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Why is China smashing its tech industry?

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#41

Post by clydethefrog »

toss1 wrote: post #16

The Western financial elites thought they were exploiting cheap Chinese labor by promoting outsourcing of manufacturing - it would make for far greater profits. Meanwhile the Chinese were exploiting the West's myopic focus on quarterly profits to gain access to and experience in fabricating and designing the top western technology. The scale of this strategic blunder by the Western societies will be considered of his…

Taking a quick look at the YC S21 offering that is posted here - it seems all this capital is still mostly based on software that stimulates more consuming.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#42

Post by throwaway4good »

andy_ppp wrote: post #18
dicomdan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re giving a lot of benefit of the doubt to the dictatorship. Establishing complete control over emerging power structures (tech industry) is more likely to be their goal.

We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything. One thing I do know is we as the West need to figure out how to come together and defend democratic and liberal values, as without them we are seriously lost. We should start by not giving any more money and technology to a Chinese state that clearly do not have our best interests at heart. I think the west is in real danger of just falling apart over the next…

"We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything."

This is a not true. Dictators do long speeches. Often quite explicitly stating why they do what they do.

Funnily sometimes in democracies there is a bigger space betweeen what is done and what is communicated.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#43

Post by creamytaco »

tablespoon wrote: post #7
spiritplumber wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss being that optimistic. What happened?

> I miss being that optimistic. What happened? The optimism turned out to be naive? I mean, regardless of whatever "cyberspace" was originally imagined to be, in actuality it turned out to be bunch of Facebooks. And more often than not it's allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness. Or to summarize in 1996 terminology: cyberspace turned out to be land of timecubes.

Cyberspace does not exist in isolation, it's a network reflecting to a large extent the sum of its parts. In the early / mid 90s, before the masses moved in, "cyberspace" was for the most part what Barlow imagined it to be.

The race to the bottom, adtech, consumerist takeover only started when the "stupid" society at large became the majority, so for the west this process was really inevitable. China, being a dictatorship on top of a closed-feedback system and unwilling to let capitalism run unrestricted, has a much better chance of controlling the process and using it to shape society according to a central vision. We should be worried.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#44

Post by deltasixeight »

whatshisface wrote: post #24
deltasixeight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is more than your classic "the CCP is just making moves to solidify it's own power." The article claims the actions taken by China also represent real philosophies about what constitutes economic health. They don't want their greatest minds optimizing ad tech or finding tax loop holes.

Tax loopholes would be accounting, not technology.

Finance is the more broader term here. China likely also doesn't want their greatest minds working on High Frequency Trading algorithms.

The article is about tech, but from a broader perspective letting the free market completely decide allocation of resources in all sectors of the economy is something China never completely bought into. After all it is technically a communist.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#45

Post by jeswin »

Asia is headed towards war - it almost seems inevitable. Xi has publicly committed to not leaving Taiwan invasion to the next generation.

China is focused on building an industrial base that complements its military power while generating cash, and internet software startups aren't going to help.

For the rest of Asia, they'd do well to militarize; for Japan and Australia to consider getting nuclear weapons or hosting them, and for India to rapidly increase stockpiles.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#46

Post by tablespoon »

billytetrud wrote: post #37
tablespoon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.

When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture.

> When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture.

No. The GGP's examples are a direct counterexample to that idea.

Being a little more general: based on past experience, I interpret general complaints about "regulatory capture" without further clarification as complaints about regulation in general and advocacy for "market solutions" as an alternative. However, a poorly regulated market will almost certainly result in a great many monopolies and businesses that convert some negative externality into private profit, which are the apotheosis of the idea that financial value != value to society.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#48

Post by rektide »

tablespoon wrote: post #7
spiritplumber wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss being that optimistic. What happened?

> I miss being that optimistic. What happened? The optimism turned out to be naive? I mean, regardless of whatever "cyberspace" was originally imagined to be, in actuality it turned out to be bunch of Facebooks. And more often than not it's allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness. Or to summarize in 1996 terminology: cyberspace turned out to be land of timecubes.

dismay is I think due but "turned out to be" is not at all how I see it. the conquest of massified consumerism over the frontier is a true story, but the frontier is still out there, still ready, still awaiting, still vast beyond our wildest imaginings. the excitement of a new liberation, out of corporate data centers & back in to power, back into freedom & exploration, building new connective mediums and places, is more compelling to me personally than ever. and increasingly more feasible, as we get better at developing systems and software.

in the aughs Tim O'Reilly was talking about chasing the alpha geeks. by contrast we seem fixated on the muck & mire of the lowest experiences, these days, and we have few visible free radicals pushing the ascent. I believe the former to be not worthy of fixation, and the latter to be imminently close to rediscovering themselves, & they will be equipped with vastly better means to pioneer onward with.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#49

Post by bordercases »

mjol wrote: post #28
caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

If you really believe that entertainment doesn't improve the human experience, I feel sorry for you.

If you really believe that mass culture doesn't denigrate the human experience, I feel sorry for you.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#50

Post by jayd16 »

ru552 wrote: post #6

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

So what happens when non-Chinese software and service tech continues to dominate because China decided it wasn't important?

Clearly these sectors are powerful or they wouldn't be targeted. Whats the plan to make them obsolete beyond taking Chinese software down a peg?

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