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

nytimes.com

121–127 of 127 posts

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

#121
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were the first movers so they cornered the market with an inferior product. Now that China has no hope of capturing the market to extract rents the next best alternative is to make extracting rents impossible, destroying the business model of the US companies who rely on said rents. In terms of a trade war this has all the downsides of dumping products on the US firms with none of the downsides to the rest of th…

'Inferior product...rent seekers' - Yeah, that's why the Soviet Union started the silicon revolution, and why the Chinese currently lead the field, right? They open sourced their fabs, and random farmers on collectives would come home (while starving) and make improvements in fab technology by candlelight. If only they had you to guide them, with your advanced knowledge of economics, trade and process technology.

Every communist nation had a much larger high technology sector than similarly developed capitalist nations.

Unless you want to talk to me about the fabs in Portugal and Mexico in 1990 when compared to the ones in Bulgaria and the USSR you're making my point for me.

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

#122
post #74
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk I think US has bigger problems than whether it's semiconductor tech gets stolen. Social media and the news media have created such a dysfunctional environment that I am finding it increasingly hard to believe constructive debate/solutions on anything are possible until the underlying environment producing the dysfunction is cleaned up. If not we are just going to get more and more leaders from both sides propped…

Fyi- https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/24622/what-fa... You have a good point, but because we have a problem with social media does not mean we dont need to worry about the semiconductor industry.

Thanks for the link. It's good to have someone point these things out when one gets carried away :)

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Inferior product...rent seekers' - Yeah, that's why the Soviet Union started the silicon revolution, and why the Chinese currently lead the field, right? They open sourced their fabs, and random farmers on collectives would come home (while starving) and make improvements in fab technology by candlelight. If only they had you to guide them, with your advanced knowledge of economics, trade and process technology.

Every communist nation had a much larger high technology sector than similarly developed capitalist nations. Unless you want to talk to me about the fabs in Portugal and Mexico in 1990 when compared to the ones in Bulgaria and the USSR you're making my point for me.

Yeah that's why engineers from Soviet Societies would scale barbed wire fences at the risk of getting shot to get here!

Communism is great if you like hunger and oppressive stupidity. "But it's never really been tried!" - No, it has: it is fundamentally incompatible with freedom and/or intellect.

Nobody is buying what you're selling, champagne socialist.

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

#124
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm no expert, I'm not Taiwanese, and I haven't been to mainland China (though I've been to Hong Kong a couple times, which seems pretty similar to Taipei).

It is an on-the-ground feeling. There is a calm chaos here that reflects the "there are basic rules, but beyond that, everybody carves out a slice of how they think they can be useful" spirit WAY better than America (where everything is pre-apportioned, indoors, with permits, etc.).

I also feel that intergenerational households and stronger community ties lead to better group decision making, which America is having some trouble with. People here have actual hometowns. They care about their local community in a way I've literally not seen a single time in America. Putting aside individual elections or politicians, this helps build a sense of public service, not just horsetrading elections (your local DA isn't setting policy on anything in their party platform, but people in America still want party info so they can try and trade for a policy they want).

All of this is a guess, obviously, and I suppose lots of places are like Taipei.

It's also worth pointing out that the KMT probably made similar statements, about how virtuous martial law was, and how the people didn't want the changes, and western allies couldn't possibly get what they wanted without oppression. Turns out they were wrong. People with power like power, that's true every single square meter of the globe.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every communist nation had a much larger high technology sector than similarly developed capitalist nations. Unless you want to talk to me about the fabs in Portugal and Mexico in 1990 when compared to the ones in Bulgaria and the USSR you're making my point for me.

Yeah that's why engineers from Soviet Societies would scale barbed wire fences at the risk of getting shot to get here! Communism is great if you like hunger and oppressive stupidity. "But it's never really been tried!" - No, it has: it is fundamentally incompatible with freedom and/or intellect. Nobody is buying what you're selling, champagne socialist.

Somehow there weren't that many engineers in Guatemala. Plenty of child prostitutes though. I guess capitalism really gives you want you want.

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

#126

I think history will suggest that the end of Deng Xiaoping's long-term strategy of "hide our capacities and bide our time" around 2015 was too premature to meet the government of China's long-term goals. The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion following the events of the past few years in the region. Because…

You nailed it in a way I could not verbally articulate.

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

#127
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete tangent, but in case someone else gets a chuckle out of it: the word "fabrication" means "creation"... but also serves as a synonym for "falsehood", almost an antonym in some contexts. I'm not aware of many words in English that can mean both a thing and its opposite. "Cleave" means to bind together, or to completely separate... Any language geeks out there know of others? Or what such words are called?

auto-antonyms.

bingo! thanks :)
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