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Why is China smashing its tech industry?

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Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#341

Post by muyuu »

itmayno wrote: post #191
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…

“ It's cracking down on private Internet companies that acquired too much power through network effects.” Sounds like smashing to me. Smashing down on private companies and innovations. Smashing down on private wealth and power. Smashing down on freedom and growth. You can tell the dictator is getting desperate if he stops the train of innovation.

Chinese mandarins don't believe all innovation is the same, and they also believe some of it may be deallocating capital from industry that brings capital influx into the country.

It's totally consistent with their long term plans since the 90s or so.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#342

Post by nbardy »

volta83 wrote: post #40

> 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 fr…

Stop being a coward today.

10 years at a FAANG take your money, quit

Study rocket science, photovoltaic cells.

Do something and do it now.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#343

Post by hnick »

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…

Problem here in Australia too.

TV aside, there has been some drama over this on Twitch. Streamers are shown gambling massive (to you or me) amounts of money daily. Kids watch this. It's entirely unregulated (maybe not in theory, but in practice). Some people have done investigations into the companies and they seem very shady. There's absolutely no reason to believe these companies aren't directly supporting or sponsoring the streamers monetarily, or even tweaking the numbers behind the scenes to make them lucky. It's been alleged for gacha games in the past, and I definitely believe people will go further for real money if they can.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#344

Post by hnick »

JTbane wrote: post #139
whymauri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Has there been a regulatory change that allows this, or has this been going on for some time? It was actually less regulated. There were gambling sites for children based on electronic collectibles from video games. It was becoming a billion dollar industry before Steam put their foot down. A friend was close to launching a venture in the space and their first year revenue projections were around 600k assuming middl…

There are still tons of games out there with gacha/loot box style elements, basically gambling for kids.

The original lootboxes were trading card games - MTG or Pokemon.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#345

Post by HWR_14 »

hintymad wrote: post #339
HWR_14 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is simply unacceptable that a toilet ordered by the air force cost more than $20k Why do people get hung up on this? Specialty parts cost a lot.

From what I learned, it’s not specialty. Congress has a law that certain percentage of military provisioning must be domestic. The military had to meet the quota by buying toilets, and someone set up a factory in the US just to supply the military, so the unit price was through the roof. This became an example of how the US manufacturing has weakened so much.

The example I'm aware of is that the toilet seats needed to be a specific shape to fit in a specific aircraft, and that they only needed 1XX of them. The $20,000 price tag is because they had to pay for molds, testing, various other fixed costs required to operate, etc.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#346

Post by deepnotderp »

caeril wrote: post #96
nceqs3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happ…

“ If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Sci-fi has a long history of inspiring technology, eg Tsiolkovsky

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#347

Post by hunglee2 »

endymi0n wrote: post #196
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…

Wow, it‘s actually public… in hindsight, I should probably not be surprised, but it has the same eery feel to me like when I learned that Hitler had actually written down all of his plans around eradicating Jews and Germanic world dominance in his book „Mein Kampf“ a decade before he put it into reality — it was just that nobody took it seriously since they thought he was a lunatic. Maybe it‘s about time to read the…

https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/ - does a pretty good job of translation of Chinese law. Another part of the problem is the language barrier - not many China commentators in media mainstream actually understand Mandarin or read Chinese - and end up recycling the interpretations of the very few that can

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#348

Post by andy_ppp »

trasz wrote: post #328
andy_ppp wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh right, apologists for the sterilisation of women and the destruction of a culture, nice.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#349

Post by andy_ppp »

papito wrote: post #294
andy_ppp wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yes I completely agree, we will probably see this happen unfortunately. It makes me very worried about the future.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#350

Post by aaron695 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #345
hintymad wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I learned, it’s not specialty. Congress has a law that certain percentage of military provisioning must be domestic. The military had to meet the quota by buying toilets, and someone set up a factory in the US just to supply the military, so the unit price was through the roof. This became an example of how the US manufacturing has weakened so much.

The example I'm aware of is that the toilet seats needed to be a specific shape to fit in a specific aircraft, and that they only needed 1XX of them. The $20,000 price tag is because they had to pay for molds, testing, various other fixed costs required to operate, etc.

This article talking about this sells it as they managed to get the cost down through 3D printing, I'm absolutely willing to bet it cost the Airforce way more than contracting it out. The cost of a commercial 3d printer with security, to autocad it up, training staff, sending people into the field to measure it.

To have a trained air force employee designing toilet seats is questionable, is that what the military should do? Maybe and the air force should explore 3D printers, so it's a waste that might be worth it. But lets not pretend $10,000 went to $300.

The Air Force’s $10,000 toilet cover - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-...

I wonder if there are any follow ups on what else they 3D printed?

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