Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping • Hacker News Board

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#221

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #118

whimsicalism wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'd be horsehockey if I were claiming that the Chinese or white people or Americans or whoever is intrinsically more intelligent or "culturally" hard-working or whatever. That's bullshit. I can understand the gut reaction to any mention of IQ since it is a common trope among racists on the internet. But my claim is not that: it is about the pretty clear concentration of inherited wealth in the US, compared t…

China's parliament has ~100 billionaires, and the concentration of wealth is even more extreme than that when you count those with a net worth exceeding, say, $100 million instead. The difference between those at the top in China and those at the top in the US is not one of wealth concentration or inheritance or intelligence. The difference is access to raw power, national unity, and a massive foundational population…

China's system acknowledge power and classes.

Billinares have enourmous power, then putting them into the power system, is a appropriate recognition; and ensures appropriate control and management as well.

While in US, the enourmous power of billinares are masked behind an entagled web of legal and political constructs, which are so complicated that the ones involved probably dont have a clue how much power they actually have. Today they can be enoumously powerful, the next day they are suddenly under constant barrage from all sides. Like FB Google and Twitter were chanted as the beacon of free world's inevitable domination in world in the grassroot's revolutions in middle east (Arab's spring); now they were blamed for almost every instances of domestic plitical failures.

A better approach might be subject these powers into the government system, and manage and use them as tools. Instead of pretending that a free-rein systems can regulate themselves, which ends up with a swamp of complications and complexity that no one is able to remotely influence the thing with a coherent vision and strategy.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#222

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:23 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #173

skrebbel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only area I know something about in your list is silicon chip tech, and I'm convinced that China will have at least one ASML competitor and at least one ARM competitor (or comparable) in the next 20 years, likely faster. Western countries trying to their block access to that tech (eg the US govt trying to stop ASML from shipping chip machines to China), is going to speed that up, not slow it down, because it crea…

> It got run into the ground by bad management This might be important. A free-market economy is more conductive to both creating new businesses and to killing those ran poorly, thus evolving better teams faster. OTOH a nepotic economy launches fewer companies by constricting the talent pool with nepotism and corruption, and it faces additional headwind in disbanding the failing teams. Nepotism also destroys the inve…

> Nepotic economies do well in copying what worked for others because the few nephews of the top party officials provide enough of a talent pool for that, but innovation by its nature requires a talent dragnet across the entire country (YC).

China runs a very large free market economy. The government only steps in when a company grows large, and mandate certain amount of state control. And we all know for sure that companies worth the notice of a national government probably should be placed under some control, instead of letting them blindly chasing the profit. And at that stage, their innovative prowess probably is also dragged down by enormous internal beauracracy that the intervention actually can help them focus on long-term technical investment (thinking about the flops of the big corps, the wasted investment by IBM on what they called AI...)

Thinking about Google, they are even seriously considering bending over to CCP to enter Chinese market. Imagine Google were under CCP control, anyone who dare to speak of such idea will be punished immediately. (Not to say CCP is better in any way)

If you have a free market economy with a size of 5-6 trillions of dollar, then you can have top-tier innovation all the time. And CCP feels pretty safe as long as it controls another 10 trillions+ market...

See, that's the economy of scale.

That's why ambitious people dream of scale, and smart people instead of value freedom. When combined, the one with ambition provides the scale to tolerate the freedom of the smart. That's how China works today.

Of cuz, Xi dreams of world domination. Precisely because he dreams of world domination, he can act absolutely like a open-minded market economy advocate: there is plenty of space under his control, where anyone, ambitious or smart, will have enough space for their personal satisfaction.

Dictators were born out of lack of imagination. Trump is not enlightened to see the possibility of his power, so he inevitably behave like a dictator, but not actually able to because of the US system.

True dictator like Xi, see the possibility, and is willing to behave like appropriate for the goal of ultimate domination.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#223

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

hosh wrote: post #164

ceilingcorner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably the biggest thing is that China has cultural unity China does not have more cultural unity, it simply has more of a stomach for suppressing minority or rebellious subcultures. See: Tibetans, Mongolians, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs.

In the more than 2000 years of history, the Chinese have demonstrated a willingness to assimilate, and oppress dissenting voices. Even the Mongolians (Song dynasty) and the Manchurian (Qing dynasty) rulers adopted those methods to maintain power during the consolidation phases. The Tibetans are a great example. Both the Mongolian and Manchurian descended rulers had left Tibet as an autonomous region primarily because…

> These are things the US is not willing to do

US government does not need to do this explicitly.

US culture outreach is effective and efficient. Prior to 2008 financial crisis, Chinese common wisdom places US superior to Chinese in every aspects. You can put Xi in that period, and see how ineffective his ambition can be implemented.

It was only after US culture outreaches have been intoxicated by self-righteousness and a chronicle ineffectiveness, think about the Arab Spring and the 2016 election debacle, and the TikTok deal, and the disastrous Covid response.

Government directed culture assimilation is always the least effective. That's used only when the civilian system is weak. In Mao's era, they dont need this, the civilian system is so effective in assimilating proactively across the whole nation. Think about the havoc by Mao. Mao can do that, because the society is utterly centered around his ideology. Precisely that the time, it was the government that is ineffective in counteract the population's attachment to a demi-god.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#224

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

nexus2045 wrote: post #169

ceilingcorner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably the biggest thing is that China has cultural unity China does not have more cultural unity, it simply has more of a stomach for suppressing minority or rebellious subcultures. See: Tibetans, Mongolians, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs.

But the Han Chinese are the overwhelming majority (92%). They pay lip service to the 56 ethnic minorities but for the most part they are expected to act Chinese or are just tourist attractions. China is not going to have or allow problems like BLM to slow itself down internally.

Han Chinese were so mixed that it should be considered a cultural group, not western sense "race".

But people probably were so indulged in mainstream media's reporting that, this hardly register to anyone as significant.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#225

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

wmeredith wrote: post #21

apengwin wrote: post #3

The title is a reference to Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the greatest novels ever written. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber

Can you recommend an English translation?

Warning: Lower your expectation.

The novel was written in traditional Chinese, with a different style and narration system.

The novel has many ancient poem mixed in the text, a major part of the plot, they were almost always vastly inferior when translated.

Lastly, even if the translation goes well, the cultural sensitivity required to appreciate the story and character is going to put you in such a disadvantage that you'll wonder why it feels so bland, even claimed one of the best...

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#226

Post by Fricken » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #2

So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy? Or are the predictions that China's growth will decline true? Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies. Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just…

You blinked and missed it. China already has the world's leading economy:

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-now-world%E2%80%9...

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#227

Post by TearsInTheRain » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:37 AM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #226

echelon wrote: post #2

So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy? Or are the predictions that China's growth will decline true? Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies. Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just…

You blinked and missed it. China already has the world's leading economy: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-now-world%E2%80%9...

They have been ahead of us for a while when you measure by PPP. International orgs are only just now starting to use PPP as the standard

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#228

Post by TearsInTheRain » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:40 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #37

Robotbeat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China’s Purchase Power Parity GDP (in other words, adjusted for exchange rate and local costs) is already higher than the US’s and is probably around 10-20 years from being equal on nominal dollars as well. There’s no doubt China’s growth will slow due to an aging population, but they’re coming already from a MASSIVE population size advantage. The West can counter by increasing immigration significantly (and probably…

One major problem is that the people directing massive capital investments in the West are simply not as smart as the people directing massive capital investments in China. If your nation gets rich earlier, then hereditary passing on of wealth will mean that in a few generations the people making the decisions about capital allocation are no longer your best and brightest. All you need to do is look at the difference…

Thats of course ridiculous. "Low !Q" wealthy people in the US arent managing their own money. They hire the best and brightest to do it. China has a massive advantage because they can simply copy or steal what works in the US more efficiently than we can come up with the next best thing.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#229

Post by TearsInTheRain » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:42 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #125

coredog64 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless China stops antagonizing India, I think there will at least be a conditional alliance between the US and India. We may also see slight shifts as Indian-Americans become eligible for US political office.

I agree, although there are still some potential obstacles: 1. the US is becoming increasingly liberal and India is becoming increasingly jingoistic/illiberal. 2. The US views Pakistan as an important strategic ally.

We'll probably view Pakistan as less of a strategic ally the further we get from the Iraq Wars temporally

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#230

Post by hintymad » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #2

So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy? Or are the predictions that China's growth will decline true? Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies. Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just…

These factors are important, but I don't think they are as important as the people factor: Chinese people simply want to work hard to live a better life. Everyone knows education matters, so much so that you see news like this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8296195/Chinese-gir.... Not that I personally know everyone, but I trust that what my Chinese coworkers told me had certain truth. They openly acknowledge that Chinese needed to learn from western civilization, especially STEM, and policy making, so much so that no one would mock CIT for not winning NCCA games. That's some serious respect. I mean, what kinda of sick country would openly mock their best university for sucking at basketball?