[DannyBee]

Antitrust won't end big tech. It will just kneecap the US and Europe. They will take the only part of the new economy they have a foothold in and hand it to someone else. China's tech companies, supported and subsidized by the government, will take over. This is blindingly obvious.

The thing that is amusing is that US/Europe seem to think they will be able to deal with this and effectively regulate them, despite not succeeding at this at all in the past (see China + IP, etc).

One major reason is that China is willing to play "unfairly" to support its companies. US/Europe will be unable to ban these services entirely because their citizens depend on them too much. They will attempt what they do now, which is to regulate them in various ways to "ensure competition"

But when you go to do that to a chinese company, the government will find a way to make it hurt for you. You make it hurt for Chinese Search Engine Company, they will ban the chip companies from making chips for you, etc. They are much better at this game than the other governments.

[karmasimida]

> China's tech companies, supported and subsidized by the government, will take over.

This is going to be unlikely, when the Chinese government is actively kneecapping its own big techs.

Data is going to be regulated like money, and not everyone is going to have the privilege to operate data on one's soil moving forward. No western companies could do in China, or vice versa.

> US/Europe will be unable to ban these services entirely because their citizens depend on them too much.

They can just ask it to sell, which was happening to TikTok, or setting up joint venture capital. They are many ways to do such things, government can make you bleed if they want to.

[DannyBee]

The chinese government is not kneecapping them, it's carefully forcing them to fall in line, and doing so in a way that won't hurt its own interests.

Remember that in China, the government is the kingmaker. In the US/EU, the companies are the kingmakers. China is simply reminding some of it's companies that this is the case.

As for the last, good luck. You have a coherent long term strategy that they are willing to sacrifice short term for on one side, and a completely incoherent mess that changes every 4-6 years on the US/EU side.

After they are finished kneecapping the US/EU companies, they will need these chinese companies more than china needs them. Not exactly a great negotiating position - there will come a point where you say "sell", and they say "nah, that's okay, we're good".

[Nasrudith]

No it is beyond just compliance - Xi is outright starting to Mao it up and dusting off the communist claptrap when it is useful to him, and spouting crap about China's future being in physical good manufacturing. He is doing the narcicistic dictator trick of fucking over nice things as potential remote threats to his power.

[ksec]

>This is going to be unlikely, when the Chinese government is actively kneecapping its own big techs.

Not really, just taming them. Which is pretty much all done at this point.

[cmrdporcupine]

It depends on what we are talking about in regards to "big tech".

It's not clear to me that products like Facebook that are primarily driven by cultural rather than technical dominance are something that the Chinese are likely to be able to dominate in. Facebook dominates because your friends and family and hobbies and whatever are on there, doing their thing. When they stop doing that, Facebook won't dominate anymore.

Now if Han culture becomes internationally dominant as the "cool" culture which North Americans Europeans aspire to emulate (like how American culture was internationally in the post WWII era through, say, the early 90s), then all bets are off -- but I think the trend is actually going opposite to that now.

Until then, there will be social networks that dominate in China and there will be social networks that dominate in Europe and North America; because culturally (and politically, obviously) and they will rarely overlap as these are still two very distinct entities.

I think it's likely that the same argument applies to a lesser degree to the ads space, and maybe even to commerce. Something like AliExpress feels worlds apart from Amazon despite the latter become increasingly a wild west of knock-off discount Chinese products anyways.

[leadingthenet]

Counterpoint: TikTok.

[ipaddr]

All big movies have random Chinese culture or star included. Han culture may become part of hollywood's core which will spread the culture

[cma]

The US funded EUV technology (the tech behind 7nm and below), and have used that DARPA funding to prevent Europe's ASML from selling to China. It seems to be almost exactly what you are warning about in reverse.