Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 228 posts

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#121

Post by detritus »

diego_moita wrote: post #35
rayiner wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like premature celebration. The Soviet Union was incredibly successful (turning a backwater into a superpower in a few decades) until it wasn’t.

The first catastrophic failure of the Soviet Union was agriculture. When the West was beginning Borlaug's Green Revolution they were deep into Stalin's great famine, the Holodomor. Their inability to put bread on tables is at the root of their collapse. Most tragedies in China's recent history also have their cause on failure to produce food. I wonder how China is prepared to handle the impact Global Warming will hav…

Whilst I don't fundamentally disagree with your concerns, I'm not following the logic behind the Holodomor being the root of the Sovet Union's collapse, given that it occured 60 years prior?

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#122

Post by detritus »

crdoconnor wrote: post #101
anoncoward111 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stalin's inability to put food on tables = cause for USSR's failure I need to clarify something on this point. Stalin's famine was deliberately engineered to kill Ukrainians. It was not a failure of central economic planning, but actually, shockingly, a triumph. Stalin confiscated Ukrainian citizens' guns and land, and forced them to work 180 days per year on centrally planned crop attempts. The product of their lab…

This is pretty much how the Irish potato famine happened, too - they grew enough food, it was just exported - along with the wealth it generated. The English justified it by invoking the divine right of the free market. In the Soviet Union's case the money derived from exporting the grain abroad supposed to be to help industrialize - which it did. It's a bit hazy whether or not it was deliberately engineered to kill…

'The English' were responsible, or 'Protestant Irish Landowners'? Seems like a key detail if you're going to attribute genocide to the English.

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#123

Post by pm90 »

watertom wrote: post #118

All tech companies need to re-think manufacturing in China, it was always a risky proposition, but not, you'll really be handing your IP over to the Chinese Government, and they'll be collecting IP from every company. It's time for tech manufacturing to move.

Where will it move to? Tech manufacturing is till pretty labor intensive, at least for the consumer electronics that I believe we are talking about. India probably has better IP laws on paper, but they're hardly ever enforced.

The only real alternative seems to be that we reach such a level of automation that these factories can be viable in the West. Still, China's integration into the supply chain of global manufacturing is breathtaking. Not saying it can't be done, but it would take some amount of determination, deliberation and a lot of Capital and skilled labor force.

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#124

Post by tischler »

SlapHappy wrote: post #110
tischler wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

beep boop Detected sarcasm directed at our great China and our great party in citizen d59e769233b8502f567e082527400594. Deduct 10 social credit points. 2 social credit points can be immediately regained by three recitations of "和谐社会". beep

Can we keep the Reddit jingoism to Reddit? This site is intended to be a welcome reprieve from the vacuous discussions elsewhere.

How is criticism of an authoritarian system jingoism?

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#125

Post by crdoconnor »

detritus wrote: post #122
crdoconnor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much how the Irish potato famine happened, too - they grew enough food, it was just exported - along with the wealth it generated. The English justified it by invoking the divine right of the free market. In the Soviet Union's case the money derived from exporting the grain abroad supposed to be to help industrialize - which it did. It's a bit hazy whether or not it was deliberately engineered to kill…

'The English' were responsible, or 'Protestant Irish Landowners'? Seems like a key detail if you're going to attribute genocide to the English.

The English, who were ruling Ireland at the time, who gave most of that land to absentee landlords, justified perpetuating the famine by invoking the divine right of the free market:

"Laissez-faire, the reigning economic orthodoxy of the day, held that there should be as little government interference with the economy as possible. Under this doctrine, stopping the export of Irish grain was an unacceptable policy alternative, and it was therefore firmly rejected in London."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...

I honestly don't see much difference between Ireland and the Holodomor except size. Both famines were caused by foreign occupiers exporting food during a period of bad harvest.

Whether you call it a genocide is another debate.

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#126

Post by NicoJuicy »

petra wrote: post #47
baybal2 wrote: post #12

Comparison Baidu - Google Baidu is horrid, even in Chinese. Baidu doesn't have nearly as big stronghold on advertising in Chinese market as Google has in every market outside of China. End of discussion. Alibaba - Amazon On commercial side, Alibaba steamrolls Amazon with some margin remaining. Tech-wise, Alibaba sucks big time. Their search algo is something horrid. Alibaba has a relatively big part of Internet ads p…

Amazon vs Alibaba - to simplify, this game will be won by the best supply chain, And sure Amazon leads by far. But what happens when the "one belt one road" railroad is finished ? Will Alibaba get a preferential treatment ? And if so, could Amazon handle that ?

Subsidized shipping from AliExpress is also insane unfair.

Then again, AliExpress is used to buy shit products most of the time. Not a single brand product is sold the from non Chinese companies

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#127

Post by loceng »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #112
loceng wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted you as I don't think people should be downvoted especially for misunderstanding/misinterpreting what someone said..

Thank you. Although to be honest, I did not misunderstand OP. My comment was just a lazy (and therefore impolite) way to point out that things may be different in China compared to Europe and that OP's comment may not be a relevant response. As such my comment may actually deserve downvotes. I will try to do better in the future.

Ah, thanks for the honesty. I wish some days when commenting I had actually taken a break from HN due to the lesser quality, less thoughtful replies I'll make.

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#128

Post by jlarocco »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #114
alehul wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with parents who experienced the USSR, this is what really terrifies me about China's rise, and the reason I can't say I'm against a trade war if it hinders them more than us. Imagine a world in which China holds more control... a country with little legal or social respect for individualism, where your fate is 'centrally planned' by how impressive your maths skills are. By contrast, ~30% of American billi…

I think that's a severe misrepresentation of China. They're communist in name, but extremely capitalist in practice. Jack Ma is the man behind Alibaba and now one of the richest people alive, let alone Chinese alive. Check out his background [1]. In my opinion, the main difference between China and the US is nationalism. And that's also what I think that slogan is indicative of. It also, I think, explains their gover…

> In my opinion, the main difference between China and the US is nationalism. And that's also what I think that slogan is indicative of. It also, I think, explains their government actions. Supporting their companies is not about nationalizing them, which implies a motivation of state driven control, but growing and improving Chinese companies on the national scene.

I've noticed that a few times recently when comparing American and Chinese policies.

In the United States we've made a cargo cult religion around individual freedom, to the point where we often don't do what's best for the country and society as a whole.

The Chinese government seems much more concerned about making their country and society better as a whole.

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#129

Post by pm90 »

stickfigure wrote: post #97
barrkel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who says a fake Gucci is a crime, if the buyer knows it's fake. It's not enough for the buyer to know it's fake, everyone who sees it must also know it's fake, or else the fake is freeriding on the cachet generated by Gucci's marketing. People buy prominently branded fashion objects for their signalling value more than their utility value. Signalling which is easy to fake isn't very valuable. It's perfectly possibl…

It's worth having a dialogue about this. This specific type of signaling (flashing brands) is enforced by social rules that prevent chameleons. It would be pretty easy to imagine relaxing this - allowing products to appear externally in any form, as long as their nature is always recognizable to the owner (to prevent fraud). It's not clear this would be bad for society. IANAL, but it seems to me that plastering logos…

The purpose of brands and high fashion is not to be functional in the utilitarian sense. They are meant purely for signalling and their utility is an afterthought at best. See for e.g. women's jeans which have fake pockets.

For people who care about such things, its more important for their outfit to be congruent to some fashion principles (color, fit etc.) rather than the actual utility that such things provide.

Re: China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

#130

Post by golergka »

k__ wrote: post #43
smaddox wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communism didn't fail for lack of top-down control. It failed because of too much top-down control (to oversimplify to the extreme).

I had the impression it failed because the planning was bad. So the logical consequence for me would be, if the plans were outdated, better IT would allow to change them faster.

It was bad exactly because it was centralized. De-centralized systems like free market capitalist economy are more resilient by nature.
Post reply on HN