americans could do the same thing if they got their act together. We rely on dumb wall street money to allocate capital that chases whatever bubble is hip at the moment. China allocates capital via giving banks very specific lending instructions. Different systems, and they seem to have some advantages.

>Different systems, and they seem to have some advantages.

Of course there are advantages to planned economies. In the 60s, the US was absolutely terrified that the Russian command economy gave them overwhelming advantages that we couldn't compete with.

And If you went to school in the early 90s you'll remember that there was a real fear that we'd have to start going to school on Saturdays to keep up with the Japanese.

I can almost guarantee that in about 30 years, we'll have a panic about India.

>I didn't say they built the tallest building in the world. They built a 54 story buildings and five story buildings are certainly realistic.

Never said you did. My argument is that the company is essentially a propaganda machine, as evidenced by their repeated claims (and failed attempts) that they are going to build the world's tallest building.

>The whole "they cheat" meme is part of every criticism of China.

I'm not making a moral argument about China. I'm telling you the reason that they can accomplish many of the things that they are accomplishing is because they aren't restricted by the same rules.

They can have cheap factories because they don't have strong labor laws, and they don't have strict emissions controls.

The thing is though, all of that will end as their standard of living increases. It's already happening. People are tired of living in smog, so they are introducing stricter emission controls. People aren't living like rural peasants anymore so they are demanding higher wages.

As these things happen, growth will slow. Sure they're GDP will eclipse ours one day, so will India's most likely, but it's going to take a lot longer than naive extrapolation predicts it will.

he's not falling for Chinese propaganda, he's part of the Chinese propaganda

BSB is a subsidiary of China's largest manufacturer of industrial air conditioners, boilers, and related products, and that's where their financing comes from.

They are able to finish onsite construction quickly because their buildings are modularized and 90% of the work is done in the factory.

Building the world's fastest supercomputer is a financial and construction problem, not so much engineering. Assuming we are talking about a system built out of thousands of distinct nodes.

If I wanted rank #1 on the top500 list, had $900 million sitting around and wanted to build something faster, I could, by hiring some of the people responsible for building massive datacenter facilities in the US (750,000 sq ft+) with their associated cooling, generator, UPS systems, and buying several metric shitloads of 1U supermicro dual xeon systems.

All of that also assumes that it's a supercomputer designed for compute tasks that can be neatly divided up into small chunks and doesn't require a totally proprietary bespoke interconnect (rather, it can use something COTS).

It is a budget problem, not technical: Are you prepared to fork out the money for a hundred 200 kilowatt air conditioners all running in parallel? Do you have the real estate for them and their air handlers?

> It took China less than a year to build the worlds fastest supercomputer

A buggy supercomputer that's down most of the time. In practice, Titan is still the world's fastest supercomputer. This isn't to say that China won't pass the US for real in supercomputing; it's just at the current moment their supercomputer is really only the best on paper.

EDIT: Actually, I didn't notice that the Sunway TaihuLight became active in June. I don't much about this supercomputer, so my comment only applies to the Tianhe-2.

As someone who spends a lot of time studying computer architecture, I'm skeptical about this machine because of its interconnect design and memory bandwidth. It seems to be optimized specifically for LINPACK. Many people are critical of that benchmark and some labs refuse to participate in Top 500 because of it.

From [1]:

>However, as we know LINPACK does not tell the whole story. On the HPCG benchmark, Sunway TaihuLight reported only .371 petaflops, which is .3 percent of peak. Compare this with 0.580 petaflops on Tianhe-2 (1.1 percent of peak) and .322 petaflops on Titan (1.2 percent of peak). RIKEN’s K computer reports 0.460 HPCG performance, 4.1 percent theoretical peak.

1: https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/19/china-125-petaflops-sunwa...

EDIT: To be more blunt, this machine might have more PR value than scientific value.

The Linpack benchmark, which is the gold standard for the top500 super computer list you're referring to, can be gamed with a shitload of GPUs. The Chinese computers you're referring to simply have an enormous amount of GPUs. These aren't generalized computers, but quite specialized one.

It is quite historic on its own, but the utility isn't quite what you might expect.

A system built with the same peak flops using GPUs would actually be more useful than what they built. The Sunway TaihuLight processing elements have 64KB scratchpad, no data cache, and have less memory bandwidth than Nvidia Fermi (7 years old.)

For most applications the processing elements will be so starved for data that they are just an idle waste of energy.

http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-...

"China has leap frogged pretty much everyone else in every aspect."

How laughable.

Is anyone in the world using a Chinese based OS? Is anyone outside of China really even using a Chinese OS derived from American ones?

Is anyone in the US really using Chinese software?

Can you name any big Chinese products or services that we use in the West besides cheap commodity stuff?

You left out the espionage part of the technology transfer equation.

You don't need much espionage when western companies are literally sending specs for their products to be manufactured in China.

Or are forced to set up joint ventures with Chinese companies as a condition of entering the Chinese market. After a few years, once the technology transfer/know-how has been transferred, the joint venture is dissolved.

I visited an Airbus factory and on the floor were dozens of pallets filled with parts ready to be loaded on a ship headed for China. The tour guide said that in order for big orders of Airbus planes to be made from China, Airbus had agreed to do final assembly in China. Boeing on the other hand, he smirked, did not agree to this and subsequently didn't get the orders (this has since changed and Boeing is doing the same, just not final assembly). It was pretty obvious to me why Boeing would not have wanted to do this, but Airbus didn't seem to have the same reservations.

I will bet that in 5-10 years, China will start manufacturing its own airplanes.

Airbus is going to regret that decision. The old adage about capitalists selling the noose that hangs them holds true

Meh. Building an airplane isn't that hard anyways, China will get there soon if they aren't already (e.g. with the C919).

It is very difficult to build avionics and jet engines that work, which are just shipped whole sale in final assembly. It will take China much much much longer to replicate that technology, and final assembly rights aren't going to help much at all.

> I will bet that in 5-10 years, China will start manufacturing its own airplanes.

China has been manufacturing aircraft since the 1930s, and its own designs since the 1950s.

Many of its aircraft of the 20th Century were reverse-engineered derivatives of Soviet types, but there were also indigenous designs which sold fairly well globally such as the Harbin Y-12 light turbrprop.

Their indigenous first jet-powered airliner, the Shaanxi Y-10, flew in 1980.

The current C919 airliner project uses the same LEAP engines as the A230Neo and 737Max:

http://english.comac.cc/Galleries/Photo/201512/25/W020151225...

A lot of the consumer tech I like the most is Chinese made: laptops, smartphones, cars, drones. Another decade of this trend and China will have all production engineering knowledge in the world and the US and Europe none.

Maybe China stacks the cards in its home market, but its not like the US (and other Western countries) doesn't.

China IMO has mastered efficient (low cost) scalable production of standard components. This is the ticket for mass produced consumer tech. Low wage was one of the big drives of this which might change in the near/mid term.

If the age of custom built products does appear this may put another damper on China insustrial production growth. In either case, next 10-15 years should be very interesting, hopefully in a good way (disruptions that are uncomfortable, but not crippling and lead to better setup in the end).

I hold a similar view. My nation now is heavily incentivized by shallow copy with little for deep copy. I just want to know what would happen next. Perhaps the context change on the global stage would break the balance and force a player to seek risky actions and...

It seems to me that China outplayed the West here by a wide margin.

For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt. I think this was a combination of fear that isolating China vs creating a high degree of economic interdependence could lead to war down the line, and a lack of control over Western companies who sought to break into China.

The situation today is deeply concerning. I think Western nations need to take dramatic action to curb / disincent China's protectionist policies and let their market open up to the rest of the world. If they won't truly do so, then the West needs to respond in kind.

The interests for both parties are now interlocked and the stakes are very high. So things are not that simple. Change will be gradual till a tipping point.

> It seems to me that China outplayed the West here by a wide margin.

Don't worry, the game is not over yet.

>For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt.

Yes. But this could be changed by Trump in one day. (Sorry, I know that this is an extremely liberal board).

Chinese don't believe in win-win. They believe in win-lose. Thats great but in my experience there is a point where you run out of stupid people to screw over.

Also, it is difficult to do business with Chinese. Why? Because a lot of their decisions are irrational and it is extremely difficult to have an opponent that does irrational decisions. But this will backfire or is backfirering already. Why? With 10 or 12% growth you can afford to make irrational decisions. But try this at 6,5 or 4 percent growth. Good luck with that.

> Yes. But this could be changed by Trump in one day.

OH really? How will he do that?

Tell them: Look, you can play around with your currency in whatever way you want. But if the trade balance is not balanced, we charge a 10% import tax. Per day. Cumulative.

I think there are many countries that can produce cheap shoes, clothes and electronics. By now all this stuff can already be manufactured in the US again due to automation and robotics (see Adidas producing shoes in Germany AGAIN).

This would be a minor problem for the US but a big problem for China, Germany and Japan.

By the way, I live in China.

> Tell them: Look, you can play around with your currency in whatever way you want. But if the trade balance is not balanced, we charge a 10% import tax. Per day. Cumulative.

Yea, that's not how the world works; the President isn't a CEO.

And watch while we are plunged into a recession due to a huge disruption in global supply chains.

Sorry, but complex problems don't have simple answers. Trump can't unilaterally force China to stop its protectionism, at least not without inflicting significant hurt on the American economy.

How do you think people will react to a 10% increase in prices for almost all goods?

"And watch while we are plunged into a recession due to a huge disruption in global supply chains."

WHAT supply chain? There is NO supply chain anymore. JIT (Just-In-Time) inventory has been replaced by BLTN (Better-Late-Than-Never) and AGNM (Ain't-Got-No-More) inventory.

Went to a large box store on the weekend. They had empty containers marked "Display" on the shelves. Two different employees explained that I should put empty containers for the desired items in my cart and, upon checking out, they would retrieve a full container of each item "from the back". Both assured me all displayed items were available.

Got my display containers and proceeded to check out. Was informed that two of three displayed items were not available. I suggested to the clerk "So now you'll take these two items off display?" He replied "No, they'll probably be back in stock next week."

I left the store w/o purchasing anything and they'll never see me again.

We may be in a recession right now because we can't buy quality goods AT ALL! I've bought five new fingernail clippers in the last six months and, for God's sake, they won't cut my nails! They're all made in China.

Many, if not most Chinese goods, especially machine tools, remain as they were 14 years ago: low quality and every item different with no standardization. And they've driven many good US manufacturers out of business. Why? Because workers buy shitty tools for one-time use, bill the customer for the work and for the tools and then throw away the tools when they're done. Of course no one's considering the external factors here: cost of shitty tools in poor workmanship, longer production times and accidents.

"How do you think people will react to a 10% increase in prices for almost all goods?"

If it convinces American manufacturers to produce quality products then it's great news.

Your anecdotes are not data.

They're anecdata, the best kind of data for those with an agenda or those without brains.

The evidence is far more than anecdotal. Anyone who is an active tool user could provide more - ask your local mechanic. The experience I describe is almost universal and transcends the term "anecdodal".

Here's some bedside reading:

'What’s in a tool? A case for Made in USA':

http://hackaday.com/2016/01/18/whats-in-a-tool-a-case-for-ma...

Discussion of the same:

https://build.slashdot.org/story/16/01/18/213236/whats-in-a-...

"China & The Decline In Quality (And Soon In Profits)":

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-18/china-decline-quali...

And my favorite, just for fun: "Chinese Factory Worker Can't Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans":

http://www.theonion.com/article/chinese-factory-worker-cant-...

I'm not from the US or China.

I think that outside the US, the reputation of US-made good has never been particularly strong. We see US cars, and compare them to Japanese cars and see mostly failings.

So far as Chinese goods go, I have no particular knowledge of wrenches.

However, I'd note that (Chinese made) Apple products are generally of pretty good quality.

I'd also point out that the ZeroHedge article doesn't really make a strong case that quality is decreasing at all. And you realize the Onion is a parody, right?

My point was that _everything_ I could post myself would necessarily be "anecdotal", but that anyone willing to do a google search can find millions of remarks: e.g.,

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&complete=0&hl=en&...

But you don't need to do that. Instead observe!

Go to a hardware store and try out a few tools from various countries. You'll see what I mean. _Pay_ _attention_ to the world you live in and the tools you and others use every day. In my case, my fingernail clippers failing (not one, but two pair, from different Chinese manufacturers, within weeks of each other) was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Instead of asking me to provide hard statistical evidence on these forums, I expect you internet wunderkinds to write a one-off ML tool to scrape the internet for "anecdotal" evidence, collate it, translate it with your neural net NL software, correlate it, and finally analyze it as your own statistical evidence. Maybe you'd even share it with others, but that isn't necessary.

nl: "I'd also point out that the ZeroHedge article doesn't really make a strong case that quality is decreasing at all.":

I can only assume you read an article other than the one I linked to.

And yes, I intentionally put the Onion article in there, because it is funny. But some people have no sense of humour and are unable to resist pointing out the obvious.

>I've bought five new fingernail clippers in the last six months and, for God's sake, they won't cut my nails! They're all made in China.

I'm just here to help. May I suggest these: https://www.amazon.com/Seki-Edge-Stainless-Fingernail-Clippe...

If your concern is with quality a good place to browse is: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/

Generally you'll have a number of options with pros/cons of each to select from. Often things are a little on the pricier side - but that price is for quality. Not all items are meant "for life" unfortunately, but a good 5-10 years is better than 5-10 weeks.

I have to chime in on those Seki clippers, amazingly better than any I've ever tried, regardless of where they were made.

Sounds like when it was the 60s and Japan was on the rise. It's almost as if, people in the occident have collective amnesia.

The United States is already dealing with economic problems caused by the Chinese trade deficit, which siphons almost as much demand from the economy every year as Obama's 2008 stimulus added in a one-time shot. So it is an interesting question and certainly not one-sided....

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/protectionism-g...

A trade war would theoretically cause a deadweight loss in global GDP, but as long as the US is not at full employment it is likely losses would end up distributed almost entirely on the Chinese side. Domestic losses would only take place after the return to full employment. Restructuring costs would also be imposed disproportionately on China because they'd be the ones dealing with insufficient demand.

Sure, a better alternative from a conventional economic perspective would be having the United States ramp up spending. The problem is that just printing more USD to enable this causes its own set of problems given that the USD is the world's reserve currency. Having the government take on additional interest-bearing debt avoids this problem, but does not seem particularly attractive when the Chinese are the ones who will end up collecting interest on the loan.

Political outcomes? My sense is that we'd see an upsurge in nationalism in China, perhaps more aggression in the South China Seas, but also a rapid collapse in the Chinese economy that would make coming to terms with the trade deficit a political priority. And is it really crazy for the West to demand a level playing field in exchange for its willingness to keep China from economic collapse?

> and having the government take on additional interest-bearing debt instead does not seem particularly attractive when the Chinese are the ones who will end up collecting interest on the loan.

But the Chinese aren't the ones that will end up collecting interest on additional US debt; while they are the biggest current foreign holder of US debt, their total holdings are dropping; they not only aren't the biggest purchaser of new US debt, they aren't even a net purchaser of US debt. (And they are only the biggest foreign holder, most US federal debt is owed to...entities within the US; non-federal US entities hold 4 times as much US debt as China does.)

You're missing the point. The problem isn’t who buys the loans (that is optics). The problem is that you are imposing a long-term tax burden on Americans in order to paper over a structural demand deficit. This is unsustainable and also unfair -- Americans are already paying for the status quo through persistently high unemployment and wage stagnation.

The best solution of course involves China recognizing that persistent trade deficits hurt its trade partners. The problem is that the Chinese political system is its own distributional game, and while there are direct costs for its participants associated with opening up markets and letting foreign businesses compete with domestic ones, there are no costs and only benefits associated with foreign dumping.

> And is it really crazy for the West to demand a level playing field in exchange for keeping China from economic collapse?

I think the US should demand that China reduce restrictions, not that we should increase them.

> government take on additional interest-bearing debt instead does not seem particularly attractive when the Chinese are the ones who will end up collecting interest on the loan

Why not? Personally, I find the obsession with debt entirely counterproductive. If the government can seemingly borrow endless sums of money with incredibly low interest, why not borrow as much as we can?

Especially since, as you said, we could actually benefit from a bit more inflation.

"And watch while we are plunged into a recession due to a huge disruption in global supply chains."

This is false. China is not the sole or important supplier of most things.

Vietname, India etc. are becoming capable of providing labour and supply chain.

A 10% tariff would be fair.

Besides, something needs to be done to balance trade.

Right now China is cheating by claiming they are open, whey they are not.

The West should simply implement tit-for-tat policies.

Vietnam/Thailand are already in the supply chain (where do you think all your cameras/hard disks come from ?). India barely has a manufacturing sector.

Of course. But supply/demand economics means as wages/issues rise in China (i.e. trade war) the rest of Asia, which is rising quickly, picks up the slack.

China has scale, and the right value chains for certain things. But ultimately they are commodities. It's that hard to build simple factories and provide reliable electricity and cheap workers.

Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Vietnam etc. - there's a lot of people there waiting to pick up the slack.

The US does not import a lot of meaningful things from China.

China imports a lot of critical goods from the West, particularly Germany. Also - the trade balance is very lopsided.

A 'trade war' with China would be very painful for China, but the West would hardly skip a beat.

A) Consumer prices would rise a little bit. B) Some plants (smart factories) would open in the US C) Mexico would boon, and so would other areas in Asia.

In the long run, if other places pick up the slack, it would permanently damage China's competitive advantages - whereas Western nations would do just fine, save a few German tool makers.

US economy grew only by 1.3% (as opposed to the expected 2.3%); the news sent XAU and JPY soaring. The silver cloud was that the consumer spending still looked decent; such tariffs without massive structural changes to the US manufacturing will come with a recession.

People don't understand why people manufacture in China - it's less about wages now, and more about logistics. Considering the global decline in demand, it's unlikely US (or any others in S. Asia / Africa) will be able to repeat the China/Asian Tiger story on such a mass scale.

I always wonder who are the idiotic supporters of trump and what were they thing? Now I found one. So trump raises 10% import tax, how will that affect prices and the economy. You are such a genius. The world is a dangerous place because of people like you with half brains.

>So trump raises 10% import tax This was just an example. But it does not matter if 1% or 10%. It is per day. Cumulative. Please look up the word if you don't understand it. It is cumulative until the trade balance is balanced again.

You're only proving his point.

There is a massive amount of US wealth landlocked in China, there's no way a US president is going to risk having China appropriate all that wealth a la Castro. If you really believe Trump will go through with his childish bravado then I feel sorry for you and for all his voters but I get why it has made him popular. When it comes to China it's too late to do anything too drastic to reverse this situation and given the risks involved there probably isn't much will to rock the boat either.

Another way to look at it: if you think Trump won't go through with his insanities, you're not scared enough.

One example: Trump said he would refuse to honor US debts, just as he has successfully refused to honor his own debts so many times. Even the smallest credible threat of devaluing US Treasury bonds would be an economic disaster.

"OH really? How will he do that?"

By slapping tit-for-tat policies.

+ Don't allow Chinese companies to invest in the US. + Control capital + Impose tariffs + Get the US gov to make it impossible for Chinese to do business in the US.

Could be done with the stroke of a pen.

> Because a lot of their decisions are irrational and it is extremely difficult to have an opponent that does irrational decisions.

While I disagree in general, I downvoted because of that statement. The decisions of the Chinese government make sense in context. They are not an irrational actor just because some of us don't understand their motivations, or because they don't align with western interests. The process is obscure, which makes it frustrating, but there is logic and grand strategy involved.

That is true (see infrastructure investments). The irrational decision makers are mainly in private enterprises. In my opinion because they are used to 10% growth. They will have to change or their companies will go belly up.

Many Chinese (both in Private and SOE) are complaining that there is a "downturn" right now. This is NOT a downturn. It will never be 10% growth. They have not realized that the game has changed.

> Why? Because a lot of their decisions are irrational and it is extremely difficult to have an opponent that does irrational decisions.

So if I make business decisions via ouija board or in a cocaine induced rage, I'll have a leg up?

> So if I make business decisions via ouija board or in a cocaine induced rage, I'll have a leg up?

No, but you'll have a job on Wall Street or maybe be a hedge fund manager.

You mistake appetite for risk as irrational. This might be true in some cases but I don't think it is general the same.

I think more of the scorpion and the frog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

> So if I make business decisions via ouija board or in a cocaine induced rage, I'll have a leg up?

Thomas Schelling's book The Strategy of Conflict has a focus on the ways that people can benefit in a conflict from being, or being perceived as, irrational or constrained in their choices or access to information. Clearly you can't be better off in all areas of life by making irrational or random decisions, but there are some specific situations of conflict where you might be, if others are aware of it.

One familiar example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)

where if people think you are very irrational, you're likely to win!

Surprisingly, according to game theory yes.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dc7/nash_equilibria_and_schelling_po...

> (Sorry, I know that this is an extremely liberal board).

Not really on economic policy, based on what I've seen. However, logical thinking is highly valued; that is to say, connecting the dots and backing up your assertions with evidence. Trite, blasé solutions to complex problems will usually earn a down vote on most topics, which is the case here.

Asserting in advance that the board is extremely liberal and will therefore disagree with you based on a difference of opinion is I'm sure reassuring when you are down voted, as it insulates you from any responsibility in putting forth a poorly-considered case. You are just lying to yourself, though.

Your comment sounds like it's coming from ten years ago or something.

China may (or may not, for all I know) have beaten the West in the game of getting the technology it wants but the country has enough structural problems that it's chances of getting ahead of the West broadly are looking very dim.

Problems: Horrific pollution, huge loans to inefficient state-run industries, massive real state and infrastructure mal-investment and bubbles, losing conventional factory jobs to even lower waged centered without gaining better jobs in compensation, having a first world demographic structure (lots of old people) without a first world standard of living, a government that's resorting to repression and ideology to solve problems and so-doubling down on all mistakes, the falsification of statistics can barely conceal an economy in stasis, etc.

So, there's little to fear from a Chinese economic "juggernaut" but the decline of China poses serious problems - especially, it seems to be what fueling the huffing and puffing over the South China sea.

Yup! Additionally the Chinese government is not a smart investor, and that's led to overcapacity. Eventually these bad investments will punish China, but it make take some time.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21696552-chinas-indus... http://www.economist.com/news/business/21693573-chinas-exces...

I saw a different thread about how China embraced mobile payments. One of the benefits was a consumer could pay a farmer directly using the mobile payment.

My first thought following reading that was "Yeah, and then the Farmer transfers that money into the stock market, and creates the bubble effect that is only corrected by direct intervention not allowing it to go down naturally."

    > Horrific pollution

Like how the US had horrible pollution during and after the industrial revolution and never got anywhere?

China's going to get their Clean Air Act. Just give it some time.

I'm more concerned about soil pollution and sinking water tables in the most fertile regions. Air could be cleaned up in a week, but this can't.

Improper irrigation can even lead to salts rising up to the soil surface and making it permanently infertile barring major earth works. Falling water tables can allow the ground to compress (now-empty pores deflate) and significantly lower the ground's ability to carry groundwater (as has happened in California).

Some damage is permanent, and we were not capable of the worst back then.

My list wasn't about China being evil or "worse than the US". I wish them well but the combination of problems they false has sufficient to make their economy stall. And with a stalled economy, China will have a hard time affording a Clean Air Act, adding to the vicious cycle they are experiencing.

Further, repression also make the equivalent of a Clean Air Act hard. The pattern currently is the central authorities issue a call to protect the environment (usually kind of ad-hoc) but local authorities ignore it and no one can complain because all the authorities are beyond criticism.

Just like the way you have the President start an anti-corruption campaign but the President's cronies exempt.

China boosters for years said these problems didn't matter. Maybe they didn't matter for those years but now, they are here in spades.

The funny thing is that even your comment sounds like coming from ten years ago. I remember reading pundits talk about the coming collapse of China for almost 20 years now.

Don't forget the USA's ace in the hole for brewing civil unrest in other countries: Hollywood. (I'm being mordant here; not advocating for international psy-ops.)

American media project a depiction of life that is very attractive by design, and this raises expectations among consumers of this media. If Chinese people were not aware of the lifestyles of westerners, the Chinese government would be under less pressure to improve standards of living. And yes everyone in every country knows that popular culture depicts dreams and aspirations rather than reality, but even with this discounting of what people in the developing world see they become aware of the quality of life in the west.

This causes an expectations revolution that is putting tremendous pressure on the Chinese government, which is not necessarily a bad thing but can cause society to destabilize if growth stops.

I just saw the new Star Wars -- cofinanced by (e:) Alibaba films. In it, one of the moral cruxes of the main story was that the crew needed 'Unity'. I saw this as a subtle shift from american 'Freedom'. There's a <plot point, not super spoilery> point where some 'good guys' are being held prisoner. In any red-blooded American Hollywood Film, this would lead to 'GIVE US OUR FREEDOM' type resistance. In this movie, it led to 'WE NEED UNITY' resistance.

Maybe I am reading too much in to it, but it felt like a shift influenced by the additional target market of the East, and I don't see Hollywood as a source of affecting moral/civic unrest.

"Maybe I am reading too much in to it...."

No, i don't think that you're reading too much into it. In fact, i like your analysis. I'll have to rewatch it, again. LOL

especially concerning "unity" vs. "FREEDOMMM!"

Is that a Helldivers reference?

Do you by any chance mean Star Trek and Alibaba films?

Probably. This wouldn't be a new theme for Star Trek.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out, edited my post.

e: Augh, I missed changing the Star Wars -> Star Trek edit and now I can't edit; I have permanently lost nerd cred for making that mixup ;_;

May the force live long and prosper with you :)

Thank you. I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie, but I have seen the new Star Wars movie so I was so very confused.

Independence Day, a blue-blooded American Hollywood Film if there ever was one, is also all about unity.

Think you mean red-blooded.

"Ordinary People" is a blue-blooded American Hollywood film.

That would be my mistake -- I said blue-blooded in my original post and I meant red-blooded as you have pointed out.

>In it, one of the moral cruxes of the main story was that the crew needed 'Unity'. I saw this as a subtle shift from american 'Freedom'.

Teamwork is a huge theme in countless Hollywood movies. A rag tag group of misfits who has to overcome their differences and learn to work together is a classic movie trope.

I don't think this has anything do with trying to appeal to Chinese audiences.

Less complex (and less overall) dialogue designed to make it easier to translate is an actual example of trying to succeed in China.

Certainly there is teamwork in many films, but I feel in traditional films that teamwork is to work towards the common goal of 'freedom' (abstractly). In this Star Trek movie, it came down to a struggle of power vs (explicitly) "unity". I.e., bad guy was against the idea of Unity. So in American films, unity is used as a tool to the end goal of freedom, whereas in this film the struggle was towards the ultimate goal of unity.

But that's one of the central themes of Star Trek. The Federation is explicitly about unity, not necessarily freedom. The Federation has been accessed of being an essentially communist government over the years.

The film was written by long time fan of the series, so one of the central themes of the series being highlighted in the film is unsurprising.

I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with China.

Unity vs. Chaos, with a preference for the former, is a common and recurring them in American film and television which has not infrequently featured in the Star Trek franchise. Freedom vs. authority/conformity, with the preference for the former, is also a common and recurring theme in American film and TV which has not infrequently featured in the Star Trek franchise, and, yes, the two themes do have tension with each other (a tension which is, itself, another common and recurring theme in American film and television which has not infrequently featured in the Star Trek franchise.)

Then again, Hollywood is now increasingly dependent on China, increasingly tailors film to the Chinese market and cultural demands, and is taking more and more financing from China:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/21/words-...

http://fortune.com/hollywood-film-financing/

https://next.ft.com/content/2cb93908-2c65-11e6-bf8d-26294ad5...

Few films (34) can be shown in China each year so being selected is a thing which some go for and others ignore. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-film-import-quot...

Protectionist trade policies are common in Japan too. Ford quit the Japanese market after less than 5000 units sold in 2015.

http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/why-arent-foreig...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/japan-the-forgott...

"Protectionist trade policies are common in Japan too...."

There are advantages to the way Asian economists do it. For example, not only in Japan, but especially in Korea, cell phones were standard even by the mid-90's....EVERYONE had one. And the rates were quite reasonable, too. (No contracts, either. IfIRememberRight.) But there are(/were) disadvantages to Asian Tiger economics too. After the Asian bubble burst, the Korean Wan [SouthKorean money] depreciated to the point that USArmy Sergeants were trying to buy cars (even Fords, not just Kias and Daewoos) made (or rather bought) in Korea. (The US Dollar-to-Wan rate was so out of wack that it was still more economical to buy AND ship a car back to the US across the Pacific on a boat. Unfortunately emissions standards were different; Korean cars didn't pass EPA muster.) ~circa 1998

Protectionism in my opinion is key to helping an economy that is developing to catch up.

What Should happen instead is quid pro quo trade agreements. But in Google and Uber's case Chinese industry isn't exploiting the US market, so the US companies have no right to complain.

Why is it a problem if China develops a higher GDP than the US. Its not a problem for the people. It might be a problem to politicians that want to tell a story, but wishing china to do worse economically is truly backwards. If china comes out with better technology than the us, better products and services, cheaper and all that, the whole world gets better. If you dont believe that, then you must for the sake of consistency think that products that come out of the us into other countries are vultures in nature and draining in economic terms.

A more mature approach would be to think what to learn and do(or not do) when someone is showing great signs of progress. Getting more products from China makes the whole richer. China's protectionis policies are probably harming them more than helping them, why play in the same game.

China's GDP compared to it's population is interesting. 3-4 times the population of the US but 80% of the GDP. To me it only seems natural that they will eventually overtake the United States in GDP. India should too, as should the EU

It's hardly that simple. China/Korea/Thai/Vietnam/India... were economically at the same level at the turn of WWII - India was probably in better shape. Now India is comparable only to S-Saharan Africa (and other S.Asian countries), in terms of educational attainment/malnourishment ...

Systems matter; it's not surprising that deeply colonized countries remain basket cases. It's likely that China will be the last nation to "re-industrialize" in the near term.

The EU has the biggest GDP in the world btw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

China is repressive and has very low standards for human rights. If China becomes more powerful they may decide to conquer the US properly. This may be along way off but this is the fear that's behind not wanting China to surpass the US economically.

Chinese civilization is different from western civilization, specially in its habit to absorb other culture, instead of conquering them. China had a Mongol dynasty, a Manchu dynasty. But it never rode to the other side of the world to force remote populations to change their religion or political system.

Neither had Japan.

This interests me. Do you know of any good books, articles, or other sources I could learn more about this topic? Specifically your first sentence.

https://archive.org/details/problemofchina00russ Not exactly answers the question, but I quite like Russel's view on this.

Any book on the long history of China would do, I'm not sure which one in English should be recommended.

What do you think of the U.S.'s record for human rights? To be fair, the U.S. has done a much better job of keeping many of those incidents (Gitmo or elsewhere) secret until fairly recently.

> What do you think of the U.S.'s record for human rights?

The U.S. is far from guilt free.

At the time that the US was developing, it also had extremely low standards for human rights.

But as the US prospered, the Civil Rights movement kicked in. So perhaps the same will happen in China.

That isn't true at all. The US had extremely high standards for human rights, just much lower standards for slaves, but the framework and standards already existed for post civil war and the civil rights movement. As far as human rights go, China is somewhere before the Magna Carta in western civilization.

>The US had extremely high standards for human rights, just much lower standards for slaves

Were slaves not human back then? GP is right: the human rights standard was appalling, and this is before considering the Trail of Tears and other small-pox-related incidents

High standard human rights existed in the west, they just weren't equally applied. In China, human rights are equally applied, just at a very low standard.

So the west only had to apply what human rights already existed universally to "develop," and there was already moral pressure to do so from unfairness. China already has "fairness", but no where to go after that; there is definitely no moral pressure from within to do better.

I'm not certain that there were (to a modern eye) a high standard of human rights for anyone. Treatment of slaves and the lack of women's rights are well known examples, but there are a large number of historical practices that paint a pretty inhumane society, including punishments (e.g. the stocks), amusements (e.g. gouging aka rough and tumble), and community standards for the treatment of children (`beat the devil out of them` was serious, and not at all metaphorical).

Maybe look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights

> While belief in the sanctity of human life has ancient precedents in many religions of the world, the idea of human rights, that is, the notion that a human being has a set of inviolable rights simply on grounds of being human, began during the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period. The European wars of religion and the civil wars of seventeenth-century England gave rise to the philosophy of liberalism and belief in human rights became a central concern of European intellectual culture during the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment. These ideas of human rights lay at the core of the American and French Revolutions which occurred toward the end of that century. Democratic evolution through the nineteenth century paved the way for the advent of universal suffrage in the twentieth century. Two world wars led to the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

> The post-war era saw human rights movements for special interest groups such as feminism and the civil rights of African-Americans. The human rights of members of the Soviet bloc emerged in the 1970s along with workers' rights in the West. The movement quickly jelled as social activism and political rhetoric in many nations put it high on the world agenda.[1] By the 21st century, Moyn has argued, the human rights movement expanded beyond its original anti-totalitarianism to include numerous causes involving humanitarianism and social and economic development in the Developing World.[2]

> Some notions of righteousness present in ancient law and religion is sometimes retrospectively included under the term "human rights". While Enlightenment philosophers suggest a secular social contract between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from notions of divine law, and, in Hellenistic philosophy, natural law.

One can say "human rights" and still not have accomplished the goal yet, but if one cannot say "human rights" at all, there is no goal in sight. The Chinese media always complains that "human rights" is a western-biased concept, not appropriate for China, and at least we can agree on the first part. Human rights was a concept in the west, even if it had flaws, it was never even a concept in China (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values).

Actually this isn't true at all then. By your logic, China also have an extremely high standard for human rights. Just a cursory look at the Chinese constitution shows how much they value equality.

And surely, the rich and connected people in China have those rights. They are treated fairly by the system and society.

It's just those poorer people that are hurt, but hey, the framework for it still exists.

China's constitution is all about equality, free speech, etc...but China's system is not based on constitutional law so they just ignore it. You know that.

People all have the same standards enshrined in the political system, but it is a low bar, and everyone makes out in the economic system instead. It's basically what a libertarian society would look like if they kept the government to a minimum (sans the occasional persecution of a dissident).

> If China becomes more powerful they may decide to conquer the US properly.

That's utterly hilarious. If there's a world in which that's even remotely possible, we'll all be long, long dead by the time it happens.

I wouldn't be so sure.

China's GDP per capita is currently about 14% of the United States [1]. That's roughly the same ratio that Japan faced in 1960, yet within 30 years Japan overtook the US in GDP per capita [2].

My view is that China has a number of economic and demographic disadvantages that mean in 30 years China is 'only' likely to reach 30-50% of US GDP per capita. But with a population projected to be 3 times the US [3], China's overall GDP will be greater than the US. In 30 years.

And once that happens, how long will it take for China's military power to exceed the United States? You might be dead, but your grandchildren will certainly see it happen.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

[2] Based on the Google graph when you search "Japan GDP per capita", etc.

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_gr...

First, the post I responded to did not claim that our militaries could reach parity. It claimed that China could conquer the US. That's impossible, preposterous even, and the only thing that could change that is the singularity, and if that happens all bets are off.

Second, even reaching parity is an immensely daunting proposition. If China were to start building ships and aircraft, the US would respond in kind. Right now there's a lot of overhead and waste in the procurement process, that waste would disappear if shit suddenly got real. Sure, we 'only' have 20 carrier groups right now, but there's no reason we can't have 40.

There's two main force multipliers I see that we have that China will never be able to catch up with us on. First, training and experience. The reason we keep a small military manpower-wise is because every US soldier is extremely well-trained. If China conscripted a percentage of their population, they could instantly have a larger army, but that army would then need to be trained in how to conduct modern warfare.

Second, alliances with other countries. The best air-to-air missile right now is the Meteor, it's being developed in Sweden and sold throughout Europe. If China started rising militarily, the US and Europe would immediately start cooperating to counter it by sharing technology.

The US has an enormous amount invested in its military dominance, it will not give that up at any cost. China could not reach parity slowly, as it would never catch up, and it can't reach it quickly, because we'd notice and respond appropriately. It would be such a huge drain on their economy that they'd abandon the effort.

The Soviets never even came close to parity in conventional force projection. The Chinese wouldn't either in a strategic arms race. Even if they did, they'd still never in a million years be able to conquer the US. As well try to conquer the Sun.

> First, the post I responded to did not claim that our militaries could reach parity. It claimed that China could conquer the US.

For China to some day have the ability to conquer the US, wouldn't they first have to reach parity? Seems to me the post was implicitly claiming that the China's military could reach parity with the United States. But I agree that the focus of the argument is on exceeding the US military power.

The generals of the First World War had training and experience, but technological change meant that training was useless and they had to re-learn how to fight on the battlefield. Future technology will have the same effect - for example, a swarm of drones might be more capable than a manned fighter aircraft. Air superiority might come down to who can write the better drone software, or perhaps simply who has the most drones. The old investment in manned fighter aircraft would count for nothing.

I agree that the US alliances with other countries is a benefit that China will not have. But China has its own unique benefit - its manufacturing industry. It already far exceeds the US in ability to mass produce smartphones. Couldn't it one day churn out military robots at a far greater rate than the US and Germany combined?

The Soviets never came close to achieving economic parity with the United States. A better analogy would be Britain in the 19th century - it lost its military dominance as the US grew its economy to be much larger than the British economy. In the 21st century China will do to the US what the US did to Britain the 19th century.

My logic is simple: (a) in 30 years China's economy will be bigger than the US economy; (b) in 60 years China's economy will be double the US economy; (c) A country will lose its military superiority to another country if that other country can afford to spend twice as much on its military.

None of these three statements seems particularly controversial to me.

> For China to some day have the ability to conquer the US, wouldn't they first have to reach parity?

Sure. But it's not enough.

To conquer a country you have to invade it. To invade it you have to move soldiers to it. A lot of them. China could destroy our entire navy and air force and still not be able to conquer us.

This is the reason we used nuclear weapons against Japan in WW2 rather than try to invade it. We could have, but the amount of resources and blood it would have taken was extreme. An operation of that scale conducted across an ocean has only been successful once, and that's because we had a friendly country to establish a base on. (DDay)

Should the Chinese want to invade us, their only real option would be through Mexico. No amount of conventional military dominance can overcome the sheer impossibility of trying to invade a country by sea. And the US and Canada are too close for them to go that route. Invading Canada would be just as hard as invading the US. They could maybe try overland across Russia, Alaska, and Canada, but that would be just as hard as an amphibious assault.

Should the US see that China was gearing up for such a plan, we'd send our army there to rebuff the attempt, ignoring Mexican sovereignty if we had to.

Without troops on the ground, there is no conquest. They could conceivably beat us in conventional conflict given a serious enough advantage, but they could never actually invade us, so complete neutralization is impossible.

It does not look like Japan ever overtook the US in GDP per capita: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Yes they did: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

But it doesn't really matter whether Japan got to 105% or 95% of US GDP in 1990 - my point that China could get to 30-50% of US GDP in 30 years stands.

The US has a horrible human rights history. The country started with genocide of native americans. It enslaved and murdered millions of africans. It still has very racist tendencies. It killed several million koreans, vietnamese and cambodians (indirectly). Then there is Iraq and Afghanistan. There are a lot of really horrible things the US did that is on par with the Nazis and the worse we've seen from many other countries. The US is good at hiding or ignoring its atrocities. I don't think China is better or worse. But I don't see why it should be vilified when the US (and many other 1st world countries) have done much worse things to each other and to the 3rd world. In fact, I think all 3rd world countries should grow their internal markets in a similar way until they can become 1st world countries.

I have to say this is an insane fear that does not reflect the world as is, or if it where true, it would have terrible implications.

First of all, China and the US, besides their rivalry, are huge economic partners: china and the US trade from each other a lot. Either of them going into military conflict with the other would mean massive economic losses. Im not saying it cant happen, but it cannot be the goal to get richer so in the end you can get poorer.

Ofc is reasonable to think that being an economic power gives you also political power, and as an American you can perceive that the US benefits from that position today and doesnt want to lose it to China.

I would say that first of all, most of U.S. intervention in other countries has cost dearly both for the intervened countries and to the american taxpayer(and sometimes citizen or soldier). China as well as the US are a problem in that regard. Its true that it could have negative consequences, as it does for the US to have that power, but it feels to me secondary to economic power, and more relevant to how international institutions should work.

In any case, China doesnt have to surpass the US to do this, as today it already has a lot of questionable policies(like being an ally to north korea, or getting into borderline military conflicts for sea territory).

Why was this downvoted? It's a perfectly good question.

"Why is it a problem if China develops a higher GDP than the US"

That isn't the issue.

The issue is protectionist policies and direct interference by the state in all sectors.

They can do that if they want, but we need to slap tariffs on their products and ban some Chinese companies from selling in the West.

Why, the US is richer for being able to import Chinese products. The victims of the proteccionist policies are the chinese people, that are forced to consume worse products, or at a higher price, or paid with their taxes.

Its like saying "my neighbor is stabbing himself, we should stab ourselves so they learn!"

No, the West does not need to respond in kind. Unilateral free trade is better than tit-for-tat escalations. Let them protect their own; in the long run we'll be better off for allowing free-trade even when our counterparties do not.

> For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt.

I always assumed that this was allowed because in turn, China gave American companies access to very, very cheap manufacturing labour.

China exchanged trillions of goods at below market rates due to games with their exchange rate. This worked because the government does not care about it's populace and can extract a lot of value from an oppressed population. The populace benefited from increasing purchasing power though far less and far slower than most developing nations.

I would say the US and communist party members got a great deal and the Chinese population is better off though still being stepped on.

Not sure why you are downvoted, this is pretty much spot on. The artificially low renminbi has been driving Chinese exports since the 90s and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile the Chinese people got rapid industrialization at the cost of by and large living in polluted filth and crowded cities, and their per-capita GDP, which is a fairly good measure of the wealth of the median citizen, is still middling-to-terrible despite their high overall GDP.

This has been a great deal for the western citizen, who have been exchanging tons of currency for cheap goods(thanks to the low exchange rate), especially US citizens who have had their government's borrowing costs financed by the very money sent over there to buy things with. Not so great of a deal for the average Chinese, in comparison to what they might have had as a more westernized country.

Edit: Let's not even talk about the demographic collapse happening as a result of the one child policy. It will make any demographic problems in the west look like child's play.

You could also tell the very opposite story. In the last around 20 years, the poor and middle class in china greatly benefited from the economic growth, while the poor and middle class in the west didn't benefit at all or even had a wage cut if you look at inflation adjusted wages. China is hardly a developing nation anymore.

In economics you end up with a reversion to the mean over time. China was in a very bad state though terrible management over the preceding hundreds of years, so catching up was rather simple. US, is coming down from being the only modern state that was not destroyed by WWII.

US lower and middle class benefited from cheap goods, and suffered from continued automation and imports. However, the US produces more goods now than at any point in it's history so you can't really blame things on a lack of manufacturing.

IMO, I would blame 5 primary factors, massive undocumented population suppressing wages, developed economy making growth harder, tax policy's that harm workers directly and indirectly, unions shrinking, and rapid automation continuously disrupting the economy.

The last time China had a huge trade imbalance with a country resulted in the Opium Wars.

I can see why China is so keen on improving their military now.

But back then China wanted nothing from the rest of the world EXCEPT its silver. So in comes Opium, and then the Opium wars.

These days, I think it is a bit better. At least China wants our airplanes/jet engines. And the ruling class is totally vested in overseas real estate. Military wars are just going to be bad for business at that point.

> For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt

The reason might be deindustrialization of the west coupled by an exploding globsl consumer goods market and large (and growing) home market. China effectively made itself the factory of the west, and a highly desirable market as well.

The TPP is an attempt to deal with China because the west can't directly confront China with a tit-for-tat strategy for practical purposes: Western countries would need to rebuild and retool consume-goods factories at a high cost that the profit-maximizing corps don't want to shoulder

Maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe Western men just like Asian women. Love after all, trumps everything.

Protectionist policies hurt the "protected" countries the most.

Smoot-Hawley

I'm hoping a genuine, knock-down drag-out economic competition will get an American president back up on the podium saying stuff more like "We choose to go to the moon" instead of this useless, vague "great again" nonsense.

> saying stuff more like "We choose to go to the moon"

So ... building space missile technology for a cold war arms race?

The US government is completely dysfunctional and corrupt at this point and is unable to muster any kind of coherent trade policy. This has allowed China to outmaneuver US repeatedly. This is most obvious recently in the Boeing deal where they are going to build a factory in China and give away all there knowhow after congress refused to reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank, blocked by one senator. See here http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/business/international/a-s...

You make it sound like the West consciously decided to outsource to China. This is not the case, and the West would not have had the unity to be able to consciously do such a thing.

Simple market dynamics caused this, albeit caused by market manipulation on China's part. China buys US debt, lowering the value of the Chinese dollars to the US dollar, making stuff in China dirt cheap.

International trade isn't a free market in the typical sense, and countries are the largest actors.

Uh, the US government's granting China most-favored-nation trading status was certainly a conscious decision, and China would not be as far along economically if the decision had gone the other way. (Driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union was the main reason behind the decision IIUC.)

(edited) xxx....xxx (end-edit)

ref. Yale (wash your hands aftah ya piss...lol).

FacebookIsEvil $C$C$C....CCC...ccc... ... __ _ '

Uber and Google are very different cases. They, as tech companies, are also different cases from consumer companies. Detailed analysis are required to gain insights on why they succeed or failed.

In short, Google posed a thread to the government and the political system. If it was allowed to run freely, it will break the restrictions and the controls the government has been trying to impose on the internet. So the government can't afford to have Google freely spread information, etc.

Uber doesn't impose such a threat. In my opinion, Didi simply outperforms Uber. I use Uber and Lyft in USA. Last summer I was in China and tried Didi and Uber on purpose. I think Didi's app was easier to use, had better design, more integrated to other services, and had more drivers. I talked to the drivers. My general impression was that the drivers were more content at working with Didi. This was especially true when issues occurred. Didi were more eager to work with drivers to get issues resolved, while some drivers complained that Uber was kind of condescending, treated drivers less well.

As for traditional consumer companies like Walmart, etc. cutting costs was their primary goal, IMHO. When one complains about cheap products from China, has she/he thought about supply and demand? If the demand for such cheap products is low, will the companies continue making them? For example, there are high-quality hand-made silk, linen, cotton clothes in China, I don't think the big companies are interested in them. The market for high-end stuffs is always small. Most people would prefer to buy high-end stuffs on well-established brands, like those in France, Italy, etc. It takes time to build such a brand. So it is not as profitable to cheap products. Due to the drastic disruption before 1980 in China, Chinese start to build high-end products only in last several years. It will take at least another 20 years, IMHO, for such products to mature in both quality and design, and be recognized.

We have some cotton fabric hand-made by my wife's grandmother, in traditional ways. After 40 years, they are still both soft and sturdy (of course, we don't use them that often, since they are so precious for us.) It feels just so good, much better than those very good quality beddings one can find in department stores here. You won't find such products in department stores, though. That is my point.

"It's a big boy's game for large nation states...."

The Koreans have a saying: "...like a shrimp between two whales...."

Relevant: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-09/u-s-impose...

'“Economically counterproductive tariffs have artificially made solar panel prices in the U.S. the most expensive in the world,” Shah said. CASE was formed to represent most of the U.S. solar industry against the petition.

Solarworld AG, a German company with a factory in Oregon, persuaded the Commerce Department in 2012 to apply tariffs on imports of solar cells from China.'

I am always amused how people disregard the largest transfer of wealth that has ever occurred. China is responsible for the theft of trillions of US tax payers dollars through their incessant hacking and stealing of technology. From the US Military to private companies, there is no limit to their State Sponsored theft.

I'm not even going to include what the have stolen from Europe.

We can talk about barrier to entry but the real problem lies in unabated theft.

> As late as this past June, Uber was predicting it would pass its rival within a year.

This is simply <del>not true</del> (edit: not going to happen). I'm a fan of Uber, but using Uber is kinda like a exotic thing to do (while Didi is more common). Uber can be only used in major cities, on the other hand Didi can be used almost anywhere. Didi simply expand faster in China. (Uber is available in less than 20 Chinese cities while Didi appears in hundreds.)

Also I don't view the merge of Uber China and Didi as a failure on Uber's side. It's more or less a peace treaty or truce (edit: between Uber per se and Didi, yes I know Uber China was merged). Uber-like service is simply too cheap in China for a long time, (I Uber to work for less than $2 for example), and both side cannot hold it any more. It's as simple as that.

(Before the Didi-Uber merge, there's a similar merge of Didi and it's major competitor Kuaidi, thus the full name Didi-Kuaidi, in which both side are Chinese companies and it's just that after long competition investors decided to facilitate a merge. This merge makes Uber the second largest, before that they were the 3rd.)

The story between Google and Baidu is a whole different one. First search engine as a gateway to informations is viewed as vital by the Chinese government and government really worked on Baidu's side.

> > > As late as this past June, Uber was predicting it would pass its rival within a year.

> This is simply not true.

Yes it is true. Kalanick's investor updates from 24-12 months ago were all gung ho on China and how Uber was seeing as much or more success there as any Western country ever had. Their explicit goal was to outcompete Didi and become the #1 on-demand service in China (on-demand generally... not just for transportation). Their timeline for winning majority market share was 12-24 months out, and that is how they justified the extremely, extremely aggressive cash burn in the market. (Nobody burns $1B+/yr in cash gunning to grow slowly into second place.) Believe me when I say that several billion dollars of raised capital and $10B+ of Uber's imputed valuation was attributed to their potential in China, their growth there, and their plan to dominate in the next 12-24 months.

What evidence have you that this is "simply not true." Some of these statements to investors have become public knowledge, which you'll see with a simple google search.

Just one of many articles and quotes from this timeframe outlining Uber's explicit goal of becoming dominant in marketshare in China within a year: http://www.digitaltrends.com/business/uber-beat-didi/ Note as well how cocky and aggressive Uber was here in their marketing, public statements, etc.

> Also I don't view the merge of Uber China and Didi as a failure on Uber's side.

It was absolutely a failure. Uber's goal was to beat Didi and dominate in China, as is their goal in every single market they enter. Did they succeed or fail in that goal?

Uber did a good job salvaging value here in having its Chinese operation acquired by Didi. But make no mistake, it was a failure and this falls far short of both their intentions and their promises to investors.

Also, this was forced on Uber by investors. People lost faith that Uber could win in China, and rightfully so. The cash burn was staggering and there was no end in sight and no clear path to actual victory, despite the previously lofty updates and promises.

> It's more or less a peace treaty or truce

No. A peace treaty or truce means each side remains independent but they agree to stop warring with each other. This is an outright purchase. Uber lost the war and it's best option was to salvage value in Uber China by merging into a minority, small position (only 18%) within Didi's business.

> Uber-like service is simply too cheap in China for a long time, (I Uber to work for less than $2 for example), and both side cannot hold it any more. It's as simple as that.

Yes. It was a war of attrition. And Uber lost the war. As simple as that. That's why it makes no sense that you're framing this as somehow just a "peace treaty".

> Before the Didi-Uber merge, there's a similar merge of Didi and it's major competitor Kuaidi..

Yes, this was a brilliant move on Didi's (and Kuaidi's) part. On top of this, Didi struck a partnership with Lyft. In terms of military strategy, Didi was encircling Uber on all sides. Instead of having to fight a war on two fronts with Kuaidi and Uber, they used Kuaidi and Lyft as springboards.

This was absolutely brilliant and bold strategy and it's an approach few start-ups could pull off or would even attempt trying. M&A and mergers are extremely complex for start-ups to tackle and this was brilliant strategy.

2 years ago, Uber was playing the role of the big dog and pressuring to buy Didi. After Didi's great growth and very effective strategy over the past two years, the roles were totally reversed and Didi bought Uber's China operations for what was ultimately a pittance. 18%, which will be further diluted over time.

> The story between Google and Baidu is a whole different one. First search engine as a gateway to informations is viewed as vital by the Chinese government and government really worked on Baidu's side.

I think the governemnt helped Didi quite a bit too. As did Tencent.

> What evidence have you that this is "simply not true." Some of these statements to investors have become public knowledge, which you'll see with a simple google search.

I'm not saying Kalanick didn't say that, what I meant is it's not going to happen based on my observation. Sorry if it was misleading.

> No. A peace treaty or truce means each side remains independent but they agree to stop warring with each other. This is an outright purchase.

What you said make sense, but I see this as a truce between Didi and Uber per se, not just Uber China. Uber lose a battle on Chinese turf to Didi and sold this branch in exchange to some share of Didi. But Uber still exists. I don't view this as a victory of Didi either, they simply defended their home turf. What we may see next is maybe they will compete in SE Asia or India. It seems like Didi is more ambitious on things like this.

Thanks for explaining / clarifying.

> I don't view this as a victory of Didi either, they simply defended their home turf.

I think this is where we disagree. It was definitely a victory for Didi. They beat Uber in China, which is the market they care most about.

Moreover, they have aligned themselves strategically. They now have a stake of Uber as well (don't forget Didi also invested $1B in Uber and as a result achieved information rights on Uber). They have partnerships with Grab in SE Asia and Ola in Inida. Lyft in the US. They continue to encircle Uber...

Whereas a year ago, an Uber investor could've reasonable thought Uber was on a path to domination worldwide... today it's clear that their potential is greatly diminished from those lofty possibilities. They are removed from China outright. They are being confronted by an opponent that has already beat them in SE Asia and perhaps in India. Who knows what is next in Europe and the US.

Didi has been absolutely brilliant here, and they deserve full credit for it.

Just because the government didn't need to put their thumb on the scale, yet, doesn't mean they would let a foreign entity take the lead in as critical a piece of infrastructure as transportation.

I strongly suspect it was a "heads we win, tails you lose" situation that just came up heads. But that doesn't mean the outcome was ever in question.

I think the Didi-Uber merge is more of a individual case. Not a reflection of "China vs US".

Many people don't know, the head of Uber china and the president of Didi are cousin. So to be honest I'm not surprised at all.

> Uber felt it was treated fairly by a government

> my guess is that if [...] had been more successful, China would have put a Mao-sized thumb on the scales.

This is how it lost me, it shows how light he is on facts.

I do agree with the 2 statements "China is protectionist" and "protectionism is bad".

But I am cynical enough to see that everyone carefully pics which protectionism they complain about.

As a Brazilian I am still waiting to hear Americans, Japanese and Europeans complaining about their own farming protectionism, at least as loudly as they complain about other countries.

I HATE American protectionism in farming. One such example is the ridiculous subsidies of corn that lead to obesity, feeding ruminants grain and even crappy cocacola!

Other terrbile side-effects of our agrisubsidies include crap processed food, agricultural practices built on assumption of nearly free water leading to droughts, nutritional deficiency in produce etc etc.

Other terrible side effects of our subsidies are a reliable food supply as we overproduce far beyond what's necessary which makes us nearly immune to supply shocks like pre-1930s america. Ever heard of famine in the united states in recent memory? Didn't think so. Know what else causes nutritional deficiency? Not eating. While there may be some problems with our current system, they are firmly in the "good problem to have" territory.

Exporting food for free is a more complicated topic, on the imports side, protectionism is justified for critical functions. If we outsourced our food production, we could get it more cheaply (it's already cheap), but imagine if a supplier suddenly decides to cut us off? Food security is a national security priority moreso than typical military stuff like steel mills.

> protectionism is justified for critical functions

Then don't complain about other countries' protectionism. They also have the right to decide what is critical to them, right?

I didn't. ;)

As an American: the US's protectionism and agricultural subsidies are shameful, and should be stopped.

It's hypocritical, that's true.

It's also true that there are good reasons not to let your farming industry completely collapse. Aside from the obvious large numbers of people who would lose everything. It's in the best interests of the US that they can feed themselves.

This. As an Argentinian, I totally agree. I read a lot of comments from Americans complaining about protectionism in other countries, and their government tells everyone else that they should open their markets, but USA has several sectors in which protectionism is very strong.

Farming protectionism is different from other protectionism, because self-sufficient farming is a national military security goal. If a nation gets into a huge war, then you want to still be able to feed the people.

In general any nation would want to be self-sufficient in all basic necessities, that would come under threat in war time.

Well, that's exactly my point and that's exactly what hypocrisy looks like.

Every protectionism is different because ... reasons. There will always be an "what if..." to justify everything.

China is a peculiar case. It has embraced parts of capitalism that ensure market growth. The huge domestic market coupled with aggressive stealing of IP to create cheapest-in-the-world knock-offs have fuelled its exports. However, having this selective breed of capitalism has allowed its leadership to sidestep aspects of American capitalism e.g. influence of corporations on leaders. This means that companies don't have the same lobbying power in influencing policy/laws/IP etc. So basically we have this wealthy nation with its leadership not generally obliged to listen to either market or its people. So they do what they want to do.

Its like the skinny kid hit the gym, made a ton of money and is now back in the neighbourhood throwing its weight around.

> However, having this selective breed of capitalism has allowed its leadership to sidestep aspects of American capitalism e.g. influence of corporations on leaders

This is not a surprise if you understand China's political culture and its long, long history.

For literally thousands of years, political elites in China have understood that political power follows economic power, which is why the richest in China are generally Party members and high officials.

When Deng Xiaoping said "let some people get rich first", he meant those with political connections.

American politicians and citizens allowing corporate interests to slowly take over the political process is due to not understanding how history works.

> which is why the richest in China are generally Party members and high officials.

Wouldn't that be the case with pretty much any totalitarian regime?

> American politicians and citizens allowing corporate interests to slowly take over the political process is due to not understanding how history works.

I'll take the flawed lobbying system over the Chinese system any day.

> Wouldn't that be the case with pretty much any totalitarian regime?

No. There are plenty of totalitarian regimes where any actual wealth held outside of a tiny ruling clique is considered unacceptable.

China's trick is that they 1) embraced de facto capitalism and 2) managed to spread the wealth amongst a relatively large Party base (as a % of the population) while still maintaining insider control. That's a very, very fine balancing act, and most authoritarian regimes can't manage to do it, leading to either failure to sustain economic growth (e.g. Russia, or North Korea) or complete loss of control to new economic elites.

In fact, Xi's anti-corruption campaign may potentially destabilize the Party because it breaks the implicit contract that has kept the Party together for the last 3 decades (namely, support the Party, and we'll look at the other way on corruption).

if you are implying China is somehow less corrupt than the US, that's rich

>Its like the skinny kid hit the gym, made a ton of money and is now back in the neighbourhood throwing its weight around.

Translation: Everyone loves it when autocratic toughmen are in charge and get results. Well, until they turn against your interests and now you bemoan not supporting a more open and democratic system. First they came for the Socialists...

Its incredible how we're throwing away thousands of years of government theory here because one country can mass produce disposable tech garbage for the world and suddenly autocracy and totalitarianism is popular with geeks and MBA's because of it.

The whole "rise of the BRICS" choir that dominated this site and reddit for the past few years is starting to fall silent as Russia and Brazil's economies continue to do poorly and as China enters its first major growth downturn. Turns out "BRICS autocracy and corruption is just as good as Western democracy and open government and markets" didn't work out in practice. The autocratic approach is just central-planing with a different face and as such isn't agile enough to move as trends and markets change.

This is another example of both American Narcissism plus insufficient understanding of Chinese business environment. Leaders are "human beings", which means they do business on behalf their own interest. Tobacco industry spend billions on lobbing/advertisement to want public believe "smoking is healthy". And listen, China is a whole different world at a complete different stage than USA, so why do u expect it should be like USA? Look out the window and you will see how many developing countries ruined because they were once obsessed with the so-called "American capitalism".

According to reports on the ground, Didi used its local knowledge to act more nimbly in satisfying Chinese customers. But my guess is that if the American ride-sharing company had been more successful, China would have put a Mao-sized thumb on the scales.

So Didi was actually better; it's a bit unfair to say that otherwise the game would have been rigged.

Didi seems to be better at e.g. customer service. For example, their support can be reached by phone, and Uber support can be only reached via Email.

I'm sure people know, in China, call center operates way cheaper than in U.S. This and the fact that people are unwilling to use Email are some of the major sources of complaint on Uber I've heard about.

If thats true, Uber was simply being incompetent here. We recently launched a shop on Tmall (Alibaba version of Amazon), and you usually hire a local agency to provide customer support for the chinese. 80% of the traffic is mobile, so they use SMS and phone calls a lot, emails much less than in the west. Also chat, they expect to be able to directly talk to someone via chat from the website.

Not doing so means disregarding local habits, good luck with that.

That's true, and I think this article was just using Uber as a jumping-off point to talk about doing business in China. I worked for a company not long ago that did business there, and the hoops they had to jump through were enormous.

Yup, this is poor writing: "Y is true because had X been true then Y would follow"

I really dislike this tone of China acting fundamentally badly. It's their country, they can do whatever the heck they want. If they want a local replacement for everything already existing outside of Chine, so be it. If you just let established big players have all the cake, chances for success of local competitors become pretty slim.

Stealing trade secrets if of course not okay, but that is more of a theoretical argument, the west probably has his fingers equally deep in the Chinese cookie jar. If you make agreements and China later unilaterally breaks them, that is of course also not okay.

But investors don't seem to care, it's not that nobody knows what to expect, but the lure of huge profits seems to win again and again.

"stealing of trade secrets [...] is more of a theoretical argument"

I just wanted to point out this pretty amazing sentence.

What is so amazing about this sentence?

in theory it's stealing something very very very abstwact?

It is of course theft, my point was that I assume the west is also taking whatever they can get so that it would be hypocritical to blame China for doing it.

Eh, that's kind of rationalizing away the threat posed by China's habitual targeting of US military tech, specifically in aviation.

I'll believe China has corrected its dirty sourcing ways when they build their own reliable Mach 2 Fighter Jet from scratch without reading Lockheed's homework first.

Where is the difference to what the USA and USSR respectively Russia did and probably still do to each other? Or the USA allegedly still spying on Airbus? If everybody does it, why only blame China?

As someone who supports strong Net Neutrality and a free internet, I'm obviously extremely against the way they are manipulating their network. Redirecting Google to Baidu, slowing them down, etc, not to mention the rest of the manipulations of the Great Firewall. I don't give them a free pass that they can "do whatever the heck they want." A free internet is a human rights issue. All citizens of the world deserve to be on a neutral network with no blocking, redirecting, throttling, or proxying.

Don't kid yourself thinking that the US is above those tactics. They might use some other techniques but it is in many regards just as protectionist as China.

One common theme is completely exaggerated fines leveled against foreign companies. Look at the banks: while doing very little to punish U.S. banks (if you take net transfers into account) who where without a doubt the main culprits in the sub-prime crisis and thereby causing a global financial crisis, the U.S. almost exclusively punished foreign banks - and with that also foreign tax payers - for wrong doings like dealings with countries the U.S. dislikes, etc..

Another striking example is the fines imposed in Volkswagen. While it certainly was immensely stupid to cheat on the emission test, the fines are completely over the top: $16b and counting. After every state and agency is through with VW, it might be $30b or more. At the same time, U.S. car companies that caused actual casualties with there shoddy engineering are left of the hook with a slap in the wrist.

Some sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/22/isnt-it-s...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/business/dealbook/volkswag...

> But my guess is that if the American ride-sharing company had been more successful, China would have put a Mao-sized thumb on the scales.

Anyone remember when GM had to be bailed out, but at the time, they were actually generating profits in China and it was one of their few bright spots? Ford likewise. I just don't buy this.

Well some members of my family own a factory making car parts. Many parts ship to Ford plants in China. China recently created a new rule saying Ford cannot buy parts from the US. So we either had to build a plant in China, or stop shipping to Ford. We stopped shipping to Ford. They were our largest customer.

Wait, what? Can you point us to the rule? It sounds like the WTO might be interested.

"Put simply, China likes locals to succeed over foreign companies, and will act accordingly."

This is SO Un-American!

Haven't noticed that anyone is talking about the fact that just a week ago, the Chinese government issued a press release about "legalizing" ride-sharing apps [1][2]. Article 21 of the new law, which should take effect this November, basically says that subsidizing the drivers would be illegal, effectively killing Uber's strategy.

The Uber case is classic in China, governemnt using "laws and regulations" to kill foreign businesses. Didi's competitive advantage was just being Chinese, nothing else. Now that Uber has surrendered, I wonder if the regulations will actually be implemented.

[1] http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-07/28/c_129186192.ht... (Official press release in Chinese)

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/28/china-issues-guidelines-to... (Article in English)

Remember this, If you do not like the status quo in China, then stop supporting it. As American companies economically invaded other countries, much of the culture became the norm. If you think censorship, collusion, corruption, disparity et al are ok traits for a society, then by all means keep inviting them into the country to control more and more of American culture.

Most successful nations today did protect their markets and relied on tight government coordination when they were doing catch-up after WWII: Japan, Korea, ,Taiwan, France, Germany, Finland, ...

The question we should ask is how much is proper and beneficial. Asking China to play the same game as already developed nations is not fair or realistic.

Making deals with someone who has an entirely different value system is dangerous, especially when there is no neutral institution to enforce those deals. Western companies doing business in China are lead by a mixture of braveness, greed and naiveness, I guess.

Articles like these never fail to drive home just how much of a US patsy the EU has always been.

Indeed. And yet you keep seeing articles from NY Times, Bloomberg, and even Reuters, with an almost negative tone about how the EU basically wants to destroy American companies by putting some more regulations on them or daring to investigate them for anti-trust or tax avoidance.

And here comes China that basically says from the start to all foreign companies: "You give us half, or you're out. Take it or leave it. And we still get to impose whatever regulations, official or unofficial, want, depending on our mood. We'll also turn a blind eye to local Chinese companies completely ripping off your technology. Sounds good?"

Unlike the EU, China has the capability to build companies that could rival top US players. So it's unsurprising that China takes the uncompromising approach to foreign investment that they do.

I'd love to see an American's reaction to a speech where Xi Jinping exclaims that he will ensure that all Americans start using Baidu as their search engine.

Europeans had been promised and conditioned that their countries would give a shit about privacy. It would have seemed unlikely to European founders that they'd be allowed to run a blatant commercial spyware operation like Google or Facebook; and in fact I'd bet that they would have met fierce regulatory resistance... until Google and Facebook waltzed in from the US and surprise, nobody put up any resistance until the war was won. Yeah, sure, long after the war was lost, some EU regulatory theater.

I actually bought a N900 back in the day. It was good. Nokia smartphones could have been a thing, not just because they were good, but they'd taken off just a few years later especially on privacy grounds. There's not nearly enough conspiracy theorizing about Elop blatantly Osborning Maemo...

Elop's actions as a whole seem so blatantly towards selling the company off and yet there has been very little scrutiny of them.

> Europeans had been promised and conditioned that their countries would give a shit about privacy

Do Europeans really care that much about privacy? As an outsider, I don't see much fighting for privacy coming from Europe.

> blatant commercial spyware operation like Google or Facebook

What kind of regulation do you think would stop this "spyware" as you call it? Are you really going to restrict an internet firm from collecting user information with the user's consent and then selling that information? What regulation would you do?

Something like "right to be forgotten" is the absolute worst direction to go. When I first heard about it, I knew the regulators were idiots. That is patently opposed to free expression.

> I'd love to see an American's reaction to a speech where Xi Jinping exclaims that he will ensure that all Americans start using Baidu as their search engine.

Why would anyone care?

Exactly.

I'm poking fun at Trump's nationalistic brouhaha concluding this article.

Europe is a has been. And it has been for at least 70 years.

China is rising.

Europe is free, China is not.

China is competently run, Europe is not.

Oh, really?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/16/chinas-debt...

Yes.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2015&...

Showing total GDP, without accounting for population is disingenuous.

Don't you think that GDP per capita would be a better indicator, perhaps?

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?end=20...

China's outperformance of Europe is undeniable. In the chart you shared China was at barely 1/20 of Europe's level a generation ago and now is over 1/3.

What will the comparison be in one more generation?

China's achievements are incredibly impressive, and will likely slow down as it gets closer to parity with Western standards of living. As for outperforming - rate of growth/catching up: sure - but not (yet) in most other regards.

China is also ahead in terms of academic output, biotechnology, software and aerospace technology. Of course it hasn't been put to the test, but China's military has also likely pulled ahead of Europe.

What are you going to do when your national defense is wholly dependent on the U.S.?

The article is off-the-topic.

It states clearly, Uber hasn't got to the state that Chinese government would put the thumb on the scale, but go straight and use Google's example to picture what would happen if Uber ever close to domination, in order to resell pieces of his book about Google's exit from China.

He might be right. Chinese government is as shady as it has ever been. But since Uber hasn't ever got close to what Google has been in China(Google has been close to dominate the market back in 2009), and their completely different nature of business, Uber's failure in China resembles very little to what forces out Google.

I won't go in deep analysis why Uber decided to make the move. But bear in mind, China has its own internet ecosystem, because the infamous Great Firewall, to the point, the government publish pieces that the 'internet' will keep functioning even US decides to cut China off, showcasing how 'secure' and isolated it is. When it comes to internet, I cannot remember what foreign services cannot be replaced by local counterparts. Besides, those local companies are very successful, Tencent and Alibaba are both 100B worth company, they both invest huge money in Didi. And when it comes to internet, China is pretty much catches up to U.S. in terms of technology. If the situation is reversed, would you ever believe Didi can compete with Uber here in U.S.? I don't think so. And for Uber, China is something good to have, but for Didi it is that they couldn't afford to lose, the determination to battle to the ground is different.

Not to mention China's state sponsored thefts of American IP (esp tech), which is no doubt being used in Chinese carbon copy corporations protected behind the great firewall.

I'm probably opening myself to accusations of whataboutery but it's not like America has never partaken in state sponsored industrial espionage: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-busted-conducting...

This is horseshit nationalism, again. What Chinese companies have made huge inroads into the American tech world? Every time they do, some commentator (probably the same guy who wrote this article) will show up to shake a big stick at them and try to chase them off, with tales of impending Chinese takeover.

The real story, there and here, is one of large corporations using whatever means they can, including their friends in local government, to increase their own power.

Money infiltrates politics because politics has power that normal money can't achieve. Remove that power from politics, and the money will leave as well.

duplicate of this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12218211

My bad, didn't see Steven himself posting it! Not sure why he used a different title than the one he chose for his own publication.

It's actually worse than described in this article. XiJinPing is beyond ruthless, law is meaningless. Even this under-describes the reality.

Your comment should be the foundation for discussion about China nowadays.

A few important segments that really seem to get buried in the rest of the text.

"This is not to say that Chinese government regulation drove Uber’s deal with Didi, which was clobbering Uber in the ride-sharing market; in fact, Uber felt it was treated fairly by a government interested in transportation innovation. According to reports on the ground, Didi used its local knowledge to act more nimbly in satisfying Chinese customers.

...

Google’s retreat came in 2010, so it’s fair to ask whether those regulatory issues still exist.

...

To be fair, the American marketplace has not exactly been a fertile ground for Chinese internet companies hoping to break in. Though many of the really big players — Baidu, Alibaba, TenCent, WeChat — have moved on from clone-ish beginnings and actually come up with important innovations, none have made an impact here. But that’s due more to a lack of resolve than any regulatory barriers."

I wish more countries would support their own brands as much as China.

Political correctness is the plague of our time.

Protectionism and currency manipulation in a free trade setup will end badly. Every trade deal we do needs to address these issues with consequences.

China joined the WTO in Oct '01 and full participation in '05, the US has suffered since then.

Problem is sometimes our greed drives these deals over long-term futures. The time of selling out the whole country with non-protectionism for a country that does protectionism and currency manipulation is truly a catastrophic deal for trade partners futures.

The "local knowledge" argument doesn't hold much water. The reason is any company entering China hires natives and people who in theory (and at the level they hire at) are quite capable of rivaling those who work for companies in that country.

I'd say Chinese government's position is well justified, given every presidential candidate in last 30 years competed to trash it. You want an enemy, you'll get one.

It is their country, they can do whatever they want. I think USA should do whatever it wants too, like blocking Chinese tech companies in the USA.

The US doesn't need to - as the article indicates, most Chinese tech companies have no interest in operating outside of Asia. To give some concrete examples: WeChat (微信), which is entirely ubiquitous in China, has essentially zero market share in the US - parts of the app aren't even localized to English! Baidu is the biggest search engine in China, and it doesn't have an English version. Alibaba operates one of the world's largest online stores (like Amazon), but has no presence in the States. And so on.

Western tech companies want in on the Chinese market, but by and large, the reverse is not true.

Weird that all those tech company didn't learn from the car industry trying really hard in the 90s to dominate the Chinese market.

Are there any cast studies on multinational companies that were successful in China and outlined why? Companies like Danone?

Sure. There are tons. Starbucks is everywhere, KFC, McDonalds, Walmart is doing okay along with Carrefour. Apple ofcourse is completely crushing the phone market (and it's not just so they can employ a few factories of manual laborers) Car comapnies do just fine. I'm sure there is a ton of industrial espionage and technology transfer from government to local companies (hard to explain some advances otherwise.. ), but articles screaming about Chinese protectionism mostly stink of "bad sportsmanship". Some of these companies just blew it (Uber and Ebay) or they're social media platforms. The reality is that the government wants control over the media and what 99% of people hear and read. So platforms like Facebook or Google (with their vague moral obligation about not being "evil") make them very nervous. I talked to a Malaysia Chinese guy who supported the censorship and he explained it this way. In the third world (esp if you look at the middle east) there is a huge problem of misinformation and hysteria. People eat up all sorts of conspiracy theories and factoids gets spun out of control and can't get contained. In a country with lots of superstitions like China that's almost doubly worrying. So the government seems it in it's interest to control that kind feedback loop (obviously in part to keep itself in power... you could see some local protest about some minor issue blowing up into a national protest) So in general once some social media platform seems to get a critical mass it gets either brought down a peg or brought into the fold somehow (like Tencent buying League of Legend and some Android game)

I'm not condoning their policies, but they have their own internal consistency that's a little more nuanced then just "fuck the foreigner companies"

Car companies do fine in weird ways: Buick is a super luxury prestigious brand in mainland China because 100 years ago, some of the first cars imported were Buicks... In the USA it's seen as your grandfather's land yacht.

It's also because companies can completely rebrand themselves when they go abroad (as do humans sometimes, go figure).

PBR is sold as a premium beer brand in China, and in Korea, VWs are considered luxurious. Pretty ironic, seeing as it's name literally means people's car in German.

Encrypted communication would be the next game changer.

Thanks, Nixon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com