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Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

nytimes.com

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Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#111

Post by tabtab »

Things move too fast for a country to be fully self-sufficient in ALL technologies, unless you either accept being behind, and/or be stuck in trade wars.

Different countries have different "personalities" and thus will shine in some areas and stink in others. You have to think global to be competitive because you cannot do everything on your own.

The US is mostly an integrator of hardware and technology made abroad, for example. US focuses on cutting edge stuff, and "glues together" the parts from abroad to make it. When a product becomes a commodity, it slips offshore and the US then jumps into the Next Big Thing.

This model may not work for China. For one, they depend much more on personal relationships than contracts. Business relationships in the US are more transnational: easy come, easy go. This is well suited to fast-paced change. China's relationship model may struggle against this approach. But that doesn't mean there are not other niches. Germany and Japan do quite well by focusing on perfecting a niche(s) and less on changing quickly.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#112

Post by hungryhobo »

sysdashprice wrote: post #105
gumby wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion... Are you in the USA? Because I'm sitting in Malaysia (who historically has a fraught relationship with China) where China is greeted with a mix of suspicion and opportunistic welcome (knowing that any cash or other assistant will have many strings attached)... basi…

Speak for yourself. South Koreans love that US has defended them against the maniacal dictators around the country. Taiwanese people love that US has protected them against the Chinese aggression, and support their island of democracy. Even some Chinese people love that US was the main capital provider into the country that lifted Chinese from abject poverty. While around the world, muslims are angry that China has e…

seems like he is speaking for himself while you are representing a whole bunch of people...

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#113

Post by tryptophan »

Taniwha wrote: post #34
adventured wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe almost no Fab manufacturing happens in the US anymore. That's incorrect. The US has four or five dozen fabs. It's one of the largest fab manufacturers globally, along with Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea. The US is likely to grow its domestic fab manufacturing over the next decade, thanks to the new lower corporate income tax rate and tighter restrictions on IP exportation (those two things l…

If you mean stolen chip designs, no we're likely not to want to use them ... but there are lots of smart Chinese chip designers doing great stuff - some using on licensed US IP (the ESP chips), others based on licensed Arm IP (I've lost track of who owns that), some home built. Remember China is not just 1/4 of the world's population, it also has 1/4 of the world's smart people

China is actually slightly less than 1/6 of the world's population.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#114

Post by LeonidasXIV »

sysdashprice wrote: post #105
gumby wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion... Are you in the USA? Because I'm sitting in Malaysia (who historically has a fraught relationship with China) where China is greeted with a mix of suspicion and opportunistic welcome (knowing that any cash or other assistant will have many strings attached)... basi…

Speak for yourself. South Koreans love that US has defended them against the maniacal dictators around the country. Taiwanese people love that US has protected them against the Chinese aggression, and support their island of democracy. Even some Chinese people love that US was the main capital provider into the country that lifted Chinese from abject poverty. While around the world, muslims are angry that China has e…

> tons of WW2 drama portraying Japan as evil

Well if I look at Japanese history in China in WWII and before , that portrayal might actually be justified. Especially given Japans stance on it, where museums in the country conveniently leave out Japans actions in China at that time. Coming from Germany that attitude seems… dishonest at least.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#115

Post by munificent »

Udik wrote: post #38
endtime wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped up purely for skills to pander. While I share some of your concerns about the media, isn't this (just an uncharitable way of stating) the entire purpose of democracy?

Western democracy has always been tempered (and sometimes subverted) by the control exerted by cultural elites on mass communications. Now that control is faltering, and we're seeing the results.

The real tragedy of the Internet is this:

It dramatically lowered the costs of broadcasting information. At the time, we idealistically felt that would enable people of all means to communicate, and not just the rich and powerful. It did that, especially in the early days before the rich and powerful noticed.

But it lowers the costs for everyone, including the rich. So once they clued in, it ended up empowering them too. In fact, it preferentially benefits them, because they have more money to throw at it.

There is a useful cautionary lesson here: any technology that reduces the cost of X for all users of X is not a force of equality. Instead, it is a multiplier to any existing disparity.

If you want to reduce inequality, focus on technology that does not scale up and instead is preferentially empowering to those on the low end of the scale.

For example, medicine tends to be an equalizer because once you're healthy, having more access to the same medicine doesn't benefit you much. There is a natural upper limit to its efficacy. (Of course, being able to control others' access to medicine does scale up.)

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#116

Post by ameister14 »

ptaipale wrote: post #56
Angostura wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I also believe that the Western policy of hoping that welcoming in China would lead to greater democratic freedoms was one of arrogance. I'd probably go with 'naivety' or 'over-optimism' rather than arrogance.

I guess it depends on whether one thinks that democracy and freedom are good things as such. They are not necessarily universal values, even if many in the West tend to think so.

Barring short 1-2 generational periods, increased personal and political freedom causes greater economic outcomes by country. Consolidating power generally stagnates an economy, and when it doesn't because of good leaders allowing selective personal freedom, that is an unstable state - leaders change.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#117

Post by ameister14 »

obelix_ wrote: post #39
endtime wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped up purely for skills to pander. While I share some of your concerns about the media, isn't this (just an uncharitable way of stating) the entire purpose of democracy?

My feeling is the kind of pandering a leader used to do to get into a seat of power has changed thanks to the internet and the state of info overload we live in. They are much more aware of who to target and what that group wants to hear. And since every targeted group is overloaded with info, getting/keeping their attention creates this arms race of who can be the most touching, entertaining or outrageous circus clo…

This is not new. Huey Long is an excellent example, as is the fact that we have a word for it that is thousands of years old: demagogue.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#118

Post by kinsomo »

hawkice wrote: post #60
ptaipale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on whether one thinks that democracy and freedom are good things as such. They are not necessarily universal values, even if many in the West tend to think so.

Democracy is complicated (we have a complicated democracy because simple democracy doesn't reflect _our_ values, for instance), but freedom? Maybe at-any-costs freedom isn't universal, but freedom generically is. It is tied so deeply into human dignity you might be imagining Chinese culture poorly if you think it's a bad match. Also, I live in Taiwan, so with a data point of 1, I'm pretty sure freedom and democracy a…

> I'm pretty sure freedom and democracy are a really good match for Chinese culture (probably a better match than American culture? hard to say). It works well here. But that's just my two cents.

Would you care to elaborate on your point that "freedom and democracy are a really good match for Chinese culture"? I ask because that directly contradicts one of the points that the CCP (probably Self-servingly) hammers on. It would nice to get other perspectives on that.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#119

Post by jandrese »

yourapostasy wrote: post #101
jerf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real utility of democracy isn't really the people getting a say, despite the propaganda on the side of the tin. The real utility of democracy is that it enables a mechanism for bloodless revolution, by essentially hosting them periodically instead of letting the pressures build up for years and decades until the whole thing explodes in a violent, civilization-damaging orgy of blood and destruction. It gives a mec…

I think of it in the following analogy. Democracy is continuous garbage collection. It is messy and inefficient, sometimes unpredictable for the efficiency nuts. Authoritarianism is manually-managed pointer references. Efficient and very predictable at first. Once the complexity gradient rises above a certain level though...

This is an analogy that only someone on Hackernews would even attempt.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#120

Post by thousandautumns »

LeonidasXIV wrote: post #114
sysdashprice wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. South Koreans love that US has defended them against the maniacal dictators around the country. Taiwanese people love that US has protected them against the Chinese aggression, and support their island of democracy. Even some Chinese people love that US was the main capital provider into the country that lifted Chinese from abject poverty. While around the world, muslims are angry that China has e…

> tons of WW2 drama portraying Japan as evil Well if I look at Japanese history in China in WWII and before , that portrayal might actually be justified. Especially given Japans stance on it, where museums in the country conveniently leave out Japans actions in China at that time. Coming from Germany that attitude seems… dishonest at least.

I lived in Japan for several years and most people I met didn't ignore Japan's actions during WWII. But they didn't like that basically every interaction between Japan and China/Korea was defined by China/Korea airing grievances from WWII.

WWII has been over for more than 70 years now, and Japan has been among the most productive, peaceful nations in the world since that time. To continuously insist on portraying Japan as evil warmongers qualifies as racist propaganda.

Imagine if the people, and the governments of the nations of the world insisted on portraying Germany as unrepentant Nazis at every opportunity. Surely you can agree how stupid and frustrating that would be as a German.

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