[zdragnar]

> Focusing on why China succeeded is more interesting and harder to get good information about.

It isn't that hard, really. They had a massive population in relative destitute poverty that was willing to work very hard for a small, but significant, increase in their quality of life, starting with Deng Xiaoping's market reforms through fairly recently.

The surplus of cheap labor is shrinking, and the current "made in China 2025" plan is intended to drive the growth further by shifting more portions of their economy away from foreign services and goods.

The tactics are largely the same, though: massive subsidies to local companies that disadvantages foreign ones, tacit acceptance if not outright approval of theft of trade secrets from those foreign companies that do business in China, and until recently anyway, kept the yuan pegged to the USD, meaning that it is far cheaper to buy Chinese goods than elsewhere. Now, it is tied to a basket of currencies, but held in a fixed range, so it remains intentionally undervalued.

All of this put together ensures that foreign countries will buy Chinese goods and services, and that Chinese people will also prefer to buy locally.

Think of it as a "cold" trade war. Why they were allowed in the WTO with such policies I'll never know.

[roenxi]

It is that hard - you just handwaved all the hard parts. Most of the world is effectively destitute, making <$10k/annum [0]. The vast majority are willing to work very hard for small opportunities to benefit themselves. We're only seeing pockets of economic success in Asia as people copy their neighbors policies. And Deng's reforms ... you handwaved them. What were they? How many good 50 page reports are floating around that actually go in to them? We're talking 50+ years of economic policy between Deng and today, I expect a bit more than just a few Wikipedia links on this one. Even a decade of economic policy across China is a complex subject, China is huge and diverse.

And these massive subsidies - what evidence do we really have? Massive subsidies have not worked well outside of China. What magic is happening in there that makes them effective? Pre-1970 we had a series of superpowers that were effective because they avoided massive subsidies and let failures fail. China can't even afford massive subsidies for most of the period that mattered. The US government's spending might have been bigger than the Chinese economy for a lot of that period, and the companies the US has been subsidising aren't showing any of the vigour that the Chinese ones are.

> ... theft of trade secrets...

People have been screaming from the rooftops for years that the IP edifice is going to reduce innovation in the West. The question is why we subject ourselves to that madness. The amount of cultural destruction in not allowing 1900s works to spread freely is a tragedy, let alone the impact on science and technology. So certainly in theory I agree that the Chinese are getting a leg up here, but it'd be nice to see some analysis. And the problem isn't the Chinese attitudes to IP; that is the solution.

But to emphasis "it isn't that hard" to gloss over decades of highly successful economic policy is just not true. It isn't a serious attitude. If people in leadership positions hold that attitude the situation will worsen.

[0] China's average wage is above the world average, by the way. It crossed the line recently to much rejoycing. I think that is PPP adjusted. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...