Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

> Look back at old Chinese teachers or masters of particular arts or culture.

The Shaolin masters and their philosophy are pretty much gone. Today those who train just end up leaving the temples and either joining private security or the military for money. Culture and society's values aren't static. I'm describing what is reality today, and not in a past century.

> Simply attributing the way things are in certain areas during certain times to cultures is simplistic and naive.

This isn't isolated to just exports. There's fake food, specifically rice and noodles made from plastic. Dangerous blood transfusion services. There's fake and poor quality meds. These exist regardless of market pressures and demand. There's a nothing else matters but my family and I mentality and a social hierarchy model that's hard to understand unless you grew up in it; living there for a year or a few months isn't enough.

Free speech is not part of Darpa's motivations for inventing the predecessor of internet.

Note that Internet is driver from some evolved tech off Darpa's research.

Again, internet was not designed to advance any political goal, but to withstand nukes. And the internet now days is different from Internet when it's born. The difference is probably more prominent than between a monkey and a human being.

BTW not sure a statement from a media expert can be a proof of Internet's design and implementation goal. I never saw Viny Cerf's similar statement. He did mention Internet is made open in the recent gcp event.

As a fellow Chinese who's been living in the West for a few years, I feel obligated to speak out against this:

Although I hold strong dissent against Chinese government in many aspects (in particular censorship, e.g. GFW), although I agree the traditional norm of Chinese culture and society does not commend rebellions, your argument is a slippery slope at its best. Essentially, you are exaggerating from both ends: a. going from political suppression and a humble (or even submissive, if you wish) culture to suppression on technical innovation; b. reading too much from the so-called SV culture and success stories, so much so to draw a strong equivalence between innovation and (social) disruption.

For (a), as many peer comments have already stated, there are many counterexamples. Japan has a much more submissive culture and Russia has similarly, if not more, suppressive political atmosphere. Innovations still happen in both places. And I also suggest you to read more history to see how many innovations were achieved in unwelcoming environment. Yes, these are obstacles and might affect the scale and success of innovations, but obstacles exist everywhere (if there were no opposition, rebellions even wouldn't be called "rebellions" in SV), and small (in the sense of domain, e.g. purely technical) innovations are still innovations, which leads to the second point--

For (b), "disruption" is really a buzz word loved by VC, and there is a trend of extending such buzz word to contexts we would not use this word originally, for example an invention in a particular domain is now a "disruption" in that domain, which makes a ripple sound like a tide. Fundamental, social disruptions can be significantly harder in China, but that does not prevent other innovations, or if you prefer, "disruptions", from happening.

In a nutshell, you are stretching these two ends to force them to meet: the negative effect of political/cultural suppression --> impossible to innovate And finally, pardon my language, your examples and references are utter nonsense. I know where you are trying to go from them, but they do not prove your point by any means.

Every time there is good aspect about China, people in HN have to talk about Government. 4Q !

"Rule by law" is the use of law to control the people. You use laws as convenient to punish your enemies, but aren't particularly interested in enforcing laws fairly. It becomes more of the default whenever there is no independent judiciary to interpret the law, or an independent media to make sure the government stays honest.

"Rule of law" is the aspiration that we are used to in the west (fair application of the law, everyone is subject to the law, etc...). It isn't perfect, we often exist in between the two extremes, but our systems are set up to at least aspire to it, while the Chinese system self admittedly depends solely on the wisdom and benevolence of a singular ruling class (in this case, the top-down CPC).