Not quite sure where the hate is coming from. The US is consistently eroding their manufacturing capability, and if there's one fact of business it's a void will fill itself...
As of 2020 the US has not seen these new jobs materialize outside the upper 5% of wage earners in the economy. The trend also shows that the US is losing the capability to manufacture high-end products such as iphones, planes ( 737-max), and trains. The manufacturing jobs which are returning tend to be making the same things that were made 3 decades ago with both inferior wages and quality to what those workers did previously (see American Factory).
While lifting billions of people out of poverty in China and the developed world is a laudable achievement, and the realization of competitive international products was nigh inevitable - the elimination of domestic manufacturing in the US was largely the result of policy choices which enabled businesses to move out of US environmental and labor regulations while still selling into the US market.
Yeah, that was super short sighted. It boggles the mind that anyone could have believed that replacing many of the core productive bits of the economy with fluff like management (and ownership), finance, and hospitality would lead to anything but weakness. It's not like people in other countries are going to do most of the actual productive work and continue to let Americans lord over them indefinitely. Under that plan, America would just seem to climb until everyone else realizes there's no there there anymore, and then it will fall to a 3rd world economy who's main advantage is people there will be desperate enough to work for low wages for the new wealthy countries. Of course, some Americans will experience wealth over their lifetimes as that happens, but they're basically getting fat and happy by eating their family's seed corn.
When the decision is largely made by the managerial and financier classes...
All of the "smartest people in the room" come through economics educations based on pat 2-line graphs and ricardian tables that make extremely grand claims about the world, and they all come out thinking the same way. They're not trying to be crooked, they're repeating what they were taught.
Given that a quarter of all political contributions are donated by the wealthiest top 0.01% (no, not a typo - and 84% of politicians take more from the top 0.01% than all donors giving less than $200), it is entirely unsurprising to me that our policy reflects their priorities.
Working on an automotive line still pays ~2-4x higher than being a manager at a Starbucks, with added benefits like a regular work week and weekends.
To me, the relationship between education and class is a bit more insidious and doesn't necessarily flow the way that benefits society.
But if your goal Of to be an academic or researcher (in higher education or industry) the name of the school on your diploma masters. A mediocre Harvard PhD graduate will probably still have Job for life somewhere (depending in the field).
But choosing to get a no name PhD is certainly not a decision optimized for earning potential or job opportunities.
A California corporation has to pay roughly 30% of its profits to the state and federal government to start. Then it’s shareholders have to pay 25-30% of what’s left to their state and federal government. In practice that’s over a 50% rate, even if the shareholder is a low income retiree. There is little progressivity in taxing investment profits.
No wonder multinational US companies rarely bring profits from foreign subsidiaries back to the US.
Why is lowering interest rates not resulting in increased manufacturing capacity as it did prior to recent years?
Source on any of this? I don't think this is true - both effective and statutory corporate tax is lower. When factoring in things like the estate tax on capital, capital gains tax, etc. - all is much lower than during the 20th century.
> In practice that’s over a 50% rate, even if the shareholder is a low income retiree.
Among equity held by American households, the richest 1% own more than 50% of that equity - and the top 5% owns the lion's share (upwards of 3/4s). The "low income retiree" narrative is overstated. Moreover, that retiree could count paid dividends as ordinary income, which is taxed progressively (10% or less effective tax rate) if they are low-income.
Meanwhile, the estate tax is much lower than it was during the majority of the 20th century, despite the fact that more than half of all wealth is not earned but inherited by the wealthiest 5% of all American households (ie. the median dollar in the economy is inherited, not paid as a wage or from capital gains)
IMHO, that's mistaking a boogeyman for a cause. The real cause here is any policy that allows important productive capability to be moved away in search of short/medium term profit increases. The idea that you'd replace those jobs with higher-paying fluff was just a little sugar to make the poison taste better.
Also, I can't remember exactly where I read it, but some well-known successful businessman candidly said that lower taxes actually make it less likely for him to invest profits back into his business.
Arguing about taxes is a race to the bottom in any case. What matters is returns on capital invested, which of course is affected by tax rates but not exclusively by them. There’s a reason Silicon Valley exists and it’s not because it’s always been cheap to produce there.
We should tax distributions that aren’t reinvested, and do it progressively.
If your startup turns a profit but still wants or needs to reinvest those profits in hiring more or more equipment, they still have to pay taxes on those earnings and only can reinvest half of them (there are some provisions to shield some reinvested profits from being taxed, but they are limited).
I’m all for taxing dividends and capital gains when investors cash out, I’m just saying don’t do it on profits that are reinvested.
I would add that the US's apogee was due to it's role on WW2, whose success was due to the US's preexisting industrial infrastructure, not only manufacturing capability but technical and scientific infrastructure that supported it.
Since then the US not only gave up on its main strategic asset but also handed it over on a silver platter to the next world power.
Switzerland is a fascinating example of a country which almost entirely bans foreign competition in anything they can reasonably produce domestically. Costs are high, but wages are higher.
The industrial complex that was built up during world war II was unprecedented, and the post war boom enabled it to grow further, allowing for things like secondary supply chains, "related" niche industries, and creating many very large companies which went beyond manufacturing products into finance, among other things.
The thing is, after the first generation of management of those companies aged out, the second generation didn't have any idea about the unique circumstances that allowed that industrial base to be created.
They chose to believe it was because of American superiority, American know how, etc.
So when they couldn't sustain the levels of growth and profit their predecessors created, the industries started eating themselves, with mergers, acquisitions, corporate raiding (Private Equity) and regulatory capture to allow it all to happen. Achieving short term gains by shipping jobs offshore was just a necessary thing to "get theirs".
Boeing was once one of many, and now it's one of the last.
The US will be unable to rebuild that industrial base for the foreseeable future, because the unique combination of the post war boom, the government sponsored head start in the war, and the emergence of new technologies just don't exist any more.
Jobs going overseas aren't the problem, really, so them coming back makes little difference. The problem is that our huge head start after World War II is gone because it's eaten itself, and now we need to start over.
Namely this: you can bankrupt your competition by undercutting them - this is capitalism 101. Turns out you can do this at country-scale too! It is obvious but PhD economists cannot see it happen. They will hold onto their comparative advantage theory all the way to the poorhouse.
One supposed limiting factor to country-level jungle of capitalism is the Impossible Trinity. Quoting wikipedia: "It is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time: 1. a fixed foreign exchange rate 2. free capital movement (absence of capital controls) 3. an independent monetary policy"
Like an undying belief in Comparative Advantage, you cannot move up to the upper echelons of PhD Economist work without a bedrock belief in the Impossible Trinity.
In reality, turns out a dual currency structure is a great way to blow through the limitations of the Impossible Trinity. China is a spectacular success in lifting hundreds of millions of people out poverty. The Chinese people are hard working and innovative. One of their genius moves has been to create a dual-currency structure: the onshore and offshore yuan.
This dual currency structure is an absolutely brilliant solution - it affords the Chinese leadership tremendous opportunity to manage their own growth while circumventing the Impossible Trinity.
What is hard for me understand is why Econ PhDs with obvious evidence in front of them continue to disregard reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_of_the_re...
Building a plane is hard, but possible. With large enough a market, a nation will be able to afford, and more importantly will have every reason to, conducting millions of rigorous experiments to figure out all the key technologies, be it manufacturing process, optimal parameters for air dynamics, or materials.
BTW, in case someone forgets, manufacturing at low cost is the hallmark of industrialization. It makes no sense for Americans to snort that Chinese could make things at a fraction of the cost, just as it makes no sense for the British to despise what American could mass produce 100 years ago.
That was Thacher's cunning plan. Break the unions and heavy industry. And then out compete Germany and France in the common market based on lower wages.
Did not work at all.
It works well in the micro, but not the macro. Apple is a excellent example of this being ridiculously profitable: management, finance, R&D, engineering and all "high value" work is in the US, and the "boring" manufacturing stuff is handled offshore. This works very well for shareholders, management and skilled employees. The American machinists and die-makers (who don't get a say) lose out, and over time, their skills will be lost as the experienced workers retire without passing on their knowledge - then the whole industry suffers.
They've now almost reached the top of the value chain after about 30-35 years of diligently following this strategy. They can manufacture phones every bit as good as Apple's without help.
China used to need Apple more than Apple needs China. Now, Apple needs China more than Apple. Apple can't move its supply chain home without eye watering costs.
It won't be long before Apple phones start to lag Chinese phones technologically and it won't be long before China can start threatening sanctions that hurt the US more than they'd hurt China.
China took advantage of America's growing individual greed and short-termism. American companies know this, but they can't help themselves.
I think it might be you who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Many startups have tried to enter the consumer electronics space because they thought assembly would be “trivial”, only to find that once the first EVT samples start coming back from China it is anything but trivial.
The tolerances on an iPhone are some of the best around. People don’t always appreciate just how strict the tolerances are for hardware assembly until they’ve tried to do it themselves.
Also, it may be that globalization is coming for them next but that they are higher up the hierarchy.
There seems to be a reawakening towards manufacturing in the US with electric cars and rockets. It’s not just Tesla and SpaceX. It’s Rivian, Rocket Lab, Virgin Galactic, etc... I hope it strengthens.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manu...
Yet employment is down ~4 million people in the same period:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
Edit: Here's a FRED blog post talking about the same thing: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/12/manufacturing-is-gro...
The labor & environmental arbitrage mafia won the war, so fixing the problem is going to be an uphill battle, rather than merely preventing the market from rolling downhill.
https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20120123/News/60519...
https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/03/technology/apple-tim-cook-a...
In other words, greed.
Huh? That plane had a design issue, not a manufacturing issue. While the loss of life was tragic, it also wasn't a major design blunder; it's the sort of thing you can fix with a new sensor and a software update. On the other hand, the 787 shows that the US can build planes.
> trains
Bombardier still makes trains in North America, and Alsom builds some trains in the US.
I actually agree with your point, but tech manufacturing moving to East Asia is the bigger story. There's also an argument that the jobs didn't materialize because the workers weren't educated enough for better paying jobs and were too expensive for manufacturing jobs.
1) The decline of Soviet Union. Since the largest opponent is gone, elites of US did not need to suck up the working class as they did not need that many manufactoring power any more, and they could finally throw the working class under the bus because they didn't need to virtual signal their "higher living standard of the working class".
2) The rise of competitive investment banking, including predative M&A and other "unethical" stuffs that blue blood bankers did not do (much) during the 50s and 60s.
Furthermore, speaking for my observations of the West, most of the political focus has been on progressing redistributive and environmental policy. Resisted every step of the way by people screaming that the policies are economic disasters. Mining and manufacturing is simply not easy in the West and doing what China does would be flat out illegal - so it isn't so strange if the States starts falling behind.
There have been a lot of changes in the US for the last 30 years. Are there any that can honestly be said to have been pro-free-market, or even experimentally proven to be good ideas? China has been running constant experiments with free market policies in places like Shenzhen and has been building engines of manufacturing wealth and prosperity. Running experiments with an open mind is a great way to figure out what works.
I have literally no idea where you're getting this from, at least from the US's perspective. The EPA has been gutted by the GWB and Trump admins, and the courts blocked anything serious the Obama admin tried to do. There was "welfare reform" in the 90s which reduced redistribution. Taxes on the wealthy have fallen a bunch. The bankruptcy reform in the mid 2000s was a disaster.
A friend of mine was in business school in the 90s. She told me all that low end production was going to be outsourced to lower cost places, and that the US would be mostly management.
I was stunned that not just a person, but a school could be so stupid. What, did they think the Chinese could make shit but would never learn how to manage things or design them? Worse yet, they can now do design, production, logistics, and the US no longer knows how to make a lot of things.
I've even read that Krugman now sees that as a mistake.
Way to go, followers of Jack Welch.
I've wondered, whether the concern for foreign propaganda, targeting US communities disconnected from reality by group-think, is perhaps misguided, in its focus on populists. Sure, sometimes you target propaganda at troops. But the usual and higher-leverage target for deception, is leadership.
"Is China’s ARJ21 Just A MD-80 Copy Or Is It The Beginning Of China’s Rise In Commercial Aviation?"
"The ARJ21 is partially built on specs from the old MD80, thanks to the presence of U.S. manufacturers in China. McDonnell Douglas was operating an MD80 manufacturing facility in Shaghai prior to its merger with Boeing, thanks to a lucrative deal inked in the early 90s. During this time period, presses and other parts were shipped from the United States to the Douglas facility. This gave the Chinese access to Western technology.
Once Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, production of the MD80 ceased, marking the end of an era. After abandoning the final MD80 and MD90 assembly lines in China after about 30 frames, Aviation Industrial Company inherited McDonnell Douglas tooling."
"It did not take long before China was announcing it’s “new” regional airliner project, unveiling a design that was eerily similar to the MD80 design. COMAC officials in Shanghai vehemently defend the ARJ21 as an original design. However, despite COMAC’s protests to the contrary, it is commonly accepted that the ARJ21 is fundamentally a redesign of the DC9. "
https://www.avgeekery.com/is-chinas-arj21-just-a-md-80-copy-...
What's interesting is the possible next steps building upon the experience gained.
Hey! Vote for me! I’ll bring those jobs back home!
Sound familiar?
I would gladly pay 25% more for devices made on US soil by US robots, but so far the supply of such is pretty limited at best.
In Mao's times you had to carry the little red book in your pocket, were put into a factory or lined up against the wall. Today foreigners can go to the country, start a business and you can work where you want. Over the last five years in particular the situation for businesses has gotten better because the courts actually have started to function and address stuff like IP claims. Still slow for foreign business in particular, but if you think modern China, one of the world's most integrated economies, is comparable to the Mao era I truly don't know what to tell you.
China is also, ironically enough, probably one of the most fiscally decentralized economies on the planet. If you look at the degree of economic autonomy regions have, you won't find it really anywhere else.
I'm Chinese. I still have family there.
> In Mao's times you had to carry the little red book in your pocket, were put into a factory or lined up against the wall.
This is funny because Xi is emulating Mao. Instead of a red book, Xi has a yellow book.
> Today foreigners can go to the country, start a business and you can work where you want. Over the last five years in particular the situation for businesses has gotten better because the courts actually have started to function and address stuff like IP claims. Still slow for foreign business in particular, but if you think modern China, one of the world's most integrated economies, is comparable to the Mao era I truly don't know what to tell you.
If you know enough about history, the credit for opening up China to the West goes to Deng Xiaoping and not Xi. Also you're talking past tense. In the present, foreigners are being squeezed out.
> China is also, ironically enough, probably one of the most fiscally decentralized economies on the planet. If you look at the degree of economic autonomy regions have, you won't find it really anywhere else.
I'm not sure what you're reading, but a good percentage of companies are either state sponsored or state owned. Still, you weren't completely off. Continued decentralization of the economy was the trend before Xi, but Xi is reversing it now. I'm speaking of the near future and not the past.
What you've written was largely true a few years ago but not so much now or the near future.
I see absolutely no evidence in the numbers, or personal experience, but only in narrative that China has become a worse place for foreigners. Business climate is way better than it was mostly due to rule of law improvements. I have no idea to what extent the corruption reforms purged antagonistic party members or whatever, but it wasn't just a stunt, it actually did help private businesses.
I also find the elevation of Deng over Xi odd, given that Deng all his economic reforms aside, also used to roll tanks over students. The current administration doesn't even seem close to go back to the old methods.
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/188629/united-states-dir...
[2]https://monitor.icef.com/2019/04/chinas-foreign-enrolment-gr...
You're not exactly providing good evidence to prove your point either e.g. your article about being 5th most popular destination for students talks about the trend slowing down.
The trend I'm speaking of started about right when Xi assumed power.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wb3Z3w...
> FDI in China is actually up, even American investment in China.
Money from far away, foreign investors are always welcome in almost every country. China is no different. I'm talking about expats who were more permanent than temporary, foreign exchange students.
China still has a xenophobic culture. Has it gotten better? Sure it has, but it
> I also find the elevation of Deng over Xi odd, given that Deng all his economic reforms aside, also used to roll tanks over students.
There's no denying that what Deng did was unthinkable and largely due to paranoia, but that doesn't change the fact that it was he who opened up China and created its current economic machine. Xi has come after that fact. I'm not even sure how what he did is relevant to our discussion since I'm pretty sure Xi supported it.
I have to ask. How long do you stay in China when you visit? Are you fluent? If you're not, you're missing a lot of context.
I've stayed usually for two to three months per year. I've been in Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Guangzhou mostly around tech folks. It's getting better but I'm not fluent, I can get around. So sure obviously I follow the politics it's of interest to me but mostly I've gotten my impression from work, talking to people and just living there.
And while the atmosphere is tenser maybe, there's more nationalistic tones in particular from very young people and it didn't feel as geopolitical say 8 years ago as it did 2 years ago, it doesn't seem like a fundamentally different place. I can't speak to every machination of the party but I don't think China is going to withdraw from the world, or not let foreigners in or anything like that. People from the very bottom to the top seem to know there's no way back to Mao's days, I don't think more political centralization is going to change that.
There's so much bad press these days you think China is the next Soviet Union, but it's hard to square with lived reality for me which is why responded quite strongly to the original post, there's just so many of them, I don't think it does the diversity in the country justice.
Has China gotten to that point yet? imo, it's really hard to achieve when you have a more collectivist culture vs an individualistic one that's ruled by an authoritarian government.
Has China gotten to that point yet for planes? No, they clearly just started. But they're clearly there for some industries like electronics where Shenzen is the place to be if you're building hardware startups.
Japan and South Korea are both democratic republics. South Korea's economic seemed to transform overnight, once they transitioned from a dictatorship into a democratic republic. Like it or not, the lack of free speech has an economic cost.
> Singapore has an authoritarian government and also managed the leap.
Isn't Singapore more or less a democratic republic now? Singapore is also able to mitigate their own lack of creativity with immigration. I do not believe China has the same views regarding foreigners. I view Singapore more as an Asian Switzerland than a tech leader anyways. I also do not believe that Singapore's leaders believe in Mao style centralist control (of the economy at least)
> Has China gotten to that point yet for planes? No, they clearly just started.
They've been copying Russian aircraft for a while now. They haven't "just started".
Before Xi, China was slowly moving in the right direction for global dominance. China under Xi is moving backwards.
If you look at actual data https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat... , you'll see that Korea has had high GDP-per-capita growth since as far back as the 1960s, with two years of shrinking: 1980 after the assassination of the dictator Park Chung-hee and 1998 after the Asian Financial Crisis, which was also the first time the ruling party let go of their power after losing a democratic election.
The economic cost of lack of free speech isn't as great as the economic cost of uncertainty (because it discourages investing). Not knowing who the next dictator will be and not knowing who will win the next election are both sources of uncertainty.
So if democracy actually has some effect on economic performance, it's not strong enough to overcome broader trends. Which makes sense if you consider that authoritarians like making money, too, so blocking obvious productivity improvements would only be shooting themselves in the foot.
Not much, no. Single party state, been in power forever, tame opposition parties allowed, ruling party never had anything less than a supermajority, individual leaders stay in power for decades, fines and jail sentences for questioning the independence of the judiciary.
China under Xi is going in the right direction for global dominance for the simple reason that he's one of the first leader since Mao to take military modernization seriously. Chinese money talks, but military hardware gatekeeps whether that conversation to happen in the first place. Which matters more and more now that China containment is official US policy. The alternative to Xi was Bo Xilai who would never have reformed the corrupt and ineffective military old guard. Now China has a massively expanding Navy with growing blue water capabilities, SCS bases, space infrastructure and enough indigenous weapons that even belligerent US under Pompeo doesn't have the guts to sail carrier through the Taiwan strait anymore. Clinton sent two. I use to be a Xi doubter, but it's hard to argue he's not doing an incredible job.
That's only part of the picture. I'm talking more lower level ie. artists, engineers and scientists
Sure, you need the infrastructure for investment and manufacturing but that doesn't solve the problem of nationally, stunted creativity
> Free speech doesn't matter when building electronics or military hardware
It does matter if you want to build something original and innovative, instead of yet another cheap copy. That requires creativity, which is dependent on free speech. I mean just take a look at mainland entertainment. Most of it consists of movies and shows about the distant past. It's not even close to what could have been done like what you see in Japan or SK. Maybe if China had a more individualist society, you'd have a better argument or even proof beyond one off exceptions like DJI
> China under Xi is going in the right direction for global dominance for the simple reason that he's one of the first leader since Mao to take military modernization seriously... Now China has a massively expanding Navy with growing blue water capabilities, SCS bases, space infrastructure and enough indigenous weapons that even belligerent US under Pompeo doesn't have the guts to sail carrier through the Taiwan strait anymore.
What does this matter when everyone important already has global, ballistic nuclear missiles? One could argue that it's a drain on GDP when it could be spent elsewhere. Most of the US deficit is due to wasteful, military spending.
> The alternative to Xi was Bo Xilai who would never have reformed the corrupt and ineffective military old guard.
How do you even know there are actual reforms vs Xi just having a good excuse for rounding up his enemies like Putin, when there's no free press?
>That requires creativity, which is dependent on free speech.
Citation needed. There's more to "entertainment" than mass media subject to rigorous censorship. Chinese entertainment is great if you don't care about politics. Great soviet artists existed under USSR. Chinese cinema tackled politics under CCP pre 90s when political discussion was less restricted. Censorship redirects where creativity goes, Chinese market likes their entertainment fine.
>original and innovative
Those aren't important priorities for military acquisition. Copy what works if it fits needs, innovate where it doesn't. China innovates on rocket force to sink US carriers, hence ahead in hypersonics. It matters because before nuclear war is conventional war. Conventional capability require to solve border disputes, become regional hegemon of a bunch of middle powers without nukes. And at minimum they need conventional capabilities to retake Taiwan.
> actual reforms
CCDI investigated/punished over 1M+ party officials, even Xi doesn't have that many enemies. But of course there was element of power consolidation, and completely justified in retrospect now that CIA confirmed (just this month) how far they've infiltrated CCP under Hu. This was suspected at time of CIA China debacle, but recent confirmation solidified that Xi was the right choice. As for actual reforms, PLAN building more tonnage in new ships per year than entire region combined. Western thinktanks analyze Chinese military modernization to death.
You're asking for evidence, yet you're not providing any either. You're partially right though. With China's gradual opening, there have been more mainland Chinese entering higher tiers in various disciplines. Still, that's not to say that China's creativity isn't crippled by its government. Personally, I feel it's a drop compared to what could be with a more democratic government. Also everything that we've seen so far is due to China opening up and decentralizing. I predict the opposite will happen in the future as Xi reverses the trend. Yes, it's conjecture, and I hope I'm wrong.
> Chinese entertainment is great if you don't care about politics.
This is just personal taste but imo it's terrible. The only works that have freedom are nationalistic in nature like the Three Body Problem, where it's easy to see what it really is once you substitute the West for the "aliens". Everything else is mostly historical fiction set in ancient times, or maybe some time around WWII. My guess for this is because it's easier not to run the ire of the CCP if you're doing fictional work in a setting that happened hundreds of years ago.
> China innovates on rocket force to sink US carriers, hence ahead in hypersonics.
Are they really Chinese innovations or Chinese retrofitted Russian designs? I don't know enough about modern Chinese rockets, so I'm actually asking a question, because historically most Chinese military equipment are variants of Russian models.
> It matters because before nuclear war is conventional war. Conventional capability require to solve border disputes, become regional hegemon of a bunch of middle powers without nukes.
India also has ballistic nuclear weapons, and so does Japan... It's good to know that China's leaders have the same logic as US leadership. For the US, imo our defense budget is a mainly a cover for massive corruption.
> CCDI investigated/punished over 1M+ party officials, even Xi doesn't have that many enemies. But of course there was element of power consolidation, and completely justified in retrospect now that CIA confirmed (just this month) how far they've infiltrated CCP under Hu.
Chinese politics have varying factions which are made up of many members. It's not like anti-corruption drives are a new tactic to remove your rivals in China. I mean you even admit it.
This is not an emotional discussion for me, but I feel that it is for you. If I'm right on this, I'm not looking to insult you, and if continuing this discussion is going to make you angry; I'd rather end it now because it's not going to change anyone's views.
>personal taste / it's a drop compared / evidence
Mainstream TV/film is trash because of censorship. Ditto with Chinese journalism under Xi, lots of talent left. Point is censorship constraints industries, but not the entire creative talent pool. Rote Chinese education system + current level of censorship is not strong enough to blunt creative outflow in a nation with as much human capita as China, output not a drop but also not close to full potential. There's probably negative per capita affects, but it hasn't stopped China from climbing ranking polls in science, innovation indexes (the evidence) etc, and in terms of strategic global competition that's enough. It will hit future Chinese cultural export and soft power, but I don't see east asian culture substantively competing with Hollywood/US culture, who is simply too strong. Consequence of inertia of being wealthy superpower that can brain drain/poach talent from entire world. It's not just because of democracy, otherwise we'd all be into Norwegian media and Swedish Gripen would be the best fighter in the world.
>Chinese hypersonics
DF missiles started as Soviet R2 & R5 copies designs in 60s. Developments after have been indigenous efforts, there's been many iterations. Chinese hypersonics are ahead of Russian designs. Like Huawei indigenous 5G innovations after copying western vendors. Familiar copy, iternate, innovate pattern. People are still fixated on the copy part when much of Chinese hardware is at iterate or innovate phase.
>defense budget cover for massive corruption
US MIC is big drain. Entrenched interests, pork barrel waste tied to political process etc. But at least enough inertia that US military is largely unrivalled. PLA very corrupt and useless before Xi, less so now. This is evident because Chinese military under Xi reforms is an actual acquisition powerhouse while capabilities are constantly improving (from huge deficit gap), and Chinese military expenditure is ~2% of GDP, aka appropriate NATO commitment. Chinese military is not that exceptional relative to GDP and population. Of course things stretch further in China due to PPP but there hasn't been massive waste. That's why neighbours are shitting bricks, China spending modest amount on military efficiently has disproportionate effect on regional power balance. But the alternative is not modernizing with modest budget, which is an unrealistic expectation. Of course the real issue is there's a bunch of disputes to resolve. Also Japan has no nuclear weapons.
>anti-corruption drives
There is nothing wrong with anti-corruption drives nor political consolidation if it serves purpose. Corruption + incentives is the mechanism that made rapid Chinese development possible. China is the only country where increased corruption correlated with increased growth. Corruption is good. Until it's not. And by Xi, the corrosive effects of corruption outweighed its use as development instrument. So corruption was reigned in because it reached level that destabilized social order and undermined the political system (CIA infiltration). So not just Xi's enemies but literal enemies of the state.
Last point on Xi and I'm disengaging because too much screetime. Leaked US intelligence of Xi, roughly "not very smart, but incorruptible, except maybe by power". Not very smart feels true, but it's hard to argue his policies have largely delivered in areas that matter. Morally incorruptible seems true, Xi believes in socialism a little to hard, which ties back to the not very smart part. Corrupt by power also rings true. These are all terrible qualities, but somehow he's making it work. I say this begrudingly because anti-corruption drive killed the gift-giving industry that some family made livelihood in. Anyway, it's working until it doesn't since he'll be around for a while. But the alternative would have been BoXiLai and US carriers still sailing through Taiwan strait. There was a very small window while US was distracted by ME where China could make gains in the region, but Xi seems to have pulled it off. Doesn't mean things can't be better domestically (i.e. XJ shitshow) but short medium term Xi has priorities right. When people say Xi is causing China to regress, they are typically not cognizant of all the essential things he did for progress, and that the alternative to him would have been much worse, at least for Chinese interests. This is not a position I thought I could hold a couple years ago.
It's a fictional depiction of investigations of corrupt CCP officials. It's quite good.
China is a place full of contradictions so I would avoid analyzing it through the lens of ideology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_X-2_Shinshin
F-X2 was primarily indigenous effort after US refused to export F22s. IIRC another factor was US was not forthcoming with tech/knowledge transfer on F2 project. F-X2 still had some US help, but stopped after demonstrator. Then rebooted into F-X / F-3 Godzilla recently, international project in draft stage. So to date, no tangible gen5 effort.
I think we should be crisp on the difference between government systems and culture. East asian culture tends to be very collectivist regardless of the government system. When you originally said "collectivist culture" I assumed you were referring to this culture (tallest hammer gets nailed down, route memorization learning, respect for seniority over ability, etc).
But if you were referring to the political system then that's true now, though this might be putting the cart before the horse. SK, Taiwan, and even Japan all got a lot of economic development done under authoritarian regimes (even if they were democracy in name). Only once economic development came did they transition. Ironically the growth slowed after that so if you think political system is a causal factor of economic growth, it might appear at first glance that democracy is bad for economic growth.
> Isn't Singapore more or less a democratic republic now?
Haha, well, maybe formally. As others have pointed out Singapore has practically single-party-rule. By some accounts, China owes much of its modern success to copying Singapore's flavor of state capitalism. Deng Xiaoping visited Lee Kwan Yew in 1978 and that set the course for China to pivot away from communism to state capitalism. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/lee-kuan-yew-lauded-for-cr...
> Before Xi, China was slowly moving in the right direction for global dominance. China under Xi is moving backwards.
I agree with that statement, though time will tell.
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To sum up this discussion:
1. if it's ultimately a question of whether democracy is a necessary condition of economic growth or even creativity, I would say no. Plenty of good science was done in Germany in the 40s or the Soviet Union, and economic growth in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan under military dictatorships.
2. Would more creative work have been done with more freedom? Hard to prove or disprove but I intuitively would lean towards yes, especially for disruptive innovation (the kind that the folks in charge wouldn't like or be able to see). I think we agree here.
3. Is democracy a sufficient to create economic growth? I would say no, looking at some of the other non-western democracies out there, or democracies which failed.
However: this does not mean that every non-democratic leader is going to make mistakes, and certainly not at all phases of their leadership career. (Mistakes are, however, more probable than not over the long term in the typical authoritarian society. It’s noteworthy that we mostly point to Singapore as the sole counterexample of an economically successful authoritarian regime that didn’t revert to democracy or suffer decades of needless economic self-harm.)
Their first trainsets were all manufactured with licensed technology (Hexie Hao) and as their demand for, and expertise on, trainsets increased they created new models from scratch (Fuxing Hao) that are consider technologically superior to other alternatives _and_ at a price advantage. (There are many reports on a recent push to start exporting those new Fuxing Hao trainsets that started operating in 2017)
Looked only slightly modified from their passenger trains. One large sliding door in the middle of each car, with a folding out ramp, and where usually the passenger seats were, there is now something like in freight planes, where standardised freight containers easily slide into their positions via slots in the ground and rolls. Automatically!
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-12/24/c_139615873.htm (contains short video showing operations)
That is a real FIRST!
(Yah, Yah! color me impressed. But it IS impressive!)
Many would be shocked to know that big name brands reverse engineer car brands that perhaps cost a fraction of their own because there is lot to learn. And the risk of competition is very high.
I'm certain that China would have done something like these jets regardless of whether other manufacturers had declined, or if they helped, or whatever. Just as the Soviets/Russians have been making jets and just as in that case it said nothing about Boeing or Airbus.