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Comment by chimpburger | Hacker News Reader

China have only achieved this result using fundamental science, technology and engineering concepts that were invented in the US, Europe, and Japan, with the unfair advantage of ultra cheap labour costs. They have people working like slaves in factories using copied/outsourced/stolen ideas. There is no evidence that their regime could have matched what the Americans have invented from scratch.

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Voted down. How exactly am I wrong? Even Chinese people agree. 60 million Chinese people were starved to death under the communist regime last century, while the Americans were inventing microprocessors and launching rockets to the moon.

Didn't downvote, but your argument is somewhat naive. Now a Chinese person could argue you Americans didn't invent paper but they did, so whenever you designed something on paper it was actually made possible by them. Or how after ww2 some of the brightest scientists from Germany were "taken" by the US and in exchange not persecuted for their involvement with the nazi party. These kinds of arguments just derail the conversation. Everybody is standing on the shoulder of giants in some way.

This is perhaps true, but the Chinese seem to have no concept of intellectual property: There is good reason to consider every product sent to made in China's design to be lost

Which is exactly the same situation as with Japan in the 50s. History repeating itself. And since it's apparently so crystal clear that they are that way, it seems companies still deciding to produce in China only deserve it?

You are totally confused. I'm not talking about Chinese as a race of people. I'm not saying that Chinese people are inherently incapable. I'm talking about the Chinese government REGIME and its inferior economic ideology. Their communist ideology has stifled true innovation. Western capitalism is blatantly, demonstrably superior.

.... Which has nothing to do with my initial argument, but is actually still wrong. Just looking at the inner Chinese market, there are way less regulations to a point where competition between companies is much stronger, almost ruthless, which ironically can be considered more capitalist than our overly regulated markets. But I understand that you're exactly the kind of person outlined in my original comment, just not wanting to see it and trying to invalidate the enemy in any way possible, as if that makes the problem go away. every county has at some point "stolen" technology from another, more or less directly supported by their government. But that doesn't change the situation we're in now.

Why are you projecting this hostility? I don't perceive China as an enemy. I live in New Zealand. China is a major trading partner. I'm just stating facts as I see it. China has made unprecedented economic growth by leveraging existing science and technology developed in western capitalist regimes. Virtually none of the science and engineering fundamentals were invented in China. They are catching up and may overtake at some point. All of this was explained to me by a Chinese immigrant (university lecturer) back in 2011.

I suggest you try read things more objectively. Filter out the unnecessary emotion from your interpretations.

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