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I don't. I'm trying to learn though. The point isn't that it literally describes a nation as it is. The point (more than a bit sentimental one) is that the ambition is deeper and more interesting than "Warsaw Pact shithole, Asia, really big", and openly stated across infinity of Party Nomenklatura documents that ≈nobody is willing to read seriously. My proposal to look at the literal characters is an attempt to break through the cognitive barrier this negative charisma duckspeak creates.
The Chinese are mostly petty men and women, like elsewhere (arguably more than elsewhere). That's fine. They have a (compelled) respect for hierarchy, and enough thinkers with enough influence, who can make meaningful nudges. It's hard to notice for cultural reasons, and the Chinese themselves are very cynical about what they're doing. But the CPC, at least in some eras including Xi's one, is a sincere ideological-civilizational project with unironic Chinese characteristics.
I recommend reading this, was pretty surprising to me. https://x.com/kyleichan/status/1992405985626124744
To restate my point, I think «lost ability to build» is melodramatic, but what is definitely true is that even «datacenters» are not a very impressive building project by Chinese standards, even adjusted for population. China could do that trivially but mom won't let them have the chips. It's ≈assembly and construction, Chinese «building» is at this point profoundly wider and deeper, they run VAST supply chains from mines to refineries/smelters to factories to shipyards. Americans are already running into constraints like having to ship transformers (physical parts, not LLMs) for their coveted Manhattan Project datacenters (eg Stargate) from China. The grid upgrade is a horrible slog. You are probably well aware of the REE context by now (read this for more if you haven't https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide).
Americans are good at building McMansions and installing HVACs, they have the workforce for that and in theory it's fungible. It remains to be seen if they can do better.
I would say that some economists are very correct but even they can be frustratingly dogmatic or outright deceptive, which nudges me towards «social science» field. For example here https://research.gavekal.com/article/unraveling-chinas-productivity-paradox/ a very fair argument is being made, except the point about FGMs is false and I bought it at face value. Lost face, very sad. Popular Total Factor Productivity stats are just gibberish. And so on. You have to scrutinize everything.
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