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Comment by rglover | Hacker News Reader

China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's ignorance and short-sighted thinking. They already "won" in the sense that they outmaneuvered the U.S. because they relied on flaws in human nature (specifically, greed). Their moves around AI are just more of the same clever behavior.

I don't agree with all of their means for getting here, but to accomplish what they have in ~30 or so years [1] should blow minds far more than it does in the West. And they did it by convincing us to give them control of our manufacturing and selling us (literal) boatloads of cheap junk. Historians will look back on this era as one of the greatest demonstrations of "winning without firing a single shot."

This whole insular POV is tired, ignorant, and frankly just another indicator that America has lost the plot, shit-faced on its own arrogance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China

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Unrestricted Warfare by Colonels Xiangsui and Liang is a must read. China's been on the path for quite a while.

> The English translation of the book was then published by a previously unknown Panamanian publisher, with the subtitle "China's Master Plan to Destroy America" and a picture of the burning World Trade Center on the cover.

Hmm, sounds awfully sensationalist, designed to fan the flames of Sinophobia and thinly veiled racism.

China deliberately adopted western style market institutions. They joined the WTO. No, they aren't a fully westernized market, but they are closer to a competitive marketplace than the state dictating all of what will or will not be built.

I'm confused, what has America and the west lost the plot on? You would have preferred the west to exploit China more?

This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive.

> This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive.

I agree but that's not at all what I was getting at. Quite the opposite. The mistake America made, what made it vulnerable, was playing everything like a zero sum game. We're in the early days of that behavior coming to roost.

No, that is exactly what you were getting at:

> China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's...

Zero sum games imply that if there is a winner, there has to be a loser. That one country takes advantage of another.

I think they're saying America ended up positioning itself as the loser because they framed things as a zero-sum game. Which of course is a generalization, neither America nor China is a monolith, but I can certainly see some presidencies of the last decades leaning more into this attitude than others.

“If you assume everyone only has hammers, you'll end up getting screwed”, or something like that.

> I think they're saying America ended up positioning itself as the loser because they framed things as a zero-sum game.

I didn't bother responding earlier, and I'm not sure why I'm responding now because I don't think "because they framed things as a zero-sum game." explains anything, and it sounds like something that sounded like a retort but offered without any evidence means nothing.

Just like how not everything is a zero-sum game, not everything is a debate where one side tries to "win" where every exchange is an aggressive retort trying to disprove the other's point. I was trying to clarify what I suspected the intent was.

If even the suggestion of considering different points of view feels like an attempt to disprove your own position, then that mainly says something about how you are approaching this exchange.

Yes, thank you.

That's not my framing, that's literally what happened/is happening.

its the natural conclusion of raw unregulated capitalism. Without guiderails, we offshored all production (because it was cheaper), and we suffered a complete loss of manufacturing workforce. Now that Trump has gone full protectionist, we have nothing with which to manufacture from. It's beautifully ironic in a way, in that our greed will be our downfall.

Of course china isnt innocent in all of this. Their 996 work culture is inhuman, and basically indentured service. But, their government is able to leverage that workforce.

>we offshored all production (because it was cheaper),

And why was it cheaper? Shipping things from the literal other side of the world isn't free. Cultural and language barriers to efficient communication aren't free. Etc. etc.

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