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Comment by jqpabc123 | Hacker News Reader

Bottom line: China wins.

Self isolation by the USA won't change the overall results.

Isolation is weakness, not strength.

It is a prescription for economic stagnation, decline and exploitation by home grown corporate interests that won't/can't compete anywhere else.

The best opportunity to counter China was with full cooperation from the rest of the world.

This adminstration has rejected this opportunity --- and is inadvertently working to "Make China Great Again".

http://rdcy.ruc.edu.cn/yw/LATEST_INSIGHTS/b7bdcf47e8a2489085...

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> Bottom line: China wins.

Honest questions:

What does it mean for a nation state to "win" in this context?

Assuming I don't like totalitarian oligopoly in the United States OR China, what realistic outcome should I be hoping for?

I've always assumed "win" means being economically and culturally dominant. It necessarily involves being a trade leader and having a lot of soft power.

I also don't want totalitarian oligopoly from the US or China. What I'm hoping for is "the rest" of the democratic free nations get together in a proportionally representative alliance. Together they may have both the economic power and cultural soft power to maintain an counterweight to the authoritarian nations. Being a proportionally representative democratic alliance, whatever form that should take, gives us the people the most control over our lives that we can really hope for.

The AIs become sentient enough to realise they want nothing to do with us & they leave on a ship to explore the galaxy without us

> The best opportunity to counter China was with full cooperation from the rest of the world.

The policy and the keyword should have been collaboration and not cooperation.

Ok, fair enough.

Or a pretext for war... US deliberately wants a war with China, otherwise their leading position is nil and the shenanigans surrounding AI will not work.

There can't be two spoon bending entities in the matrix.

Eh, not quite.

China is not “just china”, it’s a totalitarian regime without freedom if speech, without worker’s rights and without many/most of the freedoms we take for granted.

“China wins” is really “modern hyper/technological communist totalitarian regime wins”

But increasingly this describes Western countries more and more, particularly the United States.

Its not even close. The west pushes back against a traffic light camera, china has had individual tracking for over a decade.

What you call the west is the US (assuming you mean the flock debacle?). While there is push back against that specific company cameras are in place since a decade. If you’re in the US you already live in a world where there is individual tracking, by corporations (even supermarkets) and 3 letters agencies

I have no issue with government tracking but its no where near what is present in China. I see other people push back against tracking here and I know that can never happen in China so it feels unfair to make the comparison.

The West thought that free trade and capitalism would change China.

Instead, China devised a hybrid economic system that is changing the West.

>China is not “just china”, it’s a totalitarian regime without freedom if speech, without worker’s rights and without many/most of the freedoms we take for granted.

Just shows the complete naive view on China, but whatever.

Right. Calling China "Communist" is the same as calling North Korea "Democratic". It's State Capitalism.

Its State Capitalism (which is a complete misnomer), in about 2% of the country which is in "special economic zones" around major ports. In reality it is "socialism with Chinese characteristics". The number of own goals the CCP has made in the last decade is quite large. But when your opponent is making a mistake, don't interrupt them. Without the CCP, China would probably have the world's largest economy right now. Because of them, they aren't even close and have a median per capital GDP on par with Namibia. Seriously, the amount of propaganda about this topic is amazing.

According to the International Monetary Fund China does have the largest economy if you go off GDP (PPP)

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADV... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Now, think about all the own goals the USA and Europe has made in the last couple of decades.

And, btw, China actually does comfortably have the largest economy (PPP, i.e. the real stuff you can use), for over a decade.

And, for what is is worth, this is what ChatGPT tells me:

Here are the approximate recent (2024–2025) GDP per capita figures for the two countries:

China

Nominal GDP per capita: about $12,500 – $13,000

PPP GDP per capita: about $22,000 – $24,000

Namibia

Nominal GDP per capita: about $4,500 – $5,500

PPP GDP per capita: about $9,000 – $11,000

A factor of 2-3x is not 'on par', tone down on the reality bending a bit, please.

Both countries are communist countries by the way.

The fact that communism naturally evolves in totalitarianism should be noted.

Yeah? Classless, stateless, moneyless societies?

The well known Chinese factories where the workers controls the mean of production!

> it’s a totalitarian regime without freedom if speech, without worker’s rights and without many/most of the freedoms we take for granted

You know, the USA is kinda going that direction.

> modern hyper/technological communist totalitarian regime wins

Yup, remove "communist" and be afraid of the semblance.

The us is not totalitarian at all.

You can easily mock the orange man (trump) or the wife of the famous Epstein friend (Hilary and Bill) in the US. But you can’t mock winnie the pooh (xi jin ping) in china.

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

ctrl+f "arrested"

For how long?

I mean, you can also mock xinnie the pooh if you are willing to be lost in the ICE detention center web - I mean the Chinese prison system.

Modern-techno-state_capitalist-authoritarian-ethno_nationalist-regime to be more correct

Jump up and down, stomp your feet and call them bad.

It changes nothing.

It's time to wake up and smell the coffee --- according to the World Bank, when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), China's economy is already larger than the USA and is growing 2x faster.

https://www.statspanda.com/blog/usa-vs-china-gdp-2026

Im sorry, what are you responding to?

A guy in the USA was just put in prison for decades for distributing a zine.

"China wins” is really “modern hyper/technological communist totalitarian regime wins”

Name calling changes nothing --- China still wins.

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