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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

China is not "smashing its tech industry". It's cracking down on private Internet companies that acquired too much power through network effects. This is completely consistent with CCP doctrine. Anything that central has to be state-owned.

Xi declared this year that while digitization is important, “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.” Right. China, remember, has a national industrial policy. It's expressed in the national 5 year plan, which is taken seriously and used to set priorities.

What those priorities are is no secret. The current 5 year plan, the 14th, lists them.[1] Specific technology goals are in blue boxes. Semiconductors, gas turbines, biotech, new energy vehicles, robotics, advanced agricultural equipment. Internet services are mentioned in the Plan. One key line section out here: "We will strengthen the economic supervision of internet platforms in accordance with laws and regulations, clarify platform enterprise positioning and regulatory rules, improve the laws and regulations concerning the identification of monopolies, and crack down on monopolies and unfair competition. ... We will intensify anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition law enforcement and judicial efforts and prevent the disorderly expansion of capital."

If you think this isn't to be taken seriously, go back and look at the 13th 5 year plan and check off the completed items.

[1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/t0284_14th_Fi...

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I think you're spot on, and the author's assessment is accurate: "China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added"

In the perspective of Chinese government, it is simply unacceptable that a toilet ordered by the air force cost more than $20k, or the number of ship manufacturers diminishes over years, or the average age of NASA engineers went from below 36 to above 55, or the best minds of the country spends their prime time figuring out how to increase CTR for ads revenue. Manufacturing and advanced research is a key to a nation, and China recognizes it.

> it is simply unacceptable that a toilet ordered by the air force cost more than $20k

Why do people get hung up on this? Specialty parts cost a lot.

From what I learned, it’s not specialty. Congress has a law that certain percentage of military provisioning must be domestic. The military had to meet the quota by buying toilets, and someone set up a factory in the US just to supply the military, so the unit price was through the roof. This became an example of how the US manufacturing has weakened so much.

The example I'm aware of is that the toilet seats needed to be a specific shape to fit in a specific aircraft, and that they only needed 1XX of them. The $20,000 price tag is because they had to pay for molds, testing, various other fixed costs required to operate, etc.

This article talking about this sells it as they managed to get the cost down through 3D printing, I'm absolutely willing to bet it cost the Airforce way more than contracting it out. The cost of a commercial 3d printer with security, to autocad it up, training staff, sending people into the field to measure it.

To have a trained air force employee designing toilet seats is questionable, is that what the military should do? Maybe and the air force should explore 3D printers, so it's a waste that might be worth it. But lets not pretend $10,000 went to $300.

The Air Force’s $10,000 toilet cover - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-...

I wonder if there are any follow ups on what else they 3D printed?

After reading this, I think I've actually changed my mind a bit - not that I ever had a super strong opinion. But now I'm thinking that yes - we absolutely want the military occasionally doing things like going out and designing their own toilet seat.

The military is kind of an odd organization. As the world in general increasingly specializes, the military doesn't. Not really. At the end of the day the military is there to "interface" with the rest of the world - and that's basically been how it was and how it's going to continue to be. Them having knowledge of how things - even toilet seats - are manufactured could be legitimately useful in their military function. It's essentially letting them get a first-hand view on how the world - particularly in terms of manufacturing - works. What steps, technology, infrastructure, etc etc are required to build things?

Ideally of course they would, and still should, get subject matter experts in to advise them for strategy and planning and all that. But it's somewhat naive to suggest this is likely to work perfectly all the time. It rarely does, because humans are going to human. If they can get some hands on experience it gives them some trusted internal people who can better communicate with the subject matter experts and ultimately reach better conclusions.

DARPA did kinda try and automate sewing - https://www.wired.com/2012/06/darpa-sweatshop/ Uniforms are billions of dollars.

I think what's important is not they bought 3 toilet seats for $10,000 on planes that costs $100,000 a hour to fly.

Universal Camouflage Pattern costing $5 billion to develop and make, then gets ditched because it sucked feels like a bigger story. How does that happen.... Isn't that the military's main interface with the world.

The $10,000 toilets predated usable 3D printers

It predates half the people on HN. It's a weird kind of "these guys did this bad thing that one time 40 years ago and that's the last thing I need to know".

The US government and military do plenty of things badly, and plenty of things well, and practically none of the people discussing them have any idea what either category actually contains.

You know some people got a blank check and went on a rampage. And if asked they invent justifications and requirements and generally fire smoke grenades to confuse the public.

Defense audits of how you spend the money are no joke. I guarantee that all the justifications were thought of ahead of time and used to justify the exact amount they requested.

Audits are a way to earn money. Don't forget to charge by time and effort then charge for time spent for being audited.

Additionally as always with complex regulations and specifications there are ways to comply maliciously. This means comply by letter but charge for bullshit.

Another bonus are hurdles to enter the market for your competitors. If they don't know how to talk with government and comply they can't sell to government. This makes things expensive for government.

Yes - the cost is mostly testing and building an audit trail.

If every single part of the toilet has to be manufactured from raw materials, and fully tested and documented at each step of the manufacturing process, then a toilet can add up to $20k easily.

Also, anything that will be installed in a regular old non-military passenger plane is extremely expensive, because they must be able to prove that parts will not break off mid-flight, that it will not catch fire, and will be manufactured consistently and reliably.

Maybe the headline's a bit misleading, but what you're saying is almost exactly what the article is talking about. (The article immediately refutes the notion of "smashing its tech industry" right away)

but they're 'smashing' the likes of Ant Financial who were doing predatory, unsecured lending on an unprecedented scale. So IMO the thesis of smashing 'Internet' companies is incorrect - they're just making sure economy doesn't go into bubble territory (lending fuels spending) and the likes of Jack Ma, who are detached from the party don't get too much power/money.

Or Didi who had the nerve to IPO outside of China on the NYSE on a date the CCP thought was too close to a party anniversary.

The Chinese central government was always really ambivalent about foreign IPOs. DiDi has too much control over domestic markets for the Chinese to be comfortable with foreign influence. I don't think it has anything to do with the anniversary.

Actually, the CCP never formally accepted the foreign stock ownership structure, for example. It was always a grey area.

>Maybe the headline's a bit misleading

Nah, a lot of people just don't read the articles before commenting, whether it is on HN or anywhere else

The article is mostly weird kremlinology of what the chinese leadership are up to. Which seems unnecessary if they're widely publishing 5 year plans that tell you what they're doing.

Similar to Tesla's secret plan to produce cheaper and cheaper vehicles at larger scale, the boring truth isn't a big click winner.

Most people, especially in the west, aren’t reading Chinese 5 year plans very closely.

What part of the 5 year plan outlined the strategy behind why the CCP went after DIDI? I'm genuinely curious and it might be more useful to link to the relevant parts. Some people might actually be interested in reading those and better understanding this.

anti monopoly?

Didi doesn't have a monopoly in China. Meituan is also a large player in the space along with hundreds of tiny ones.

Meituan has only just entered the market. Where did you get your information from?

Didi was caught selling user data without prior consent.

Think if Equifax got pulled for "leaking" user data

For what it's worth those 5-years plans used to get changed regularly, at least when my country, Romania, was doing them. For those that can read Romanian I recommend this book [1] about the 5-year plans from the 1970s Socialist Romania.

[1] https://www.librariaeminescu.ro/ro/isbn/606-020-215-8/Vlad-P...

Yes. The 5 year plans contain a lot of verbiage, and sound like political speeches in part. But you look in there and find specific goals. Sometimes very specific: "We will accelerate the large-scale deployment of 5G networks, increase the user penetration rate to 56% ... comprehensively promote the commercial deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)."

There's identification of very specific technologies that currently need to be imported: "high-purity electronic materials such as photoresists for ICs." There's realism rather than hype: "Promote the demonstration operation of the C919 large passenger aircraft and the serialized development of the ARJ2I regional passenger aircraft." The C919 project, to build an airliner comparable to the Airbus A320, hasn't been going well, although prototypes are flying. So the goal for this plan is merely "demonstration operation". The ARJ2I is a 90-seat or so regional airliner now in early production. So those goals should be met. "Dominate world aircraft industry" might be nice, but that's not in the 5 year plan.

There's a longer range 2035 goals document, in which one goal is to get GDP per capita up into the middle of the developed country range.

From my understanding, Jack Ma was allowed to own whatever toys and mistresses he wanted. He could even have some outside of China so he feels safe. His mistake was thinking that the American dynamic of "money equals real power" held true in China.

Basically, its just antitrust which for a decade or two has not really been enforced in the US, which in turn might be a reason for many of the ills we see in economy and society today.

Great point.

Even to take it down a notch, what has happened in the US is just boring. You almost can't have a conversation without one of 5 of the same companies coming up.

I'm still reading up so looking for resources. What's a good introduction that talks about how the Chinese state is looking at individual choices? 5 year planning makes sense but the implementation is key (India for example had similar planning processes). Is there writing on how Xi or the CCP thinks about incorrect choices in the planning or a fail-safe that prevents what happened to the Soviet Union? Have they ever talked about getting things wrong?

> “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.”

This hasn't been really put to the test yet, has it? What's the cost of labor delta compared to the places where outsourcing from China would be attractive currently?

In the West the accounting means you can't invest in robots that take years to pay for themselves. It is therefore more profitable to outsource and not have the capital investment on the books.

The Germans do it differently and can get a better return investing in themselves.

In China they have invested heavily in the robots that make the robots. Sure they are playing catch up in some areas, for instance, chips where they don't have a TSMC yet.

Even farming, where do those green and yellow tractors go? Cotton picking in China.

Some China tech is way ahead of the rest of the world. The difficulty of competing is getting really hard hence sanctions against Huawei. They had got 5G and The West didn't even know what it was for.

We have seen it before, Japan was way ahead with electronics and commodity cars. But China has a vast internal market and can proceed without making cheap goods for the West. If Western companies want to outsource to Burkina Faso then fine.

Also into the mix is that Chinese brands are desirable in China and increasingly abroad. China has barely got started.

Not in the experience of Harrods and Burberry in the UK

Sanctions against Huawei were for malware + ties to the CCP, not because the west "couldn't compete".

If you think the part where they blitzed 5G so hard that a) you could build 5G network using only Huawei b) it was effectively impossible to build 5G network without Huawei, didn't have impact on USA push to sanction Huawei...

I have few bridges in Brooklyn to sell, good price.

Building a next gen communications infrastructure on top of a CCP backbone just didn’t seem like a good idea for many.

> This hasn't been really put to the test yet, has it?

Yes. Their textile industry has been gradually leaving for much of the past decade, as cheaper production exists in several other countries at this point. Textile dominance by China peaked around 10-15 years ago. They will lose labor cost sensitive industries to their cheaper competitors as their economy continues to climb, as labor costs continue to climb. It took many decades for the US textile industry - the world's largest for a while in the 20th century - to be worn down by this same process. During the first 2/3 of the 20th century the US was often a leader in inventing new textile technology and manufacturing processes. Toward the waning days many US textile makers tried to modernize and or consolidate their domestic operations as a competitive advantage, it didn't stop the process. Most sent their manufacturing overseas ultimately. China is currently attempting to modernize, reduce labor in the manufacturing process, and that also won't stop the industry from leaving. Textiles are one of the first major industries that tend to leave due to being particularly labor cost sensitivity.

China is still the world's largest textile exporter, and may retain that crown for a long time yet given their size. A large chunk of their market share is going to be gradually dispersed across two dozen other nations.

Vietnam for example became the largest textile exporter to the US in 2019 (pre pandemic), overtaking China. Vietnam's GDP per capita is $3,600 versus $11,800 for China. Vietnam is in the position that China was 15 years ago in that regard. China will struggle to compete with labor that costs 1/2 or 1/3 what theirs does.

Isn't that just the plan of every developing country? You start with textiles, then move up the value chain until you're a developed country and can pay for socialism or aircraft carriers or whatever you want.

It's not the plan, it is probably an inevitability. If you could automate your textiles, with 1/100th the labor, while retaining it all, you'd still want to keep it even at a reduced labor benefit, rather than see it go to China or elsewhere. China would rather keep all of their textile industry and hyper automate it, than see it leave to countries like Vietnam. Keeping industry like that internally has vast benefits, in terms of profit/savings, capital, technology and economic eco-system, leverage, influence, and so on.

If the US could automate low-value manufacturing through robotics and get a significant cost advantage over China and pull back much of the low-value manufacturing that it lost, while getting very little labor benefit in the process, it would still be ideal for numerous reason to achieve that outcome (tax base, deprive China of that value, onshore capital and technology investment, some construction & maintenance value, wider economic ecosystem, and so on).

China's big problem with this process is of course that they have 1.4 billion people. High-value replacement jobs for so many of their low-value manufacturing workers is something beyond difficult (you don't need 100 million software developers to build China's tech infrastructure; you don't need 10x the workers to build as many planes as Boeing or Airbus do). High-value manufacturing for example doesn't absorb labor like low-value manufacturing does. Their social welfare costs over the next 30-40 years will be extraordinary as their demographics rapidly shift toward being an older society. They're already into a workforce decline demographically, those aging & retiring workers begin to shift more to the liability column in terms of cost. They need their workforce employed and pumping tax dollars into the system. Automation is not China's friend, even if they're the ones doing it to themselves (if they had a critical national labor shortage, that would be a different matter).

If China were to take over all of Germany's auto manufacturing (obviously we're talking a huge share of the global auto market), how many jobs is that worth to China and how does that scope to their 1.4 billion context (Germany has a mere 83m people)? What does something like that do for their context. That's the essential China labor and automation problem going forward. They could conquer a lot of high value manufacturing and be worse off overall than they are now, unless they can somehow keep all of their people employed, keep most of their low-value manufacturing employment simultaneously. And if China did use 4x the labor to build the equivalent of Germany's auto output (say they absorb their labor oversupply that way), that then caps the ability for that labor to rise economically, the margins won't be there to support far higher incomes, which has serious social consequences in terms of stability in China long-term. China would probably need to own all high-value manufacturing globally to both keep their people employed and keep incomes rising like they have been.

Thanks for the really interesting reply!

I think this question of unemployment and underemployment is one that's simply going to get worse everywhere, and I don't see a non-political solution. I just don't see a realistic way to employ everybody, or even a majority, in a high automation society.

So my feeling is, the countries that will be best placed to tackle this are the ones that are able to push forward a political solution. I'm not entirely sure of how socialist china is, but there are certainly some socialists in the CCP who would be perfectly happy for everybody to be unemployed or underemployed, and to pay for them from the profits of highly automated industry.

I think it's probably a question of ideological flexibility. Because China is both officially marxist, practically capitalist, traditionally confucian, and pragmatically developmentalist, they have a lot of options open when it comes to political solutions that western countries don't. So they could, for instance, just pay everybody UBI, then point out that China is a socialist country if elites object. That would be a harder argument in officially capitalist countries.

I don't imagine they'll go that way, but I guess the basic point for me is that productivity, employment, and welfare are largely the result of political decisions. You can run the economy like they did in the DDR, where everybody had a job even if it was totally meaningless. You can run the economy like in Japan, where if you have a job, you'll probably never lose it. These things have different tradeoffs. The biggest challenges are usually how hardened the political discourse is around work itself.

I think that's the hubris China is currently having: as they've grown stricly because of the reliance of export-led growth, they are now dependent on the global economic order as much as the US is (for its import-led growth). And the ones that initially built the factories in China, can always pack up and move to a different country. So global corporations are now kind of "cycling through" a list of alternate underdeveloped countries to build factories in, and keep going until the options are all exhausted. Some countries are quite receptive to this (like Vietnam, which is undergoing a similar transformation like South Korea and China had in the past), but some countries are not (like India, due to its complex cultural/political legacy it's hard for foreign companies to navigate through).

> I think that's the hubris China is currently having: as they've grown stricly because of the reliance of export-led growth, they are now dependent on the global economic order as much as the US is (for its import-led growth).

Honestly, I think the PRC's hubris is more than matched by the US's (and Western world's). They're still overconfident from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and seem to think the chips will inevitably fall on their side, so they still engage with a large amount of wishful thinking.

> And the ones that initially built the factories in China, can always pack up and move to a different country. So global corporations are now kind of "cycling through" a list of alternate underdeveloped countries to build factories in, and keep going until the options are all exhausted.

I'm not so sure...

1) I think it's ultimately the PRC's goal to have domestic champions replace those global corporations in the global economy (e.g. Apple declines as Huawei ascends)

2) I don't think the PRC is as stupid as the US was, and will not allow those companies to "pack up and move" to the degree it's disruptive to their ability to provide an unmatched manufacturing supply chain.

> Honestly, I think the PRC's hubris is more than matched by the US's (and Western world's).

Yes, I still definitely agree with that one. US’s hubris is the undeniably the largest in the world.

> I think it's ultimately the PRC's goal to have domestic champions replace those global corporations in the global economy (e.g. Apple declines as Huawei ascends)

Maybe, maybe not? We’ll see if this goes well as planed. Easier said than done.

> I don't think the PRC is as stupid as the US was, and will not allow those companies to "pack up and move" to the degree it's disruptive to their ability to provide an unmatched manufacturing supply chain.

The point is, companies are already doing this. You’ll be surprised how much conglomerates like Samsung has already taken production out of China.

> Maybe, maybe not? We’ll see if this goes well as planed. Easier said than done.

My understanding is that China's manufacturing supply chain is so well-developed that companies like Apple don't think they even have a choice except build their stuff there. The only things they're missing are a few things at the very high end. If they lack a commitment to free markets, its conceivable that they could use that advantage to slowly strangle their global competitors (e.g. allow their domestic champions a price/quality/volume advantages, while keeping the value proposition for global companies just good enough that continued dependence makes economic sense). To counter that, the US would also have to take bold steps away from free market dogma, against the interests if its corporate sector, which has relatively more political power, and against its reigning ideologies [1].

> The point is, companies are already doing this. You’ll be surprised how much conglomerates like Samsung has already taken production out of China.

I'd be interested to know how truly disentangled they are. My understanding is that even when companies move production away from China, they're still seriously dependent on China's manufacturing supply chain (e.g. they have to ship all the components from China to Vietnam for final assembly). I'm not aware of any efforts to replicate the range of capabilities elsewhere.

[1] The right would have issues with stepping away from free market economics, and I think the left would be skeptical of the international competition aspect.

Funny thing I noticed that the last batch of iMac's I purchased were made in Thailand.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...:

> Two decades ago, as Apple’s operations chief, Mr. Cook spearheaded the company’s entrance into China, a move that helped make Apple the most valuable company in the world and made him the heir apparent to Steve Jobs. Apple now assembles nearly all of its products and earns a fifth of its revenue in the China region. But just as Mr. Cook figured out how to make China work for Apple, China is making Apple work for the Chinese government....

> No Plan B

> In 2014, Apple hired Doug Guthrie, the departing dean of the George Washington University business school, to help the company navigate China, a country he had spent decades studying.

> One of his first research projects was Apple’s Chinese supply chain, which involved millions of workers, thousands of plants and hundreds of suppliers. The Chinese government made that operation possible by spending billions of dollars to pave roads, recruit workers, and construct factories, power plants and employee housing.

> Mr. Guthrie concluded that no other country could offer the scale, skills, infrastructure and government assistance that Apple required. Chinese workers assemble nearly every iPhone, iPad and Mac. Apple brings in $55 billion a year from the region, far more than any other American company makes in China.

> “This business model only really fits and works in China,” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. “But then you’re married to China.”

Thats a good point I have started investing a small amount in Vietnam and other frontier countries.

BFRI and VIEL for anyone whos interested.

I would check them out.

Agree with your overall assessment, but the 5 year plans are certainly "flexible" and not all goals are consistently met. Often goals will changes mid-5 year span to accommodate reality. Think about your own personal development plan at work, but not that bad.

I do agree that "power" is the issue here. It doesn't take much for China to look at how Bezos or Elon act and say "yeah, no, we're not going to have corporate leaders challenging the Party publicly".

The five year plan is interesting, because I was born in a country that worshipped its five year plans ("pětiletky"). It was the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

Now the thing about five year plans was that they worked rather well at the beginning, so approximately until 1960. Back then, the economic power of a country was measured by its heavy industry, and in a post-WWII world where there was war damage to be fixed, an entire eastern part of the country (Slovakia) to be modernized from its earlier rural state, and new housing stock to be built, concentration of our five year plans on heavy industry made sense.

But slowly the world development started to diverge from the coal-and-steel line. And our central planners didn't take notice, or rather underestimated the significance of that development. They had, after all, a lot of success earlier with coal and steel, so they continued to plan for more coal and steel. Also, a lot of workers in those industries were card-carrying members of the Communist party, so it made sense to reward them for their loyalty.

We slowly lost our development edge, fell behind the West in automation, computer technology, semiconductors. The overemphasis on industry led to major ecological problems and pollution, and the emerging ecological initiatives proved to be a fertile ground for opposition. In 1989, the regime fell, and we were left with a huge, absolutely bloated, but mostly obsolete coal and steel industry that could not compete anymore. And its subsequent collapse was a source of significant societal disruption.

I saw the collapse of that industry first hand, growing up in a coal and steel city (Ostrava; just take Google Maps and look at the enormous chunks of industrial structures located literally inside the city, with residential buildings right next to the factories).

Now China does not seem to fall behind yet, they also allow a lot more capitalism than Communist Czechoslovakia did (in our country, even a private café was a rare sight; the regime was so ideologically pure that it purged even most self-employed people from independence into formal jobs).

But I can see a similar "it-must-stay-the-same-itis" in their proclamations that the country must never deindustrialize. Never is a bad word in mortal's mouths. If they fixate on industry at the cost of all other developments, they may go down the same route as Czechoslovakia eventually.

My dad worked in Tesla Elektroakustika Bratislava manufacturing electronics and often recounted that a member of Politbyro said "Prečo vyrábate polovodiče a nie vodiče?" "Why do you make semiconductors instead of conductors?"

There isn't such kind of boneheaded inertia in China. Yet.

Yeah, President Novotný is said to have declared that semiconductors are a fad and Czechoslovakia will wait to develop "toticonductors" ("celovodiče").

That is price paid for a system that kept a totally dumb person at the head of the country for 12 years. And when we got rid of him, the Soviets arrived in their tanks to correct our heresy (1968).

As for China - TBH we do not yet know what happens within China. The flow of information is fairly restricted. A lot more of the economy is outside direct control of the Party, and those parts of the economy are likely to be fairly functional; they have to compete on the international market, after all. But within the Central Commmittee, I wouldn't be surprised if boneheadedness wasn't a significant problem. Many politicians are of the "dumb, but cunning" sort, even in the West.

But I can see a similar "it-must-stay-the-same-itis" in their proclamations that the country must never deindustrialize.

There's some of that. There's an official push in China towards self-sufficiency, and eliminating reliance on imports. The US used to have such a policy during the Cold War.

The coal and steel fixation created the European Union, which was originally "the European Coal and Steel Community". Britain grew to be a world power through coal and steel. As those declined in importance, they were taken over by the Government, under what was derisively called "lemon socialism". There was British Steel, British Coal, British Rail... All the old labor-intensive plants.

China has problems with inefficient state-owned businesses, which tend to be jobs programs. They're mostly owned by provincial and municipal governments, not the national government. Lots of steel mills and coal mines, inevitably. But since they make steel for export, they can't be too inefficient.

You're agreeing with the author in a rather disagreeable tone.

“ It's cracking down on private Internet companies that acquired too much power through network effects.”

Sounds like smashing to me. Smashing down on private companies and innovations. Smashing down on private wealth and power. Smashing down on freedom and growth. You can tell the dictator is getting desperate if he stops the train of innovation.

That makes the assumption that "innovation" is consumer facing internet technology.

Alibaba isn’t just consumer facing internet technologies, look up the vast b2b stuff it does. And other types of companies have been smashed as well like evergrande or Wanda.

Also, do you really think innovation will come from state companies? In that case, why didn’t 1980 China or 1980 Russia thrive?

> Also, do you really think innovation will come from state companies? In that case, why didn’t 1980 China or 1980 Russia thrive?

You need a stronger argument to prove that state-associated companies can't innovate.

There's also plenty of counter examples too. The internet itself was largely created via DARPA, a US state-sponsored research agency. Ditto for the space station and most other space-related achievements prior to SpaceX.

I think the more nuanced, and boring, view is that a well functioning state can innovate, and so can well functioning private companies.

This comment probably isn't the place for it, but I do think for-profit companies will tend towards different sorts of innovation than for-the-public-good government agencies... but yeah, not for this comment.

DARPA doesn't do research or development. They fund it.

Chinese mandarins don't believe all innovation is the same, and they also believe some of it may be deallocating capital from industry that brings capital influx into the country.

It's totally consistent with their long term plans since the 90s or so.

Wow, it‘s actually public… in hindsight, I should probably not be surprised, but it has the same eery feel to me like when I learned that Hitler had actually written down all of his plans around eradicating Jews and Germanic world dominance in his book „Mein Kampf“ a decade before he put it into reality — it was just that nobody took it seriously since they thought he was a lunatic.

Maybe it‘s about time to read the Chinese 5 year plans in depth.

Yea Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that he hated Jews and Communism so it should've been taken very seriously since a person like him(German nationalist and fanatic) became a chancellor. I don't who expected different behavior than what was written in Mein Kampf. Holocaust and WW2 War could've been prevented if Allies(US, UK and France) invaded Germany in 1933-1939 time period. But they expected Hitler to be European shield against Communism and geo-politic partner.

https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/ - does a pretty good job of translation of Chinese law. Another part of the problem is the language barrier - not many China commentators in media mainstream actually understand Mandarin or read Chinese - and end up recycling the interpretations of the very few that can

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