Joooooooosh t1_j6mcj7l wrote
Reply to comment by mad-hatt3r in Chinese Nuclear Lab Uses Intel, Nvidia Chips Despite Ban | Blacklisted Chinese entities obtain American hardware on the open market. by chrisdh79
You say this but a lot of technical improvements in China have come from importing western specialists.
If you look at a lot of the high tech companies manufacturing there, the design teams and lead engineers come from the west.
The Chinese education system is kinda batshit insane and competitive on a level, few of us in the west can understand. It doesn’t really reward creative thinking or encourage people with novel ideas, quite the opposite really.
Not to say some really bright people don’t make it through but then they are presented with the classic issues within communist systems… cronyism and just endless red tape, very un-talented people gate keeping and protecting themselves. It leads to little or no innovation.
mad-hatt3r t1_j6niwe0 wrote
I agree that the competition in the schools are soul sucking and robs children of their childhood. However, you have a common Western view that I don't believe is very accurate. Mostly from people that don't understand the region. To say they don't innovate or have novel ideas is comforting for the west but wrong. I've heard from the heads of Google and even Elon talk about China, saying these stereotypes are completely absurd. Intelligent ppl innovate, Chinese can and will. Half of modern society arises from Chinese innovation, to dismiss that shows a real Western propaganda bias. Not here to give a lesson on history, or shill for a repressive regime. Just pointing out that these policies can and often will backfire
Joooooooosh t1_j6nw4ov wrote
Wasn’t really the point I tried to make, just by sheer percentages alone, China must have some real innovators.
The main issue is the political culture and systems of government and business.
Chinese people are just as capable as anyone else but only certain cultures seem to produce free thinking, trend busting and renegade inventors.
Look at the peak of the USSR, produced some of the smartest people in history. Unfortunately the rate of technological advancement stalled and suffered, because of the corrupt cronyism that’s rampant in communist states.
China isn’t a meritocracy, only favourable people to the regime are allowed to succeed and this is what stifles real innovation.
Productivity ground to a halt in the USSR due to massive corruption and I don’t see much evidence that this won’t happen in China. The regime at the top has tightened, Xi has surrounded himself by weak, yes men and expelled any dissenting voices.
The West tried to move closer to Russia and China, opening their economies up, hoping it would bring the nations closer. It has failed. Putin built an army with the profits and is trying to rebuilt the Soviet Union, Xi has centralised power and doubled down on Authoritarianism.
It will be interesting to see how the two economies manage without Western input, they might do fine but history is not on the side of corrupt, authoritarian regimes.
ThunderKant_1 t1_j6ovhot wrote
The exact same shit was said about Japan not so long ago… (that they can’t innovate and just steal all the tech from the west, and everything made in Japan is low quality). And actually the same has been said about Germany as well a little longer ago. So I would be cautious with these kind of statements, they don’t have a good track record.
Also there are already examples of fields were China is more technologically advanced and more innovative then the west, for example renewable energy or some aspects of EV manufacturing (new battery tech for example)
Joooooooosh t1_j6pi9cq wrote
I mean who knows what the future holds…
But why isn’t Russia a technological powerhouse…
Germany, Japan, Korea… these are not authoritarian countries, with nightmarish political systems. They ain’t perfect, but they ain’t totalitarian hellscapes either.
Just because things are going well somewhere, doesn’t mean the trajectory holds.
Iran was a beacon of progress in the East, now look at it… Brazil was poised to become a powerhouse but things fell apart.
No doubt Chinese industry has come a long way, turbo boosted by Western companies wanting a piece of the action but as the country becomes more insular, more extreme… let’s see how things go.
China’s rise was not Xi’s doing. He’s just the rich kid inheriting his Daddy’s fortune.
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