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What’s with HN’s weird obsession with China? Every other day it’s a new sensationalized headline about how China is somehow taking over AI, or startups, or the
by che_shirecat 9y ago
What’s with HN’s weird obsession with China? Every other day it’s a new sensationalized headline about how China is somehow taking over AI, or startups, or the world. Is China just a easy catalyst for American insecurity or is there some other trend that I’m missing here?
- legulere 9y agoAnti-Chinese sentiment in the United States has a long tradition that continues on to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...
- ckastner 9y agoArticles of the sort "<country> is taking over AI, or startups, or the world" would be interesting to HN regardless of the actual <country> in question. China just happens to be the <country> in question, in a number of current cases.
- em500 9y agoChina is the second largest economy in the world and will likely be the largest one in within one or two decades. Is it really that strange that it's often in the news? In Europe, the USA still makes the news far more often than China, so here we all have a "weird obsession" with the USA.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago> China is the second largest economy in the world and will likely be the largest one in within one or two decades. Based on what data? Of the 31 provinces, direct-controlled municipalities and autonomous regions in China, three have already admitted falsifying certain economic data. Starting with the northeastern province of Liaoning in January 2017, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the city of Tianjin have said their statistics were wrong. Of the three, only Tianjing has admitted doctoring the overall provincial gross domestic product figures. Liaoning and Inner Mongolia had padded something else: their fiscal revenues. In Liaoning Province tax receipts and income from various fees were padded by 20-30% according to counties and cities during the period of 2011-2014. Inner Mongolia has said that a quarter of the fiscal revenue stated for 2016 were actually fake. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chinese-local-governments-rush-to-admit-fake-data https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chi...
- cabalamat 9y ago> Based on what data? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
- dis-sys 9y ago> China is the second largest economy in the world and will likely be the largest one in within one or two decades. No, China is just a poor developing country with a per capita GDP of around $8k USD. That is just a small fraction of what US/EU achieved. Everything is just because of the huge population, but again that is not an advantage when the population is rapidly ageing. Chinese communist party recently announced the goal to reach $12k USD gdp per capita in 2020, basically they want 1.4 billion people to work damn hard for the next 3-4 years to reach 20% of today's American GDP per capita level! To give you better understanding on this matter - US economy is growing 2.5%-3% annually in the last few quarters, with that kind of growth, in the same 2018-2020 period, US GDP per capita is going to add up to 9% and that new volume expected to be added is comparable to the entire Chinese per capita GDP figure. Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely poor per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be individually achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are clearly far more important than a meaningless national GDP figure.
- cabalamat 9y ago> Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely poor per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be individually achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are clearly far more important than a meaningless national GDP figure. Depends what you're evaluating. If you're evaluating standard of living, yes. If OTOH you're evaluating the power potential of a country's government, then total GDP is more important than GDP/capita.
- dis-sys 9y agopower potential of a country's government? what is the point of having/backing it when regular citizens couldn't have a fair share of that power? telling 1.4 billion Chinese to work their ass off for the next 3-4 years so China's GDP per capita figure can reach 20% of today's US GDP per capita is not impressive at any level. it is a solid proof that China is still damn poor after 40 years of economic reform. there is no competition whatsoever - when Japan challenged America's economy in the early 80s, the GDP per capita figure of Japan was on par with the American one. We are now talking about an economy that is working day & night trying to reach 20% of America's GDP per capita.
- coldtea 9y ago>Is China just a easy catalyst for American insecurity or is there some other trend that I’m missing here? Both, since China is a rapidly developing superpower with 1.5 billion internal market + all the world's manufacturing doing quite well in tech, and the US is not feeling very well lately...
- tanilama 9y agoI know right? China is the new Japan. Industrialized East Asian machine that designed to steal the crown of economy from US. One thing I feel very funny is the entitlement, such as one from this article, that US is destined to be NO.1 in anything that is phrased as race/competition, is rarely being questioned. Why would that be the case by default anyway? With the recent domestic developments, maybe US should consider to resolve the conflict within other than step in other country's business.
- cabalamat 9y ago> One thing I feel very funny is the entitlement, such as one from this article, that US is destined to be NO.1 in anything that is phrased as race/competition, is rarely being questioned. For much of the 20th century, and certainly from 1945, USA was #1. If wanting to stay that way helps them to up their game (which certainly needs upping, politically), then good luck to them.
- lazyjones 9y ago> Every other day it’s a new sensationalized headline ... It's not just China. There's just too much of this political/policy content pushed on HN by various publications craving for the traffic IMHO. NY times, Wired, FT, Forbes etc. all seem to have such clickbaity submissions to HN daily.
- nopinsight 9y agoIf, in the future, China actually takes over many of the key industries as mentioned in the news, there will be some significant changes in economic and geopolitical landscape that affect everyone's life. That is worth knowing and preparing for. On a practical note, it might be useful to know whether to encourage your kids to take mandarin classes for their future or to learn one yourself in the next 1-2 decades, like most people in the world need to learn English for a chance of getting many good careers now. ;) Note that I am not pro-China nor any country. I observe the world and comment on what I see.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoJust like you had to learn Japanese in the 1980s?
- nopinsight 9y agoJust imagine a country about as rich as Japan (or even just half as rich on the per capita basis) but with 10 times more people. How would that change the power balance in the world?
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoHow can China become as rich as Japan? What makes China so different that it can escape the middle income trap? Their economic data is so doctored we aren't even sure how rich they are now.
- cabalamat 9y ago> Their economic data is so doctored Yes it is. However, there clearly has been very significant economic change there in recent decades.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoI'm certainly not denying that. I would just argue caution in jumping to far fetched conclusions, like China will become a superpower so we should all learn Mandarin.
- staunch 9y agoChina is a totalitarian state that is acting in extremely hostile and aggressive ways. The Chinese government has chosen to ally itself with Putin's dictatorship, and not the US. And together they're behind North Korea's threat of nuclear war. People are starting to realize that the Cold War never ended. China and Russia are still acting as enemies of the US. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Unite... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_People%27s_R... 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas... 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea_Islands
- sctb 9y agoPlease stop using this site for political battle, that's absolutely not what it's for and we ban accounts that continue on like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- staunch 9y agoI most certainly do not use my account "primarily for political or ideological battle" so I am very clearly not violating the guidelines. I answered someone's question with the most accurate and factual answer I could. That you find the answer controversial does not change the fact that I'm acting in good faith. My personal political beliefs aren't even relevant or expressed in the the reply. I'm stating an opinion based on the facts as I see them. I provided many citations, to a trusted source, which supports my comment. And the opinion expressed is the same one expressed by most of the world's military experts from all political backgrounds. You should be warning the users that abused the flagging system to censor my comment. Instead, you're helping the abusive mob by threatening to ban me. IMHO should unflag my comment, warn those users that flagged it, and apologize to me.
- icelancer 9y agoWhat’s with HN’s weird obsession with the United States? Every other day there's some article about a business in the US and how it's taking over AI, or startups, or the world.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoI'm not American, but it's very easy to see that US is the centre of the tech world. You may not like but that's indisputable.
- icelancer 9y agoAnd where are all of our tech things made? China is very much the center as well. Just in different verticals. You may not like that, but that's indisputable.
- joelb2014 9y agoIt is today but things like lower-skilled manufacturing have a way of moving quickly to the lowest cost locale. Anecdotally from relationships with a few hardware companies (US & EU) there has been an increasing shift out of China for as wages have gone up on the mainland Article on wage increase in China (2017): https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/chinese-wages-rise-made-in-china-isnt-so-cheap-anymore.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/chinese-wages-rise-made-in-c... edit: defined type of manufacturing (lower-skilled)
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago> And where are all of our tech things made? Oh, overwhelming China. It perhaps would have been less confusing had I said "the software world".
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoI think people desperately want a bipolar world, because the unipolar reality bores them. Hence their eagerness to crown China a "superpower". China has certainly come along way in the past few decades - transitioning from a low income country to a middle income one. But people for whatever reason want to make it out into a bigger deal than it actually is.
- cabalamat 9y ago> I think people desperately want a bipolar world, because the unipolar reality bores them. Hence their eagerness to crown China a "superpower". I desperately want the West to win because it's the best hope for a good society, worldwide. China is a threat to that because China is (1) an autocracy, (2) competently governed, and (3) big. If China wins, the future might be an eternal dictatorship more all-encompassing than anything we've seen in the past.
- BuckRogers 9y agoYou must not have lived through the Opium Wars.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoThat's not a rebuttal to what cabalamat was saying.
- BuckRogers 9y agoYes it is, it just requires critical thinking. What I'm saying is that you wouldn't be all about the West if you experienced colonialism as China has in their past. It makes sense that many people may not hold the same viewpoint, if they're from a former colony or just have a strong knowledge of history.
- cabalamat 9y ago> What’s with HN’s weird obsession with China? China is the country with the largest or 2nd largest economy (depending on whether you measure by PPP or CXR). So it shouldn't be surprising if there are lots of articles about it.
- bfuller 9y agoThat has been a common trope for over 20 years. It was Japan before that.