Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

IMHO there's an interesting case to be made here (that China won't take over the world), but this article seems to have all the thought and research of an off-the-cuff tweet. The author spends almost half the article talking about mobile payments, which is a really tiny part of international dominance.

He mentions the gravity model being a limiting factor. Huh? If anything, including the gravity model would sway the balance further towards China and away from the US. China is extremely close to a massive number of highly populated Asian countries, and can run inexpensive trains to Europe. The US has Canada (population 36 million) or Mexico (127 million) close by, but not really much else. As a result, China can inexpensively ship to ~5 billion people, and the US can ship to maybe 500MM. Throw in all of South America (only 400MM or so people) and the US's reach is still under a billion.

Some figures: Northeast US to southern South America is about 11,000 km straight line, which has to be done with a complicated series of trucks, trains, boats, more trucks, etc. Beijing to Eastern Europe is 6400km, and can be done with two trains.

I think that one of the big blocks for China will be regulations around product safety and manufacturing/labor standards. There will be also regional pride ("made in USA"/"made in Europe") products and specialized equipment (processors, optics, scientific equipment.) There are a lot of cases to be made, but I don't think this article makes any good ones.

Yes, China can ship to 5 Billion people, but what do you think countries will do when China starts dumping products on their shores? levy duties or create awareness in the masses.

I am from India and trust me, even a small shop keepers (I don't mean to be offensive) refuses to carry Chinese goods because "Why support a country who screws up at the global stage".

It is a surging wave which might hurt China.

p.s. the 'screw up' is about designating a Pakistani terrorist as a global terrorist in the UN and China has been vetoing against it.

I worked in India and see Chinese products everywhere. You're right that people will openly dislike them, but most of them don't even know things they're using are Chinese.

Like Oppo, Xiaomi phones are basically everywhere. Basically everyone uses PayTM (Alibaba owns 40% of it). Even small vegetable sellers on the side of the rode will have a QR code for you to pay with PayTM

In the end, practicality trumps blind nationalism every time. The Chinese dislike Japanese too, but still buy their cars and stuff.

Yes, of course. A majority of the things are manufactured in China, but it does help the local manufacturing scene if we don't hold in things which China dumps like Plywood, fire crackers etc because they have no laws in China, no regulations etc.

of course, there are many such things which are Chinese but the general populous doesn't know (hello oppo, oneplus and vivo, which are owned by the same company!). but I am happy with what I saw. Indians should slowly stop importing substandard Chinese products not because of blind nationalism but because Chinese products are dumped pan India

Your point about trains is strong. China also is pushing new train systems into southeast Asia. There's a project going on in Thailand now that will see a "medium speed" train run from the northern border (Nong Khai) to the south. I believe at the northern border it will connect to lines running from China through Laos. At the south I'm sure it will be extended through Malaysia and on to probably Singapore in the future. China will be able to ship by rapid rail to a large chunk of southeast Asia in the not so distant future.

This is one of these points that really bugs me about the US and North America in general. Did you know there is NO land route to South America from North America? You have to take a car fairy at a certain point. Its ludicrous. The US should be actively trying to raise the bar for this hemisphere. Its also not totally unfeasible to create a land bridge from Canada to Europe through Greenland/Iceland. Ideas on how to do this are out there. Why not a silk Road for the America's, and a future Europe connection! Sure you may not equal the population reach of China, but population is posed to start declining globally anyways. Better to have 300 million "rich" people than 2 billion "poor".

To acertain extend you are complaining that the US transportation strategy, which was long-time favouring trucks over train and resultet in a very old-fashioned public transport system, is now back-firing?

I saw an incredible video about a drone motor factory in China that made me think the days of China being behind technologically must surely come to an end, and sooner than we think.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com