Hurricane China: How to prepare
steve-yegge.medium.com
steve-yegge.medium.com
One of the key thing he got wrong, was that Americans view cheating as bad but Chinese (and rest of the world) do not.
1, our tribal mind naturally groups who we deem as other in groups. so if you identify as American, and see reports that some Chinese groups/individuals steal something, it registers as "Chinese steal"; but if fellow Americans steal, it registers as "Group(like race)/Individual X steals", and the group X is probably not a group you are part of. Also, you hardly hear about people/companies following the law, because those are not news worthy.
2, developing countries tend to be behind not just in economy, but also public consensus and regulation. i.e. ponzi schemes ran rampant during the 80s/90s in China, that's not because Chinese love ponzi schemes more than Americans, but due to Chinese people and regulators not being familiar of those scams. Same is true for IP, copyright, etc, as more Chinese individuals get harmed by those types of theft, the public consensus has been shifting and regulations are catching up.
3, author touched on this, generally speaking, poor and rich people has a higher possibility to cheat, the former due to realization that the system is rigged against them, so taking from the man is justified; the latter, is more of a reverse effect of those who are most skillful at taking from others tend to rise to the top.
Combine this with the effect that the law-abiding American middle class have a higher chance of interacting with the immoral (hackers, IP thieves or just ruthless corporations) or poor (refugees or illegal immigrants) foreign entities than the law-abiding foreign middle class citizens. It's quite easy to come to a conclusion that foreigners are less moral than Americans.
4, as an American, author is probably going to be more familiar with how foreigners steal from Americans than vice versa. For example, do you know that Chinese shows are more widely available on Youtube (illegally) than the reverse?
I don't doubt that China has great engineers; I personally use a Huawei phone and Huawei tablet. I believe these are banned in the USA.
I do doubt that Huawei have created their own operating system to rival android. Unless git clone constitutes an act of creation; if so I have also created lots of new operating systems.
Not saying they couldn't develop an operating system; but the rest of the article did a pretty good job of explaining why they just wouldn't.
If someone 'cheats', there is a pretty good chance that they also 'lie'. And enough with the cultural relativism. Some things people do are recognizably bad just at the human or even social animal level.
Even dogs get embarrassed by their own behavior, if they are caught out.
The author's other point seems to be that many westerners don't seem to get that it doesn't matter. So what if they didn't "innovate". I'd guess that the author would say that they don't care about innovation for innovations sake. They care about winning in the market. They care about selling product and making money.
Finally, about the cheating/lies thing... I think the author explained it rather poorly. Though perhaps he was simplifying to try to get his point across. The real core, IMO, is that what most people in the west think of as cultural differences -- food, clothing, music, etc -- are just a façade. Actual cultural differences are differences in what people of varying cultures think are good and bad, what they view as moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. To accept that other cultures actually exist, you have to accept that they actually accept that something you feel is good, they feel is bad. That something you think is immoral, they believe to be moral. Not everything of course (probably not even most things), there seem to be a lot of shared aspects between cultures. But some things.
The author asserts that "stealing" intellectual property is one of these things. But.. don't lots of techies in America spout the whole "information must be free" rhetoric? Or do they mean only when it's someone else's IP? <shrug>
- Edit: except for the "Bloomberg big hack" part, I have to point out it died because it is extremely likely to be a fake story, by amending my comment.
> I do doubt that Huawei have created their own operating system to rival android. Unless git clone constitutes an act of creation;
As someone who had interviewed a few guys working on their so-called "Android compatible layer for HarmonyOS" and "automatic Android app to HarmonyOS migrator" (sounds like a source-to-source transpiler for mapping calls to Android APIs to mostly-same-to-Android-but-with-some-subtle-differences HarmonyOS APIs, nobody would create such a horrible thing if they really simply git clone), I believe they do. I don't know to what extent, though.
I think your comment is an interesting example of the "dismissive tone" Steve referred to.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-h...
Indeed, Microsoft was lying on how they created WSL1! They must be using git clone-d Linux source code, because from a cursory look the "Bash on Windows" looks exactly same to a bash running on real Linux, I even tried grep, they are all the same! Then they finally cannot cover it up anymore so they released WSL2, publicly stating it is vanilla Linux running in Hyper-V, pretending they are not doing this from the beginning to save face, shame!
/s
Huawei has publicly declared HarmonyOS a wholly original creation, which as we can see from the previously linked article, is a total fabrication.
The entire country is a country of scammers where the rules of the game are to cheat as much as possible. Like the article said, literally think of yourself as a member of a gang where killing people gets you “street cred”. Cheating is an aspect of street cred for Chinese people.. if you cheat and get away with it, it’s something to be proud of. The Chinese will ‘lie’ to authorities about cheating, but among friends it’s high fives all around.
How do I know this? I’m Chinese. Born in the states but with ties to the east. I don’t know if it’s genetic or if it’s cultural but growing up I never purchased a single game or purchased a single movie or piece of music and I was proud of cheating the system. In fact me and many people in Asia think you’re stupid if you pay money for any form of electronic digital media when all of it can be pirated easily.
This is the mentality of basically most of Asia with the exception of Japan and to a lesser extent Korea.
I get your mentality though. The rules of US culture is basically fairness. It pervades the mentality of the country but you have to understand different games have different rules. For example in mafia the name of the game is to deceive everyone. Deception is therefore praised and you are proud if you win the game via deception. Just like how a simple game can flip a switch so can culture. China is playing mafia while the US is playing chess.
The cultural attitude I talk about dominates most of the culture in china. You walk into shenzhen not only is software pirated but entire phones, products and hardware is pirated and sold publicly. It's completely normal in china. Not to mention many people are proud of their own businesses.
Whatever your experience is I feel you're telling it from within some social strata that is largely different from the rest of china and this is only a minority opinion.
Like the author I say this in the most non judgmental way possible.
Look at the iPhone sales figure from Apple, and look at android sales numbers. And you are trying to suggest that "the rest of China" buys a counter fake iPhone? You are either dishonest or you know nothing about China.
Some are legit parts. Many are pirated. There's even android phones sold under the apple brand with a reskinned android OS. You 100% don't know what you're talking about at all. You want proof? Watch it:
https://youtu.be/e4wbFdePb-k?t=278
The more you watch the more educated you'll be.
>Look at the iPhone sales figure from Apple, and look at android sales numbers. And you are trying to suggest that "the rest of China" buys a counter fake iPhone? You are either dishonest or you know nothing about China.
Yes. Dude. In China they have entire factories that build counterfeit stuff.
>And the worst part of your story is that you attribute what you did to something not yours, so you don't have to take the responsibility of your own behavior. It is wrong.
This is where you're wrong. I never admitted or justified what I was doing as right or wrong. In fact I think it's wrong. I'm human and I'm not perfect. I'm very capable of doing things that are wrong. The difference between you and me is that I don't have to lie to myself about the reality of what I'm doing. I don't have to justify it to myself. It's wrong, but I do it regardless without lying to myself. There are moral lines I don't cross, but I'm no boy scout.
If you can't see that pirated goods are rampant in China than you're lying to yourself. Stop lying. Accept reality for what it is, don't let national pride blind you from the absolute truth.
I can assure you that thing is not hand made. It's coming out of a factory. Your anecdotal evidence pales in the face of visual evidence and information distributed by a wired documentary.
Whether you or your friends buy knock offs doesn't change the fact that a huge industry of cheaters exists.
I think you haven't been to the States. What you may consider "normal" is actually far off from what happens in the west. The western perspective on China: https://youtu.be/5ncOyYzOP3w?t=274
One industry I won't disagree with you is brands, clothing, Nike/Adidas for example. The problem is still affordability. The consumerism has educated people to value brands, and they will buy counterfeits when they cannot afford it.
I don't blame people buying counterfeits to be honest, people make financial decisions based on their circumstances, either setting a trust to avoid taxation, or a shell company, to buy some counterfeits product they cannot afford.
That documentary showed real knowledge on the ground. It literally filmed someone buying a knockoff from a mall that sold only knockoffs. Like come on, that’s as close to on the ground knowledge you can get. All I need you to do is explain where that knockoff in that video came from and why I see these knockoffs all over the place every time I go to Shenzhen.
The topic of this conversation is not about your disagreement with counterfeiting or not. I don’t care about whether you blame anyone or not.
The topic is about whether or not such an industry of cheaters exists in China. Your initial claim is that they don’t. My claim is that not only do they exist but they’re everywhere in China. The entire Chinese culture is all about scams and the people buying and selling pirated goods play a huge part in this culture.
And no, I disagree that Chinese culture is all about scams and buying/selling pirated goods. Business is the least part of Chinese culture, a Chinese billionaire would rather his children to be doctors or lawyers, business owners are not perceived the same as professionals. Yes, we do have a saying that 'all businessmen are corrupted', because its profit driven nature of business. We also believe building trust and relations is the only base you can build your business. Buying and selling pirated goods do exist, and they are not scams. As I said, it is a response to the consumerism world, it is good that you don't have to rob a store or steal money to buy the real thing. China is the biggest market for many foreign brands, it is a fact. Nike won't report profit from fake Nike shoes.
Anyway, thank you for making the effort to educate a Chinese about China and Chinese culture. Enjoy your day.
Of course a chinese billionaire will want their children to be doctors. Every chinese person wants that. But not every chinese person can be a billionaire let alone a doctor.
So what do these people do when they can't be rich like you? They cheat. They hustle. You ever heard of the lost generation? It's a generation of cheaters.
I'm chinese as well and I can tell you, it's pretty sad that I have to educate a chinese person about chinese culture.
The united States, like china, has many issues. But unlike china its citizens face these issues head on. Is there racism in the US? Yes. How does the US deal with racists? By protesting and criticizing them and demanding change. Are there economic issues in the US? Yes. And citizens deal with the issue by talking openly about it and discussing ways to move forward.
How does a chinese person deal with rampant cheating in their culture? By denying its existence. Not only do you deny its existence, but your government makes damn sure that you better deny it or face the consequences.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
> I hope they are not proud about it.
But like the parent post I have no shame or guilt in not paying for content. And I'm proud about being clever!
It may be a mentality, as I do think people are stupid to pay for a DRM ebook while libgen has it without DRM. But if it takes more than 2 minutes to find it, I buy it.
For ebooks, there are scribd, kindle, oreiley, and libraries. And to be honest, you probably won't read most of books you downloaded anyway. It is just a waste of your time in the end. At least if you buy it, you will only buy those you are going to read.
I'm not poor, far from it, yet I still use stremio to stream movies just as conveniently as netflix without paying a dime. It's wrong. There is no way to justify what I'm doing. Yet me and many other people both in America and in China use the app without the need for justification.
Don't think that the guilt you feel is something other people feel. I can assure you I feel nothing.
It's unfortunate, I recognize it's wrong, but at the same time... I don't actually care.
You can vote me down, but I'm being candid here. There are tons of people like me and most of them won't be candid about there apathy towards piracy, so this is a window into our mindset if you're a person who can't relate. If you want to make the world a better place you need to account for bad actors in any model because they can never be fully eliminated.
> It's unfortunate, I recognize it's wrong, but at the same time... I don't actually care.
Same for me!
Sure I may buy stuff if it's more convenient. But that's not the issue here. The issue here is that I and many others are capable of cheating and won't shy away from it if a viable opportunity presents itself. Same with pretty much a good chunk of people in China.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If Google (or rather Danger) could have forked Android instead of creating a new operating system, they would have done that too. In fact, they did, in a sense, as Android uses the Linux kernel, after all.
Sure, Google now actually is trying to create a new OS from scratch (Fuchsia), but it remains to be seen if it will be a success in the market (or if it will even ever be deployed in a commercial product).
> If someone 'cheats', there is a pretty good chance that they also 'lie'. And enough with the cultural relativism. Some things people do are recognizably bad just at the human or even social animal level.
I share your difficulty in wrapping your head around this idea, but a certain amount of cultural relativism is required here. And your own absolutism isn't a absolute as you think.
Here is an exercise that may help: Why is cheating at poker considered, well, cheating, but bluffing (including deliberately faking tells, or other subterfuge) is not?
If you say "bluffing is part of the game", try to understand that much of what is called 'cheating' is seen as part of the game in their context, and while getting caught cheating is cause for losing face, it isn't cause for feeling guilt. In fact, whoever is doing the catching is supposed to feel embarrassed for pointing it out, not self-righteous.
> Even dogs get embarrassed by their own behavior, if they are caught out.
Right. While the idea of 'Face' or shame is something that exists in Chinese culture, and is as powerful a force as guilt is in Western cultures, it doesn't work in the same way, and trying to guilt a Chinese person typically just shames them instead, and makes the shamer a target for anger and even revenge. This point perhaps could have been given more space in the essay.
Aside: I think that this is part of what drives the 'social credit score' initiative: In a very real sense it is a system for measuring 'face', but there is never a 'shamer' that can be embarrassed or blamed.
Did they ever find these supposed chips in servers at Amazon and Apple?
China doesn't have a big middle class. Education in China does not produce a lot of creative people. China government can disappear any Billionaire or Actor or any influential person. Such regime will always be less effective, less creative. Solution to the Problem: remove trade advantages for china, add sanctions and wait while it degrades to the state Russia is now. If you cut them from the global markets, China will crumble. China is all about "face", to the determent of everything else and is the reason for a global Corona outbreak. I believe the author has too good opinion on them, they just lie a lot. Sure a lot of the products are assembled in china, but not created. As I look around my desk, I don't see anything beside mobile phone that was engineered in China. As a matter of fact I prefer to buy locally engineered German stuff even if it costs a bit more, because I have a better quality and after sale support than with any Chinese Product. I hate dealing with Chinese Traders after a sale and I started to pay more for European products, even if they cost more. The west and others can relocate supply chains and that would be the end of it.
I remember in the 1970s people used to say that the Japanese could only copy the west; they couldn't create things of their own; their culture or even their different brains prevented them from original creativity.
That was obviously just a load of garbage; it was just a stage their economy was going through.
I think the article is light on historical context.
There are good reasons why catching up with other nations; especially ones that once oppressed you could be regarded as a completely ethical thing to do; by any means necessary; to safeguard your peoples future.
No one would be in any way surprised if Huawei had just said "we are forking Android and our fork will diverge over time; eventually becoming our own unique operating system."
Understanding why they didn't say that is perhaps the interesting thing.
The USA also lied, cheated, stole, murdered, etc.
Just in my life time, I've read a lot of these alarmists missives. The Japan That Can Say No, the evil USSR, something something Islam, Latino immigration, etc.
This too shall pass.
What always seems to be missing is recognition that the USA also has agency. It's so weird to think we'll not respond, adapt, accommodate, or whatever.
These things are always a dance, action then reaction, move then counter-move.
--
That said: One thing that worries me is ethics around medical research. I have the impression that China's currently a free-for-all. Well. In time that will change. Not so long ago, the USA did a lot of horrible shit. Now we have institutional review boards and government oversight.
(I'm purposefully not reading about anyone's atrocities. I acknowledge them. But I'm struggling mightily to keep my head in a positive space. If I think too much about the horrors, I just start crying. And that's not helping me or anyone else.)
--
Yes, an emergent China presents a lot of challenges.
But I'm more worried about scenarios where China that doesn't become a super power. Or worse, if China declines. People start acting stupid and lash out when the narrative flips.
Further, I've been thinking having a sole super power has been bad for humanity.
I'm hoping that if the USA feels a little heat, we'll pull our thumbs out and resume building towards a better future. Because whatever we've been doing these last 20+ years, it kinda sucks.
IF China is amoral and doesn't see anything wrong with lying, why wouldn't they have an operation running to get the US to deindustrialize themselves and give up their manufacturing base to overseas countries, mainly China?
It's like this guy is shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on at Rick's American Cafe.
"Better Education" isn't going to help if it's just maleducation in things that don't help, and trying to build up the corporations that helped get us in this mess because their worldview can't really handle manufacturing probably won't help either.
Sorry, I didn't mean your comment specifically, it didn't come across as such to me.
> "Better Education" isn't going to help if it's just maleducation in things that don't help
Well if we're at a point where people believe 5G caused Coronavirus, Bill Gates wants to implant microchips into people to control their minds and so on, I think almost any education helps. ;) The article puts it quite well, there seems to be an anti-education, anti-science movement going on, and if you look at history, it wouldn't be the first time that an advanced civilization somehow turns around 180° and starts rejecting science and turns to religion and superstition, even without the help of externally seeded misinformation.
> and trying to build up the corporations that helped get us in this mess because their worldview can't really handle manufacturing probably won't help either.
For now just letting them be and, as the article suggest as well, milking them for that sweet tax money that could go into education would be a start. That also doesn't exclude regulating them in other ways.
Not so different after all.
Those in power just like to chose when its "cricket" and when its a free for all.
I have a feeling a lot of people will say they are not related. Unfortunately, I believe that we are going to find out how related those things are in the next few decades.
As for the US dollar, we have a potential replacement that is enjoying global acceptation, while most of the mining is in China.
---
His argument boils down to: China (as if they were some unified entity) likes taking intellectual property and will therefore rule over us. They have done rather well for themselves and are therefore better than the US in every aspect.
I'd actually predict the exact opposite of this post: China will have serious internal turmoil around 2040 or 2045. They are not in a position to overtake the U.S. culturally or creatively. No one in Europe or Africa or India or the Middle East can name more than one or two cultural figures from China. I don't see this changing, because China is a traditional ethnic nation-state, whereas America is built on diversity.
American culture is "open" by definition and it's easier for people worldwide to adopt it. Chinese culture, while incredibly rich and worthwhile, is almost universally centered toward China.
While the may be true, unfortunately that argument is only leading to complacency on part of the rest of the world.
CCP has shown remarkable resiliency so I won’t rule them out.
For the past 20-something years "experts" have made predictions of how China will catastrophically fail "in the next 5 years" because whatever the latest issue was that we just identified with how China does things wrong. At least you put your predictions 20 years in the future so you don't have to correct them that often. ;-)
And while it's true that China has a lot of internal conflicts and issues, I don't see how any of them should pose a serious threat to their road to success, or rather not more than the issues we have in the west now.
As the article says several times, it's better to prepare, rather than trying to find arguments that the problem will magically solve itself and everything will comfortably stay the way it is.
That is exactly what the Soviet Union did for the first 30 years of its existence.
> For the past 20-something years "experts" have made predictions of how China will catastrophically fail "in the next 5 years" because whatever the latest issue was that we just identified with how China does things wrong. At least you put your predictions 20 years in the future so you don't have to correct them that often. ;-)
20 years ago, China was barely on the radar of anyone in the media.
> As the article says several times, it's better to prepare, rather than trying to find arguments that the problem will magically solve itself and everything will comfortably stay the way it is.
I don't disagree with that, but it's always important to accurately identify the problem before implementing solutions.
While I unfortunately can't time travel back and visit Russia to make a direct comparison, from everything I read and heard about the efforts in Russia, it was primarily tuned to enable brilliant people to do research with unlimited resources, preferably in directions that would yield military benefits. Improving general broad education was more or less a side-effect of this. The initial communist Marxist movement was deteriorated by corruption and the conflict with the US much quicker than that in China.
Again, I wasn't able to witness the overall sentiment in Russia back in those times, but it seems to be that China is doing much better in this regard and their people truly and strongly believe in their country. Frankly it is amazing that China is still going strong with its dictatorship and didn't end up at Russia levels yet.
> 20 years ago, China was barely on the radar of anyone in the media.
Definitely not mainstream media; I have a relative who's a high-up at Volkswagen who I learned a lot from about China starting in the late 90s, and then I had my first business trip to China in 2009. So I've probably been following them closer for longer than the average Joe. I specifically thought of people like Gordon Chang when I wrote that comment, who has predicted China's downfall multiple times already over the past two decades in books, TV interviews etc.
I mean sure, maybe these predictions eventually become true and the problem solves itself from our POV, but I see it as equally likely that China has built a sophisticated surveillance state until then to reliably shut down any internal unrest in time, so they "just" need to deal with the rest of the world, which brings us back the the article... :-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_th...
"For the past 20-something years "experts" have made predictions of how China will catastrophically fail "in the next 5 years" because whatever the latest issue was that we just identified with how China does things wrong. At least you put your predictions 20 years in the future so you don't have to correct them that often. ;-)"
I put no timelines on any predictions nor did I make a prediction just a simple comparison to the history of the USSR. Me thinks you didn't even read the original comment.
"And while it's true that China has a lot of internal conflicts and issues, I don't see how any of them should pose a serious threat to their road to success, or rather not more than the issues we have in the west now."
No state attempting to gain imperial power does so without causing significant pushback from its neighbors (South China Sea, Himalaya border, Taiwan, etc.) This is the exact issue that caused WW2 which didn't work out to well for the new imperialist on the block.
You should check out yourself, or better yet try to find sources that go into more detail about education in general.
The focus in Russia was strongly on science in the form of technical progress: While education was improved in general, the number one goal was having excellent scientists who'd push the boundaries in every discipline possible. Broad, general improvements of education were an afterthought. You tried to find a wunderkind early and then give it the best career possible.
> I put no timelines on any predictions nor did I make a prediction just a simple comparison to the history of the USSR. Me thinks you didn't even read the original comment.
You aren't the person I replied to.
> This is the exact issue that caused WW2 which didn't work out to well for the new imperialist on the block.
Quite an entertaining comparison.
"Steve Yegge is ex-Geoworks, ex-Amazon, ex-Google, and ex-Grab, with nearly 30 years of tech industry experience. Nowadays he’s pretty much retired."
"If you break up the Western Tech Giants, then they will be replaced with foreign companies that you cannot regulate. "
"Elizabeth, please stop talking about breaking them up. "
> Stop trying to kill your Golden Geese, and start milking them instead!
I like to read intelligent articles about technology and China.
I don't like to read articles that have cussing every other sentence. It's just crass, vulgar, and serves absolutely no purpose.
- fuck: found 40 times
- shit: found 16 times
Completely unnecessary. Get an editor and act like an adult, please, Mr. Yegge.
Idiocracy, here we come.
In other words, it's only entertaining because it offends someone like you. If you didn't care about the word fuck or shit, those words would lose their meaning and probably fall out of popularity only to be replaced by a new word or phrase that offended common sensibility.
All that being said I completely recognize it's a matter of taste and think it's perfectly valid for you both to not like it and to express that dislike. And I don't mean to express any argument, just explain why some would enjoy it.
I wouldn't be offended if Barack Obama burped and said fuck during a speech, I'd simply find it to be unnecessary. Not everyone that dislikes swearing is a moral puritan, you know?
Though there is one truth that is inevitable that the author glosses over just like many do when talking about global warming. It’s hurtful but I have to say it.
The worst case scenario of China being the dominant global economic super power is the most probable outcome of the future.
Hopefully the West will make them jump through hoops to sell their stolen IP in free countries though.
Is it racist to say that American culture is cold and uncaring and inhuman when someone dies from a curable condition because they are too poor to afford healthcare (compared to a country with a culture of universal heathcare)?
You should perhaps rethink your definition of the word racist, a better accusation would be to say the author mispresents this cultural value or overstates any real cultural difference between western and eastern cultures in terms of the cultural idea of 'fairness vs cheating'. But to call it racist seems a bit like calling all liberals communists or calling all conservatives fascist, no? Painting with too broad a brush. That is to say, it makes sense to ask whether this assertion about these cultures and their ideas around cheating are true, but to disallow any discussion about cultural values and the different ideas of various cultures comes across as a very "the emperor's new clothes' situation" where we aren't allowed to discuss things that are immediately apparent for fear of punishment.
You are avoiding addressing any of the real arguments presented by the author by dismissing their entire piece wholesale with a casual accusation and label that tarnishes their reputation. And doing so in a casual way.
I also think your claim is not substantiated.
Also too add my own anecdata, this "cheat if you can - screw over the man" is a huge part of Spanish culture. That's not to say it's how everyone thinks, but every institution tries to check you're not cheating them, and of course still gets cheated.