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Arm China Has Gone Rogue

semianalysis.substack.com

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Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#231

Post by obviouslynotme »

benreesman wrote: post #131

The PRC isn’t fucking around. They’re playing for the whole show and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time. Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you w…

>e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you win in full-contact sports

So we need a totalitarian government to compete with their totalitarian government? No thank you. If your company gets ripped off by the Chinese, like many do, then that is your company's fault.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#232

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #120
hintymad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an honest question: why could China catch up to the western countries in many verticals and even become the dominant player, while in history the western could stay lightyears ahead of developing countries, no matter how hard the developing countries tried, with or without government interference or industrial espionage? What's changed?

> What's changed? Colonialism ended. The west was not light years ahead of, say, India, when it was first colonized. In the process of colonizing it, India's industrialization was stopped. Countries didn't somehow fall into 'developed' and 'undeveloped' buckets by divine fiat. The latter tended to be invaded by the former, with the occupiers focusing more on wealth extraction, than development. Once that parasitic re…

[deleted]

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#233

Post by engineer_22 »

reaperducer wrote: post #130
klelatti wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that it's not the 51% (and I think some of the 51% may be held by non Chinese investors) that has been key but rather Allen Wu having the seal - so even without control of the board he's still been able to get control of the company.

Allen Wu having the seal For those of us not familiar with Chinese business practices, is this an actual seal? Like someone would use to frank documents, or squish into hot wax to seal documents? Or is it a symbolic seal, like a legal document, or something else?

Yes, there are corporate seals in the USA as well. Sometimes it is an embosser, others an ink stamp.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#234

Post by benreesman »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #217
benreesman wrote: post #131

The PRC isn’t fucking around. They’re playing for the whole show and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time. Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you w…

> For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent society. A large digression, but I do wish we didn't need these silly ritual flagellations each time we mention that the West was actually pretty good. To call these things "human rights violations" implies that the West defied some…

I think you make a fair point and arguably better articulate something I was trying to say. People, institutions, and nations do in fact need to be viewed in the context of the relevant time period, applying present-day values to e.g. the Framers is a silly waste of time. They did what they did, hopefully it was their best, and there seems to be lasting value.

On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to expect a civilization to spring socially equitable from the forehead of Zeus, we should also continue to strive to be better.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#235

Post by kazen44 »

baq wrote: post #162
bserge wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess it's the American Dream of the rich, "anyone can make it (on the Chinese 1.3 billion people market)".

The anarcho-capitalist’s nightmare: realization that you need a strong government to enforce fair, intervention-free market.

one of the best arguments against anarcho-capitalism is that without a goverment, there would be no market to speak of.

why exchange in trade if no one can guarantee it will be beneficial for you? Why would the other party trade instead of just stealing your stuff? You could ofcourse defend against by carrying a bigger stick then the next guy or cooperating with others.

Which starts to look an awful lot like the organised structure of a state..

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#236

Post by throwaway894345 »

n8cpdx wrote: post #190
benreesman wrote: post #131

The PRC isn’t fucking around. They’re playing for the whole show and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time. Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you w…

The West and Americans (in my experience) take for granted that civil rights, free speech, democracy, and other values automatically create better outcomes than authoritarianism. This is how it was taught to me, and it seems baked into the culture. Unfortunately, the reality is that while (in my opinion) liberal values create better outcomes, it takes care and concerted effort to get the benefits. A democracy isn't a…

> Chinese people got to go to movie theaters and eat at restaurants and dance at raves for most of 2020 and 2021; I, as an American, could not.

I suspect this is largely CCP propaganda.

> The United States is not particularly effective at national security (2021-01-06), foreign engagements (Afghanistan and Iraq, last 20 years), or social mobility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...). The media ecosystem is a mess (due to purposeful de-regulation), voting rates are abysmal, education is poor by rich world standards

I'm not sure that I accept these as facts, but even so, I believe you're comparing the US to other democracies. If you compare the cohort of democracies to the cohort of authoritarian regimes, how do the democracies compare? I suspect China is an outlier among authoritarian regimes, and even while we marvel at Chinese foreign policy, their per-capita GDP and other indicators don't suggest that they are meeting our Western standards for "effective government".

And even if an authoritarian government is more effective at establishing a global hegemony, what's the point if it comes at the cost of its citizens' basic rights, prosperity, etc?

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#237

Post by bllguo »

denverkarma wrote: post #64

So when is the western world going to wake up and realize that China is a cutthroat competitor that does not respect western law or traditions, cannot be trusted, and intends to dominate the world? This seems especially troubling for the tech world as IP is easily copied and the only thing that really protects it is the legal system, which China has shown over and over they don't care about.

they want to dominate the world? shall we compare war involvement or record of foreign influence? this is literally a response to an American act of aggression to cut China off of access to chips. but we're the peaceful good guys?

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#238

Post by benreesman »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #231
benreesman wrote: post #131

The PRC isn’t fucking around. They’re playing for the whole show and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time. Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you w…

>e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you win in full-contact sports So we need a totalitarian government to compete with their totalitarian government? No thank you. If your company gets ripped off by the Chinese, like many do, then that is your company's fault.

There’s a little daylight between having a central committee and having legislators who don’t even pretend that the top of their to-do list every day is preventing, ya know, legislation. This is a non-partisan observation. Everybody pulls this shit these days.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#239

Post by throwaway894345 »

benreesman wrote: post #234
throwaway894345 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent society. A large digression, but I do wish we didn't need these silly ritual flagellations each time we mention that the West was actually pretty good. To call these things "human rights violations" implies that the West defied some…

I think you make a fair point and arguably better articulate something I was trying to say. People, institutions, and nations do in fact need to be viewed in the context of the relevant time period, applying present-day values to e.g. the Framers is a silly waste of time. They did what they did, hopefully it was their best, and there seems to be lasting value. On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to exp…

To be perfectly clear, I wasn't rebutting you, but the bizarre anti-West kayfabe culture.

> On the other hand while it is in fact unreasonable to expect a civilization to spring socially equitable from the forehead of Zeus, we should also continue to strive to be better.

I don't think even the most zealous western chauvinist would disagree with this. :)

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#240

Post by dang »

nootropicat wrote: post #173

Diversity happened. Civic nationalism empirically doesn't work [1]. Societies need some level of individual sacrifice for the group to prosper over the long term, and diversity kills the impulse to do that. Favoring the ingroup over the outgroup is a stable state for groups, starting from ants and ending with humans. Trying to eradicate those impulses was perhaps noble, but ended in utter failure. Hapless attempts at…

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents, and please stop using HN for ideological battle or flamewar, especially race war. Those things are not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28332301.

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