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I don’t have the knowledge or experience to refute much of this but do that consider China has not found some new, incredible system of economics. They’re massively tilting their economy and investment towards things like this to the detriment of their consumers and other sectors of the economy. It is an inefficient economy that needs strong reforms that will likely never happen. The main character argument seems like some self fulfilling prophecy you believe in. Whatever happens, I’d probably rather be in the shoes of the US than China in the next 50 years.
I don’t underestimate their ability to innovate but I don’t believe in their ability to produce strong thinkers and leaders that come from out of nowhere. There’s some appropriate panic about their progress in many areas, but I just don’t believe in ‘capitalism with socialist Chinese characteristics’. The idea that they will just steamroll the world is far fetched imo.
And precisely this mindset's why the US, yea West is decaying - instead of infinite striving for excellence, those raised here sit on past laurels and cope away anything better. Living without curiosity is comfortable lest you learn something new and convert everything around you into tech debt to work on - yet that comfort's disappeared, hence our entire community, formed around discussions of cost disease and cultural decline.
More glib, is America, are Americans really just better because of superior protestant-frontier culture - even though they lost their mandate and lack children to be replaced? What distinguishes Chinese in America from those in the PRC, home grown communists from foreign infiltrators, pedophiles from the heartland like Hastert and Foley from Afghan bachah-lovers and Pakistani groomers? REV Group closed factories and quintupled prices so an (inferior!) American firetruck costs a magnitude more than Chinese or even German vehicles, which our communities must pay for, our world is on fire, and you say nothing's wrong.
I don't understand your point here.
You're complaining about Americans being glib but your comment is one of the worst offenders I've seen in a while.
I think his point is that many Americans are watching China build an extremely impressive society almost from nothing and searching for excuses to explain Chinese achievement away rather than deciding they could learn a thing or two.
(It’s not ‘real’ growth, Chinese can only imitate, what about the consumer sector, etc.)
It is conceivable (though not certain) that the achievements of the West are not a reflection of a better philosophy or system of government but merely a temporary reflection of weakness in our competitors plus luck for us (finding a new continent, the renaissance, etc.). If so, if so, it would behoove us to get our act together and drop our certainty in our own systems ASAP.
Is anyone saying China isn't in some of ways impressive? But except for maybe industrial might it's still no comparison. For example, many Chinese people joke that the Chinese dream is "becoming American". It's an unpleasant place to live for all but a few. Much like the Soviets it's a poor totalitarian dictatorship forcing money into key sectors at an unsustainable rate to keep pace with America. I'm not implying it will totally collapse like the Soviets by the way, but acting like a country with a $13k GDP per capita is a true peer to America in most ways is on its face pretty tough to swallow.
I have only ever visited China once but most of the people I spoke to (and the Chinese I have known outside China) were very proud of their country and not very interested in America.
This is the point being made above about glibness. China is rapidly developing industrial might, while America (plus Europe) looks an awful lot like a sclerotic mess with incredibly high costs, propped up by finance and an AI bubble. And faced with this, Americans claim that ‘actually, the Chinese want to be like us really’ and ‘Chinese growth is all an illusion so it’s not worth worrying about’*. Americans seem right now to be incapable of genuinely entertaining the proposition that the American way of doing things isn’t the only way or the best way.
*The latter claim may be true. Genuinely unsure.
Whereas one might as easily point out that huge amounts of Western economic activity are either self-sabotaging (wasting vast amounts of treasure and brainpower on finely-balanced legal questions, financialisation of the real economy) or fripperies and super stimuli (witness China heavily restricting video games).
Ultimately people didn’t want to be American or like Americans because of America’s culture and system of government, but because America was rich and powerful and they wanted to be rich and powerful too. Even in for Americans themselves this is the case, I think: how many Americans would happily live in a third-world shithole economy as long as it was run faithfully in accordance with the American Constitution and Amendments? 10%? If America loses industrial might, they will lose a lot of other things in quick succession.
This is the same mistake we British made, incidentally: that the rest of the world looked up to us and came to be educated by us and copied our parliament because they liked us and respected our way of life. No. They respected Empire and when the Empire died so too did the respect.
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If I understand @DaseindustriesLtd correctly, he's not saying that China will steamroll the world, he's saying that the US will lose its position of clear dominance.
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Thats what gets me. The dream for some Chinese seems to be for their children to leave China, how many of them want their child to go to Harvard? And some of the Chinese here in America have relatives sending them money to invest in oppurtunities not available to those living in China.
My impression is that in recent years the relative status of top American and Chinese universities has flipped in elite Chinese circles, such that someone who went to Harvard is seen as a slacker who ran away because they didn't do well enough on the Gaokao to make it to Tsinghua.
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There are a lot of Chinese. A tiny fraction of them could be dreaming of leaving (smaller than the "move to Canada"/"move to Russia" faction of Americans?) and there would still be enough that it would feel like a huge phenomenon in the target country.
(Also, how up-to-date is the perception that it is common?)
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It doesn't come out of nowhere, it's called education, competition and meritocracy, and they clearly have strong leaders and thinkers already. You're just in a bubble.
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