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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>I have lived in Shenzhen for many years, traveled to tons of cities in China, and recently am back to silicon valley. From what I can tell on the ground, China is going to be in decline for the next 10-20 years.

Most of what you've written are arguments for China to be on the up-and-up in the next 10-20 years, not in decline as you seem to think (undeveloped parts = still has areas for future growth).

Others are just on par with the situation in the West (credit debt, propped up etc).

>(I have a good hunch most people that comment favorabily on China here, have never been)

Which doesn't say much. There are tons of people who don't understand anything about their own society despite having been born and raised there (which entails more familiarity than merely living in some place for some years).

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Disagree there. I didn't even mention China's middle income trap, 300% gdp to debt, pollution crisis, demographics crisis, gender crisis, censorship impact on innovation and research, wage inflation impact on factories leaving, etc.

The wage inflation is why I've never been too scared about these China will take over soon scaremongering tactics. We've heard the same a few years ago about Japan. Now Japan has high salaries and we can still compete with them. As soon as Japanese produced the same quality as Europe and America, they also got the same prices. The same happened with South Korea now. A Kia car costs basically the same as a European car, it's a good car, but it's not super cheap.

And Chinese products first have to show care for craftsmanship to command these prices, which is something I haven't seen so much until now. India is probably worse.

>As soon as Japanese produced the same quality as Europe and America, they also got the same prices.

That's not the point though.

It's that if they have the same quality AND high wages, then they would be like a 1.6 billion strong USA.

It's not just about market competition -- and even if it was, their huge domestic market (further developed to Japan levels as you expect it to) would be a huge advantage in itself.

>And Chinese products first have to show care for craftsmanship to command these prices, which is something I haven't seen so much until now.

Craftmanship? The kind of stuff they can make, few if any factories in the US can. There's a reason almost all high end stuff is made in China as well (from Apple and Armani, to BMW parts). If they make and sell cheap stuff too is not because they can't make the good stuff, it's because that sells.

(And of course in the level of high artistry and craftmanship China as a culture, has had extreme global masters for millennia, in painting, sculpture, woodwork, and tons of other arts. Of course they don't compete with that -- which are very low yield -- but with mass products for the industrial age).

>There's a reason almost all high end stuff is made in China as well (from Apple and Armani, to BMW parts).

Yeah, they're cheap. If you've ever worked with Chinese suppliers unless you give them a lot of crap they will send you parts where 10-20% aren't useable. They only pay attention to quality if there's a foreign company putting lots and lots of pressure on the factory to produce to their standards.

>China as a culture, has had extreme global masters for millennia, in painting, sculpture, woodwork, and tons of other arts.

Yes, but they lost them in the last century because of some movement, where they killed artists, intellectuals, etc... They still haven't recovered from this. If you kill a whole generation of intellectuals it will take probably a few more centuries to regain that culture they lost.

I used to be at importer/exporter equipment exhibitions when I was younger, the unfortunate truth is that a lot of products are assembled in other countries but that the materials made come from China or some cheap place for production and/or simply rebranded as made in a certain location to increase the prices. But yeah apple iphones etc are made in China since about 2012 or before.

When you go to China (or any foreign country in general), it really depends on whether or not you step outside the expat bubble.

Those that don't often have a very skewed viewpoint compared to those who do.

It would be like judging the entire US based on living in Silicon Valley your entire life.

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