Why is China smashing its tech industry? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#31

Post by ilamont » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

I believe we're seeing yet another example of an ossified and hierarchal Chinese Communist Party struggling to maintain control over real or imagined internal threats.

Under the CCP, the "rights" pendulum swings wildly for society and the economy, alternating between openness and crackdowns. Some policies seem well thought out, and then you have edicts which seem impulsive and extreme with little regard to long-term consequences or the impact on China's people.

100 flowers/Great Leap Forward.

Cultural Revolution/Deng reforms.

Tiananmen/hypernationalism.

Tech has enjoyed a relatively open hand for two decades. Now the fist is closed and comes smashing down.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#32

Post by billytetrud » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

You have a rosy view of the oppressive actions of an authoritarian government. It should be noted that the author does not think that is the reason China is doing what it's doing.

Netflix is not draining capitol and not sapping mental health. It was a massive innovation that saved people lots of time (wasted watching TV ads) and money ($10/mo rather than $100/mo for TV). It worked so well every other major media company has copied it's model.

Facebook is often shit on, but it was useful in it's time. It's a tool people can decide to use oe not use, and how to use it if they do. We're learning as a society how to do this.

But it's very clear the solution is not for a government to smash those companies. That is very clearly an evil action.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#33

Post by ASalazarMX » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #24

deltasixeight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is more than your classic "the CCP is just making moves to solidify it's own power." The article claims the actions taken by China also represent real philosophies about what constitutes economic health. They don't want their greatest minds optimizing ad tech or finding tax loop holes.

Tax loopholes would be accounting, not technology.

Fintech agrees and has motioned to change the subject

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#34

Post by epivosism » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

Is there a name for the question of distinguishing useful economic activity from rent-seeking? It seems tied up in lots of other system/corruption/control related questions - cancer, budget spending, regulation etc.

It feels like there can never be a trustable implementation of a "value or rentseeking?" oracle, since the system implementing it would also be under selection and pressure from the virtual gains to be had from corruption.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#35

Post by distribot » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #7

spiritplumber wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss being that optimistic. What happened?

> I miss being that optimistic. What happened? The optimism turned out to be naive? I mean, regardless of whatever "cyberspace" was originally imagined to be, in actuality it turned out to be bunch of Facebooks. And more often than not it's allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness. Or to summarize in 1996 terminology: cyberspace turned out to be land of timecubes.

The printing press also allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness.

I'm not convinced that previous systems of more centralized distribution of information (television networks and woodblock printing) were better than the ones that succeeded it.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#36

Post by tablespoon » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

88840-8855 wrote: post #19

dicomdan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re giving a lot of benefit of the doubt to the dictatorship. Establishing complete control over emerging power structures (tech industry) is more likely to be their goal.

In my eyes China is a technocratic autocracy, not a dictatorship. This would explain the hypothesis why they want their brains to work on rockets rather than ad tech, as OP assumed.

It's an authoritarian oligarchy currently trending towards more autocracy. I think people often have an unfortunate lack of political vocabulary, and therefor loosely use terms like "dictatorship" for any system with a large amount of political repression.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#37

Post by billytetrud » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #22

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.

When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#38

Post by cainxinth » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

deltasixeight wrote: post #10

cainxinth wrote: post #5

They want a big, powerful, capable tech industry... that will never even think of challenging the supremacy of the government. This is their way of reminding the tech sector of that latter part.

This article is more than your classic "the CCP is just making moves to solidify it's own power." The article claims the actions taken by China also represent real philosophies about what constitutes economic health. They don't want their greatest minds optimizing ad tech or finding tax loop holes.

There’s some truth to that, but call me cynical, when asked to guess whether a nation’s actions are primarily motivated by power seeking or philosophical principles, I usually assume power was the dominant factor.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#39

Post by jjoonathan » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #22

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.

Yeah, the day I realized that the economic notion of value was weighted according to the wealth of those creating the demand, while the colloquial definition generally isn't, a lot of mismatched puzzle pieces fell into place. It was probably the single most successful update to my worldview (measured in terms of predictive power) that I have ever made.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#40

Post by volta83 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

> There are certainly those in America who believe that Facebook and Google produce little of value relative to the profit they rake in; maybe China’s leaders, for reasons that will remain forever opaque to us, have simply reached the same conclusion.

Arguably, capturing most of your country's top talent with absurd salaries and putting them to work on world-critical challenges like... how to generate more revenue from advertisement or... how to create as many "phone-addicts" as possible... could be quantified as producing tons and tons of negative value.

If China's crackdown on "consumer-facing tech" is about this, that could be a very good thing for China long term.

I grew up wanting to work on NASA and putting stuff on space, and during university got offered 10x the NASA salaries at FAANG companies, and was to week to just say "no thanks".

10 years later I am starting to wonder what my legacy is going to be.