Comment by oraphalous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oraphalous | Hacker News Reader

I think the west is in for a rude shock when it finally realises how fast China is developing technologically.

I was there a few months ago in Guangzhou, it was stunning to see how many EVs were on the road. You can tell too - because they have a distinctly coloured license plate.

The scale that China can achieve is just mind boggling. We went into a giant mall - 7 levels. And it was all just jewellry. A whole mall! Blew my mind. Apply that sort of scale to technological development. They can do things other countries just can't because of that scale. Here's another example of a data center they just built:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUVF8crDZ7g

I get the sense that some people are just starting to really cotton on about what China is really becoming - for example that recent review from Marques Brownlee of the Xiaomi EV.

But still - most of the narrative in the west seems to be doomerism about their demographics and real-estate over investment. We will see.

It's going to be interesting to see if China can offset its oncoming demographic challenges with their technological progress.

While this is certainly true, I don't really know if molten salt reactors are the best example. The US and Russia shared molten salt reactor technology after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then the US shared those details with China in 2014 under an international DOE initiative: https://web.archive.org/web/20130919025430/http://www.smartp...

The PRC has much credit to give the United States and Soviets for their thorium reactor designs.

Correct, the PRC has much credit to give and indeed does so. Yet, they still picked up the development and successfully ran with it.

That's interesting - but I guess we need to understand better what innovation counts as a good example of Chinese incipient superiority.

If China is leap frogging the west technologically, then it can still only be a very recent fact. It stands to reason that their current innovations will be developed on top of much of what they learnt from the west.

That doesn't mean that a particular innovation does not deserve to be counted as an example of their progress, just because that innovation was on the shoulders of western tech. Most progress is done on the shoulders of others anyway. So I don't feel examples like this should be discounted.

But also - there are a lot of dimensions to think about here. For example, one dimension is the raw development of a technology. Maybe China has not developed so much newer tech (although I'm reading much to the contrary in this respect also). But another dimension is the economics involved in implementation. With scale comes so many advantages. Business models that just aren't economical in Western countries can thrive in China.

There was one example that really struck me. I was at a mall with my partner and her friends (who live in Guangzhou). Those friends wanted to order something to drink. One of them got out their phone, ordered those drinks and had them delivered outside the mall. This was less effort and cost in their minds than actually wandering around the mall trying to find the drinks they wanted. Heaps of people just get their morning coffee delivered.

You might not think this example is a good demonstration of technological superiority. Every country has the phone and internet tech for goods delivery. But that they can leverage the technology to this degree is only be possible where the cost of delivery is so low - as it is in China.

So yeah - raw innovation is one dimension, but opportunity for implementation is another very important one as well.

Well, now you're moving the goalpost. I think China has every right to be proud of developing economically beyond what the Soviets were capable of.

Characterizing that success is easy, looking at the economy; China has tons of raw and manufactured resources, with a weak financial sector. That's the exact opposite of what you see in developed economies in America and Europe, and the service industries will reflect that. Oftentimes, a weak finance sector is reflected in a surplus of poor people (which can be confirmed looking at China's GDP/capita).

What you're describing in all of your anecdotes are not the nascent signs of superiority. It's cheap concrete and poor people who will do jobs that other people consider insulting. There are absolutely domains where China has met or exceeded the global watermark in various areas (HGVs, BVR missiles, expendable AESA/GAN radar, speaking as an aviation nerd) but much of that stems from the aforementioned surplus. The Soviets also had wonderful trinkets that the western world couldn't copy, but it didn't save them when they needed money and foreign support.

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