[acdha]

I don't think that line of reasoning is completely wrong but I think it's often over-emphasized as some sort of durable higher truth rather than a simplification of very complicated social factors, and usually this tends to significantly under-weight the ability to change things — e.g. many Americans are used to thinking that we have a huge cultural lead for entrepreneurship but the popular opinion there hasn't adjusted for the degree to which Europe, Canada, Israel, etc. have closed that gap over the last couple decades.

In the case of China, I don't think there's any question that it used to have higher barriers to innovation but I'm not comfortable concluding that this will be true for that much longer given how many people are trying to change it. Every time I read one of Bunnie Huang's gongkai posts[1] it really seems like the view in 20 years will be radically different.

1. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20

[erva]

I agree. I wasn't using it as de-facto; rather as an idea that may calm the panic of "OMG They have more X than we do!" "They have more X than we do" only works to determine an outcome if all other things are perfectly equal, which they are not. My primary point was the idea that academia does not necessarily mean applied innovation.

That said, how long does it take for a culture to change part of its core structure? Cultures seem to me evolutionary and, aside from rare radical mutations, very slow to change. Then again, with over a 1.3 billion people there are sure to be plenty of sub-cultures with enough size to be a driving force for the whole.