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

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#321

Post by dmitriy_ko » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

xiaq wrote: post #278

jurmous wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands gambling is either done by the state owned company with all profit going to state treasury or heavily regulated when done online. All to prevent gambling addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Casino It seems harmful to let gambling be unregulated... Even loot boxes in games are illegal https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/10/30/netherlands-rules-...

I lived in Eindhoven for two years and passed by its Holland Casino every week. I never knew it was run by the Dutch state! There is a Chinese Internet slang "智商税" ("IQ tax"), used to describe products with questionable actual value, like pseudoscience-based health products, luxurious goods with crazy price tags. The idea is that only people with poor judgement would buy such products, and in doing so are being taxed…

Is organic food an IQ tax?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#322

Post by hintymad » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

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…

I think you're spot on, and the author's assessment is accurate: "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"

In the perspective of Chinese government, it is simply unacceptable that a toilet ordered by the air force cost more than $20k, or the number of ship manufacturers diminishes over years, or the average age of NASA engineers went from below 36 to above 55, or the best minds of the country spends their prime time figuring out how to increase CTR for ads revenue. Manufacturing and advanced research is a key to a nation, and China recognizes it.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#323

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

xiaq wrote: post #278

jurmous wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands gambling is either done by the state owned company with all profit going to state treasury or heavily regulated when done online. All to prevent gambling addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Casino It seems harmful to let gambling be unregulated... Even loot boxes in games are illegal https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/10/30/netherlands-rules-...

I lived in Eindhoven for two years and passed by its Holland Casino every week. I never knew it was run by the Dutch state! There is a Chinese Internet slang "智商税" ("IQ tax"), used to describe products with questionable actual value, like pseudoscience-based health products, luxurious goods with crazy price tags. The idea is that only people with poor judgement would buy such products, and in doing so are being taxed…

German equivalent is "Dummensteuer"(tax for being stupid) regarding lottery.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#324

Post by mc32 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 12:13 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #277

mc32 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably depends on inner will and psychological stage of mind. Do you mind being unproductive and such.

Maybe I'm different. Passive entertainment is dull to me. I don't watch other people play sports, I want to play them myself. Traveling and looking at sights rapidly gets very dull.

Yes, I'd say you're not the "binge watcher". It's a phenomenon.[1] According to some researchers, this is an understudied phenomenon which may have negative correlation with mental health[2]. Of course Netflix would be loath to admit this.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge-watching

[2]http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2019/04/kruger-binge-wa...

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#325

Post by ghomrassen » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

thujlife wrote: post #312

viscanti wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of the 5 year plan outlined the strategy behind why the CCP went after DIDI? I'm genuinely curious and it might be more useful to link to the relevant parts. Some people might actually be interested in reading those and better understanding this.

anti monopoly?

Didi doesn't have a monopoly in China. Meituan is also a large player in the space along with hundreds of tiny ones.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#326

Post by ghomrassen » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

itmayno wrote: post #318

scarmig wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 500M who live on $1k/month is a point of pride for the CCP; it's one of the legitimizers (probably the primary one) for its rule. China from 1980 onwards has produced the largest and most rapid wealth generation process in history. Now, you can come up with counterfactuals about why it would have happened anyway, and that's a pretty reasonable position to take. But acting like the $1k/month figure is somehow damn…

I like how you conveniently gloss over the $100/month folks. And the $1k/month folks are still having a hard time buying a $300k house to get married and have children, while taking care of the elderly parents. Meanwhile they know about the party princelings driving around in lamborghinis and buying fendi bags to show on social media. Oh yeah, the $100/month folks know too. And they know about the yearly flooding tha…

'Poverty alleviation' is one of their current blockbuster initiatives that gets massive air time. TV shows, documentaries, news reports, all focused on how committed the government is to fighting it.

How much is actually happening? Fuck knows. The government controls the press and the metrics coming out.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#327

Post by ghomrassen » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

papito wrote: post #236

China is "cooling" certain sectors, to spur growth in physical tech and manufacturing. This is where the future power is - not in social networks and ad sales, it's in stuff . Just look at what happens when we can't manufacture our own chips. Car factories halt. Personal computing prices spike. Military tech sputters. China is doing what the U.S. would normally do in an effective anti-monopoly action, if our system w…

They are not doing this for anti-monopoly reasons. It's purely because they thought the tech companies had more data, and therefore more power than them.

One of the examples I've seen over here, which I can't seem to find in English, was an infographic created by Didi. Either stupidly or some tech dick-waving contest, they made a chart of the most hard working government agencies in Beijing. They had all this work habit data and they released it as a fun little thing.

Suffice it to say, it's hard to find now and a smaller part of a overarching data issue that has gone out of the government's hands.

Totalitarians are gonna totalitarian, but now they've learned to do it effectively and use the terminology the free world does to make it sound righteous.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#328

Post by trasz » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

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…

Yeah, I’m sure the Uyghurs would much prefer the US treatment, namely being murdered from safe distance, over the Chinese genocide, which is essentially a youth correction facility, but for adults.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#329

Post by 55555 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #53

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…

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…

Interesting. Can you name some of the apps you've been seeing advertised?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#330

Post by 55555 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

lucasyvas wrote: post #113

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 live in Canada and noticed these same ads - what is this garbage? It seemed insanely predatory and unethical. I've never seen anything like this in my life and had the exact same reaction.

Which apps are being advertised?