[pjc50]

When people discuss this subject, I wonder what they think the counterfactual world would have looked like. Do people think China could have been kept backwards forever? I notice nobody goes around accusing Maurice Chang of doing this. Or W Edwards Deming.

[avidiax]

According to the book, Apple had a special team to prevent divorces among the engineers sent to Asia. That's how long they were over there training.

An argument can be made that Apple nearly singlehandedly advanced China's consumer electronics manufacturing by 20 years, and hastened the decline of U.S. manufacturing while doing it.

China doesn't allow key AI engineers and scientists to go overseas. They literally have exit bans and confiscated passports. The west could have ordered companies like Apple to stop sending engineers, banned companies like Boeing and Rolls Royce from building factories in China, and retained massive wealth, expertise, and national strategic advantage, but allowed it to be pissed away for quarterly profits.

[pjc50]

> The west .. Boeing and Rolls Royce

Boeing is a US company. RR is, last time I looked, a UK company. "The West" isn't a coherent political unit.

Besides, this is the exact opposite of the FDI strategy of past decades. How far should the ban on overseas FDI go? Ban on investing in South America? Full capital controls? As you mention, passport confiscation (!) for key nationals? I don't think any of this would have worked for "the west" at any point past about 1970, or even post-WW2.

[avidiax]

Airplane and jet engine manufacturing are literally defense industries.

Corporations operate at the discretion of the local government. Corporate charters could be revoked or threatened to be revoked to preserve national interests.

I'm not saying that I agree with or recommend the mechanisms that China uses. I'm saying that the West actually does have alternative mechanisms if it wanted to try.

As it stands, we are now under a ticking clock before China creates competitive, commercial and military airplane industry and begins to massively undercut Airbus and Boeing, and it was our own companies that wound the clock.

[andrekandre]

  > Do people think China could have been kept backwards forever?

its what the vice prez literally said in a speech; you can look it up on youtube...

fwiw, i have no idea if people that say such things are sincere but sending 100's of billions of dollars investment to china doesn't sound like they expected them to take it and turn around into their biggest competitors otherwise they would never have done it imo... but i'm not a billionaire so what do i know ^^y

[gedy]

I think it's more the taking (or at least not growing) skills, jobs, know-how from the US and giving to China, irrespective of if they would have developed on their own in any case. It's not about keeping China down, etc. People like to compare this with Japan in the 1980s, but Japan was indisputably an ally of the US, whereas China has never been.

[zdp7]

> Japan was indisputably an ally of the US, whereas China has never been.

Except for the time we were indisputably not allies with Japan and were with China.

[gedy]

Correct, I mean PRC, not China per se. Japan as ally meaning post war we have military bases there.

[unethical_ban]

Likening postwar occupied Japan, who is still a military and economic partner of the US, to 2000s-2010s China is certainly a choice.

[shimman]

No, but it's kind of pathetic that the elites in America hallowed out our manufacturing capabilities and condemning tens of millions to abject poverty so their shares can be worth slightly more as a sign of societal sickness.

[pjc50]

> condemning tens of millions to abject poverty

I think you're overstating your point a bit; I'm not convinced that the tens of millions are that much worse off than their counterparts in poorer parts of China. Was there ever a massive assembly plant for iPhones in the US?

(also, everyone in this subthread seems to be arguing that the US should be at least in part a planned economy with state-directed industry?)

[shimman]

Go visit something called "the rustbelt" (not a term of endearment) and get back to me.

One thing you can always count on about HN are extremely out of touched tech workers that ignore poverty in their country that they helped propagate because "fuck you, I've got mine."

Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite you in the next decade.