China Has Overtaken America | Hacker News Reader

China Has Overtaken America

paulkrugman.substack.com

65 pointsrbanffy52 comments

> Today American leadership is once again being challenged by an authoritarian regime.

It’s strange to oppose the two concepts, as if American leadership weren’t itself an authoritarian regime.

Well it’s on the way there but it’s not yet. American democracy still has some spine left I hope. But we are closer than we have ever been I think.

As an example, I don’t think Trump can make Sundar Pichai or Tim Cook disappear and then retreat from public life, like what happened with Jack Ma. To be clear I do not hold any of these individuals in high esteem, I am just illustrating the power of Xi Jinping, compared to Trump’s.

> like what happened with Jack Ma.

What happened to Jack Ma? Other than taking a quiet vacation and then continuing to enjoy his piles of money?

I'm genuinely curious, he is an interesting character. I wonder why he believed he would be able to pull off what he tried to pull off, my only explanation is, he didn't really know what he was doing. I'm always happy when I find new information about him.

China has big problems. They are totally trade-dependent (imports and exports) and some of the worst demographics on the planet apparently.

https://youtu.be/UltVl2Qlf6A

China has mostly decoupled from the US (both for imports and exports) [1]. They will automate around their demographics issues (they build and install more robots than any other nation in the world) [2]. They export cleantech to the world [3]. What does the US build besides systems of rent seeking?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45580229

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/business/china-factory-ro... | https://archive.today/RoygE

[3] https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

They'll presumably happily sell all the factory automation to anyone else who wants it (everyone else has), so it's not clear factories will stay where they are long term. Once factories are near fully automated, they'll place them wherever the combination of taxes and transportation costs is best.

Keeping the factories ensures trade continues, selling the factories eats the seed corn. To your point, I think its more likely they build fully automated factories where they want to sell to avoid tariffs or trade barriers, while maintaining ownership.

The chart shows a Biden-projected growth of 30GW renewable capacity until 2030.

If these renewables could run at max capacity 24/7 they'd then produce ballpark high estimate 270 TWh.

Looking at the Chinese comparison chart china adds 2000TWh of annual production per 5 year interval.

Now renewables run at 25% capacity factor on a good day, so the renewable growth with bidenomics would've added 65 TWh of growth in a span of time that china adds 2000. If Trump causes a further drawdown of 100 TWh in renewable capacity it will still only be a rounding error.

The US and most of the west is simply not even competing in this arena, the entire leadership is resting on their laurels and the focus is never on actual development but on policy, regulations and ideology.

Edit: I now see it was Paul Krugman as the author of that article which clearly illustrates my point on ideological drive of the western leadership, here we have an economic Nobel Prize winner that present numbers he either don't understand or misuse to take potshots at a leadership he's unhappy with.

Serious question - should I (an average engineer on HN) learn Chinese?

I'm old enough to remember when everyone was trying to learn Japanese back in the 80's.

It would be difficult to work in China, their green card equivalent is difficult to obtain.

The economic conditions in China right now are very bad for the average person, pretty high unemployment.

Why shouldn't you? You learn 3 new characters a day with no effort whatsoever via SRS and pass the HSK1 in 2 months. If you like it, you keep on studying and improving, if you don't like it, at least you will be able to greet the taxi driver when you go there (but won't understand their reply).

What's SRS?

Spaced Repetition Software.

Probably good to have to pad it under language skills in resume but not a very important concern.

It is incredibly hard.

It's really hard to get anywhere with. I was in Hong Kong a while and gave up. I tried Cantonese and Mandarin. That's another thing with 'Chinese' - there are actually about 200 versions spoken although the written symbols are the same.

At least with Japanese if you read a phrase from the guide book they understand but with Chinese if you don't get the intonation right they can't figure what you are on about.

They are mostly happy to do business in English though - it's not a bad place to cultivate business ties.

Even if you don't learn Chinese, I've been consciously adding http://v2ex.com to my doomscrolling regimen and running it through Google translate. It's a popular Chinese webforum, and while I wouldn't say it's exactly Chinese HN, it's a close enough approximation. It's interesting to see I have some of the same concerns and questions as someone halfway around the world in a totally different language and culture.

Here's an example from the front page, English title is: As a backend programmer writing front-end with the help of cursor, what is the most suitable front-end framework/solution

The comments mentioned all the usual suspects, Angular, Vute, React, next, etc.

https://www.v2ex.com/t/1165949

One thing that some users here would appreciate is their footer:

• Please do not copy and paste AI-generated content when answering technical questions

Decades ago I had Chinese coworkers and decided to ask them to teach me a word or two a day. I immediately discovered I could not tell the difference between the five tonal sounds of "ma" and so never got very far at all.

I suspect it's one of those things you kind of have to learn as a child due to brain plasticity. As a native English speaker I've been trying to learn some Serbo-Croatian — which is linguistically much closer to English than any Chinese dialect — and even though my hearing is normal I can't perceive the difference between the "č" and "ć" sounds. They both seem like the English "ch" to me.

Learning Chinese is not easy. That being said, one does not need to know Chinese in order to work with peers or business partners from China. For working in China, while knowing the local language is certainly an advantage, it is not a requirement, especially in science and technology. I have met a few scientists and exchange scholars in China. They basically only know how to say "Good morning," "Thank you," or "Sorry, I don't know how to say it in Chinese." One can expect co-workers to speak English. Buses and subways in big cities announce stops in English. There is English on road signs. Restaurant menus may not have English, but they likely have photos, or perhaps you can just surprise yourself anyway.

There is a new K visa that is granted to anyone holds a STEM degree from a well-established college anywhere in the world. People can come to China first and then look for a job. This K visa is less than a month old, so it is unclear how it works. Getting a job is a different story. Past data shows that non-state-owned small businesses created more than 90% of new jobs. Perhaps because they have not fully recovered, the job market is tight.

No. I can speak Chinese, I’m an engineer, I’ve had collegues in both China and Taiwan that I’ve worked with. It’s never been useful to me as an engineer (socially is another matter). I guess if I could speak at a really high level it could have some use. But getting there is incredibly hard unless you live in a Chinese speaking country.

Appreciate the insight!

Paul Krugman, the guy who predicted fax machines were more would have more impact on business than the Internet, even in 1998?

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/miscellany/paul...

The original Paul Krugman quote

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

> most people have nothing to say to each other!

Seems he was also wrong about social media

He's absolutely right. Most people have nothing to say to each other, and that's why social media is a small number of people broadcasting and an overwhelming number consuming. Most pairs of people don't say anything to each other. Absolutely spot on.

It's weird how you just replied to me on social media to tell me people have nothing to say to one another. It's almost like you're ... unaware of what is happening?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

I can anecdotally say you didn't add to the conversation with this link, so maybe you are one of the folks who do not have anything to say to another, as Mr. Krugman so eloquently put it.

I'm glad you came around to my position.

He's substantively wrong; he’s right that most people have nothing to say to each other, but its a scaling law being discussed, and “most people have nothing to say to each other" is an issue impacting the constant multiplier, not the scaling rate.

Porn drove electronic payments and a lot of other tech. The fax machine did not carry porn. Look to the medium's ability to be used for porn as a clear indicator of adoption.

Home robots will eventually catch fire.

Oh no, he made a mistake one time... When I was in 5th grade I added 2 numbers wrong, that must mean my whole career has been a lie.

Do you believe Paul Krugman's intelligence and impact on the world to be equivalent to a 5th grader? Do you want to try to make an argument that support's Mr. Krugman's point of view, or did it just upset you that I brought up a factual quote from the past?

Your last sentence is a verbose way of saying "Just sayin'".

https://psychcentral.com/health/defending-against-im-just-sa...

You know why you posted that quote, it's not just to "[bring] up a factual quote", it's to imply the man is a fool who's not to be listened to. And when challenged you pretend you're "just posting a quote".

Here's a Krugman quote from today (in fact it's in the post):

> A powerful faction in America has become deeply hostile to science and to expertise in general

Predictions are wrong more often than observations, I expect.

McKinsey advised AT&T that the total market for cell phones would be just a handful. McKinsey is going strong.

You're right, he missed that one. Do you think his total track record is poor?

> Do you think his total track record is poor?

That is actually the issue. All these talking heads, professional experts, writers, etc. make their reputation and money by constantly making predictions while never getting benchmarked.

It's the whole trope behind the book Superforcasters.

Please let's not dip into the cosmic hashtable. It's boring and offtopic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096 (June 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622773 (March 2020)

Whatever you say, boss! I'll never mention it again, my apologies.

Appreciated! It's not that you did anything wrong in itself, it's just that the global effects these things have end up being negative.

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