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China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

nytimes.com

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Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#71

Post by fspeech »

Edmond wrote: post #7
neya wrote: post #2

Well, one thing that is mentioned in the article, but deserves a lot more attention is IP theft. You should read about the chilling IP theft case of the bullet train where China pretended to contract Japan for the bullet train, but used it to steal their IP, patent it all and screw them over. Here's a really good documentary on how much engineering went into Japan's bullet trains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4a…

IP theft is an important part of the Chinese "Miracle" but it is short-sighted to focus too much on that...If IP access is all it took, I think we would have seen the Chinese achievement replicated in many other places.

Japan’s KHI licensed their technology to China’s CSR. Japan was never going to have the Chinese market to itself because it has competition: in addition to indigenous competitors Europe was competing for contracts as well. The dispute was over CSR’s redevelopment of licensed technology and attempts at export of the new package overseas. As it turns out there is not much of a market for HSR outside of China, Japan and Europe after all. Still it is weird to keep on calling licensed technology “theft”, when blueprints were actually sold. It’s also weird to have this fetish of how superior Japanese technology is (so China must have stolen theirs from Japan) while ignoring evidence to the contrary as revealed by the recent Taiwan rail disaster.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#72

Post by Invictus0 »

I think it is still too soon to blow the horn on China's model. Yes, China has become successful through authoritarianism, but it has only had 2 successful authoritarian leaders, both of whom were competent and benevolent. History shows that, on longer time scales, it is difficult to continuously install competent and benevolent leaders, and when a leader comes along that is not competent or benevolent, authoritarianism makes it difficult to remove them. This is why the American system is superior: if you have a bad leader, they can only do 4 years of damage and can be removed if they are truly awful. China has no such safety, which makes its system fragile in the long term.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#73

Post by SubiculumCode »

40acres wrote: post #59

China has mastered the balancing act between authoritarian and free market policies. In a way, the West's persistence that eventually prosperity would lead to Democratic policies always seemed a bit condescending and short sighted to me, democracy is a strong form of government, but why does it have to be the only one? The big variable here is growth, the social contract between China and it's citizens seems to be on…

Mastered? Far too soon to say that. Within the span of a few decades they moved from party rule where there seemed to be a meritocracy in place, to authoritarian rule by their president, which included an "anti-corruption" campaign that conveniently consolidated power and removed other power blocs. Doesn't sound like they are maintaining the balance you extol

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#74

Post by [deleted] »

astronautjones wrote: post #61
clubm8 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe in the short term China will "win" (America declines, Chine's influence rises). Only to find that they are unable to develop their own tech, come up to solutions to keeping said tech running 10-20 years down the line, etc etc. I could totally see a future where America gets embroiled in a civil war and China's experiencing a sort of "island syndrome" ala Japan where all their tech was advanced at one point a…

USA's best and brightest minds are currently being used to figure out how to sell ads for corrupt social media companies

[deleted]

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#75

Post by westiseast »

toyg wrote: post #67
api wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has also totally rejected environmentalism and monetary discipline. Need energy? Burn coal with no scrubbers and fake the air quality data. Have waste? Dump it in rivers and bribe local officials. Economy slowing? Print money. Need infrastructure? Print the money to pay for it. Western liberals say ignoring the environment will catch up to them. Western conservatives say you can't ignore fiscal discipline forev…

The USSR looked similarly all-powerful between ‘45 and ‘78, roughly. If we say “new China” started its rise in the late ‘80s/ early ‘90s, we should expect another decade or so of its power looking “inevitable” before cracks start to be a bit too big to ignore - possibly longer, considering their superior scale.

The timescales are slightly shorter than many people think - the 1970s-90s were basically a whole scale westernization of Chinese society. Big economic reforms in the mid-late 1990s really freed up the economy from the burdens of inefficient state enterprise, and then real insane growth started in the 2000s and post 2008 with huge quantitive easing.

A lot of the “China can’t fail” rhetoric suggests it’s been a 40-50yr trend that defies all critics, but it’s only in the last 10-20 years we’ve seen a rise of this insane wealth, massive debt fueled economy, reverse in liberalization trends etc.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#76

Post by clubm8 »

astronautjones wrote: post #61
clubm8 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe in the short term China will "win" (America declines, Chine's influence rises). Only to find that they are unable to develop their own tech, come up to solutions to keeping said tech running 10-20 years down the line, etc etc. I could totally see a future where America gets embroiled in a civil war and China's experiencing a sort of "island syndrome" ala Japan where all their tech was advanced at one point a…

USA's best and brightest minds are currently being used to figure out how to sell ads for corrupt social media companies

> USA's best and brightest minds are currently being used to figure out how to sell ads for corrupt social media companies

Are they really the brightest if they can't find a way to make a high wage without working in advertising? :)

Also LOL at calling advertising, a scummy but legal industry "corrupt" in a conversation about China

https://web.archive.org/web/20081210040251/http://www.csis.o...

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#77

Post by simion314 »

simonh wrote: post #68
simion314 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Can NATO or US force any law they want? If I am in a small country and decide that patents and copyright is evil should I expect a war? If not what do you mean by military in your comment? As I see it if you don't like China politics don't do business with them and do not involve the army(though we all know some big countries like to get involved in smaller countries politics and force laws).

Most smaller countries depend on bigger ones for defence, and often for defence subsidies in order to support the strategic objectives of the bigger powers. So military considerations can be a huge factor in a way it just isn’t with China (not in the same ways, anyway).

Yeah, I know how it is, small countries get gifted one airplane in exchange on buying a dozen or more airplanes, ground vehicles, installing military bases.

My point is that it sucks that IP and copyright laws are forced by the countries with big armies, the big countries impose their values on the most small countries.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#78

Post by patrickg_zill »

scarcely wrote: post #53
Edmond wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP theft is an important part of the Chinese "Miracle" but it is short-sighted to focus too much on that...If IP access is all it took, I think we would have seen the Chinese achievement replicated in many other places.

America owes its very existence to the land it stole from Native Americans. It owes a huge part of its prosperity to the entire lives it stole from generations of black people by using them as draft animal (hence freeing the white man to think about science, mathematics, whatever). The entire material infrastructure that enabled the production of these fruits of the intellect is stolen, with direct violent human cons…

The land was not stolen any more than the native Americans stole it from someone else. Did they have no war before the Europeans came?

America had slavery, but unlike untold other empires and large countries, it ended it. It owes very little if any part of its port-1865 prosperity to the work of slaves, given the destruction wrought by the Civil War.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#79

Post by dingoegret »

scarcely wrote: post #53
Edmond wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP theft is an important part of the Chinese "Miracle" but it is short-sighted to focus too much on that...If IP access is all it took, I think we would have seen the Chinese achievement replicated in many other places.

America owes its very existence to the land it stole from Native Americans. It owes a huge part of its prosperity to the entire lives it stole from generations of black people by using them as draft animal (hence freeing the white man to think about science, mathematics, whatever). The entire material infrastructure that enabled the production of these fruits of the intellect is stolen, with direct violent human cons…

The fact this got down voted so much proves how American centric this site is. Disgusting

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#80

Post by seszett »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #12
Edmond wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP theft is an important part of the Chinese "Miracle" but it is short-sighted to focus too much on that...If IP access is all it took, I think we would have seen the Chinese achievement replicated in many other places.

Most countries don’t have the military or self-sufficient economics of China though. French Polynesia could probably never do this kind of thing to Japan for example.

> French Polynesia could probably never do this kind of thing to Japan for example.

Just a nitpick but French Polynesia, being French territory, is clearly not averse to stealing technology[0]. On the topic of high-speed trains precisely, I certainly would not be surprised if the TGV had "borrowed" some features from Japan's shinkansen.

[0] https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio...

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