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Why is China smashing its tech industry?

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Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#291

Post by sudosysgen »

onepointsixC wrote: post #212
mountainb wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China produces more steel in a month than the US does in an entire year of all types. US steel production is around 7% of Chinese steel production. Could the US ramp up steel production etc. on a crash basis under war conditions? Yes, but the overall picture is not great, given that China could also ramp up its production under the same constraints.

China could not ramp up steel production because it imports the raw materials from far away, mostly from Australia. Most of the raw materials, including energy and even food are imported into China. None of those supply chains would be left untouched in a war.

Well, no.

China is food-safe in calories. Not in dollars, because China produces less expensive food than they import.

While yes the raw materials are currently imported from Australia, in war-time they would be imported from Russia and Central Asia. Preparations are being made right now to facilitate this.

China is also #4 in iron ore reserves, they just aren't as economical as Australia's. Of course that doesn't matter much in wartime.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#292

Post by sudosysgen »

adventured wrote: post #226
onepointsixC wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China could not ramp up steel production because it imports the raw materials from far away, mostly from Australia. Most of the raw materials, including energy and even food are imported into China. None of those supply chains would be left untouched in a war.

And the first thing the US should do in the case of a large scale war involving China, is hand Australia nuclear weapons for its self-defense. It would guarantee an extraordinary cost if China were to decide to destroy Australia to try to annex their land for resource extraction. In the coming decades China will have the military capability to invade Australia, given China's rapid naval expansion. It's not a sure thi…

China is never going to attempt to do such a stupid thing as invade Australia thousands of kilometers away for resources.

It's much simpler, cheaper and faster to simply import the ores via land from Asia. Which is one of the core reasons for the BRI.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#293

Post by dragonwriter »

bennysomething wrote: post #283
Apocryphon wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the rise of fascism in Germany directly caused by crippling and humiliating terms levied at Versailles

But hardly an excuse to try to exterminate an entire groups of people and invade other countries. Don't think anyone argues Hitler national socialism would have been fine if it wasn't for the allies. But they do argue communism might have worked of it wasnt for the USA.

> Don't think anyone argues Hitler national socialism would have been fine if it wasn't for the allies.

I’d be surprised if there aren't neo-Nazis that argue exactly that, just as modern Leninists argue that Soviet Communism might have worked out great for everyone if it wasn't for the USA.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#294

Post by papito »

andy_ppp wrote: post #287
papito wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do notice is that the Chinese "rulers" seem to be more concerned about long-term well-being of its people, rather than trolling and performative assholery on Twitter. You might describe it as a dictatorship, but it's more data-driven than you might suspect. The Chinese keep the pulse on decisions they make, and if it's unpopular - it's gone. Of course there is a line - you can't go head-on against the Party an…

Pithy response: Tell that to the Uyghur Muslims? Are they not Chinese people? More serious response: I don’t want to live under a dictatorship where a generational change could lead to corruption and suffering on a much bigger scale. I think America as a project might also be lost and we should consider if this crazy idea (democracy, freedom of religion, free speech etc.) is worth fighting for. I think it is and I be…

I by no means suggest that the Chinese system is superior. It's a sort of system that can descend into runaway corruption pretty easily.

What I am saying is, given the decay of the western society, which is our fault entirely, our chances of staying ahead are slim.

The problem is, the Chinese have a team. They do not easily sell out. We, however, have an entire layer of high-level government that will readily go to the highest bidder. This is not sustainable. The only way to fix this is a crisis that unites us, but if a global pandemic did not do it, what will?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#295

Post by bsder »

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 breaks down when you consider that they are smashing Alibaba. Alibaba, like Amazon, is more about logistics than tech.

It's hard to argue that shlepping stuff around efficiently isn't "economic health".

As much as I hate Amazon and WalMart for being predatory, I applaud their logistics advances.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#296

Post by estaseuropano »

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…

Basically, its just antitrust which for a decade or two has not really been enforced in the US, which in turn might be a reason for many of the ills we see in economy and society today.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#297

Post by nostrademons »

epivosism wrote: post #233
exceptione wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are looking for the term Real Economy? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_economy "The real economy concerns the production, purchase and flow of goods and services (like oil, bread and labour) within an economy. It is contrasted with the financial economy, which concerns the aspects of the economy that deal purely in transactions of fiat money and other financial assets, which represent ownership or…

Hmmm, that's an interesting distinction; But someone who intelligently evaluates startups and picks a more genuinely productive one (likely to discover new pure gains) to give money to seems to qualify as a valid outcome. Unlike things which are very hard to justify, like directly impeding such people for selfish reasons. Perhaps it's about selfishness?

I think one useful distinction might be "Imagine that the state collapsed and you could no longer count on guys with guns to defend your pieces of paper. What happens to your income?"

The obvious losers would be landlords (the literal definition of "rent-seeking"), because without that piece of paper, there's just a tenant that lives in that apartment and you have no claim on any of their money. A carpenter who actively builds a house, however, is creating value: even without the state, people still need houses, and he has useful skills for things people want. Financial assets would crash, trademarks would become worthless, there'd be open season on patents. Medical care is still creating value. People who grow and prepare food would be very useful. Software engineering is in the middle: new software that people use is creating value, but just sitting on a service that you own exclusive rights to because it's protected by copyright & trade secret laws is rent-seeking.

This also illustrates a lot of the confusion between the two. Without the state to enforce contracts, there's no way to tie "the value you create now" with "getting paid for it later". When a carpenter builds a house, he now owns a house that he can pay for later - but without the state to enforce his right to the deed of his house, he's got nothing to sell and no reason to invest the labor in the first place. Same with the service that the software engineer creates and the drug that the biologist discovers.

You could look at rent-seeking as "property rights that have extended beyond the public's attention span".

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#298

Post by sudosysgen »

bennysomething wrote: post #225
neutronicus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think it's wrong to assume that the example of the Soviet Union proves anything. Maybe Free Markets were the best you could do with the quantitative decision-making tools available to Stalin, and maybe central planning with modern AI/ML/Operations Research techniques would be more successful than a free-market approach. Or maybe, the Soviet Union would have done just fine if there were no United States trying…

The violence and suppression in the Soviet union started immediately. Trying to control the economy from the centre requires individuals give up choice not just in what they buy, but where they work. As troksky said "In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall n…

This is not really correct. There is no inherent reason to remove choice in what you buy or where you work. Individuals in the Soviet Union once they had access to an urban habitation and once they were done with their first job after university were actually allowed to change jobs as they wished. If you had no university education, then you could change jobs as often as you wanted. And then you could buy what you wanted with your money. If it didn't exist then yes, invention was complicated and bureaucratic.

Beyond that, the argument of starvation is flawed, because Russia in the market system had worse famine than the USSR, and crucially, the USSR ended famine in the Russian Empire, not started it. You can argue there were unnecessary famines, and you'd be right, but saying that famine is an inevitable component of the Soviet system is wrong because there were one/two, at the beginning, and then none after.

The actual limit to Central Control assuming that the people doing the central control are willing to let consumer goods follow what people want is data and the ability to process it. In the USSR this was very low - data collection was manual and plans were updated every 5 years. The bureaucracy opposed every attempt to improve the situation as that would usurp their power. Beyond that the freedom that individuals can have as far as what to buy and which jobs to build is only limited by what others are willing to work for.

It's also not true that they attempted to control more aspects of someone's life as ever before. Feudal states had much more control than the Soviet state on their inhabitants. Some capitalist states had more control.

There are arguments to be made here. A poor rehash of a poor book written by an author who openly admitted that he started with conclusions and worked backwards from there is not one.

The reality is much more complex than market=good everything else=bad. Heck, even the Soviet weren't always opposed to markets. Their ideology didn't even explicitly oppose markets, only class distinction in production.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#299

Post by sudosysgen »

bennysomething wrote: post #286
andyzweb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. - Arthur Jensen (Network, 1976)

Are you arguing that this worked? Their centrally planned economy was a disaster of ineffeciency compared to western price based systems.

It worked and it didn't. In large parts the bureaucrats actually opposed linear programming methods, but really the biggest issue was data, not planning. They had no automated data collection systems to speak of.

Beyond that, the Soviet economy was solidly middling as far as the world was concerned.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#300

Post by sudosysgen »

viscanti wrote: post #222
xchaotic wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but they're 'smashing' the likes of Ant Financial who were doing predatory, unsecured lending on an unprecedented scale. So IMO the thesis of smashing 'Internet' companies is incorrect - they're just making sure economy doesn't go into bubble territory (lending fuels spending) and the likes of Jack Ma, who are detached from the party don't get too much power/money.

Or Didi who had the nerve to IPO outside of China on the NYSE on a date the CCP thought was too close to a party anniversary.

The Chinese central government was always really ambivalent about foreign IPOs. DiDi has too much control over domestic markets for the Chinese to be comfortable with foreign influence. I don't think it has anything to do with the anniversary.

Actually, the CCP never formally accepted the foreign stock ownership structure, for example. It was always a grey area.

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