China has become a scientific superpower | Hacker News Reader

China has become a scientific superpower

economist.com

37 pointsBrajeshwar14 comments

I was wondering when this would become a more mainstream position. When you have a manufacturing base where you can iterate on hardware, PCB design, chip manufacture and other fundamental technology, it's only a matter of time before scientific throughput catches up.

I suspect China has been a scientific superpower for at least 5-10 years.

This is funny because the economist got done calling out China for science paper fraud a few months ago:

https://www.economist.com/china/2024/02/22/why-fake-research...

And the guardian calling out the significant amount of papers redacted

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situatio...

Until Chinese academia comes down hard on the researchers who do this, they'll be a power house that no one trusts which is as bad as not being a power house at all .

The article does mentions it as a problem, more so for second and lower tier universities.

Several big IEEE conferences have regional "affirmative action" for papers, and you used to be able to tell which APAC papers took advantage of this. The research quality has been rising fast in China (and IMO dropping in the west).

They labs in China often do write a lot of papers, though, and they always cite their own work and the work of sister labs. People around the world do this, but it's much tighter in China than other parts of the world. They may have found that Chinese research papers (on engineering topics) are much higher "impact" for that reason.

It is frustrating sitting in the US watching our lack of national ambition compared against stories like this. There are so many smart people here, but culturally they are all pushed into the corner to make room for financial interests. Instead of growing our collective talent we are just harvesting it.

One of the features of a totalitarian government is the power to absolutely shape the populace. In China's case, their government planning sessions identify key technologies they think are the future and seek to be the best at, and execute on it. [0]Their tight control of their social media algorithms, combined with the ban on similar western tech in China allows them to minimize the brain rot in their upcoming generations. China is hungry, and America is full at the buffet going back for thirds.

Their manufacturing base allows for much more rapid iteration in related fields than our service based economy can. Combine this with increased military in these key fields they want to "dominate" in [1] spending and you'll see rapid expansion in scientific capability.

Of course there is corruption, world-wide IP theft, and other misaligned incentives there, but with a population 4:1 of the US, it was only a matter of time before the strategy paid off.

If they end up finding a fix for their birthrate problem, they will be the globally entrenched power for the next century, assuming they don't eat themselves politically.

[0]https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN2AX0IW/ [1]https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/202... - Page 168 for the TLDR,but the whole thing is a great read.

Many Americans do not choose STEM careers. Lot of them, do not want to sit and do hard mathematics.

Once, I tried to persuade this high-school grad American, how mathematics degree is valuable, and she'd have a job for life, she could care less.

Even her parents did not persuade her, now she has no college degree, works as a bike mechanic.

Being from India, I notice starkly another way of how American parent raise their children not towards their true potential.

Without paywall: https://archive.ph/UVk4x

After a century of humiliation, this is a well orchestrated revenge, without a war, congrats China

It is just getting started. The revenge is yet to come when it increasingly displaces the dollar in international trade, with most Americans staying in total denial until the very end.

It simply cannot until China can be as seafaring as the US Navy and guarantee trade flows. Without guaranteed trade over the ocean, you'll see a more traditional alignment of vassal states and colonialism based on technology, geography, and ability to project/protect power.

Dread it, run from it, multipolar world returns all the same.

What is this guaranteeing of trade flows over the ocean that I keep hearing about when Houthis have effectively blockaded the Red Sea ? Operation prosperity guardian is a failure

It's the thing that allowed states to move out of colonialism post WW2. The American fleet is a fraction of what it used to be, and the populace appetite for a war glassing the Houthis where the US benefits very little is non-existent.

Could the US turn their might on any nation in the middle east and end their ability to wage war and affect this? Absolutely. Is it worth it in an election year? Not to this administration.

Doesn't really affect what currency you use though. The no 2 currency for trade is the Euro and they have basically no navy.

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