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China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

nytimes.com

101–110 of 110 posts

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#101
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You need process knowledge in addition to IP in order to make innovation and manufacturing happen. And China is really good at cultivating process knowledge, something the US is slowly ceding to them.

Transferring process knowledge is why, until very recently (Tesla, others?), all companies have been required to minority partner with a Chinese company in China and thus transfer their process knowledge along with IP.

China abandoned that requirement initially few months after Trump's trade war.

But things got escalated.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#102
post #66
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…

I would counter this by saying China has been and will always be an inward looking country. This alone limits its ability to be a global leader.

Every country is that way in some measure. The US plays sports which most people in the world don't even know exists(Baseball). Every country's politics is unique due to historical context, so are their cultures, religions and languages.

But all countries are also same in the way that we are all humans.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's NYTimes, not WaPo. And it's not a single author, there are 5 bylines Jonathan Ansfield and Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing. Claire Fu and Iris Zhao contributed research from Beijing, and Carolyn Zhang from Shanghai.

I meant to say that the author works for Washington Post

The author works for the NYT. Evidence: this article by the author, published by the Times.

Or are you saying they are secretly working for the WashPo?

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#104
Western economists doubted that innovation could take place under China’s rigid bureaucracy. They were proved wrong.

Western economists, politicians, and citizens are having a hard time realizing that the bigger rigid bureaucracy is in the west. Whether you are trying to develop housing in the bay area, or set up a new factory, or build mass transit, the bureaucracy tax of time and dollars is our biggest handicap. Things end up costing too much, taking to long, and being inferior.

California passed the high speed rail proposition ten years ago in 2008, we have spent billions, and have zero working miles of rail complete. Since 2008, China has built 15,500 miles of high speed rail.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#106
post #85

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, authoritarian…

> but it has only had 2 successful authoritarian leaders, both of whom were competent and benevolent. Which ones were benevolent?

Xiaoping Deng. He is a great man.

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

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The borders of all nations are determined by some previous conquest and the great nations are the ones that were most successful conquering their neighbors, but what made them able to do so where most could not? The ability to conquer obviously can't be taken by conquest. Only recently has IP been as or more valuable than natural resources, but the concept remains. Why has Nigeria stuck to stealing a few of our dolla…

The point is that ALL superpowers and empires were created by some unilateral expropriation, and being able to defend that. I was looking for a counterpoint to that. The "any random country" comparison wasn't what I was going for

Eh, I'll give it a go, although I realize the goalposts have not been properly fixed here. You can argue about what a "great country" is, what "theft" is and what is a "valuable resource". No country is a saint, at least no large country.

Anyway, I nominate Germany as a counterpoint to your thesis. Germany's greatness has not been built on theft, but on hard work and skill of the Germans. When Germany tried theft, or rather conquest, they failed badly, but when they got on with developing their own country rather than war, they succeeded pretty spectacularly.

Do you agree...?

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#108
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that ALL superpowers and empires were created by some unilateral expropriation, and being able to defend that. I was looking for a counterpoint to that. The "any random country" comparison wasn't what I was going for

Eh, I'll give it a go, although I realize the goalposts have not been properly fixed here. You can argue about what a "great country" is, what "theft" is and what is a "valuable resource". No country is a saint, at least no large country. Anyway, I nominate Germany as a counterpoint to your thesis. Germany's greatness has not been built on theft, but on hard work and skill of the Germans. When Germany tried theft, or…

I proposed Germany in this same thread and it got shot down because they didnt pay market rate for anything

Others said the Marshall Plan was a subsidy and they also defaulted in their debt

So I would have agreed 22 hours ago but not now

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#109
post #32
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…

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…

They're working on the enviro bit:

> China is the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States.

Re: China Rules – The Land That Failed to Fail

#110
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The west was sure the chinese approach would not work"? Is that why the west invested trillions of dollars in china over the past 4 decades? I expect very little from the nytimes, but this is a new low for them. Did the nytimes assume Gordon Chang is "the west" and then run with that false premise? If anything, we have gambled our future and put all our eggs in one basket - china. We looked to china to be the manufa…

> The west helped create modern china. It was our money, resources, expertise, technology and markets that helped create modern china. Why would we invest trillions in a country expecting it to fail? I think the expectation was that it's political system would fail, not the country itself, and a liberal democracy would emerge from that failure. Much of the investment was sanctioned by the (now disproven) idea that ca…

ha?How could it not fail when its political system fails? China’s history is full of turnarounds and disasters from the political failures
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