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Comment by benreesman | Hacker News Reader

The PRC isn’t fucking around. They’re playing for the whole show and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time.

Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you win in full-contact sports.

For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent society. Sucked ass if you were a minority but there was movement on that, real wages seemed to be trending ok, technological innovation was on point. It looked to be going somewhere.

I’m not sure when it all went sideways, but the PRC is looking more than happy to design the future, and it seems unclear at best if that would be a net win in the “get to Star Trek as fast as possible” game.

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The West and Americans (in my experience) take for granted that civil rights, free speech, democracy, and other values automatically create better outcomes than authoritarianism. This is how it was taught to me, and it seems baked into the culture.

Unfortunately, the reality is that while (in my opinion) liberal values create better outcomes, it takes care and concerted effort to get the benefits. A democracy isn't automatically better than an authoritarian regime; that assumes that the democracy is effective and that the authoritarians are not.

The CCP is clearly effective. They are able to nail jello to the wall and have it stick. The US Congress is clearly not effective. Chinese people got to go to movie theaters and eat at restaurants and dance at raves for most of 2020 and 2021; I, as an American, could not. The CCP delivered for their people in a way that the US did not.

The United States is not particularly effective at national security (2021-01-06), foreign engagements (Afghanistan and Iraq, last 20 years), or social mobility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...). The media ecosystem is a mess (due to purposeful de-regulation), voting rates are abysmal, education is poor by rich world standards. Democracy doesn't work well when the populace is not sufficiently educated, accurately informed, and empowered by a political system (see the Senate's strong R electoral advantage). We keep choosing leadership who lose at the polls because we haven't invested in modernizing our democracy.

The US and other Western states need to step up and put in the work to prove that their values can deliver for their people better than the authoritarians can.

This comment should be the parent of mine. You’ve laid out a far more detailed and compelling case for what I called a “queasy feeling” about how the West lost its stride.

In 2-5 years, US/Japan/UK can/will block every single silicon build with "ARM China" IP for < 28nm, similar to how it block Huawei last year. Just look at Huawei's current, next couple years revenues, you can predict what will happen to "ARM China".

"ARM China" without any IP license / Interop tests for USB4, PCIe gen4,5,6, LPDDR5,6 etc, will be completely useless in 3 years.

CCP is following the path of North Korean/Iran/Mao.....

> Chinese people got to go to movie theaters and eat at restaurants and dance at raves for most of 2020 and 2021; I, as an American, could not.

I suspect this is largely CCP propaganda.

> The United States is not particularly effective at national security (2021-01-06), foreign engagements (Afghanistan and Iraq, last 20 years), or social mobility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...). The media ecosystem is a mess (due to purposeful de-regulation), voting rates are abysmal, education is poor by rich world standards

I'm not sure that I accept these as facts, but even so, I believe you're comparing the US to other democracies. If you compare the cohort of democracies to the cohort of authoritarian regimes, how do the democracies compare? I suspect China is an outlier among authoritarian regimes, and even while we marvel at Chinese foreign policy, their per-capita GDP and other indicators don't suggest that they are meeting our Western standards for "effective government".

And even if an authoritarian government is more effective at establishing a global hegemony, what's the point if it comes at the cost of its citizens' basic rights, prosperity, etc?

Some of what you mention is indeed true, but some of it is selective. The US is truly a union, and one that is increasingly heterogenous.

The US higher education system is the best in the world, which is why you will see wealthy Chinese send their kids to the US (or Oxbridge). The high school system is very mixed, as half the union runs around trying to convince the world that math is racist (no joke).

I’ve lived in China. You’re not likely to see the next SpaceX emerge from there for all the reasons you mention. It’s an economy that is tuned to replicating/copying. But this is so culturally enshrined now that I cannot fathom the emergence of the Sino version of the American Dream.

China also has some unique ineffective areas. One example I ran into a little while ago was that China has essentially a review board that approves video games to be distributed to the Chinese market. A particular political backdoor to expedite the approval process was exposed, which quickly lead to an extreme backup of the approval queue as the party clamped down on that backdoor and made the entire video game industry wait several months to a year for them to get their ducks back in a row.

Additionally, if you want to publish in China, it is advisable (although I don't think strictly required... yet...) that you provide some way to block any messages in your game that the party disapproves of. For some sorts of games, this is basically untenable.

Essentially, China is effective where its policy of iron-handed top-down dictatorship is effective. It is less effective at bottom-up development, except insofar as that bottom-up development is done with the express intent of being a tool of the iron hand (but the iron hand's whims can change, so that presents a moving target).

I suspect what we'll see over the next hundred-or-so years is that the iron-handed approach is effective while it has intelligent leadership (and though I disagree with China's politics, I'll concede they're making strong strategic decisions). Inevitably, though, every empire has stupid emperors and we'll probably see China stumble when its turn comes.

I agree with your first two paragraphs but I don't necessarily agree with the rest. The CCP is clearly effective at letting you see what it wants you to see because no matter what you think of our media, even the most biased right-wing or left-wing sources are more open than theirs and criticism of everything that goes wrong in the US flows freely. We're more like a reality TV drama that frequently airs our dirty laundry. Taking news from China at face value is like looking at someone's Instagram feed, you are only seeing the highlights. Some Chinese people got to go movie theaters and eat at restaurants in contemporary urban middle class sense. Hundreds of millions in the interior cannot afford the aforementioned middle class lifestyle. You can see the large gap in per capita GDP for provinces here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...

Also, if you were under the impression that they locked down once and beat the virus, then you'd be surprised to find out that they've had to do multiple recurring region-wide lock-downs all throughout, even up until now.

August 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-under...

June 2021 https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-china/article/31380...

January 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-lo...

I don't know what state youre from; I went through lockdowns too but I've gone to restaurants and movie theaters and traveled to other places freely as well. If you didn't, that's on your state, just like there were times that people in Shanghai had more freedom than people in Shenzhen, and vice versa.

Your third paragraph is hard to comment on briefly and partly subjective, I can't comment on 1/6 because it's still an ongoing investigation with the FBI reporting a lack of evidence that it was some centrally coordinated plot. Sometimes riots get out of hand, we should be thankful that unlike a certain riot in 1989 we didn't roll out the tanks and run them over. Instead we arrested them all and they are going through due process. The foreign engagement failures of Afghanistan and Iraq don't exist in a vacuum. We've been in Germany, South Korea, and Japanese for decades and those are going quite well - you win some you lose some. When South Koreans went under repressive rule by Park Jung Hee, you could've said our nation building failed, but we held on and now it's a thriving country that exports its culture worldwide. As for social mobility, I'm an ethnic minority and no matter how bad you think social mobility is, and it's not easy, you do not have better chances anywhere other than the US and Europe. Make of that what you will, I've experienced it. First in my family to go to college, got a job in tech and all that. Believe me if you want. I appreciate the social mobility here and acknowledge that my family couldn't have done it without the civil rights movement of decades prior. I also understand why Americans look down on their own history, but the thing is contemporary Chinese folks do not look down on theirs. They are proud, they want their country to be the best, they want to win. More power to them, but the "Chinese Dream" is only for them. You can go there as a student, be an expat, but it's almost impossible to become a citizen. They are not a nation of immigrants. At best you can be a permanent resident, preferably if you have a western passport. Africans there are not treated as kindly:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079497/us-w...

https://news.yahoo.com/no-blacks-evicted-harassed-targeted-1...

They didn't get the support of allies mass protesting police brutality in every city like Americans did. People like me don't appreciate the self-defeating sentiment that China's ascension is inevitable and well deserved because of our bad history. I don't mean to detract from your points too much. We do need better education, better healthcare, a more prudent foreign policy and all that. I'm just adding more context and my input that all hope is not lost and that western values are inferior to Chinese ones. All hope is not lost. We don't want to get to the point where we say "welp that settles it the only way to improve our standard of living is to become repressive authoritarian regimes too"

If you're looking for a turning point, it was fall of 2001 with the 9/11 attacks and China's accession to the WTO. The USA became distracted and the 00s were the time when China's economy grew like gangbusters.

Turning point for China, yes. The turning point for the USA was as late as the Reagan administration dismantling the country for profit, though the seeds were planted earlier.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

One could also make an argument that the fall of the USSR began a period of complacency. Terms like “the end of history” [0] come to mind.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...

Speaking for myself I’m happy that many millions of people got lifted out of crushing poverty in Asia. I think it’s a good thing that the economy in the PRC started producing fewer famines and more of a middle class.

The part I’m less happy about is whatever point the Western economies began working less well for most people in them.

Even serious economists have trouble being rigorous about this sort of thing, so I won’t even try. But I don’t think I’m the only one with a queasy feeling that Eastern elites seem to be admitting more people to the middle class while Western elites seem to be pushing people out of it. In spite of there being powerhouse economies in both systems.

People love to nitpick this stuff to pimp whatever dumbass Ayn Rand thing, but people outside the elite in the West seem to be doing worse over time, and that is not how you get an economy that is and feels fair, that’s not how you make sure the talent rises to the top, that’s not how you get a financial system that isn’t a ripoff, that’s not how you get a government that gets shit done, that’s not how you get a military that buys good weapon systems at a compelling price point.

That’s not how you win.

Libertarianism isn't very realistic anyways.

I read something pretty interesting recently that pretty much convinces me that the folks at the top get there by luck rather than merit. Obviously I'm sure that they themselves would disagree but I'm talking about them, not to them.

The US got to the position it is in the 20th century by luck, we discovered a new world with wealth to exploit, took the country from the indigenous, then had a stack of decades with slavery, then took that momentum into the world wars, coming out on top into the boom years when our competitors were saddled with rebuilding ruins.

If we're in decline then its our own undoing, heck we pretty much inherited the best deal in the world and pissed it away.

The people who like Ayn Rand don't like history.

>But I don’t think I’m the only one with a queasy feeling that Eastern elites seem to be admitting more people to the middle class while Western elites seem to be pushing people out of it.

I agree with this and everything in your comment but that specifically doesn't really make me queasy. I'm glad that the elites of some countries still seem focused on creating positive outcomes for their citizens, even if some in the West may want to quibble about the nature of those outcomes.

What gives me the queasy feeling is reading threads like this on HN where the top comments discuss the "security risk" of Chinese nationals/ABCs in American STEM fields (the parent makes the distinction of those fields related to national defence, but replies do not) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28334051, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28332562) and the general preponderance of what I consider extremely shortsighted, low-info, and jingoistic comments. It's frightening. It's possibly hyperbolic but these comments about "security risk" in particular seem to carry the shadow of internment camps.

My basic queasy feeling is that certain western elites may be sleepwalking into something very bad here. I really hope that this feeling I have is just that mid-pandemic feeling of living through history in the making, but metastasized into areas where it doesn't belong.

edit: the comments I refer to are I guess a microcosm of the fact that China hawkishness in all its forms is one of the very few bipartisan issues in US politics right now. I'm not American, and again, this makes me very uneasy.

> For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent society.

A large digression, but I do wish we didn't need these silly ritual flagellations each time we mention that the West was actually pretty good. To call these things "human rights violations" implies that the West defied some accepted standard for how we treated people, but the West was always on the leading edge for human rights (slavery, colonialism, racism, etc were normal on virtually every continent until the West decided they were wrong). We often talk about the West as though it is some great failure because it didn't emerge from the mists of history fully-formed and prepared to adhere to our modern moral standards, ignoring the fact that our modern moral standards are precisely the product of millennia of Western progress.

I think you make a fair point and arguably better articulate something I was trying to say. People, institutions, and nations do in fact need to be viewed in the context of the relevant time period, applying present-day values to e.g. the Framers is a silly waste of time. They did what they did, hopefully it was their best, and there seems to be lasting value.

On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to expect a civilization to spring socially equitable from the forehead of Zeus, we should also continue to strive to be better.

To be perfectly clear, I wasn't rebutting you, but the bizarre anti-West kayfabe culture.

> On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to expect a civilization to spring socially equitable from the forehead of Zeus, we should also continue to strive to be better.

I don't think even the most zealous western chauvinist would disagree with this. :)

I agree with you except post-independence in the middle of the 19th and 20th century, the supposedly benevolent West hedged and continue to plunder and usurp Africa and Asia. Values based? Sure, see how rational it is, for you but not for us. We must agree upon universal declarations and you better listen up we know what we're doing.

I have no idea why you think these are `silly ritual flagellations`. Drop everything, the British left the Indian subcontinent in flames. Oh wait, this sounds a lot like Afghanistan. Down vote me for all I care, but if you've not experienced the horror of colonialism and the mess we have to pickup after and fix, with poverty, disease and f_cking IP (TB, Aids, Food Security), and fragile democracy setup to serve external masters, in the presence of evolved men, I respectfully ask you to be empathetic to a lot of voices that still can't be heard. You clearly don't seem to understand the utter s_it some of us and our parents have lived through.

Sure, the awesome Western cultural evolution is grand and something to wait for, who knows what form it will take.

Ok, let's drop all of history except the last 70 years. The zenith of evolution. A poor country had to give you, the West, the finger to save the less fortunate from Aids[1].

I respectfully ask you to continue to self-flagellate.

[1] https://qz.com/india/1666032/how-indian-pharma-giant-cipla-m....

Dang dude, this is clearly bothering you. You should find a professional therapist to talk through this with, sincerely.

Thank you for being flippant. I'm too poor for a therapist.

Sorry man, this forum isn’t for emotional or psychological support. I can’t help you. Good luck, genuinely.

> I’m not sure when it all went sideways,

When we sold our manufacturing base and equipment to them, then bought the same products from them just shipped over seas. They had suppressed labor prices and used it to tilt the table.

I find it more than a little disturbing that most of the interest in this comment centers on people trying to refute what amounts to a parenthetical that while a lot of things were looking pretty awesome in 1960 in e.g. the US, being black or gay probably weren’t among them.

Being black or gay in the west was better than being black or gay in any other part of the world. There are still countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. Being black or gay in the US in the 1960s was worse than being white and straight in the 1960s, but my precise point in my sibling comment is that this a stupid criticism because the West was pioneering equality.

There seems to be some widely-held superstition that if we acknowledge Western progress, then we will stop progressing.

>e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you win in full-contact sports

So we need a totalitarian government to compete with their totalitarian government? No thank you. If your company gets ripped off by the Chinese, like many do, then that is your company's fault.

There’s a little daylight between having a central committee and having legislators who don’t even pretend that the top of their to-do list every day is preventing, ya know, legislation. This is a non-partisan observation. Everybody pulls this shit these days.

If you want a rubber stamp committee, then someone has to dictate that rubber stamp.

> the USA

But, according to the article, ARM Britain didn't sell to China, SoftBank (Japan) did.

There is this guy named Karl (and actually if you read carefully a guy named Adam Smith) that has some relevant predictions on how that went sideways.

Well, on one hand you have mass ideological repression, concentration camps designed for cultural genocide against ethnic minorities, and censorship that means you can't trust common knowledge, so we don't even know if the persistent rumors of mass organ harvesting from religious dissidents are true. But on the other hand you have the capacity to manufacture respirators and stop pandemics dead in their tracks, not to mention most of the world's microelectronics (particularly if you include ROC), and PRC was vaccinating people in July of last year, only four months after the first vaccine was developed (in March in the USA).

Meanwhile, the EU has banned borax on grounds that amount to pure superstition, California has banned xylene, Texas only recently repealed a years-long lab glassware ban, the US Supreme Court didn't legalize screen-scraping until this year, and the USA still has 1% of its adult population imprisoned, just like shortly after the lead-driven crime wave crested 30 years ago (I guess its legislature does get some things done; they also direct the world's biggest military budget). Also, the US maaybe just passed 50% of the population believing in evolution, and gifted programs are being cut out of their high schools because they "promote inequality". And apparently police killing people with impunity is a major political cause in the US now? And let's not forget that Armadillo Aerospace had to abandon their working rocket engine design and restart from scratch because nobody would sell them peroxide, probably due to the US regulatory regime surrounding product liability. And when Clinton launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 02000, instead of diamondoid mechanosynthesis we got the fraudulent rebranding of any random submicron particle research, down to the study of medieval stained glass, as "nanotechnology".

In short, the US and EU are stupid enough that they're dooming themselves, regardless of whatever happens in China. I can empathize.

Having your government run by the kind of people who would vote for Donald Trump might be okay as long as the government doesn't control anything important, but inevitably putting the foolish and stupid in charge of the wise and learned is going to end in disaster, as it has with the covid pandemic. On the other hand, dictatorships and monarchies are no guarantee of wise leadership, often the opposite; they tend to oscillate randomly, often when succession happens. Marcus Aurelius is succeeded by Commodus, who is succeeded by Pertinax, then Didius Julianus, and the country is thrown into catastrophe. Qin Shi Huang may have been an asshole who destroyed China's cultural heritage, but he wasn't the fool Qin Er Shi was.

I'm not sure Star Trek is a worthy ideal; it's a militarist naval soap opera that doesn't begin to grapple with the political and psychological implications of post-scarcity civilization. Let's have the courage to imagine a future worth living in, and then create it.

> Also, the US maaybe just passed 50% of the population believing in evolution

"Passed"... Which way?

It went sideways when the CCP/PRC realized that they could just sell off their citizens to U.S. corporations as cheap slave labor. My speculation is that they also figured out an effective system for blackmailing the executives of those companies and U.S. politicians into doing whatever they want (e.g. Christine Fang).

The subsequent ideological compromise of the West is the result of the CCP getting its tendrils into Western leadership (https://nypost.com/2020/12/13/us-companies-riddled-with-memb...) and culture. This video of John Cena apologizing for recogizing Taiwan as a country in Mandrin should have been a deeply frightening wake up call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zre2p7mg64g&ab_channel=China....

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