Notes on China

Tofu dreg is not as large of a problem as it once was but I agree on the other points. I am interested to see if their monoculture experiment works. My armchair analysis has always been they made mistakes alienating foreigners as much as they historically did pre covid. With the lack of any way to get citizenship and the general hostility towards non Chinese.

> One recent student I talked to said that they understand they don't have freedoms here, but they're willing to take the tradeoff in favor of safety

Recently there has been a string of mass vehicular/knife murders in China, some speculate due to the worsening economy: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-28/china-zhuhai-car-ramm... https://english.news.cn/20240727/7d5035a8b0b647f08b7a81df10b.... It has spooked the citizens of China, even Xi Jing Ping has commented on it. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dxz1vzdyzo

> One VC half-jokingly asked if I could help him get his money out of China.

Even Goldman Sachs has a hard time getting money out of China https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3287199/goldman-sachs-...

> And dangerous, and won't last more than a few decades. Just watch some of the tofu dreg videos https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1eyUAZCb3sA

Concrete quality requires vigilant testing, testers, and enforcers backing up the testers when they find bad concrete. It's a constant battle. A job as a concrete inspector is no fun.[1] Concrete testing machines are big, heavy, labor-intensive, and often require a forklift to move. This is why much third-world concrete is so bad. You need hard-ass honest inspectors with real authority. And backup inspectors to inspect again.

There's a market here. Design an automatic hand-held testing device you can hold against a concrete surface to get a good evaluation. Ship it with a set of small test blocks, known good and bad, as a check. Market it to home buyers, real estate agents, etc. in countries with poor inspection. It's a hard problem, but a combination of ultrasonics, cameras, ground-penetrating radar, and mechanical probes might do it.[2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlDm_BHyNAU

[2] https://geomodel.com/applications/concrete-and-rebar-inspect...

Western oligarch media has been running China collapse stories for decades.

> Outside of Shanghai, almost nobody spoke English. This is why China will be irrelevant in a few decades

that assessment seems completely off since in only a few years every visitor of China can bring their own babel fish. also there is hope that after Xi there will be a renewed opening up

> Just watch some of the tofu dreg videos

The video you posted is from Falun Gong, a cult that is roughly analogous to Scientology. A few pictures of bad concrete do not say much about the quality of construction as a whole in China.

> This is why China will be irrelevant in a few decades, as it recedes into its own shell.

Given that China is the largest trading nation on Earth, China "reced[ing] into its own shell" is highly unlikely. China is highly interconnected with the rest of the world.

> "the pay is decreasing fast" ... "travelling outside the country is discouraged and passports are hard to get"

You're just making this all up. Pay has been increasing steadily in China, and is now higher than in Mexico, for example. Chinese citizens can get passports easily, and travel is not discouraged at all. Outbound tourism took a plunge during the pandemic, but it is recovering and is now approaching pre-pandemic levels (about 150 million outbound Chinese tourists per year).

This is happening all around the globe, I would argue. There is title (hyper)-inflation. In the EU are just lots of PhD, doing jobs that hardly require more than some basic training.

> Same problem the US has. Too much education for the job market.

Quite a stark contrast to arguments used by the soon-in-power in the current US H-1B political kerfuffle.

However, this is happening in a lot of places.

TBF very simple (not easy, but anticipated) structural problem: currently PRC ~5 years into ~20 year period where the intersection of cohort from when PRC had higher TFR - was generating 15m+ new borns while simultaneously massively expanding tertiary capacity and enrollment (single digit to 60% and increasing). Unsurprisingly (and again anticipated when scale of academic reforms was being proposed) sought after air conditioned office jobs hasn't kept pace to frankly stupendous tertiary expansion, meanwhile tuition doesn't drive PRC student into crippling debt, and parents have high savings % to doddle kids who can afford to fuck around. Broad unemployment is steady ~5% - sooner or later youth will enter workforce doing less desirable jobs when they realize they're not tier1 material. Same with all the ones now chillaxing in tier2+ cities, not everyone makes the grind in NYC either. West simply had to deal with academic inflation earlier and culture have already learned to live with paper degrees.

If one followed the domestic/elite debate 30 years ago (project 211/985), it was exceedingly obvious CCP decided it was more useful to max out the dial to brrrrt teritary talent generation even if it means eventual talent oversupply and opportunity mismatch. At end of the day, more useful to have excess talent where top minds are discovered and coordinated, then not. Teritiary talent can fail back to delivering DiDi, but undereducated DiDi driver not going to work in fabs.

Still given PRC youth unemployment rates, the % employed is still integrating ~2-3x more STEM workforce per year vs US (excluding non STEM technical fields). They have massive relative youth unemployment, but massive absolute youth employment that has closed the STEM/technical #s with US in last decade, and set to lead for decade(s). Like if current trend/ratio continues, PRC set to add 40M stem in next 20 years, about as much US projected to gain population total (births + immigration). The talent:opportunity gap will eventually close since new cohorts moving from 15m new birth years to 9 million (and declining) new births, i.e. if PRC keep pace with high skilled job generation (difficult), they'll eventually experience (skilled) talent shortage, but by then they may well have OECD combined in high end talent in the workforce.

There isn't going to be rustication, unless you count mediocre people realizing they're doomed to mediocre work in mediocre location rustication. And ultimately, that's what all the developing tier2/3+ cities and interior provinces is about, why CCP was lolling at all the naive (western) urbanists trying to convince them to increase tier1 density to increase productivity and follow zipf scaling. CCP solution is to tell people NYC is full, but here, we build multiple NYC alternatives, with comparable amenities, slower pace for the mediocre/mids (not meant to disparage but mere statistic reality), but you'll end up making 1/2 the money but have same or better QoL because local PPP is scaled accordingly. They're not moving people to the countryside, they're moving people to other world class cities.

This comment inspires a more philosophical observation. I tend to notice that it's an illusion that education exists for the sole purpose of preparing human labor for future jobs. Partially it does, but another part is fixing progress consequences. Imagine you traveled to the past where 99% of workers were agricultural ones and explained that there would be a future when only 10% is required to fulfill needs for food for others. They obviously complain that it would be terrible because so many jobs would be lost and so on. But humanity is great at inventing new occupations. Fast forward from the past to present. We have many schools, universities where there are many paid jobs (tutors, clerks, management) and many unpaid occupations (pupils, students). In our hypothetical past only a tiny fraction of the population could afford to belong to these two categories. And the latter can afford to be unpaid because progress allows their parents to pay for them in order for them to be occupied without a paid job.

> > It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.

bahahaha literally spoken by a 24 year-old. Let's see if he thinks time is not a limiter at 48.

With any self-awareness the profound truth he should be saying: Life can be abnormally easy when you're handsome and charistmatic.

> Curious what led to the decision to use "burner" devices,

When visiting you are required to install a tracking app. At that point your phone is considered compromised. So you bring a burner that gets infected instead and you toss afterwards.

He's pretty good at curating very smart people and interviewing them. There's no shortage of interviews with double talking politicians and polemicists so podcasts like his are a breath of fresh air. I'm not watching his podcasts to learn about Dwarkesh, but to learn what his guests have to say.

Tend to agree. His interview with Leopold Aschenbrenner and subsequent interview with François Chollet revealed a pretty obvious LLM maximalist position. Kind of off-putting.

The bar for wide-audience podcasters and interviewers is low. They're expected to be generalists who can ask good questions, not experts driving the conversation.

Now, expertise is valuable for focused Podcasters like Peter Attia for fitness or Razib for population genomics. But, Dwarkesh is trying to cover all tech and wider HN-friendly content. For that purpose, his CS education and knowledge of the tech industry workings are solid.

He does a better job than Lex, Rogan, or other tech-adjacent Podcasters. Nowhere near as personable as some of the more mainstream successes. But, when those podcasters get tech guests, we're stuck with tired questions like:"Will AI kill us all?".

In Seattle, in the summer we have anti-CPC protests almost every Saturday run by Chinese Americans I assume, I think it is driven by Falan Dafa though.

The biggest critics of the CPC seem to be ethnic Chinese though (well, or other ethnicities present in China or Asia as a whole), not generally European descended Americans.

Americans:

>If I was the US President, and I wanted to win hearts and minds in China, here's what I'd do. In every single speech where I'm talking about China, I'd make a conspicuous effort to complement Chinese people, Chinese values, and Chinese culture. I'd talk about how my Chinese staffers are the smartest and most hardworking people I've ever worked with (which honestly is probably true). I'd talk about how much my daughter is obsessed with ancient Chinese dresses. I'd talk about how I'm learning Mandarin in my free time, and have a live "Aw shucks" conversation in Mandarin.

It's kind of incredible this is a serious suggestion. "Our foreign policy is to punch you in the face, but now we're also going to lie about our enmity to gaslight you, because we think you're that naive and stupid". PRC nationals also not going to buy a word of it when the central narrative is economic / military containment. New gen of patriots/nationalisms doesn't seek western validation anymore. Few in PRC is going to be fooled as long as sanctions / export controls are ongoing and US military bases are around. People not that gullible. There's also the 100,000s of international students and millions of diasphora to report back all the sinophobic shit happening in the west despite honeyed words.

Agreed, his writing is clear and his tone is pleasantly curious and humble. Was a nice read.

Ask a podcaster to name intellectuals, and they just name other podcasters.

“Intellectual landscape” is way over selling it. Joe Rogan used to host a reality tv show where people ate cockroaches for money. They’re little more than glorified influencers.

Jordan Peterson is intelligent when he is in his field I will give him that but calling Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman intellectuals should be a crime.

Jordan Peterson, Lex Friedman, and Joe Rogan are conservative, right-wing entertainers. They are not widely accepted as intellectuals, but rather as entertaining lecturers and interviewers who are quite biased.

That the author would consider them public intellectuals is fascinating and speaks to their worldview and media consumption habits.

It's kinda like calling Hunter S. Thompson a public intellectual back in the 70s. Public yes, opinionated absolutely. Intellectual? Ehhh, stretching it.

> they let their guests say whatever anti-intellectual bs they wanted, without trying to correct the guests

I do not like any of the 2 (even I could say I hate them, in the sense I cannot watch for more than 10 s), but what do you mean with “let they say (…) whatever they want” I mean… is that not right?! Do you expect some kind of sensorship? I mean maybe is what YOU perceived as “anti-intellectual bs” whatever that means for you? Maybe they concur?

Also “try to correct”? Sorry, maybe is a language thing, but “correct” seems to imply the guest said something “wrong”. Is the host always an authority to ”correct” a guest?

I’m really not trying to attack or insult you, I’m just totally perplexed by the comment? I would HATE to see an interview where the host is “correcting” the guest in any color, shape or form.

Maybe I am misinterpreting your reply. Maybe can you give an example of what you think is better, ans show a correction from host to guest, as you would like?

> Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, and Sam Harris

One of these is not like the others. It’s funny, in a sad way.

> they let their guests say whatever anti-intellectual bs they wanted, without trying to correct the guests

This is correct. Friedman praises himself to listen to "all sides". I think this is good in principle, but he invites all types of professional bullshitters and propagandists and let them go without the slightest pushback which is pretty disturbing.

He probably wouldn't have the same range of guests if he wasn't only throwing soft balls though.

To his credit, I found that Rogan was at least pushing back a bit against (what he perceived as) BS (haven't listened to him for a while though).

In any case, I hope for Americans these guys don't define the US intellectual landscape.

When I read this I felt intellectual was the wrong word choice but I think I understood what he meant. Less about being an intellectual but more that China generally does not have very deep discussions in public about state matters or anything remotely related.

To use the phrase “Public intellectual ecosystem” and then to go on mentioning Lex Friedman, Joe Roegan says more about the author than China I think. I had a good laugh at that phrase as well as his examples.

It’s interesting to see China making giant progress in EV, renewables, bullet trains and so on while SV podcasters get high on their “intellectual ecosystem”.

They're part of the "intellectual landscape" in the sense that they act as a gateway for getting people interested in deeper topics, in a culture that has largely been anti-intellectual.

For as long as Hollywood shaped the cultural narrative, being smart was considered downright shameful; nerd was a synonym for loser, geeks were always social misfits. That shifted at some point in the last 10-20 years, in part due to increased immigration from non-anti-intellectual cultures but also because of the popularity of such podcasters and some YouTubers, especially fitness YouTubers.

I'd definitely credit these people as part of the "intellectual landscape" because they showed America that you could remain engaged for hours on something that isn't vapid bullshit, in a way that NPR perhaps couldn't.

This is where I stopped reading. Not to be elitist, but anyone who considers this cadre the “intellectual landscape” of America is not someone whose intellectual contributions I’m particularly interested in.

Fridman has interviewed some pretty smart people - so I would say the shows are intellectual, rather than the hosts themselves (although Lex is a smart guy IMHO). I like the long-form interview format - it's allowing the listener to make up their minds rather than "old media's" way of pushing certain points of view.

For example: Fridman's interview with John Carmack is my favorite episode (at 3+ hours I think?).

I've never got on with Joe Rogan's or Jordan Peterson podcasts - just not my cup of tea. Sam Harris is no doubt a smart guy but he suffers too much from TDS - which gets annoying.

I appreciate podcasters who let their guests talk. I'm not listening to hear the the host. I'll form my own opinions, thank you very much.

That was the original definition.

I mean, that was from 100 years ago, and language does drift over time. Still, it's not an outlandish definition.

Hmm, I only listened briefly but it sounds a normal rate to me. Perhaps the high end of norma; podcasters do want to convey enthusiasm and that often translates to speed.

As an aside, some people whose first language is not English speak English too fast, because their first language uses fewer phonemes and hence uses a higher syllable rate to reach the same information rate. I wondered if that might be the case here, but this sounds like a native speaker.

Yes, Dwarkesh does speak quite fast, though I think much of it is nervousness and excitement. He spoke even faster in his first few interviews, but learned to tone it down. Bryan Caplan even mentioned it to him in one of his interviews.

I wouldn't say it's representative of westerners, but more of hyper-active, eager intellectuals (over-represented in the programming world, from my experience). Marc Andreessen is another example of someone who talks very fast.

I wish he'd match his guest's pace of talking. I'm happy to set watch speed to 1.25x. But if they're mismatched, all speeds feel wrong.

Covid was an exceptional scenario and also a convenient test period for that control. As for moving military forces into cities - it would be very viable. Look at any situation on leaked social media where police or state actors are shutting down protests - for example when masses of Chinese citizens demonstrate against their employer or real estate scammers or banks or whatever. The authorities have an easy ability to bring lots of personnel and gear to any situation quickly. Then there’s the dystopian stuff that ranges from social credit scores preventing use of public transit to police drones patrolling the air between apartment buildings telling citizens to stay home. The Chinese society is under mass control all the time from all sides.

Most western cities were designed with such things in mind. Look at Haussmann's renovation of Paris. Why do you think all those armories were built in US industrial cities at the turn of the 20th century? The odd thing is he makes it sound like China designs its cities with concerns not seen in the West.

It's not a secret or chinese thing. European kings and emperors also had their cities remodeled to stack the odds in their favor in case they had to deal with uprisings.

> The idea of military driving through the middle of city is even more ridiculous.

Okay… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protes...

It isn't like people sat in smoke filled rooms and pre-conspired their cities for pandemic controls, that part's silly but the way a lot of Chinese cities are constructed has its roots in this high modernist, Le Corbusier, Robert Moses style design[1].

Chinese urban planning is very much heir to this idea of regular, orderly urban development, in the parts of cities that aren't old and premodern. Everything has its place, the apartment complexes, the roads, the recreational areas, how people move, and so on. It's become very fashionable to rail against this in particular in Western intellectual circles but honestly having been to China but also to places like Chandigarh, I've had a pretty positive impression.

[1]https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-cor...

Washington, D.C. was laid out to be defensible against the military technology of the time. Hence all those circles and radials with good fields of fire.

The point is that, if your only exposure to American public opinion was Twitter, you might get an unrealistic view of how to understand the relationship between public opinion and government policy. It's not the case that the 2020 election proves the American people broadly endorse the most extreme left-wing thought on Twitter, any more than the Twitter ownership change and 2024 election proves that the American people have now become extreme right-wing devotees.

Yea not knowing why cameras are everywhere is naive.

And the fix to “winning” Chinese citizens over is to dismantle the CCP, by practicing asymmetric warfare - like economically weakening them - until citizens are ready for change.

So he would be doing exactly what the Chinese government wants. As a US president the guy would shoot himself in the foot.

I listened to one of this guy's podcasts recently. The guest was impressive but Dwarkesh... Not so much. His questions were meandering and made it clear he didn't have much of a grasp on the subject matter. Does not surprise me that he is perplexed about the totalitarian regime's penchant for watching people.

Yeah its really weird because the US already did this stuff during Obama's presidency, hell talk of the town was the US and China should form a G2 back then. Trump also recently made same sort of G2 comment, China declined both times.

You had China bailed out the US and what did China get in return the US destabilising Asia with their Pivot to Asia policy. Trump started out this way and what did trump do start a trade and tech war with China. I don't US word or signature is worth shit tho all it has is violence and fear to work with these days.

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Maybe the article is bad (I haven't looked), but a bad article does not justify a shallow dismissal. We want curious conversation here.