381–390 of 467 posts
> This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights and free expression.
> The Chinese Century is increasingly palpable, for better or worse.
Ummm remember Guantanamo? Lol.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> BYD ... is leading in battery tech. Dang, it seemed not that long ago - 5 to 10 years - when Tesla had far superior battery tech. I know that isn't a short scale by tech standards but has BYD, and others, really leap-frogged that much? I'm not in that space myself and do not keep up with EV benchmarks but am curious what advances or other changes were made. I recall reading Ford battery technology was also very goo…
BYD is one of Tesla's battery suppliers. https://thedriven.io/2023/05/22/teslas-switch-to-byd-batteri...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's what the USA did during its industrialisation, it's what Japan did during its industrialisation. If you are looking to history to find ways to make your country prosper and industrialise, wouldn't you take those examples since they panned out pretty well?
The US, via a wide reaching, decades long government policy stole technology from other countries, passed that along to chosen domestic companies, and helped flood the market with the stolen/cheaper goods by supporting the companies doing so to produce goods to be sold at below cost? There's a lot of data around that in the history of the US and Japan?
NSA spied on Airbus in the 90s and passed along information to Boeing and MacDonell Douglas - paving the way for the latter to win a Saudi deal, over Airbus. Further, Boeing airliner development is subsidized by military purchases of its jets by the US government. Its easy to forget that increasing the influence of and/or financially benefitting American champions falls under the auspices of "National interest"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But it's still not at the point where it's cleaner per capita than the US and it's still quite far from that. China has significantly lower co2 emitted per capita than the US already. Per kWh no, but that's a different thing. AFAICT China's renewable growth is now outpacing demand growth significantly though, so that per-capita gap will widen, and the per kWh is steadily improving as well, and faster than the US. F…
> China has significantly lower co2 emitted per capita than the US already. Per kWh no, but that's a different thing. Sorry I meant per kWh not per capita. I don't disagree that China's path looks cleaner than the US right now, but also think "US decline" is viral hyperbole. It's the kind of thing people use on Twitter to get everyone to start discussing something. It's the kind of thing people say on Reddit all the…
This administration is attempting - and mostly succeeding - in "Dismantling the administrative state". They even provided a handy checklist (project 2025). That shit won't bw undone in 2.5 years.
BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion. It’s just one example among many of China charting the way forward and innovating while the US recedes further into backward-looking, protectionist policy. See: US politicians on both sides trying to ban BYD imports rather than incentivizing stiffer competition from US automakers. Another example: massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens…
One thing China did which was smart was to start training thousands of engineers about twenty years ago, about 10x the number of US engineering graduates. That's paying off now. It was also a little sad to see the treatment of Tesla by Biden. It was the world's leading EV company at the time but he excluded from EV get togethers because he wanted the unionised companies like GM to win. I think that sort of thing - pr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the government is basically subservient to him, and there isn't anything stopping it from making a company cease to exist other than the status quo. If, for whatever reason, him (or in his absence the rest of the government) decide they don't want it to exist, it won't exist. It might not be as explicit as how the CCP does it, but it will have the same result
This might be true for small companies, but it's delusional to think that Trump could unilaterally put an end to one of the major tech companies. It would be a huge legal, political and financial battle, at a minimum. Either you're overestimating Trump's power or underestimating the power of the tech companies.
Good luck suing the White House, sovereign immunity basically makes this impossible in most cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some countries have stronger rule of law protections and social customs that enforce them, but the US has been on a speed run to dismantle all of them in the past year.
> Some countries have stronger rule of law protections and social customs that enforce them Do they? Ultimately, what you see in China is the dream of well-capitalized authoritarians in the US. You have a near-permanent upper class that has no real political opposition that could impact their value creation ambitions. If you want to open a factory that makes electronics where people work 18 hours a day, you do it. If…
Sorry, what? China regularly prosecutes billionaires. Between 2003 and the mid 2010s it EXECUTED at least 15 billionaires.
When was the last time a US billionaire faced a death penalty case, even when their actions directly result in tens of thousands of innocents dying?
Isn’t the US much more aligned with the dreams of the capital class, given that distinction alone? All the money in the world won’t save a Chinese citizen from their laws. Meanwhile, we have the President’s family selling crypto coins and NFTs and Trump Gold Cards and “produced by USA” Trump phones made in China.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason I called out Lada in my original comment is because it's a counterpoint to what you just said. The Lada was the result of too much protectionism. Produced from an empire that was too inward looking and feared interacting with the rest of the world on equal terms. BYD keeps performing well in the rest of the world. If we hold US consumers hostage to prop up companies like Tesla, we risk allowing them to sta…
I prefer to take my chances on stagnation vs Chinese industrial hegemony
Traveling in Asia and South America, the primary impression I got was not that this is a war of manufacturing that we're losing but that the game is already up. Chile was full of Chinese makes and they were all surprisingly good. Riding in a Chinese MG in Taiwan or Hong Kong you suddenly realize that this isn't a future competitor. The people talking about the war of car manufacturers here seem like those Japanese ho…
It's not "surprisingly" unless you haven't bought much in the last 20 years. China-owned brands are now often better and more premium than their Western counterparts across the entire spectrum. Give me Anker over Belkin any day. There are a few areas where the West still leads - Chinese software tends to be buggier and less polished, luxury apparel isn't at the same standard - but that lead is diminishing rapidly. Cu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some countries have stronger rule of law protections and social customs that enforce them Do they? Ultimately, what you see in China is the dream of well-capitalized authoritarians in the US. You have a near-permanent upper class that has no real political opposition that could impact their value creation ambitions. If you want to open a factory that makes electronics where people work 18 hours a day, you do it. If…
> You have a near-permanent upper class that has no real political opposition that could impact their value creation ambitions. Sorry, what? China regularly prosecutes billionaires. Between 2003 and the mid 2010s it EXECUTED at least 15 billionaires. When was the last time a US billionaire faced a death penalty case, even when their actions directly result in tens of thousands of innocents dying? Isn’t the US much mo…
Billionaires are problematic by their very existence, but the sort of power they want is what the CCP has. They want to use their capital to build that. Trump's having the best luck so far. If there are people who also just happen to be extremely wealthy who get in their way, they'd gladly use the power they then had to get rid of them. Alex Karp would be a good example of this sort of aspirational melding of the state and capital.
In a way, the CCP is beyond someone with a lot of money being able to do anything about it, which would be nice, except for the fact that they're totalitarian.