There’s a Global Race to Control Batteries–and China Is Winning
wsj.com
wsj.com
As mentioned in Tom Clancy: Full Force and Effect.
Whatever the enemy does (there, Russia building mine shafts) we must do to counter. A humorous classic which explains a mindset and was far closer to the truth than people like to admit.
Worth a view. Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.
[1] https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/c00b94e5-bbb3-4ea9-a078-7a1...
In Europe, the USA still makes the news far more often than China, so here we all have a "weird obsession" with the USA.
Based on what data?
Of the 31 provinces, direct-controlled municipalities and autonomous regions in China, three have already admitted falsifying certain economic data. Starting with the northeastern province of Liaoning in January 2017, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the city of Tianjin have said their statistics were wrong.
Of the three, only Tianjing has admitted doctoring the overall provincial gross domestic product figures. Liaoning and Inner Mongolia had padded something else: their fiscal revenues.
In Liaoning Province tax receipts and income from various fees were padded by 20-30% according to counties and cities during the period of 2011-2014. Inner Mongolia has said that a quarter of the fiscal revenue stated for 2016 were actually fake.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chi...
No, China is just a poor developing country with a per capita GDP of around $8k USD. That is just a small fraction of what US/EU achieved. Everything is just because of the huge population, but again that is not an advantage when the population is rapidly ageing.
Chinese communist party recently announced the goal to reach $12k USD gdp per capita in 2020, basically they want 1.4 billion people to work damn hard for the next 3-4 years to reach 20% of today's American GDP per capita level! To give you better understanding on this matter - US economy is growing 2.5%-3% annually in the last few quarters, with that kind of growth, in the same 2018-2020 period, US GDP per capita is going to add up to 9% and that new volume expected to be added is comparable to the entire Chinese per capita GDP figure.
Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely poor per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be individually achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are clearly far more important than a meaningless national GDP figure.
Depends what you're evaluating. If you're evaluating standard of living, yes. If OTOH you're evaluating the power potential of a country's government, then total GDP is more important than GDP/capita.
telling 1.4 billion Chinese to work their ass off for the next 3-4 years so China's GDP per capita figure can reach 20% of today's US GDP per capita is not impressive at any level. it is a solid proof that China is still damn poor after 40 years of economic reform.
there is no competition whatsoever - when Japan challenged America's economy in the early 80s, the GDP per capita figure of Japan was on par with the American one. We are now talking about an economy that is working day & night trying to reach 20% of America's GDP per capita.
A market bigger than US governed by a single political entity, that has the ability to control its citizen beyond the imagination of any western governments.
That is enormous power, and it comes in aggregate. US has been the biggest/smartest country to turn its internal market into a weapon. Now that China has it, it will surely use to same, if not greater extent, and that is what makes it intimidating.
By the way, American GDP per capita has been high because of many fortunate factors in addition to the quality of its people: abundant resources and huge productive landmass relative to population size; mostly intact from WW II; tech, talent, and institution transfer from Europe; etc. It is a great country but also a very lucky country.
I start to wonder why there is quite a bit of cynicism (it goes beyond skepticism at this point) by some commenters on China’s progress or likely progress, despite so much tangible evidence?
On a practical note, it might be useful to know whether to encourage your kids to take mandarin classes for their future or to learn one yourself in the next 1-2 decades, like most people in the world need to learn English for a chance of getting many good careers now. ;)
Note that I am not pro-China nor any country. I observe the world and comment on what I see.
Their economic data is so doctored we aren't even sure how rich they are now.
Any countries with such characteristics that are still in middle-income trap after a couple generations of focused development?
Possible example of a leapfrog: https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-comm...
Note that I am not pro-China nor any country. I observe the world and comment on what I see.
1. 6 out of the 45 classmates in my primary school ever had the chance to finish university level education. 2. those 39 kids who didn't get the chance to study in uni were not stupid or lazy - many of them studied until mid night every day. 3. not talking about some random poor areas in China, talking about tier 1 primary school in Shanghai.
not enough fun? sure - now you need to own a $2-3 million apartment in that area so the kids can go to that fancy school to enjoy that mentioned science education. If she/he is lucky to finish master level education, his/her starting salary will be $1.5k per month before tax. what a good start of career!
you are right one thing - you are not pro-China, you are China bashing by promoting its most ugly & brutal part.
I'm sure you have legit reasons for this grievance, but you're abusing HN by taking it out in the threads here. We ban accounts that do this kind of thing, so please stop it if you want to keep commenting here.
[1]http://hubei.eol.cn/hubeinews/201704/t20170425_1510433.shtml
[2]http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_sjzl/s5990/201612/t20161219_292432...
It's slightly better than an anecdote, I suppose.
From the figures I see the situation is getting much better now in terms of access but yes the atmosphere is still very competitive and resources and opportunities still need to be expanded.
Yes it is. However, there clearly has been very significant economic change there in recent decades.
I don’t know why it escapes attention, but China has the power to regularly bully their neighbors, have pretty much annexed territory, their ships raid protected regions for fish, they have massive diplomatic programs and trillions they spend on funding it - none of which has any challengers in the diplomatic space.
Do note they also have their own space stations.
In essence China has learnt from the western lessons and converted the parts that work for it.
I don’t understand why HN is unwilling to countenance this, but let me put it this way - Can America afford to antagonize China ?
As for the Japan comparison - Japan is tiny compared to China. Chinese surplus production destroys industries in other nations.
Not to mention it has an actual army and navy which is constantly being upgraded.
Something which it uses to enforce its geo political will and aims.
In contrast - the backbone of American international ability, it’s state department, is unstaffed and seen as the enemy by an administration which thinks that only MBAs can do a job effectively, while everyone else working in the govt must be a leech of resources.
Not to mention how many bizarre steps the govt has taken to ensure people look for more stable patrons than the current administration.
China has monstrous momentum.
edit: I would ideally like a solid and non-wonkish rebuttal of China's ascendance.
For example people can highlight debt/finance issues and over capacity in China - and then address how China won't be able to solve it by just exporting to everyone and everywhere.
It's antagonising all year round - US military presence in Japan and Korea, continuous arm sales and pushing the envelope on unofficial relations with Taiwan, support of Japans claim to the Senkakus, "Freedom of Navigation" exercises in defiance of chinas maritime claims, opening up military relations with Vietnam.
Again, China is not the USSR. There's no "Korean missile crisis" where China can provoke an international crisis if the US decides to park ballistic missiles in its near abroad. There's no equivalent of a Warsaw block. The US has an entanglement of military alliances and relations all around Chinas backyard.
China is not a superpower.
They built islands to increase their territory in the South China sea.
They just bullied Bhutan and India over Doklam.
They're worse than the USSR, they just aren't competing with America in a directly military stand off?
Again, people want to buy into the narrative.
China is very much the center as well. Just in different verticals. You may not like that, but that's indisputable.
Article on wage increase in China (2017): https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/chinese-wages-rise-made-in-c...
edit: defined type of manufacturing (lower-skilled)
Oh, overwhelming China. It perhaps would have been less confusing had I said "the software world".
One thing I feel very funny is the entitlement, such as one from this article, that US is destined to be NO.1 in anything that is phrased as race/competition, is rarely being questioned. Why would that be the case by default anyway? With the recent domestic developments, maybe US should consider to resolve the conflict within other than step in other country's business.
For much of the 20th century, and certainly from 1945, USA was #1. If wanting to stay that way helps them to up their game (which certainly needs upping, politically), then good luck to them.
China just happens to be the <country> in question, in a number of current cases.
China has certainly come along way in the past few decades - transitioning from a low income country to a middle income one. But people for whatever reason want to make it out into a bigger deal than it actually is.
I desperately want the West to win because it's the best hope for a good society, worldwide. China is a threat to that because China is (1) an autocracy, (2) competently governed, and (3) big.
If China wins, the future might be an eternal dictatorship more all-encompassing than anything we've seen in the past.
It's not just China. There's just too much of this political/policy content pushed on HN by various publications craving for the traffic IMHO. NY times, Wired, FT, Forbes etc. all seem to have such clickbaity submissions to HN daily.
Both, since China is a rapidly developing superpower with 1.5 billion internal market + all the world's manufacturing doing quite well in tech, and the US is not feeling very well lately...
China is the country with the largest or 2nd largest economy (depending on whether you measure by PPP or CXR). So it shouldn't be surprising if there are lots of articles about it.
It would be really interesting to know how the community at large deals with this, but I suspect something akin to the Observer Effect makes it a a catch-22.
The hacker ethos invites careful observation and exploration mixed with out of the box thinking. Whether this site purposefully aims for that or accidentally encourages it is irrelevant.
http://www.hnreplies.com/ - maintained by user https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman
The method explained in the first link works wonderfully, and it took a total of 0,51 seconds to find it (according to google).