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Comment by riku_iki | Hacker News Reader

that's obvious that some country with 1.5B working people will have edge in some niches, and will demonstrate tremendous growth from the bottom where they were 20 years ago.

But for global picture, if we are comparing Western World: US+Canada+EU vs China in technological domination, the picture is likely not super-clear and more complex analysis is required. Even if we consider manufacturing output, where China is supposedly global leader, we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching).

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The tremendous growth is still happening on sector by sector basis, and arguably west only holds edge in few extreme frontier niches while PRC increasingly dominating rest. Relevant PRC joke:

If China can't make something, it's considered high tech. Once china makes it, it's no longer high tech.

PRC makes high tech products into low margin commodities. That's what happens when they have roughly oced combined in stem talent and vast industrial base to value engineer. And most of it happened in last 15 years. The point is PRC catches up fast (including extreme frontier), and when they do, they can scale and cut margins, which is more interesting direction than west who seemingly can't. The point is that is obviously the superior dominance recipe vs west who has vanishing frontier lead that will continue to be lost because western margins is PRC opportunity. The point is when PRC makes >50% of global stuff materially but charges <50%, it's exceedingly likely that will take over everything, at PRC speed, and will not leave west any high margin, leading edge niches, unless west can learn to operate with low margins as well.

unfortunately, your comment consists of many loud hand-waving statements without much substance, so there is no much to discuss.

> The point is when PRC makes >50% of global stuff materially but charges <50%

and could you provide source of >50%?

Unfortunately, your reading comprehension can't parse basic argument, so there's not much to discuss.

For >50%, pick a manufactured finished good or intermediary good like steel, electronics, solar modules, batteries, shipbuilding, xyz components, and chances are PRC produces more than 50% of it by volume/units/tonnage, but not gross/value add. For more broad proxy indicator, look at share of global export TEUs, PRC ships out like ~50% of filled containers, OCED 20%, Row 30%. Emphasis on filled, i.e. take away empty container traffic that flows back to PRC to be filled. Hence western cope is PRC export only ~30% by gross/value (both $$$ figures) that underestimate how many sectors PRC makes more than >50% stuff in while capturing <50% in $$$. And this only considering PRC only exports 20% of GDP, i.e. a lot of manufacturing stays at home.

So, you don't have source, this was expected.

I'm not here to enter your lame sealioning effort for basic facts. This is 2026, you can validate claims trivially. Or you can keep demonstrating illiteracy/innumeracy, which is just as well. Audience can go through comment chain and judge argument merits / cognitive function.

burden of proof is on you, because you made a statement.

If you blindly trust LLMs, it explains well why you are like this..

> Audience can go through comment chain and judge argument merits / cognitive function.

or very few care about your fantasies spam lol

I've been writing metric dense post before LLMs, and even then I don't entertain sealions who don't do their own minimal research, or demonstrate inability to. LLMs simply available now for previously lazy/cognitively inept readers to validate gist if they want. For those that have trouble with basic comprehension (i.e. can't read gud so only retort is words & numbers are fantasy spam to be handwaved without much substance), LLMs can ELI5. Reciprocally, why care about the incurious who can't be bothered to do better than 5th grader.

I'll skip answering your non-sense this time..

>we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching).

I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment.

Not only is China catching up to those sectors, they are continuing their momentum to accelerate and expand in other low value market. They key here isn't to maximise profits, it is to maximise control.

If Trade is war, which is the fundamental of principle of what "Art of War" is about, then I dont see how the west could win this war without some very drastic changes.

> I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment.

sure, and what's your point? My opinion is that high margin leading edge equipment is more interesting direction than low cost low tech produce.

They keep increasing and increasing the level of what they can produce. Within a couple of decades they will overtake TSMC, ASML, etc. If you're thinking about how the west still does all the design, they will produce their own computer architectures (Loongarch is outpacing RISC-V) and chips and operating systems. IIRC they're now able to make their own chips and chip-making equipment at a decade-old technology level and that's rapidly catching up.

>Loongarch is outpacing RISC-V

Not really, unless you mean in performance of available chips.

Notably, Loongarch and the company behind it have been around for much longer, and thus have a head start. But it is ultimately a single company's ISA.

On a grander scale, China's focus is on RISC-V.

great, healthy competition is good for everyone, and it will force western companies innovate harder.

>sure, and what's your point?

You may want to reread what I wrote.

They key here isn't to maximise profits, it is to maximise control.

Maximising control over low margin low tech niches sounds like losing strategy.

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