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by airflow 1907 days ago
Chinese here.

I want to share two things:

* People's reactions to BCI in China are divided by ages -- younger Chinese prefer goods from companies kind to China.

* Western people's ideas about China are also divided by ages -- you have to refresh your view about the world after 18 months.

Growth means everything. The American people should control covid-19 as quick as possible -- make US a qualified competitor to China.

2 comments

By chinese, do you also mean you're living in china? (I'm taiwanese/chinese american.) Would be interesting to get boots on the ground insights on the peoples' views.

First point implies younger chinese seem to have more national pride? I saw a few videos where it's not too weird for young people to wear traditional chinese clothing in public anymore.

What do people think about the accusations regarding Xinjiang?

> By chinese, do you also mean you're living in china? (I'm taiwanese/chinese american.) Would be interesting to get boots on the ground insights on the peoples' views.

30+ yrs of living in mainland.

> First point implies younger chinese seem to have more national pride? I saw a few videos where it's not too weird for young people to wear traditional chinese clothing in public anymore.

Mostly true.

> What do people think about the accusations regarding Xinjiang?

People don't CARE too much about it. We don't quite understand what US media is saying and why saying that a lot. What I see is covid-19 is changing opinions towards both US and CH govs.

The US is on track to be fully vaccinated before many other countries except small ones.

And the US is already a competitor to China, to think otherwise is delusional. No matter how you slice it:

1) more tighter alliances, 800 military bases around the world vs 3 for China. These are diplomatic encirclements, including South East Asia.

2) dollar as world reserve currency

3) most of the top internet brands, aerospace companies, EV, etc

4) Top silicon (eg Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, etc)

I mean, if you look at high value industry vs low, China is the country catching up, not the one leading.

And without innovative companies like Foxconn and joint ventures from foreign countries where would they be in the pecking order?

Yes they’ve made absolutely astounding progress over the last 20 years, but I think it is going to some people’s heads and they need to cool the chest beating Wolf Warrior nationalism stuff for a bit. Their GDP per capita PPP is still 1/6th of the US.

In the 80s there was much lament over how Japan was making everything, and how they were going to surpass the US. And then came the Lost Generation, we know how that turned out. Cheap labor manufacturing is a temporary comparative advantage, one that moves to Vietnam, India, or Brazil soon. And eventually, with 3D printing, robotics, and other automation, a lot of the advantage will disappear.

Silicon Fabs for example, can be built anywhere, as they're almost 100% automated. The crucial limiting factor these days is often lithography tools and capital. So for example, Xi Jinping's 5 year plant isn't likely to give them EUV lithography fabs if ASML decides not to sell them any IP. There's no real competitive advantage to Mainland China except ignoring environmental laws, but at the same time, there's a lot of risk, so who wants to commit $10 billion in capital given the political risks of a capricious and non-transparent government who often ignores the rule of law.

You are right, but just consider where top students in top universities in China would like to stay. This record means that country is more attracting.