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Why is China smashing its tech industry?

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#91

Post by jeswin »

cyberpunk wrote: post #72
jeswin wrote: post #45

Asia is headed towards war - it almost seems inevitable. Xi has publicly committed to not leaving Taiwan invasion to the next generation. China is focused on building an industrial base that complements its military power while generating cash, and internet software startups aren't going to help. For the rest of Asia, they'd do well to militarize; for Japan and Australia to consider getting nuclear weapons or hosting…

Can you elaborate on why you think it seems inevitable? From my armchair, I can't see a benefit to China for kicking off a superpower war; they're already pulling ahead in STEM, their economy is fairly safe and not really that dependant on exports, quality of life is improving massively, infra is improving.. ?

I don't mean imminent war, but that it's headed there. From articles in Chinese news sites, it seems Xi wants to attach reunification to his legacy. The thing with dictatorships is that ultimately it will depend on what one person wants to achieve.

Xi is of course not going to risk a war that he won't win easily. So there's enough time for the rest of the world to reverse the wholesale shift of industrial capacity into China.

Taiwan had nuclear program in the 70s which would have prevented war and invasion. That was nipped under pressure from everyone else, so I imho defending a democratic nation must be a shared responsibility.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#92

Post by mc32 »

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…

It would be quite interesting to see a cleaving between us in the “West” and those who follow China’s model.

I can see the disadvantage of the saccharine part of our economy and the advantages of focusing on nuts and bolts.

It’s the difference between letting people decide what’s right for them and having a more planned society. Obviously planned societies have been a recurring theme in history, most notably socialism and its chronological counterpart national socialism. Neither made good faith efforts and both resulted in millions of deaths. But we also experienced unnecessary deaths from unregulated parts of the economy, though not as many deaths and at least it involved more free will.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#93

Post by refenestrator »

tablespoon wrote: post #36
88840-8855 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know this is just semantics but I actually like 'technocratic autocracy' better than any sort of oligopoly to describe China. There are no other poles of power, the army even reports directly to the party rather than the government. And, so far, they've been quite dynamic on the technocratic front, people get fired for incompetence despite having a political base.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#94

Post by dotcommand »

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.

> This article is more than your classic "the CCP is just making moves to solidify it's own power."

"And so, in classic CCP fashion, it was time to smash."

It's your standard state propaganda.

At least he attempts to cover his bases: "China’s leaders famously want to prevent the emergence of alternative centers of power, but is the West so different in this regard?"

"For those outside China’s byzantine, opaque nexus of party, government, and big business, it’s very difficult to figure out what’s going on." I guess Noah Smith is in the inside so he knows his stuff?

It's your standard "CCP bad because CCP is friends with iran due to BRI" propaganda you find all over traditional and social media.

The real question is who is noah smith and why was his article spammed on hn? That would be an interesting article.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#95

Post by drevil-v2 »

rvn1045 wrote: post #25
ru552 wrote: post #6

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

The scale that these companies operate on requires huge innovations in software engineering and computer science. Think about all the distributed systems that have come out of places like Facebook and Google over the last 2 decades.

Distributed systems that, more or less, are only really needed to run similar social networks as Facebook or Google?

That’s like saying the Cook maybe fat and morbidly obese but look at how efficiently he consumes such a large number of calories every day.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#96

Post by caeril »

nceqs3 wrote: post #21
anotherman554 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised you put Netflix in there with Facebook. Do they not have television in China?

Yeah I agree with the FB part but Netflix? The chinese audience consumes huge amounts of video content.

Asia/Pacific region consumes, on average, 154 minutes per day of all media, compared to North America's 293.

I'm old enough to remember the general optimism we in technology had about the unlocking of human productive potential as automation and globalization freed us from the constraints of scarcity. Marshall Brain, Clay Shirky, and many others write extensively on this zeitgeist.

But that's not what ultimately happened. the zombification of our attention that began in the 1950s has accelerated in the last two decades. We're not volunteering our free time to space exploration collectives, life extension self-experimentation in biohacking hackerspaces, or even traditional enterprises like Habitat for Humanity.

We're clicking heart icons on posts bemoaning billionaires conducting private space exploration, getting angry at CRISPR researchers on Twitter, and passively consuming "marathons" of Hollywood renditions of dystopian future worlds.

This is to say nothing of the fact that we don't even have all that much more free time to begin with. Not because we're all working for SpaceX or in cancer research laboratories, but because the vast majority of the very people CAPABLE of doing so (IQ is in limited supply and not evenly distributed) are actively recruited to make iphone apps more addictive, make pornography engagement higher, and make front-running retail options order flow faster.

Apropos of Netflix (or in this specific example, Amazon Prime Video): There are likely 40 million hours passively poured into marathons of The Expanse in North America, by people with an average IQ in excess of 115 (just by virtue of the type of audience). What if half (approximately the NA/Asia split) of those hours were instead poured into activities that actually got us closer to the technologies depicted?

Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#97

Post by tablespoon »

bennysomething wrote: post #87
tablespoon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's "value to society" people's values vary that's why we have markets so people can decide what they value by deciding to buy it. That's a difficult question to answer generally, however it's also clearly not one that markets "solve." That's easy to see with the example of addictive drugs (which the market shows can be very profitable), unless you're willing to argue there's social value in destroying many peopl…

The point I'm trying to make is people often use the term "value to society" like it's an answered question. We know it's not answered as that people's values vary. Centrally deciding what is useful has proven to be disastrous (see the Soviet Union and every other centrally planned economy). Free markets allow us to express our values at an individual level rather than having an authority deciding what to value.

I know the point you're trying to make; it's ubiquitous. The point I'm making is that "free markets" won't answer the question either, and often result in things that are obviously against "value to society."

One little thing I find annoying is that whenever someone points out some issue with free markets, someone always seems to reply with something that amounts to "have you considered free markets?" Whatever the problem, markets are the solution, even if the problem stems from markets themselves.

The Soviet Union had serious problems, but it's a mistake to reason from that to the conclusion that markets are in some way ideal. They have their own problems, and we don't have access to an ideal system, so we have to try to deal with individual problems and make tradeoffs.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#98

Post by toss1 »

clydethefrog wrote: post #41
toss1 wrote: post #16

The Western financial elites thought they were exploiting cheap Chinese labor by promoting outsourcing of manufacturing - it would make for far greater profits. Meanwhile the Chinese were exploiting the West's myopic focus on quarterly profits to gain access to and experience in fabricating and designing the top western technology. The scale of this strategic blunder by the Western societies will be considered of his…

Taking a quick look at the YC S21 offering that is posted here - it seems all this capital is still mostly based on software that stimulates more consuming.

Yup, consume now, profit some this quarter. Nevermind putting in the effort to invent new technologies that could profit and dominate for decades.

It is exactly the myopic financialist's approach. It works great for a while, juicing artificial growth. Meanwhile it starves the real growth engines, so when it stops working, there is no hope of recovery before failure (but the finance wizards have by then moved on).

Normally this applies at the scale of companies, but here it applies on the scale of nations or societies.

Ignore at our peril.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#99

Post by cryptica »

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…

I was thinking along the same lines so it's interesting to see that others have come to the same conclusion.

IMO, large parts of the tech industry are artificial and fueled entirely by monetary policy.

If reserve banks in the west stopped expanding the money supply, large parts of the tech industry would be wiped out; they would quickly be revealed as negative-value industries.

With limited autonomy over their own global monetary policies, this was the only way China could fix this problem.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#100

Post by freebuju »

ub99 wrote: post #66
yarky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is probably talking about the psychological impact of washing Netflix restlessly during long periods of time. That generates GDP, but the net impact on society might not be positive. Same thing with the psychological issues associated with social media addiction.

People watched TV for many hours daily for decades now. I agree that it’s not healthy, but it’s not purely a new technology’s fault.

The TV always has been a stationary device. But now you can carry it with you everywhere you go in the form of a Netflix-capable device ala smartphone/laptop.
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