[HN Gopher] 2021 Letter
___________________________________________________________________
2021 Letter
Author : jger15
Score : 273 points
Date : 2022-01-01 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danwang.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (danwang.co)
| danschuller wrote:
| > Manhattan meets Maui
|
| I think that is a stretch beyond snapping point for Hong Kong.
| Most days in Hong Kong I could _see_ the air pollution obscuring
| buildings in the distance. It 's AQI is terrible
| https://aqicn.org/city/hongkong/ . There are nice mountain walks
| and nearby islands but it is extremely dense and urban. It's one
| of the places Ghost in the Shell used for reference!
|
| Also the narrative here feels mostly from the mainland China
| point of view; having to go and deal with "problematic" Hong
| Kong. But problems between Hong Kong and the mainland began when
| Beijing used its influence to restrict Hong Kong's traditional
| democracy, so only "approved" candidates could be voted into
| office. And since then it's increasingly clamped down on the
| freedoms Hong Kong previously enjoyed, most recently doing things
| such as removing the Tiananmen Square memorials
| (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-59764029). At this
| point the writing is on the wall and bit by bit Hong Kong will
| brought in step with the rest of mainland China.
|
| Unlike the author I found the Hong Kong bureaucracy fast and
| effective. Enforcers "sometimes able to look the other way"
| sounds like corruption to me and people with better guanxi being
| able to bend the rules. I'd rather have the laws fair, clear and
| applied to all equally (though that's always going to be a
| gradient).
|
| Despite all that, it's undeniable China is on the rise and that's
| going to be the dominant story of this century. There's potential
| for that to be a great boon to the world and I hope that's the
| reality that comes to be.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Despite all that, it's undeniable China is on the rise and
| that's going to be the dominant story of this century.
|
| I think that remains to be seen, for two major reasons:
|
| 1. Countries whose primary political system devolves into "cult
| of personality" tend to fare very poorly in the long run when
| it comes to global leadership (note, I think this warning
| applies to other countries besides China).
|
| 2. China has an undeniable demographic crisis on the horizon.
| Of course, so do many countries, so my hypothesis is that
| countries that are able to accept _and integrate_ immigrants
| will do the best. It 's an open question which country that is,
| but it definitely doesn't look like China.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| As for demography - this being 2022, we cannot rule out that
| further progress in biotech will result in kids born from
| artificial uteruses.
| avrionov wrote:
| Even if this is possible it is highly unlikely anything to
| change in the next 25 years.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Expectations are a huge part of policy.
|
| If by 2030, first kids are born in "factories",
| governments will plan for the future in a different way
| than if they know that there are no alternatives to
| natural births.
| alexanderdmitri wrote:
| This is a fairly ridiculous thing to bring up right now.
| [deleted]
| secondaryacct wrote:
| I disagree with you on Hong Kong (I m now a voting citizen, for
| what it's worth - not much).
|
| The problems in Hong Kong didnt start 2 years ago, they started
| when the UK came in, and we inherit a difficulty I know well
| where I come from (Europe, full of Corsica, Basque Country,
| Northern Ireland, Brittany, Catalonia and so on).
|
| Beijing reacts like we all reacted 2 centuries ago, and will
| slowly learn to deal with it, especially if they invade Taiwan
| and have to stop killing because unlike Xinjiang there's
| nothing to mine there and only cost cost cost to maintain an
| aggressive colony that builds processors as only output of
| value.
|
| I think the CCP is no more evil than Napoleon, and ask a
| Frenchman today and he'll rave about what he did that
| transformed _eventually_ the country, at the cost of 200k+
| young people 's lives to invade Russia, if you can believe it.
|
| Things progress and China has to experience it for themselves,
| sadly. There's no shortcuts that I know of for such a big
| place.
| petre wrote:
| Except what was deemed acceptable two centuries ago is no
| longer acceptable now.
|
| Napooleon also abolished the Spanish Inquisition. Invading
| Russia was always a stupid move.
| jollybean wrote:
| The CCP is not like Napoleon, bringing order out of chaos.
|
| Hong Kong and Taiwan are _way ahead_ of China.
|
| Common prosperity would mean literally just leaving them
| alone - or even promoting and supporting their independence
| (!).
|
| Healthy, free, mostly democratic and sovereign Hong Kong and
| Taiwan would probably be in China's best interest in every
| way but their nationalist view of identity. It's their choice
| - but let's not pretend that Hong Kong and Taiwan are gaining
| Napolonic bureaucracy wherein there was none before.
| bllguo wrote:
| way ahead? On what metrics?
|
| "leaving them alone" is straight-up naivete, especially
| when you consider the US military presence. I cannot
| imagine anyone who has seen a world map seriously advancing
| the idea of HK independence, it's not even what HK itself
| wants. Their current methods seem shortsighted and heavy-
| handed but China's objective of national security is
| eminently rational. To say it's in their best interest to
| leave them alone is simply absurd and clearly only accounts
| for Western perspectives
| jollybean wrote:
| There is zero US military - or any other military threat
| related to Taiwan or Hong Kong.
|
| While there might be some possibility of US defence of
| Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, there is no
| material threat to Chinese territorial integrity
| otherwise - from anybody.
|
| There's no airbases, no missiles, no naval base, no
| ballistic missile launch points for US forces on Taiwan.
|
| There is zero military justification for China to invade
| Hong Kong or Taiwan.
|
| The capture of Taiwan and Hong Kong is 100% a Nationalist
| Imperialist objective of Han Supremacy and their version
| of identity, history etc.
|
| Militarily, the invasion of Taiwan is going to be
| extremely expensive, hugely disruptive, and will risk
| giant swaths of Chinese trade, their international
| standing and participation in so many things. In fact -
| it already is. China faces a great deal of pushback for
| their moves on both HK and Taiwan.
|
| ...
|
| "I cannot imagine anyone who has seen a world map
| seriously advancing the idea of HK independence,"
|
| There is a 100% chance, that if a choice were given to
| Hong Kong citizens today to either continue on the path
| to integrating with China - or - to be independent - they
| would chose independence.
|
| Why don't we find out and give them the choice?
|
| Hong Kong would dump China the instant they had the
| opportunity.
|
| If the CCP had not moved towards controlling the
| political apparatus, Hong Kong would have been
| independent in 1997 whereupon China used the threat of
| violence to stop anyone from considering otherwise, as
| they do now: violence as the only instrument of power.
|
| ...
|
| "way ahead? On what metrics?"
|
| Hong Kong and Taiwan are ahead of the mainland on all
| metrics.
|
| 2020 GDP/capita in USD:
|
| HK $46K Taiwan $33K China $10K
|
| In terms of quality of life, education, healthcare,
| political freedoms - Hong Kong and Taiwan provide
| immensely better for their citizens than China ever will.
|
| The capture of Hong Kong by China is already resulting in
| it's decline, the same would happen to Taiwan.
|
| Hong Kong serves as an important financial gateway for
| China into the 'real world' - the only reason that
| financial opportunity exists is because the historical
| independence of Hong Kong.
|
| No more independence - no more special financial status -
| and so both China and Hong Kong lose.
| jaynetics wrote:
| > way ahead? On what metrics?
|
| GDP/c, PPP/c, HDI, World Happiness Report, Global Health
| Security Index, World Press Freedom Index, ...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > ... only cost cost cost to maintain an aggressive colony
| that builds processors as only output of value.
|
| Just to correct you here, the only aggressive _country_
| between these two is the Chinese side, which is "buzzing"
| Taiwanese airspace daily to keep them mobilized and exhausted
| and has built a full scale replica of central Taipei [1] in
| which the PLA does drills simulating its capture.
|
| That's not peaceful, those are the heights of aggression.
|
| If the CCP wants peace, they need to start showing it with
| action.
|
| [1] https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-
| china...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think the GP was perfectly in line with what you're
| saying. They seemed to me to suggest that China will
| eventually invade Taiwan, and learn the hard way how bad
| that works out in the long run, and how costly this type of
| aggression is - just like the European empires learned for
| themselves from their own experience some few hundreds of
| years ago.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yes, ofc I meant the aggressivity would come after they
| invade Taiwan and transform it into a colony. My English
| is sometimes awkward but the British could have switched
| to French when we invaded them. Sadly we all learned the
| hard way France couldnt maintain... an "aggressive
| colony" in England either hehehe
|
| As a half-related aside, I think the solution is what we
| eventually did with the EU, a mutually assured dependency
| that would force everyone to keep the peace we longed for
| millenia, and I think the British forgot a bit too fast
| the vain inter massacres our ancestors rushed into at
| each disagreement when they yelled for Brexit to give
| them back their "independence".
|
| Wish China could see it but afraid they have to try every
| other stupid way first :( Praying for the British and us
| our fishing disagreements and submarines rifraf dont
| escalate. Could Taiwan compromise with a soft border
| economic Union called the Greater China Union that would
| make everyone cool down ? Meh.
| ouid wrote:
| the writer speaks too negatively about the government of Hong
| Kong for me to be entirely trusting of the content. Maybe Hong
| Kong is desperately in need of new direction, but we'll never
| know for sure.
| pell wrote:
| They wrote thousands of words but did not even mention China's
| genocide against the Uighur people. How neutral can they really
| be?
|
| Edit: A nice little tidbit also is that I've written comments
| on all sorts of contentious topics. But only when bringing up
| this specific factually based truth my comments tend to be
| downvoted within minutes. I wonder why.
| layer8 wrote:
| The article mentions the internment camps.
|
| (I didn't downvote your comment.)
| pell wrote:
| Unless I missed some part here, you're probably referring
| to this part of one sentence as the only mention, correct?
| If so, I find this not very credible when we look at the
| length of the post alone. But yes, technically you'd be
| right and I should have phrased my comment better.
|
| > That's due to the operation of detention camps for ethno-
| religious minorities
| [deleted]
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| "China can simply follow the roadmap set by the US, while
| enjoying the easier task of reinventing existing technologies
| rather than dreaming up new ideas. It can worry about new
| invention after it has caught up."
|
| This was said about Japan 40 years ago. How would you
| compare/contrast the outcome for Japan versus the prospects for
| China?
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I'd totally live in Shanghai if not for the rampant pollution. I
| run 5 miles a couple times a week through the city and if the
| city was shanghai I'd have the lungs of a smoker.
| whoevercares wrote:
| Funny anecdotes: it's relatively rare to see company led by "old
| fart Beijingers" who have been native to the city for 2-3
| generations. Immigrants have been driving the leadership there.
| Native Beijingers tends to be more layback and they thrive in
| cultural related stuff like xiangsheng, comedy and movies.
| dannyw wrote:
| I grew up in Beijing (around the 3rd ring). You'd walk past
| elders playing Xiangqi on the back alleys, while street vendors
| sold Tanghulu for a few coins.
|
| I wonder if the city is anywhere like my childhood two decades
| ago.
| jacquesm wrote:
| paying -> playing
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Not really. My first visit to Beijing was more than two decades
| ago (winter 1999), when you could get a roasted yam on the
| street for a few mao. The sea of bicycles was still a thing,
| old military guys with tuktuks would wait outside of the subway
| stations to take you to your final destination for a negotiated
| 5 mao or so, you could choose between a cheap 8 kuai drop taxi
| or a fancier 10-12 kuai one. Starbucks just opened one store in
| Xidan, and the department stores were still mainly based on the
| Soviet model.
|
| Things changed quickly when it returned in 2002, and then when
| I moved there to stay for almost a decade in 2007. It is a
| completely different place from my memories. The feelings, the
| momentum of society, the industries.
| nus07 wrote:
| You might enjoy reading this -
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/chinas-reform-...
| beckman466 wrote:
| i appreciated this comment at the bottom of the essay.
|
| Reader Dude - January 1, 2022 at 5:59 pm:
|
| _> Dan - I love your letters as always. In terms of China
| commentary it's about as good as there is in the English speaking
| world, but unfortunately that bar is pretty low these days.
|
| > I have to say - I'm a little disappointed re: your indictment
| of Chinese production of culture and some of the platitudes re:
| repression. The government can be heavy handed and has shown zero
| agility to respond when it comes to the propagandizing from the
| west, but you yourself are taking a western lens to what culture
| means and it's embedded in your whole spiel (your references,
| your bit on classical music, etc.). In fact, writing from the
| states, one might even uncharitably call it the soft internalized
| racism (unavoidable) of ingesting a western standard of values.
|
| > Why must the arbiter of cultural quality be what appeals to a
| commercialized western marketplace? Is it somehow a bad thing if
| China doesn't produce manga or Kpop? Frankly it's a failure of
| the state in some ways given that those cultural products help
| soften image on the world stage, but in short - Who is to say?
|
| > Is not the rejuvenation of the Chinese people (something many
| subscribe to) a culture? Is not the rising patriotism and pride
| in China's accomplishments by the vast majority of actual Chinese
| a culture? The rising "cultural level" (volunteers in Xi An
| delivering food as the area is in lockdown, the galvanizing of
| philanthropic attitudes after the Sichuan earthquakes) - Are
| those not cultures?
|
| > Are we mistaking culture for entertainment? In 30 years are the
| artifacts you mention "culture"? Or some footnote in the history
| books, much as Madonna might be here stateside?_
| justicezyx wrote:
| These are good point, but not very well received in the west.
| These comments are obviously from a CHinese national.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > A distinctive feature of Chinese governance is to continuously
| fix slogans, like "reform and opening" to move the country away
| from socialism, and the more recent "common prosperity" to move
| it back. Beijing isn't satisfied with greater national wealth.
|
| > A lot of macro indicators on China are disappointing, like a
| rise in the amount of credit needed to create growth and a fall
| in total-factor productivity growth. But we can't let these
| poorly-measured data points govern as the gospel truth to
| understand this economy.
|
| The reader is left to interpret the overly broad hand-wavy navel-
| gazing adjectives and adverbs.
|
| I'm not sure what this very long "letter" is supposed to inform a
| reader about. There's no substance. I'm not sure it's
| intentional, but it's obvious.
| draw_down wrote:
| manor wrote:
| paganel wrote:
| > They care instead more about cultural issues, which is why
| people have fond views of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
|
| Apart from anime Japan is pretty much a cultural desert for us,
| Westerners, right now. Compare that to the excellent movies they
| made back in the '50 to the '70s, back then they were on the
| vanguard of world cinema together with the French (la Nouvelle
| Vague) and the Italians (Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini), as
| Hollywood was on its dying bed.
|
| Taiwan is even more a cultural wasteland, I can only name you
| Tsai Ming-liang (who apparently has just filmed his last ever
| feature film) and Hou Hsiao-hsien, other than that it's only the
| idea of money and of making money that comes out of Taiwan.
|
| South Korea is a little bit more complicated. There's K-Pop
| that's definitely a thing among younger people (I'm personally
| 40+ so I'm not in their target demographic) and there's Korean TV
| dramas, which rival Turkish TV dramas in many parts of the world,
| but I would say that's not probably what the author had in mind.
| SK used to have a very, very vibrant movie scene in the 2000s and
| a little in the early 2010s, its Busan film festival was one of
| the most interesting movie festivals in the world at some point,
| but for some reason or another all that is a thing of the past
| now.
| rhtgrg wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic but this is an excellent opportunity to
| recommend this lovely chili sauce from Taiwan. [0]
|
| [0] https://yunhai.shop/collections/su-chili-
| crisp/products/su-c...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Lee Ang is Taiwanese.
|
| South Korea's cultural export boom is finally going mainstream
| in the U.S.- Squid Games, Parasite, etc.
| porknubbins wrote:
| In terms of tv/film/music quality Japan is almost a cultural
| desert even to Japanese. The industries are pretty stagnant.
| Japanese have Netflix now and can see the cinematic quality of
| (some) US tv shows that is beyond anything locally. But Japan
| is still widely admired for a good number of iconic cultural
| exports like food, architecture, games, decorative arts like
| bonsai, ikebana, martial arts, etc. And every midsize US city
| has a few ramen restaurants in the past 5-10 years.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Coming from the perspective of culture rather than pop culture,
| Japan and Taiwan have shared a lot to the west, while Korea has
| recent ascendence in the area of pop culture. Taiwan, in
| particular, has preserved much of the traditional Chinese
| culture that was beat down in the mainland during the cultural
| revolution.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| You're talking about entertainment media. "Culture" is more
| than just cinema and the entertainment industry.
| paganel wrote:
| > than just cinema
|
| That's the thing, Japanese cinema back in the '50s-'70s was
| pure art: Mizoguchi, Ozu, Oshima, Naruse, Misumi (my
| favorite), Kinji Fukasaku, Seijun Suzuki (even though you
| could say he was more on the "entertainment" side) were
| defining the cultural norm for many in the world. The same
| goes for the Italian and French cinematographies that I had
| mentioned.
| danachow wrote:
| Sure it is - food, clothing, architecture, design. What else
| am I missing? Moreover, when taking this into account how
| does it change the original post's point?
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I'm referencing stuff like this:
|
| "Apart from anime Japan is pretty much a cultural desert
| for us, Westerners, right now."
|
| Japan is much much much more than just anime when you
| consider the country from a cultural perspective, EVEN from
| the western viewpoint.
| orojackson wrote:
| As mentioned in a different post, he completely missed
| video games. For example, Pokemon is the highest-grossing
| media franchise in the world. Many game companies are
| headquartered in Japan such as Nintendo, Sony, and Square
| Enix. So when taking that into account, it absolutely
| changes the original post's point. He also mentioned how
| he's not really into video games (I don't really count age
| as a factor for this anymore because video games have been
| around for a couple of decades already).
|
| The more interesting question out of this particular
| discussion, though, is this: are video games part of
| culture? I absolutely agree that it is, but the fact that
| neither you nor the original post brought it up tells me
| that it is not for a certain percentage of the HN crowd
| here.
| paganel wrote:
| > are video games part of culture?
|
| Back in the late '90s - early 2000s the "Cahiers du
| Cinema" were beginning to treat them like culture, if I'm
| not mistaken they used to have a relatively small (but
| important, given the context) "chronique" in each issue
| talking about a specific game. Then came a "reactionary"
| backlash, as is typical with French cultural
| institutions, the directorship of the magazine got
| changed and there were no more "chroniques" about video
| games and Michael Jackson. I think Les Inrocks might
| still give the video-games world a fair representation
| but to be honest I haven't read them in a long time.
|
| In the Anglo world a magazine like Sight&Sound just
| ignores video-games almost completely, or that's what
| they seem to have been doing since I first started
| reading them (10+ years ago). More generalist media
| institutions like The Economist, the Financial Times
| (both of these I try to read pretty constantly), NY Times
| or the Guardian don't seem to allocate too much space to
| video games reviews in their Arts&Culture pages, or at
| least I don't remember having read too many of them (if
| any, to be honest).
|
| And I do know that video-games have been available for a
| few decades now, but the thing is that they've become
| quite compartmentalised from society's point view. More
| exactly if you like video games or if you're into video
| games most probably that means that you're the kind of
| person that is spending tens of hours per month (week?)
| hooked to a PC or a game-console, ignoring the outside
| world, hence the outside society. Culture, by definition,
| was meant to provide some "glue" to society, to embrace
| it, so to speak, today's video-games (or most of them,
| anyway) run counter to all that.
| traject_ wrote:
| >And I do know that video-games have been available for a
| few decades now, but the thing is that they've become
| quite compartmentalised from society's point view. More
| exactly if you like video games or if you're into video
| games most probably that means that you're the kind of
| person that is spending tens of hours per month (week?)
| hooked to a PC or a game-console, ignoring the outside
| world, hence the outside society. Culture, by definition,
| was meant to provide some "glue" to society, to embrace
| it, so to speak, today's video-games (or most of them,
| anyway) run counter to all that.
|
| Culture has various definitions that it can be
| interpreted by but by your comments, your views on
| culture appear to be that relevant to the youth of the
| mid to late 20th century but are much less relevant to
| the youth of today. The culture around video games is
| more dynamic and popular compared to that of cinema which
| has serious issues drawing eyeballs outside of the
| repetitive blockbuster films. There's a reason why the
| CEO of Netflix was more concerned about the threat from
| video games to their product.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| With Squid Games being one of the most watched and talked about
| TV-series last year, and Parasite winning the Oscar for Best
| Film the year before, I find it odd that you consider SK to be
| past it's prime.
| neartheplain wrote:
| In terms of fashion, Japan's Uniqlo is quite popular in the US
| and continues to grow:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniqlo#United_States
|
| Americans remain fascinated with all aspects of Japanese
| culture, from food ("Jiro Dreams of Sushi" and sushi/hibachi
| places) to clothing to martial arts to Marie Kondo. Haruki
| Murakami's books are sold at Wal-Mart. Judo and karate studios
| still populate strip malls. Pokemon's going strong more than 20
| years on. I would say Japan's second only to the UK in terms of
| visible cultural exports here.
| paganel wrote:
| > I would say Japan's second only to the UK in terms of
| visible cultural exports here.
|
| That's really interesting, I haven't been to the States until
| now so that is really news to me. To be honest I had thought
| that the Japanese "mania" (if I may call it so) had run its
| course back in the '80s (the "Karate Kid" movies, Akira as an
| underground (?) cultural phenomenon, the Nakatomi
| Corporation), with an important continuation in the '90s
| through the anime mania, maybe also in the 2000s, when many
| people (re-)discovered Miyazaki and Takahata. Also the JDM
| car scene that was made famous by the first F&F movies.
| Anyway, I thought all that was in the past, for example a Mk4
| Toyota Supra sold for a record auction price recently [1], I
| thought there's no way that culture is still part of the
| mainstream, joining it has become too expensive.
|
| I certainly do notice the fascination Japan as a country
| still holds among many in the tech-crowd scene like is the
| case for many HN-ers in here, but I thought that was a local
| and contained phenomenon.
|
| [1] https://www.thesupercarblog.com/toyota-
| supra-a80-mark-4-rm-s...
| Xcelerate wrote:
| > In terms of fashion, Japan's Uniqlo is quite popular in the
| US and continues to grow
|
| Wearing a pair of Uniqlo jeans right now. Every time I look
| for the best made (accessible) consumer goods, I seem to end
| up with something made in Japan. Kitchen knives, charcoal,
| blue jeans, and even food items like beef, rice, or uni. It
| just seems that a lot more care goes into creating high
| quality goods that are meant to last. I think I read
| somewhere that the last shop that actually made blue jeans in
| San Francisco closed recently.
| fnord77 wrote:
| uniqlo feels like a simulacra of The Gap
| eatonphil wrote:
| I think South Korean film industry and quality has only grown
| massively since the 2000s. All Bong Joonho's work for example.
| paganel wrote:
| I'd say he is a product of the 2000s, his "Memories of
| Murder" (imo his best movie) dates from 2003 and "The Host"
| from 2006, it's only now that mainstream Western audiences
| have gotten a chance to see his work.
| ljhsiung wrote:
| I speak with California bias, but the culture/recognition of
| Taiwan is rather massive here. Not as massive as Japan or South
| Korea, but very notable.
|
| It's all mostly food related though. Boba, Night markets,
| Taiwanese breakfast.
|
| On the "namebrand" side, there is TSMC as well, though I feel
| that's gained notoriety in the last few years from the US's
| media push, not necessarily through Taiwan's own efforts.
|
| There's still a fair amount of association with Taiwan <-->
| Chinese culture in many American's minds, but there's certainly
| some differentiation.
|
| Again, potential California bias.
| vehemenz wrote:
| You're forgetting about video games. Japan has Nintendo, Sony,
| and many of the biggest IPs. South Korea has PUBG and is a huge
| player in eSports.
| paganel wrote:
| Yeah, I did, sorry for that, in my defence I'm not into
| video-games (see the age part).
| danbolt wrote:
| If you're interested in checking out new Taiwanese video
| games, I really enjoyed _Opus: Echo of Starsong_. It's
| worth a go! _The Legend of Tianding_ has a fun feeling to
| it as well.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Meh, China is probably the biggest county in DOTA (just as
| Korea with SC). The piece has very interesting points, but
| the author eagerness to criticize every single thing about
| China (ironic, because he complains that the Chinese are
| petty) clouds his judgement.
|
| Also, I dont know in which world he lives (I suppose most of
| his friend were Asian-Canadians) but your average westerner
| cannot name even 1 single cultural production of Taiwan. In
| the case of South Korea, most of the stuff they are known for
| (mainly KPop, and great movies/tv shows) has been produced in
| the last 20-25 years when the country reached an economic
| level and show business know-how that allowed them to
| flourish. China is not there yet.
|
| China produces lots of good stuff, that for many reasons
| (distribution, advertisement, political hostility) are not
| known in the west.
|
| Just one example, this is a fantastic TV show. I even say it
| is the best show I've watched in 2021, and you can watch it,
| legally and for free:
|
| https://www.iq.com/album/the-bad-
| kids-2020-19rrhl1l3l?lang=e...
|
| The quality is there, it needs to be more wisely advertised.
| Lots of mediocre productions too of course, but that is just
| Sturgeon's law in action.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China produces a lot of costume dramas, which aren't that
| popular in the west at but are popular in the rest of Asia.
| Actually, I have an American non-Asian coworker who
| surprised me by her interest in Chinese costume dramas,
| that was a first for me.
|
| The other spice of life and drama formulas seem incredibly
| derivative. Japan does those better to my tastes when I'm
| going over the in flight media options on a long trans
| pacific flight.
| clairity wrote:
| in my admittedly limited experience, korea seems to make
| great suspense, intrigue, and twist-of-fate romance
| dramas, while japan seems better at the quirky and the
| heartwrenching.
|
| china seems better at historical/costume dramas
| (wuxia/xianxia being my current streaming obsession),
| especially for the costuming (obviously), sets,
| landscapes, and cultural history. they're not great for
| plot (holes out the wazoo), editing (quantity over
| quality), or writing/dialogue (uneven at best). they all
| lean much too heavily on tired tropes, like love
| triangles and (weirdly) amnesia, but are still really
| entertaining on balance.
|
| i've been on the look-out to see when wuxia/xianxia
| really crosses over in popularity with american/english-
| speaking audiences, given that it's basically the chinese
| version of the cowboy western, simple morality tales set
| in (seemingly) simple times. _star wars_ , a westernized
| takeoff of xianxia (but in space) seemed like a logical
| stepping stone, and _crouching tiger, hidden dragon_ (one
| of my all-time faves) even made the leap, but didn 't
| establish a wider popularity for the genre. _shang chi_ ,
| marvel's recent and modernized foray, doesn't seem to
| have made much of a splash either.
| eatonphil wrote:
| For that matter, South Korean electronics are massive too.
| Samsung, LG, SK Hynix. Not just phones but laptops,
| refrigerators, chips, air conditioners, etc.
|
| Japan of course has many name brand consumer and engineering
| product companies.
|
| Taiwan has TSMC and Foxconn which while two of the most
| important companies in the world aren't well known outside of
| tech because they dont sell directly and don't do branding
| (like Intel for example).
| danachow wrote:
| I think durable goods is a stretch for what is considered
| the export market of "culture"/creatives - talking
| appliances aside.
|
| Nobody was claiming that these places had no export
| economy.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I know less about SK and Taiwan, but for Japan I think you're
| looking at it quite narrowly.
|
| Others have mentioned videogames, where Japan is more
| influential than all of Europe combined, this being the biggest
| (by revenue) cultural industry by far.
|
| In literature then, Japan has one of the most popular still-
| living authors in the world, Haruki Murakami.
|
| Japanese cuisine and culinary design (pottery, tea
| paraphernalia) is extremely influential everywhere in the world
| - with some amount of mix up with Chinese symbolism, to be
| fair. Japanese visual designs are influential in fashion.
|
| It's true that in cinema and music Japan's influence is small
| and even shrinking (especially given that they had titans like
| Akira Kurosawa). But Japanese culture is still an item if
| fascination and influence in much of the world.
| andromaton wrote:
| > Where does Beijing prefer dynamism instead? Science-based
| industries that serve strategic needs. Beijing, in other words,
| is trying to make semiconductors sexy again. One might reasonably
| question how dealing pain to users of chips (like consumer
| internet firms) might help the industry. I think that the focus
| should instead be on talent and capital allocation. If venture
| capitalists are mostly funding social networking companies, then
| they would be able to hire the best talent while denying them to
| chipmakers. That has arguably been the story in Silicon Valley
| over the last decade: Intel and Cisco were not quite able to
| compete for the best engineering talent with Facebook and Google.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > That has arguably been the story in Silicon Valley over the
| last decade: Intel and Cisco were not quite able to compete for
| the best engineering talent with Facebook and Google.
|
| They were not willing to compete. Intel and Cisco's directors
| had plenty of net income they could have used to compete, but
| decided to reward shareholders in the present instead, rather
| than invest in the future.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| How about Uyghuristan?
| manor wrote:
| Where there is no democracy can we truly speak of culture? In
| 2021?
| justicezyx wrote:
| > By my count, the country has produced two cultural works over
| the last four decades since reform and opening that have proved
| attractive to the rest of the world: the Three-Body Problem and
| TikTok.
|
| I think a lot of people simply cannot wrap their head when they
| view from the Western angle. As a result, they sometime just
| fixate on some main-stream idea without realizing that those
| views are from limited exposure to the ground.
|
| It's true that China has not produced much other attractions than
| 3body and tiktok, even 3body is heavily influened by US SF
| writing, and tiktok is originally produced in US by musically.
| The point is that these productions are easier to be accepted by
| the Western socieity, because they themselves are linagage from
| the western tradition, with a more tainted cultural identity than
| the indigenous stuff.
|
| In reality, China have produced enourmouse amount of culturally
| diverse and innovative work for the domestic audiance.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWdkAyt9Q2A I'll give you one
| example of a recent production of a Cantonese opera mixed with
| modern filming tech of the classic Bai She Zhuan. And Pop star
| signing Song Dynasty Chi
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t9VT9Dwiqg.
|
| Of course, these color productions are very distant from the
| Western cultural heritage, and people from the West simply cannot
| appreciate their wonderfullness and depth.
| jai_ wrote:
| The author's overall point is that China does not seen to
| export many cultural works with global appeal (and not just
| restricted to western tastes). In comparison you could look to
| Japan with it's global cultural export of manga, anime, and
| video games and also South Korea with it's global cultural
| exports of movies and drama. These exports aren't strictly
| limited in taste to western audiences but have a global appeal
| while still retaining elements of it's place of origin.
|
| It's unclear to me though if it is deliberate in this way for
| there not to be many cultural exports like this and if having a
| strong domestic scene is enough, however purely from a number
| game I would have expected more (which the author goes onto
| address later in the essay in the section "Strangling the
| cultural sector")
| [deleted]
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| >In nearly all of my letters over the years, I've lamented the
| idea that consumer internet companies have taken over the idea of
| technological progress: "It's entirely plausible that Facebook
| and Tencent might be net negative for technological developments.
| The apps they develop offer fun, productivity-dragging
| distractions; and the companies pull smart kids from
| R&D-intensive fields like materials science or semiconductor
| manufacturing, into ad optimization and game development." I
| don't think that Beijing's primary goal is to reshuffle
| technological priorities. Instead, it is mostly a mix of a
| technocratic belief that reducing the power of platforms would
| help smaller companies as well as a desire to impose political
| control on big firms.
|
| I have to agree with this mindset. Technology is neither good nor
| bad, but it could be used for bad/good things. We should strive
| to progress society forward and we need to be careful with
| profitable distractions.
| [deleted]
| jollybean wrote:
| Great work.
|
| The lack of 'stupid culture wars' within the treatise is
| refreshing.
|
| How many popular American outlets are addressing these kinds of
| issues?
|
| The media in the US are rabidly obsessed with either demonizing
| or 'heroizing' a kid in Wisconsin's questionable and difficult-
| to-place-actions, whereupon in a spectacular bit of irony there
| was actually a lot of nuanced and thoughtful insight about the
| subject on _TikTok_ of all places.
|
| Pew's political topology is out [1] it's really good, but it
| doesn't bode well for the US as it identifies hardening,
| outrageous voices on the far end of 'both sides' that I suggest
| amounts to a serious cancer on the nation as those voices seem to
| consume everyone's energy on civic issues.
|
| We're not even talking about the right things and when we start
| to get onto the right subject, it seems as though it's
| radicalized for clicks & views, or trivialized so the
| writer/commentator can 'seem smart'.
|
| For example, for as much as I very much respect and support Elon
| Musk's work and achievements, most of his public commentary is
| glib and uninformed and he's not remotely prepared to start
| answering questions on these kinds of subjects (unless they are
| very specifically within his domain). We spend way too much time
| gawking over his Tweets instead of materially addressing
| 'manufacturing v. financialization'.
|
| And we need to consume much, much more quality news coming out of
| China and the rest of the world.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-
| red-v...
| bsenftner wrote:
| Great article. Requires more than one setting to really absorb.
| Almost 20 years ago I did an extended study in China for my MBA.
| IBM had billion dollar annual contracts managing the construction
| of hospitals and medical universities. My MBA class traveled
| throughout China participating in project reviews. More and more
| it is impressed upon me how that China of 2004 was a photo-moment
| in time. With the speed of development, that China I met was
| lifetimes ago.
| epberry wrote:
| > The state has subjected scientists to the tender mercies of the
| US criminal justice system, usually for charges related to
| relatively unimportant issues implicating research integrity.
|
| Does anyone know what this refers to? Is it prosecutions of
| Chinese researchers in the US?
| everforward wrote:
| I believe it's this:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/21/politics/charles-lieber-harva...
|
| And there may have been another similar case, I can't recall. I
| believe the US line is that China was trying to steal research
| or something.
|
| I don't believe any of the people implicated were charged with
| treason or spying or anything like that. It's been more mundane
| "failing to disclose bank accounts" kind of stuff. Whether
| that's indicative of anything is up in the air.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Key points:
|
| "Thus Beijing prefers that the best talent in the country work in
| manufacturing sectors rather than consumer internet and finance.
| Personally, I think it has been a tragedy for the US that so many
| physics PhDs have gone to work in hedge funds and Silicon
| Valley."
|
| "The US focus on efficiency has revealed the brittleness of its
| economy, which has neither the manufacturing capability to scale
| up domestic production of goods nor the logistics capacity to
| handle greater imports. Decades of American deindustrialization
| as well as an aversion against idle capacity has eroded domestic
| manufacturing."
|
| "In the face of this challenge against a new peer competitor, the
| US has demonstrated a superb capacity for self-harm."
|
| "For someone in the middle class, there has never been a better
| year to live in China. That comes down to the entrepreneurs, who
| are creating businesses to please people."
|
| All, absolutely true as I've commented previously in other posts.
| The decline of America is primarily a story about misallocation
| of talent and the demise of the American middle class as a
| result.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| What metrics are you observing that lead you to conclude that
| the American middle class has met its demise?
| paganel wrote:
| > a story about misallocation of talent
|
| I wish modern-day economists would be more aware of local
| maximums, which is the economic strategy the US seems to have
| adopted in the last 2-3 decades. Looks like China is targeting
| things beyond the local maximums, much like the US used to do
| back in the '50s and '60s, maybe also in the '70s.
|
| Not sure things like the ARPANET would have been possible in
| today's world when the strategy of "looking for the local
| maximum" is the only one made use of.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Poor logic. How can U.S. PhDs work in manufacturing when
| factories moved to China? Beijing didn't make PhDs work in
| manufacturing either. It's just the manufacturing job market is
| there. The government has nothing to do with this.
|
| The west self-harm is contradicting itself by allowing both
| heavy labor-regulations in their own countries and trade with
| countries with basically no labor-regulations. It's just like
| they hate their own low skill workers so much that the
| politicians intentionally destroyed the factory job market.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> How can U.S. PhDs work in manufacturing_
|
| There are tons of US PhDs working in manufacturing. Most of
| the interesting and high-leverage problems in manufacturing
| are in Chemical/Biochemical Engineering, Robotics, Controls,
| ...
|
| When it comes to "stuff phds do in the manufacturing sector",
| the US is still a leader.
|
| _> The west self-harm is contradicting itself by allowing
| both heavy labor-regulations in their own countries and trade
| with countries with basically no labor-regulations._
|
| This is accurate. If you want manufacturing capacity in the
| US, the correct thing to do is to _raise the bar globally_.
| Want to import? Great. Meet a minimum standard of labor and
| environmental regulations, perhaps different than the US
| labor regs, and even possibly lower in some dimensions, but
| qualitatively similar.
|
| Of course, this is _far_ easier said than done.
|
| _> It 's just like they hate their own low skill workers so
| much that the politicians intentionally destroyed the factory
| job market. _
|
| WRT environmental regulations, it's much easier to turn a
| blind eye to something happening half-way around the world
| than something happening in your own town. Especially when
| that "something" is "Pittsburgh's skies blacker than night at
| noon due to cancerous smog".
|
| WRT labor regulations & cost, you seem to claiming that the
| workers rights movement hated workers? Again, it's easy to
| say "make jobs safer and pay people more". It's much harder
| to so "and also we're going to accept permanent double-digit
| inflation."
|
| I think, instead of malice, we can attribute the US's current
| situation to the fact that policies which make manufacturing
| more expensive are largely popular _even among manufacturing
| laborers_ and policies which make imported goods more
| expensive are (a) horrendously difficult to "get right" and
| (b) largely unpopular.
| billconan wrote:
| As someone who grew up in China,
|
| I don't think they want to put more PhDs in manufacturing.
| They want to produce less PhDs.
|
| What they want to copy from Germany is its Apprenticeship.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_in_Germany
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The west self-harm is contradicting itself by allowing both
| heavy labor-regulations in their own countries and trade with
| countries with basically no labor-regulations. It's just like
| they hate their own low skill workers so much that the
| politicians intentionally destroyed the factory job market.
|
| This is the problem but you have the motive wrong. It wasn't
| intentionally destroyed, it was a complete lack of concern
| about whether or not it was destroyed.
|
| You have, on the one hand, unions and others who lobby for
| more regulations. They have perverse incentives. If they get
| a new regulation that increases US manufacturing costs by 2%,
| they get credit for protecting workers. But they don't get
| credit for regulations passed in the 1970s, so they're always
| asking for more, so the cost of US manufacturing is always
| going up.
|
| Manufacturing companies would have the incentive to
| counterbalance this by lobbying against them, if they didn't
| have the alternative to offshore manufacturing to countries
| without this. But they do, so they do that instead.
|
| So regulations that can't pass a cost benefit analysis, or
| that no longer make sense because things have changed or we
| know more now than we did then, are still on the books and
| have no obvious path to being removed.
|
| Politicians have no incentive to fix this because their
| incentives are to make the lobbyists happy. The unions are
| happy that they get to take credit for passing more
| regulations all the time and the corporations are happy that
| they get to avoid all the regulations by manufacturing in
| other countries, so who is the lobby to fix it?
| throwDec21 wrote:
| Chinese may be the world's best manufacturers but it just
| creates pollution and little profit. SV maybe create pointless
| apps but it makes loads more money.
| natded wrote:
| My unironic recommendation for any nation state is to block
| American social media companies and then proceed to restrict or
| outright ban R&D work on 'ads' and other such trinkets. Exactly
| because of: ".. a tragedy for ... that so many physics PhDs
| have gone to work in hedge funds and Silicon Valley." Just
| looking at the sheer amount of work gone to optimize ad
| clicking is insane.
| dnautics wrote:
| > Just looking at the sheer amount of work gone to optimize
| ad clicking is insane.
|
| It's circular -- while I think ads are absurd and am actively
| trying to remove as many of them from my life as possible,
| it's not like technologies that have been subsidized by
| optimizing ad clicking haven't come back around to help
| science out.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Are you referring to ad tech somehow being useful or that
| some of FB/Google pet projects ultimately funded by ads
| have been useful?
|
| Just curious, especially if you mean the former.
| dnautics wrote:
| both. For the first category, basically "machine learning
| advances in general". For the second, "machine learning
| advances like alphafold".
|
| I reserve the right to claim at some future date,
| possibly in the next few hours, "the circular payoff is
| mostly tapped out".
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Perhaps a less heavy-handed approach would be to actually
| enforce existing anti-trust laws against Big Tech so that
| they're not able to monopolize America's best and brightest?
|
| Also, as a Physics PhD holder myself, I dislike that Physics
| PhDs are held up as the archetypal smart people to be
| allocated in society's best interest. My opinion is that most
| of them, myself included, were foolish to go that far in
| their education and would have better served themselves, and
| society, if they had stopped at a BS. We could unlock a large
| economic gain if we went back to fairly matching job
| responsibilities with the minimum required education.
| jollybean wrote:
| This may not be so true.
|
| Remember comparative value, which is a real thing.
|
| China had very cheap labour that the US could never compete
| with.
|
| China made outrageous amounts of stuff, and stocks Wallmart and
| Amazon shelves with it.
|
| In my own lifetime, I have seen a seismic shift in material
| consumption of Americans, mostly for the better: the quantity,
| variety, quality of goods and even foodstuffs in a Wallmart
| today - cheap and accessible to most Americans - would blow
| someone from 1975 away.
|
| The giant piece missing from the economic equations is
| 'consumer surplus' which is the 'profit' that consumers derive.
| When consumers get more choice, more quality and lower prices,
| they are making huge 'profits' that we simply don't put in the
| equations. Consumer Surpluses have been massive for the West.
|
| At least for low-end manufacturing, it's been a massive
| neoliberal win-win.
|
| Obviously, the storyline is changing, and for more advanced
| products it's a different issue. But for most things so far,
| it's 'good' trade.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > China had very cheap labour that the US could never compete
| with.
|
| Not a case now.
|
| Skilled assembly line workers cost more in South China than
| in cheaper US states.
|
| Amazons, Googles, Facebooks still keep pouring into China
| like there is no tomorrow.
|
| I think a little of critical thinking will point to problem
| not being with the cost of labour.
|
| Thought, the initial US MNCs push into China was definitely
| motivated by the borderline free workers.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > Skilled assembly line workers cost more in South China
| than in cheaper US states.
|
| Irrelevant when 2/3 of inputs are in China and overseas
| shipping rates are 2x what they were 2 years ago.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Not a case now."
|
| Yes, it's the case now.
|
| Average mfg. wages in China are still short of Mexico, and
| US salaries include all sorts of overhead, especially
| healthcare.
|
| "Skilled assembly line workers cost more in South China
| than in cheaper US states." - for some things, not for most
| things.
|
| "Amazons, Googles, Facebooks still keep pouring into China
| like there is no tomorrow." - Yes, and?
|
| Without 'cheap labour' China would not exist, even today,
| the economic machine depends on it.
|
| The surpluses wrought by the American/Western consumer are
| massive.
|
| Walmart would have 1/2 of the goods, and they would be more
| expensive.
|
| Americans consume considerably more goods than they would
| otherwise, and that's a measure of the enormous surplus
| being created by comparative value trade between the two
| nations.
|
| The 'anti comparative value' argument made in the article
| is just hot air and speculation without a lot of data to
| pack it up.
|
| Adam Smith is as correct as Isaac Newton, you can't just
| say 'gravity doesn't exist anymore'.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > "For someone in the middle class, there has never been a
| better year to live in China. That comes down to the
| entrepreneurs, who are creating businesses to please people."
|
| _Every_ rich Chinese I know is trying to leave China now. This
| includes even _very_ well placed regime insiders.
|
| A PLA 2 star general almost forcefully sent his daughter to
| live in Canada at the peak of COVID travel restrictions. I knew
| her from my days in a Canadian college.
|
| A grandson of some revolutionary hero whom I took misfortune to
| acquaintance with by helping his daughter practice English,
| started recently asking me how immigration to Canada works, and
| if he can get along there without knowing English.
|
| Even most zombiefied, hardcore pinkos who were going flag
| waving at West Georgia have shut up for good, and got in line
| for Canadian passports.
|
| From the middle class you mention, factory owners I knew who
| were the most staunch, and stalwart when it came to hostile
| business environment, are now shutting down, selling at n-times
| discount, and pretty much running from the country.
|
| It's done for.
| deanCommie wrote:
| I think you're making the point.
|
| North America is for the rich. There is no better place to be
| RICH (better than even Europe).
|
| Western Europe is probably the best place in the world to be
| poor.
|
| It seems that China is now the best place in the word to be
| middle class.
|
| (I know very little about it, just basing it on the article
| and the other discussion here).
|
| That the richest want to leave China for North America is not
| an indictment of China, it's an indictment of North America.
| thewarrior wrote:
| Yea you're exactly right. The elite of every non first
| world country are busy trying to immigrate to the US or one
| of the Anglo nations. It doesn't say much about whether a
| country will continue to rise or not.
| rsync wrote:
| "And there's no obvious leader in the southeast, but it is
| between Shenzhen, the richest city in the region, and Guangzhou,
| the political capital ..."
|
| An incredible statement - made even more so by _possibly_ being
| true.
|
| It was less than ten years ago that Hong Kong might have been
| considered the leading city _in all of China_ and certainly the
| most dynamic on the axes that he is considering.
|
| FWIW, I think the CCP has made a tactical error in their handling
| of Hong Kong:
|
| As a business owner in Hong Kong I was, previously, only
| peripherally and philosophically concerned with the behavior of
| the party throughout the rest of the country - it was _possible_
| to compartmentalize the "two systems".
|
| But if Hong Kong is just another Chinese city and if there is
| only one "system" then I am forced to _very critically
| reconsider_ my business activities there - small as they are.
|
| This makes me very sad - Hong Kong has for my entire adult life
| been my favorite city and the city I thought was the most
| interesting and exciting.
| draw_down wrote:
| > I am forced to very critically reconsider my business
| activities there - small as they are.
|
| You can take as hard a negotiating stance as you like, in
| most/all situations the leverage resides with them. Even being
| Apple won't get them to leave you alone, that should tell you
| something.
| infinity0 wrote:
| If you a "business owner in Hong Kong" then you should be able
| to see with your own eyes whether Hong Kong is "just another
| Chinese city" or not, rather than believing the anti-China
| propaganda that western media regurgitates repetitively and
| predictably, paying only the most basic level of lip-service to
| actual events.
|
| You will know then that Apple Daily and Stand News were pushing
| "freedom of the press" into territory that no western media
| dares to push in their own countries, including actively
| calling for foreign military intervention in Hong Kong.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfVGludKPWM SCMP - The
| insufferable hypocrisy of Western governments hell-bent on
| destroying Julian Assange
|
| "the only solution to bad speech is more free speech"
|
| "the only solution to a bad market is more free market"
|
| "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy
| with a gun"
|
| edit: Hacker News that bastion of "free speech" where all
| opinions not conforming to the "western liberal" doctrine gets
| downvote-censored because the readers are too fragile to read
| different opinions
|
| > US media personalities calling for military invasion of
| Australia
|
| (1) That's not the same thing as calling for military invasion
| of the US. (2) No government cares about random small articles
| that only random internet commentators know about to make a
| "irrelevant counterexample fallacy"; what matters is large-
| scale media exhibiting a long-term pattern of behaviour and
| trying to organise large numbers of people (which they failed
| at in HK; most people stopped going to the protests after a
| small group started extreme violence).
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| > You will know then that Apple Daily and Stand News were
| pushing "freedom of the press" into territory that no western
| media dares to push in their own countries, including
| actively calling for foreign military intervention in Hong
| Kong.
|
| I recall very recently some US media personalities calling
| for military invasion of Australia; doesn't seem very
| different.
| _dain_ wrote:
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| >Over the last two decades, the major American growth stories
| have been Silicon Valley (consumer internet and software) on one
| coast and Wall Street (financialization) on the other.
|
| I don't think California deserves this label anymore. I propose
| we rename Silicon Valley to "MetaSoft" valley.
| yosito wrote:
| Why not just Silicon Wasteland? Is that not "meta" enough?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I've always been a fan of Silly Valley
| infinity0 wrote:
| The author makes an incorrect assessment without considering the
| appropriate context for China.
|
| The gaping hole in his assessment of "Chinese cultural exports"
| is the failure to account for China's population and GDP per
| capita, which currently is only about $17k PPP. This is no
| position to be exporting culture to the globe from; that would
| just be a waste of resources. Culture is a result of being rich,
| not a cause of being rich.
|
| In other words, China is not "culturally-stunted" than any other
| country with a similar GDP per capita PPP.
|
| Chinese culture is also all in the Chinese language, and China
| has no strategic reason to make any effort to export it globally
| into English, a foreign language, where fitting translations
| would cost even more resources.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| Fascinating letter. It's a bit of a tangent, but I would be
| interested in similar perspectives on the development (or
| stagnation) of cities in the U.S., and how they compare to China.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Cities in the USA are already mostly developed, the USA is not
| a developing country, it's not like there is much movement in
| our industries or skylines. After China reaches developed
| status, it will similarly become boring and stagnate (since you
| can't grow forever).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think that attitude is in itself completely a cultural
| product of the sort that Dan talks about, and which Mark
| Fisher lamented when he talked about the consequence of the
| neoliberal era to cancel any concept of the future.
|
| A little over a hundred years ago we hadn't invented flight.
| We probably have many thousands of years left. Who says
| there's no way to build a city that makes our cities look the
| same way we look at a medieval town? Our 'developed' world is
| boring and stagnant because we've made a choice to not push
| towards the future, and instead relive the 80s pop culture in
| VR.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > I think that attitude is in itself completely a cultural
| product of the sort that Dan talks about, and which Mark
| Fisher lamented when he talked about the consequence of the
| neoliberal era to cancel any concept of the future.
|
| The fallacy of "rapid growth forever" has been repeatedly
| asserted multiple times in history, to be knocked down each
| time. The last time we went through this was with Japan,
| where, in the early 80s, the prediction was made that
| Japanese would be twice as rich as Americans by the year
| 2010. And then their real estate bubble crashed and they
| lost a couple of decades. China today is like Japan in the
| early 80s with an even more insane property bubble.
|
| The developed world keeps developing, just at a far slower
| pace than the developing world. If China avoids the middle
| income trap and reaches developed status, then they will
| experience slow growth just like other developed countries
| do. But rapidly aging demographics is a huge challenge for
| China to overcome in sustaining its current rate of growth
| before reaching developed status.
| rsync wrote:
| "Shenzhen and Guangzhou are still attracting entrepreneurial
| types, producing an even more commercially-oriented culture than
| Shanghai. But while Shenzhen is pleasant, it is also a boring
| city with minimal culture. A friend relates an anecdote from a
| gallery artist, who said that clients in Shenzhen rarely comment
| on the art that they plan to buy. Instead they ask only its
| expected price in five years."
|
| This is a bit dated (2015 ?) but I was wandering around Shenzhen
| very late at night. After midnight. I came across a Lamborghini
| dealership and I thought it was noteworthy.
|
| Then I noticed that _it was open_.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| It's a book!
|
| Fascinating insights.
| baybal2 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| manor wrote:
| Pointing out the lack of Democracy in China is hardly a
| "shallow" dismissal.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you for all of your insights into China over the last
| couple of years. They tend to be blunt and unvarnished but
| verify as accurate relative to what I know about the country
| (which, arguably isn't much, I've never visited but am in
| fairly close contact with some people living there).
| dannyw wrote:
| I enjoyed the read but I'd like more perspectives that go
| deeper. Can you share some recommendations?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Unfortunately, pretty much all even moderately accurate
| coverage of China is completely evading the Anglophone media.
|
| Matters.news is blogging community of few authors not afraid
| speaking their mind. It's still just a drop in the ocean, and
| any kind of good reporting on current affairs in China has
| been extinguished for good.
|
| The few people remaining brave enough to open their mouth are
| either from religious cults on one side, or former regime
| insiders themselves on another.
| logshipper wrote:
| I don't think the author's American-ness disqualifies them from
| writing about China. On the contrary, it is their very
| experience as a Chinese American that helps me (an outsider)
| see things from a new and interesting perspective.
|
| > some seriously confused Chinese American
|
| I don't recall where I read this (I think it may have been
| Rachel Cusk), but it is a writer's job to ask questions. And
| what better source of questions than confusion?
|
| That said, I'd genuinely be interested to seek your
| recommendations on China from Chinese sources.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I don't think the author's American-ness disqualifies them
| from writing about China.
|
| It does. Americans, and Chinese Americans themselves
| sometimes don't realise that Chinatown America is absolutely
| not characteristic of China, nor modern, nor at any point in
| history. Instead, it's a strange universe on its own, with
| its own history, and customs.
|
| To me, when I talk to Chinese Americans, Chinese Americans
| feel as Chinese, as American football is football.
| [deleted]
| beckman466 wrote:
| > as American football is _football_.
|
| the second 'football' here being American 'soccer' right?
| whoevercares wrote:
| While this is an excellent article (admittedly I stopped around
| half its too long) that refreshes most of my obsolete memory of
| China, I do think the author is a bit too optimistic. From what I
| heard from my startup founder friends, it's becoming increasingly
| hard to innovate without government relationships (many founders
| do though, some from family some from bribery). The "national
| team" is coming to many consumer segment as well so the space is
| squeezing.
|
| Let's see where this trend goes, I think the golden age of
| entrepreneurs are ticking
| gruez wrote:
| >The "national team" is coming to many consumer segment as well
| so the space is squeezing.
|
| Can you expand on this? Are you talking about consumers wanting
| to buy chinese brands (eg. huawei instead of apple), or some
| sort of officially state sanctioned brand?
| whoevercares wrote:
| More on the to-C technical startup founded by overseas
| Chinese who returns to the country. The national team now is
| disguised as private owned companies and have unfair
| advantage to supply chains, even better pricing with cloud
| providers
| justicezyx wrote:
| No, he wont provide much concrete evidences.
|
| This so called national team, is a myth. It never manifests
| itself. Apparently, national team backed national captical,
| executed by nationally-owned enterprises, are not agile and
| innovative enough when competing with private businesses.
| That's simply a human nature-driven market econmomy law.
| Chinese people are not living in an alternative universe
| where economy laws do not apply.
| whoevercares wrote:
| Meh not so fast.. it's China, it has plenty of talents and
| execution is not a concern. Take ride sharing as an
| example, those stated owned enterprises CAN do tech!
|
| > Other major state-owned automakers have rolled out their
| own ride-hailing brands: FAW Group established Yiqi Chuxing
| in 2019; Hong Kong-listed Dongfeng Motor launched Dongfeng
| Chuxing in 2018;
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.kr-asia.com/chinese-
| automak...
|
| I don't have data to prove they competed unfairly to DiDi
| though but we know didi has been punished to death now
| beloch wrote:
| Anybody living and working in China and _writing_ about it has
| to conform to certain viewpoints, or they 'll be unable to
| continue as they are. This letter is interesting in several
| ways, but you'd be wise to approach it from the angle of it
| having been approved by the government. Anything remotely
| negative has to be balanced by big positives (or negatives
| about Hong Kong).
| pphysch wrote:
| > This letter is interesting in several ways, but you'd be
| wise to approach it from the angle of it having been approved
| by the government.
|
| Which government? Beijing would absolutely not allow the
| publication of a piece that uncritically regurgitates
| Washington's narrative about "mass detention of minorities".
| It's Saddam-has-WMDs-and-is-allied-with-al-Qaeda all over
| again. Fool me once.
|
| It's best read as a letter for Western/liberal audiences.
| That is clearly the intended audience.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| >"mass detention of minorities". It's Saddam-has-WMDs-and-
| is-allied-with-al-Qaeda
|
| These aren't equivalent. We have plenty of evidence of the
| Uyghur genocide from 3rd party journalists and satellite
| imagery. The only evidence for WMDs came directly from a
| new government agency (named "Office of Special Plans")
| created by Dick Cheney and not independently verified by
| any 3rd parties.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Exactly. Any Chinese citizen writing on the same topics would
| need a high degree of formal education outside of China,
| English proficiency, and the ability to publish anonymously
| on the real Internet. It's a high bar.
| chongli wrote:
| I didn't read all the way through but what I got out of it is
| that socialism is destroying the traditional Chinese character
| of Beijing. Not exactly a glowing portrait of the central
| government!
| uyt wrote:
| As a tech worker with little knowledge about china, the most
| interesting section for me starts at "A summer storm" where he
| talks about why/how the government is cracking down on big
| consumer tech.
| andromaton wrote:
| > Somehow the US has evolved to become a political system in
| which people can dream up a hundred reasons not to do things like
| "build housing in growing areas" or "admit people with skills
| into the country." If the US wants to win a decades-long
| challenge against a peer competitor, it needs to be able to
| improve state capacity.
| pkdpic wrote:
| As somebody who got tricked into drinking way too much baijiu
| last night by a Beijinger I'm really enjoying this read so far.
| She had a lot of the same thoughts and observations. I find it
| all super fascinating.
| azangru wrote:
| Who is she?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not quite:
|
| https://twitter.com/danwwang
| pkdpic wrote:
| An artist that grew up there and goes back to visit family
| regularly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This isn't true, see the 'about' page.
|
| https://danwang.co/about/
| istorical wrote:
| I believe the commenter is referring to the individual
| they shared drinks with, not the author of the piece.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah yes, I see now how that sentence works. Thank you for
| pointing that out.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Sorry for the confusion there!
| jacquesm wrote:
| No problem, my bad, I should have read it slower before
| commenting. I think the Beijinger is what threw me off, I
| thought that was the complete reference and then the
| 'she' referring to the article writer, not cluing in that
| the Beijinger was the reference of the 'she'.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| There's a fair number of international members who speak
| English as a second (third, fourth) language. I try hard
| to be as unambiguous as possible to account for that.
|
| Though I certainly don't always get it right.
| xwdv wrote:
| Does she have a dual citizenship?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Chinese citizens are not permitted to hold a second
| citizenship.
| chunghuaming wrote:
| cheschire wrote:
| > The central government has delineated around a hundred million
| people to each of these megaregions and charged them to drive
| future growth.
|
| Can someone explain what this means? What does this governmental
| "charge" look like? Is it just a zoning thing, or is it more
| personal?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It's more image than an official distinction, and it is hardly
| accurate. For example, both Tianjin and Beijing are autonomous
| cities not part of provinces, while neither Shenzhen or
| Guangzhou in the Bay Area are autonomous. The cities and
| provinces around Shanghai are incredibly wealthy and each hold
| their orbits. But like San Jose becomes an adjunct of San
| Francisco, so does Hangzhou of Shanghai for some reason.
| Stevvo wrote:
| It's partially a propaganda thing with slogans printed on
| buildings everywhere saying things like "Charge towards the
| Chinese dream with vigor, for the betterment of the region and
| the party!"
| baybal2 wrote:
| Nobody really did. China does not have any kind of coherent
| regional policy, or, well, any kind of real economic policy.
|
| The infamed communist 5 years plans barely mean anything for
| the real economy.
|
| South China got ahead in manufacturing due to market economy
| reaching it first.
|
| Shanghai got banks because Jiang Zemin lived there, and he
| wanted money like every proper communist.
|
| Chongqing seen its development as the only inland China big
| city, and lack of any other alternative.
|
| Beijing is now late to the party, and bureaucrats there
| basically ordered it to become another "center" through
| administrative fiat.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > China does not have any kind of coherent regional policy
|
| I am not sure your basis for this. The presence of the policy
| itself is effective in guiding the human mind and interests,
| also broadcast certain information national wide. The policy
| is comboed with fiscal policy, i.e., easier loan for the
| designated sectors. And more effective use of nationally-
| owned enterprises, research facilities, etc.
|
| Of course, policy needs to be realistic by matching the
| regional characteristics. As you said, one cannot
| industrilize the inner cities first, because the global
| economy is centered on marine transportation, so naturally it
| starts from Shanghai and guangdong, which are close to sea
| ports. But that does not make the policy less coherent. It
| just means that the policy is sensible and meaningful.
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