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Notes -
Dwarkesh Patel interviews Jensen Huang.
I'm no tech expert, and I'm pretty much a single-issue poster on China here, so I pay attention only from the 57th minute. It's worth a listen.
Here's my interpretation of the case laid out by Dwarkesh, although he didn't spell it all out. Some in the US, especially the Silicon Valley tech bros (exactly the kind of attitude Dwarkesh puts on display, and also Dario Amodei and his cult followers, and some here), believe that in the brief window before we hit the technological singularity, America can and will ride its computing power advantage to total dominance over AI and, by extension, the future of humanity. Under this logic, any computing power exported to China during this window is a direct blow to American national interests. The goal is very focused: sprint past the finish line, and everything else will sort itself out afterward, China included. If you want to solve the energy crisis? Invest in AI. If you want to end world hunger? Invest in AI. If you want to make sure the yellow vermin stay in their place? Invest in AI, told you already.
But 1) how far away that singularity actually is remains unclear (I'm not sure, again I am no expert on AI or anything this forum is familiar with, so feel free to lay out your thoughts on why the tech singularity is in sight). 2) US-China competition is a long game. Both countries are formidable, and in different ways. Both countries largest threat is from the inside, not the outside. There is no silver bullet that delivers a knockout blow. It's naive to think that restrictions on computing power, rare earths, or the like can permanently lock the other side out. What it will for sure do is generate animosity and bellicosity, with intensity up to a scale never seen before on this planet. This is probably partly why rare earth controls, effective as they are, haven't been deployed on a permanent basis. 3) There is a profound deficit of goodwill between the US and China, and that poses an enormous security risk to both nations and the world at large. This risk is far more real than the doomsday anxieties peddled by those types who love to brand themselves as "effective altruism" advocates, wringing their hands over alignment and the specter of a superintelligent AI annihilating the world. Export controls and measures of that sort are therefore much harm and dubious gain. At their core, they reflect a desire by certain people to take a shortcut, convinced that this one move alone can defeat China and "secure the light cone." I think this is pure fantasy, likely just another manifestation of a weird complex.
Which brings me to something more personal, because I realize I can't talk about this purely in the abstract. I love my country (contrary to what some seem to believe, people in China do love China, not all, but still. I can't believe this needs to be spelled out but apparently so). But I also like the Americans, in fact more so than most other peoples. I like power and I like a country that is strong and powerful, and I think that is a virtue in its own right. It demonstrates the vitality of the culture that country is founded on, which I think provide a lot for Chinese to learn from. I think for the most part the Americans I've met and know have treated me well, and respected me, and I think it is my duty to return that. But something has been puzzling me for some time, maybe because of my apparent inability to understand conflict. I do not understand why China and America have to be in conflict. I don't think the current situation is only any particular country's fault; it's complex and in many ways an extension of domestic issues; it's fueled by mutual misunderstanding which I think is somewhat lopsided given the lack of American in China but not vice versa; it's also because China for a long time until recently was not a functional society and ran by either corrupt (physically and/or spiritually) or megalomaniac people, and that itself creates all sorts of troubles that overflow beyond the border; it's also because of the growing anxiety among Americans due to societal rot, and the impulse to seek a simple explanation and target to avoid facing the real issues. But I do not understand it. To use what Xi said, the Pacific seems wide enough to contain two powers, and I think the years of collaboration and positive competition between China and the US have benefited both, tremendously so. I also believe that the right position on a wide variety of social and economic issues is somewhere in between those of China and the US, and that losing either one is like losing a mirror to reflect upon, which hastens the decadence of each. I can't think of "rational" reasons why this has to be confrontational.
Maybe this is all motivated reasoning, but all reasoning is motivated. Anyways, thoughts?
Honestly, if China wasn't run by Godless Communists, I'd have far fewer issues with them competing against America economically (or otherwise). Not to say there would be zero concern about those things, for example I don't like US manufacturing being hollowed out by Chinese competition, but the overwhelming weight of my concerns about China are the ends they are using their economy and political and military and cultural influence towards.
Which is it, the Godless part, the Communist part, or both? The communist part is less and less true by the day, unless you're the communist plan trusters who think we'll get there eventually and all these reforms are just means to an end. I think there are true communists among the high echelons of the party, but if they keep going down the current economic path they're not going to get what they wished.
Which ends? What do you think the endgame for the godless communists is? World domination? World revolution? Spreading atheist ideology across the world?
I think most people in senior positions in the party, including Xi himself, are true believer communists in a ideological sense. Nothing the CCP has done since Deng really contradicts Marx and Engels, who were clear that a long capitalist phase was necessary (implicitly to drive down widget costs by competition) before socialism could be achieved. Amusingly this may be the best way of justifying the highly destructive involution / neijuan process going on now.
Even Lenin agreed with this, hence the NEP - only Stalin and those inspired by him (Mao, Castro) didn’t (and that ideological turn was largely self-serving in his battle to consolidate state power, eliminate Trotskyism, and prevent the emergence of anyone with influence or wealth who could challenge him domestically). The turn to capitalism was an about-face, sure, but it isn’t inherently a rejection of communism because communism is a process that in theory involves capitalism (and feudalism and so on).
In my understanding the idea that the communists are being ideologically sidelined in the party elite is more of a fantasy of very online Chinese nationalists who are more ambivalent on Marxism and the CCP (even if they’re often very careful to only imply this rather than say it outright) and who care more about a grander trajectory of Chinese civilization to which the ideology of 1947-present isn’t central. But to the actual rulers of China, the children and grandchildren, by and large, of the revolutionaries themselves, it is central.
I see that you read Tanner Greer perhaps, and those books from the red princelings.
I don't pretend to know what the Standing Committee of the Politburo thinks. But the fact is that China is less meaningfully communist, in both the ideological and material sense, than it was in Mao's era, and even less so than in Deng's era (yes, even that; Deng was surrounded by old guard revolutionaries, and of course he himself was one). If you read whatever documents they publish in Chinese now, they do invoke "socialism", "core values of socialism", and all sorts of jargon frequently. But what are these socialist core values? "爱国、敬业、诚信、友善 (Patriotism, Dedication, Integrity, Friendliness)." Tell me what's socialist about that. "Patriotism" is literally the first value they think individual Chinese citizens should have. The "Socialist Concepts of Honor and Grace"? "以热爱祖国为荣 以危害祖国为耻 (Love the motherland as an honor; harming the motherland as a disgrace)." Tell me again what's socialist about these values.
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is transparently a middle ground between communism and Chinese nationalism. The old aesthetics of red banners, "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", and steel-jawed workers have been replaced by LED hellscapes, "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation", and steel-jawed workers. I understand that it is possible that none of the material conditions matter to the Great Man, as they have proven again and again. But even they cannot pretend that they will certainly, certainly get to their communist paradise one day. They will not live to see it; they cannot guarantee it. What they do know, perhaps, is that the Chinese nation will outlast them, for millennia to come. Mao himself certainly knows that and acknowledged that. I hope they realize this sooner rather than later, and I think they do.
I find the comparisons to the Soviets beside the point. I do not think we are as ideologically devoted as the Russians were, in fact that's partially what's charming about the Russians, that their populace truly believe those nonsense. China have not exported the ideology abroad since Mao, and even Mao himself was, like Stalin, a "socialism in one country first" type, less ideological fervor than proselytizing Trotskyites. Our people have been materialistic, or what I prefer, realistic, in the sense that actions are dictated by things on "this shore" (I believe this is a Buddhist term, "this shore" being our world, "the other shore" being the spiritual world).
Mao, megalomaniac as he was, and a sincere believer in communist ideology, was both a Chinese nationalist and a communist. He behaved like the emperors, he ruled like the emperors. He had communist ideals and aesthetics, but he was not meaningfully different from the First Emperor and many after him. He even compared himself to the first emperor, a lot in fact. I do not know if Stalin thought of himself as the latest repetition of the Tsar lineage, but Mao certainly did to some extent, as did his wife, who compared herself to Wu Zetian or Empress Lyu. He destroyed a huge fraction of meaningful Chinese culture, but that impulse was not atypical for 20th century Chinese intellectuals, who believed the root of all ills of the Chinese state was Chinese culture itself, who wanted to abandon Chinese characters, Chinese clothing, and Chinese ways of thinking. The Nationalist KMT is filled with those people too, who think Chinese culture is what's stopping China from being powerful. Are they communists too? All of them were still Chinese at their core. The Chinese communists did not reject communism; they did believe in it. But I have a hard time believing that they placed their ideology above the Chinese state.
The Chinese state is the Chinese religion. It is what people believe in. It is "the other shore" of the Chinese people.
Guilty as charged. I do not think the communists are being ideologically sidelined; I think they are less communist than you believe and more nationalist than you give them credit for.
How many very online Chinese nationalists have you actually interacted with? The majority of them practice a confusing and self-contradictory brand of Chinese nationalism, syncretic with socialist third-worldism. It is not a clean or coherent ideology and I do not like it.
It doesn't matter. Like the Manchus before them, they are surrounded by, and have to source talent from, a largely Han nationalist base. Are the revolutionary families breeding like rabbits? Unless they are, I don't see how they can maintain their true communist selves without being absorbed by the nationalism around them.
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The majority of senior leadership now lived through getting yeeted into the fields by the cultural revolution. They have nil interest in letting honest to God socialist zealots ever get anywhere near the steering wheel ever again.
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A nitpick: the turn was in essence an adoption of Trotskyism in all but name to counter Bukharinism (later reborn as Dengism). The only significant difference was Stalin's willingness to establish foreign relations with capitalist countries and jumpstart the industry by purchasing whole factories abroad.
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