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Why is China smashing its tech industry?

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Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#171

Post by tablespoon »

distribot wrote: post #35
tablespoon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

I'd dispute that, after making one clarification to my original comment: I meant "unprecedented relative effectiveness." At no other time has any rando with a batshit insane idea been able to spread it with near equal access to same the tools people use to spread real knowledge and understanding. To contrast it with the previous system, it's like hiring a bunch of incompetents and then getting rid of code review.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#172

Post by polote »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #165
Animats wrote: post #150

China is not "smashing its tech industry". It's cracking down on private Internet companies that acquired too much power through network effects. This is completely consistent with CCP doctrine. Anything that central has to be state-owned. Xi declared this year that while digitization is important, “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.” Right. China, remember, h…

Maybe the headline's a bit misleading, but what you're saying is almost exactly what the article is talking about. (The article immediately refutes the notion of "smashing its tech industry" right away)

>Maybe the headline's a bit misleading

Nah, a lot of people just don't read the articles before commenting, whether it is on HN or anywhere else

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#174

Post by ffggvv »

citilife wrote: post #69

The U.S. has been in the process of delisting Chinese companies. I personally suspect that China wanted to get a jump on the effort and in turn force U.S. pension & hedge funds to lose $400B. https://www.wsj.com/articles/investors-rethink-china-bets-af... That's a huge amount of money and will dramatically and negatively impact the public pension funds. It's not about the tech, it's about the economic war between Chi…

a lot of chinese also hold baba and some of these stocks

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#175

Post by djanogo »

I am not surprised after seeing how US tech companies created their own rules what public can discuss and undermined democratically elected leaders. They don't want Chinese versions of Jack D, MarkZ, and numerous MSM groups. No country would want social media companies that US now has.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#176

Post by Apocryphon »

mc32 wrote: post #157
senko wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're moving the goalposts. Whether reading is better than watching is an interesting debate unrelated to the topic at hand. I'd happily veggie out on a couch with a favorite book series and live in fantasyland for days (alas, real world interferes...).

I don’t think so. Of course we can read pulp. Evenso, I doubt people would read as much pulp as they’d watch all you can stream programming. Given the option of gorging on books or gorging on Netflix over a long weekend dawn till dusk, I bet most people would choose Netflix. If you randomly divided the people into those two groups and made them read and the others watch, more readers would wash out than watchers.

Just wait until VR fulfills its hype.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#177

Post by ativzzz »

pm90 wrote: post #142
rakmos wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the giant gaping time sink that is the video game industry. I also think including this in the discussion will, perhaps, emphasize the nuance of what I believe you're indirectly referencing -- the economics of how humans choose to spend their time (sometimes referred to as the "Attention Economy"). I believe literally optimizing for something such as GDP fails to take into account freedom / liberty which i…

The video game industry is one of the key factors to the success of the US technology industry. Some of the most innovative software is written by game developers. As we move into a future where AR/VR and digital worlds will become commerce hubs, the US is arguably incredibly well set up to take advantage of it. Video game bashing seems like another moral panic to me. People are spending more time playing video games…

The argument I get from the article is that the video game industry will not strengthen the U.S. geopolitically versus China compared to investing into "hard" technology like better semiconductors or more advanced military hardware.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#178

Post by lamontcg »

neutronicus wrote: post #115
Mizza wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hijacking this comment a bit, but I haven't watched real TV in a very long time but have been tuning in again because of the Olympics and Jeopardy. I'm seeing an incredible amount of ads for companies that let you gamble real money on your phone. Sometimes it's back to back to back to back commercials for online app casinos. This seems really dangerous and a sign of a tragically unhealthy and predatory economy - I ca…

I listen to a lot of basketball podcasts and they are all , even the biggest national ones, trying to get people to gamble It seems like it's gotten a lot worse after COVID, though

There was a court decision recently (2 years ago?) that started to open up online gambling in the US.

I follow soccer, and right after that mlssoccer.com started publishing vegas betting odds for all the games, and ESPN FC started using UK betting odds for EPL and EUFA competitions.

They're definitely warming up Americans to the idea of normalizing betting and sports betting in the mainstream.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#179

Post by itmayno »

logimame wrote: post #162
itmayno wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The native citizens will come to HN and offer some rationalization. The non citizens will offer others. The reason is very simple. The dictator is paranoid about losing control and getting killed. Simple as that. Long version: when you are facing internal party conflicts, alliance between US-UK-Japan-Australia-India-Taiwan-South Korea-EU which accounts for 90% of worlds wealth and war power 10x the magnitude and is a…

And the alliance countries you've listed are also suffering from those exact same problems (climate change, Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, deindustrialization, widespread unrest, a hopeless young generation). And debatably, some of them have much worse on some fronts than China. I do think that every country in this world, whether it be the US, China, or my country, are experiencing the same eff…

Sure some countries have some of the same problems, I don’t disagree. However, the magnitude of the problem is 10x worse for China. Remember that China is still extremely poor - 600M lives on $100/month. And another 500M lives on $1000/month. All this is the party’s doing, and the people won’t forget it. So when things goes bad like it is now for China, it will go really bad for its dictator.

Also other countries prob don’t have the problem of “what if the dictator was killed or dies early, and civil war and political struggle ensues”

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#180

Post by lasagnaphil »

triceratops wrote: post #156
jefftechentin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how valid but I think a case from this hypothesized Chinese Government perspective can be made even without criticizing Netflix itself. When Hollywood was built in the 1920's it was not exactly the backbone of the economy. The article argues that the Chinese Government sees value in the economy beyond GDP goes up and cash flows good. Technology and manufacturing are important to national security. The articl…

> “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.” This is a valid point, and I tend to agree with it. However I see entertainment as part of the "real" economy. It's an incredibly old industry, provides real value to nearly every human being, creates high-, medium-, and low-skilled employment across a wide variety of disciplines, can allow your culture to punch above its…

The real problem is that when the basic infrastructure that maintain the entertainment industry is gone, then the whole thing breaks down in shambles. For example, someday there might be a global shortage of electronics due to geo-political factors, and then you will have no chips to make those fancy consoles and PCs with.
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