Is Xi Jinping Stifling China's Tech? | Hacker News Reader

Is Xi Jinping Stifling China's Tech?

6 pointsfsndz16 comments

From blocking IPOs to imposing strict data security laws, and cracking down on tech giants like Alibaba and Didi. What's the end game of this, given the lacklustre economic growth in China recently.

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Conversely, is it really a good thing that our corporations are more powerful than our (supposedly democratic) government? They're not subject to the same checks and balances of elected government, and can leave pretty negative impacts on everything from technology to society to the environment to, at a certain scale, history itself. Meta and X at this point really hold more social power through selective propaganda than most governments in the world, arguably including ours. They have powers of amplification and reeducation that our formal schools and universities could only dream of. They also have economic war chests rivaling many countries and militaries, and increasingly control much of our infrastructure across land, air, radio, and now space. The end goal of any such corporation is always monopoly control unless some outside force stops them. Competition alone won't prevent that because they'll eventually just get acquired or become a duopoly.

Maybe China goes too far in the direction of state control, but it's possible to go too far in the opposite direction too. IMO the EU has a better balance in this regard.

Cracking down on tech giants and blocking IPOs are basically political moves because tech giants (anywhere, not just China) are backed by political powers.

People who study China and authoritarians note that the end goal is not the same as capitalism. The goal is to always maintain party leadership and control. The CCP made a deal with the people, rapid growth in exchange for govt control. Now that many hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, they are looking for what comes next, choice and a say in how they are governed. Unfortunately, this does not work for the CCP. Their greatest enemy is a political alternative to their leadership.

The primary end game is thus

- staying in power at all costs, economics matter little

- elimination of political alternatives, most notably Taiwan as ethnic Chinese with a democracy and great success

All else is secondary. Authoritarian regimes are always willing to harm their people and country for their own benefit.

Actually I think modern Capitalism's end goal is exactly the same. For example the US version. It tastes and looks a bit different due to historical reasons, but in the core it's exactly the same thing. If we replace "party leadership and control" with "elites and control", it's pretty much every country.

The difference is that democracies have elections and this year we are seeing them reject the oligarchy and populism, across many countries.

Democracies are not perfect, often messier, but they can course correct and have meaningful checks and balances.

I don't really think ordinary people who vote in general elections make much difference. They are basically randomly cherry picking things that the elites as a whole feed to them. Different elite interest groups compete with each other during election with whatever methods they can get away with. That said, it COULD make a difference if general citizens are knowledgeable and can stand against the system if needed -- which is definitely not the case for most developed countries -- again just my opinion, which could be wrong and biased.

The Chinese model is: OK we are going to keep calling ourselves the communist party, but we are going to grab every elites, and THEN we will have "inter-party democracy". How do you recognize an elite? It's easy: either you have a lot of money, or you are accepted into the top universities, or you have influence among the locals. Ordinary people don't even bother with voting (it's still there) because they accept the fact that general election is just a facade, and the party is going to assimilate most of the elites into it anyway -- you can't do much if you are not in. But inter-party democracy DOES exist and is a thing, and goes to the top level election, when the central committee votes for the Politburo members.

So basically, the core idea is:

- Do you assimilate capable people into the elites?

- Do you have relatively peaceful competitions among different elite interest groups?

- If there are systemic issues do you correct it in a relatively peaceful way?

Both US and China check for all of them.

And that's it. Ordinary people like you and me are not part of the elites so we are just resources, human resources.

Right, but the CCP seems likely to be seen as breaking the deal with the people soon, because they likely aren't going to be delivering rapid growth. The cracks in that are already showing.

Worse, the people are getting to the point where rapid growth isn't enough. It was what they wanted when China was a poor country. Now that they aren't in poverty any more, growth is nice, but they want other things more. As you say, they want choice and a say in how they are governed. (What they really wanted was a better life, not growth for growth's sake. Growth was just the form that a better life looked like when they were poor. Now it's not.)

I also see a parallel between China and Russia here. Russia attacked Ukraine because Putin couldn't tolerate a prosperous, democratic, ethnically similar neighbor - it might give his own people ideas. China's in the same boat, except that they have the Taiwan Strait to deal with, and the US at least appears to be willing to back Taiwan more forcefully than it backed Ukraine.

The first goal of any institution is to maintain the power it has. The second goal is to expand those powers. This is as true for your nearest pickleball club as it is for the CCP.

Joe Biden is certainly an exception, setting aside his ego and candidacy to pass the torch to the next generation

I've also been in multiple small groups where this power dynamic is not a thing.

Joe Biden was pressured to drop

yet ultimately still Biden's decision

people put pressure on others to make decisions all the time, especially in politics, that is the essence of politics

It is actually the proof that the institution in power will do whatever it takes to remain there

Many regular people, pundits, and media outfits were calling for it. It's not simply just the "institution"

Many are saying similar things about the other candidate that remains.

He must have a ginormous ego to even consider running in his state of health. Seemed borderline narcissistic to me.

Don't anthropomorphize an authoritarian regime too much, especially one made of millions of officers with different career goals and ambitions. You end up with an oversimplified model, and you're in danger of projecting your own political views and fears onto it.

The end game is directing best and brightest to other strategic sectors, especially hard tech (like semi) where employment and wages and market cap are exploding. Ditto with killing edtech, capping finance compensation, it's wasteful for all math PhDs to be quants or adtech.

It's just correctly identify that it's retarded to pour so much money in service platforms with diminishing returns, i.e. DiDi is already stupid efficient in most areas, what's the point of spending billions to shave average delivery by a few more seconds when it's just going to shit up traffic more. It's realizing spending 300B on importing semi conductors and billions more on other imports / paying patent fees to western countries that are no longer reliable is dumb.

IMO at this point, if you see western articles saying XJP is doing XYZ bad things, he's probably doing right thing, things that west is about to do (industrial policy, increase speech controls, regulation/antitrust in big tech), or things they wish they can do.

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