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I spent first half of my life in Asia, and second half in the West so I am very much under influenced by cultures on both sides. I've always tried my best to vi

I spent first half of my life in Asia, and second half in the West so I am very much under influenced by cultures on both sides. I've always tried my best to view these issues as objectively as possible and without any biases. China of the past has always accepted that they were inferior, but they were always willing to learn which was why most people accused them of copying from others. However, human knowledge and innovations have always been about replicating what others have already done, and then adding your own tweaks to it. Nobody could go from 50 to 100 without climbing up through every step, and China was willing to climb those steps at all costs. They have studied Western society extremely well over the years. China were able to extract all the best elements from the West, removed the not-so-good ingredients, and then applied those filtered results back to the country. On the opposite side, it's understandable why most people are criticizing China because psychologically it's very difficult to accept an inferior opponent who was only considered as "copier" not long ago could now in fact be as good, or possibly even better in the future. It's not easy considering they have been leading by a wide margin for such a long time. The danger here is while China has quietly concentrated all their effort to adapt the best formulas from the West, people on the other side continue to ignore an inevitable reality. Instead of investigating China to see why they have done so well and to obtain some of their knowledge in return, many are still refusing these facts and trying their best to hold onto old ideas that just badly need updates. If not careful, we have seen this scenario played out time and time again in business (Kodak, Myspace, Blackberry, etc...). Despite what others may want us to believe, majority of today world are still operating based on zero-sum game. Italy has seen its real GDP in decline and is the first G7 country to endorse China's "Belt and Road" initiative. In their own view, China of today no longer believes they're an inferior opponent. It's about time people should forget about the past and start looking more into the future. Our world is changing very fast and failing to do that may quickly leave people behind before they even realize it.

bsenftner 7y ago
The end of my MBA program was a trip to China, with a week spent in Shanghai. a portion of our trip was meeting with the then CEO of China IBM and he toured us through the most ambitious project I'd ever heard: the Chinese Government hired IBM to create a nationwide western medical infrastructure - they needed everything from the health science courses in high school, university majors, nursing and medical universities, and hospitals and pharmacies by the thousand. This was a giant jaw dropping ambitious effort, and from what we could see the entire effort was being executed with the latest organizational and educational models known at the time from the west. I thought it was like taking the entirety of the Harvard Review and attempting a mass implementation of all that thinking in a real world project. After the trip was over, I remember thinking that such forward thinking investment was going to make China unbeatable within my lifetime. Looks like that is becoming true already, 14 years later.
- asark 7y ago
  The US is strangled by responsibility-avoidance everywhere, public and private sector. Layers and layers of consultants and bureaucrats to make sure no-one ever makes a decision without being able to point a finger elsewhere, repeat recursively for each added layer. No one with the will and authority to call people on this behavior and cut through the BS—the people at the very top are doing it, too, in fact it's most of what they do—so it works, and so it keeps happening, on a larger and larger scale.
  - 75dvtwin 7y ago
    I agree with you, @asark But I would change "..strangled by responsibility avoidance..' Into US business business are forced into culture of 'plausible deniability'. If you do not follow that culture, your business, if successful, will be virtually and very quickly devoured by lawyers or partisan politicians seeking their racketeering tax. Both of those professions essentially became licensed racketeers in the Western world. I would also build up on your premise, and say that it is not that China is advancing at incredible pace, it is that our own West Europe and US have been slowed down by the above internal nemeses.
- hangonhn 7y ago
  This is the dangerous allure of an authoritarian state and China has been here before -- many times. Replace "western medical infrastructure" with "a massive wall to keep the barbarians to the north out" or "a massive canal to connect the two rivers" and you'll get the same effect. Authoritarian states, which China really basically pioneered during the Qin dynasty, can accomplish great things when its powers are wielded correctly. The problem is that when the people or person in charge is incompetent, crazy, and/or lazy then the whole thing just goes to hell. The often tried and just as often unsuccessful solution is to have good court officials and properly educating the heir-apparent but the cycle of dynasties and the catastrophe that follow their overthrows suggests that it is not a good long term solution. In fact, these violent overthrows often erases many of the accomplishments of the peaceful periods. This is sort of the problem democracy solves: accountability allows the leader(s) to be changed in a non-violent way. The problem with democracies is that it is almost by definition very average in progress. It is slow and steady but the overall trend is positive. It takes a very long term view to appreciate the steadiness of progress in democracies. The US is on track to overtake the majority of Chinese dynasties in term of longevity.
slothario 7y ago
America copied a lot of ideas from England during the industrial revolution. From my cursory understanding of things it seems like copying technology is how you get up to speed, before you can start really innovating yourself. I think a lot of the ideas about how China isn't capable of innovation for cultural reasons is frankly rooted in racism. Not long ago they were a developing country, and they are rapidly, rapidly getting up to speed. If you were raised by subsistence farmers, you can rise above that but it's hard to become a technological prodigy. But there's a whole generation of Chinese people being raised in a modern, prosperous economy, and I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be capable of the same contributions that Western students will make.
zwaps 7y ago
I find your perspective very interesting, because I think most Westerners would really strongly disagree that China "took the best elements from the West". I think we agree that China took whatever it could to make itself powerful. But if you ask a Western person, is it really the power of our countries that defines greatness? If I think of any country and what makes it great, I always end up thinking about things that definitely do not exist in China. I think the greatest moments of civilization are found in compassion, humanism, freedom, the fight for liberty, the preservation of peace, philosophy, art, music, poetry, scientific pursuit even against church&state etc. China doesn't care about these things, at all, or is overtly hostile to them if they compromise efficiency. China is not the first country to be very efficient while having concentration camps. People are afraid not because they don't respect China, nor because they think China is inferior. We are concerned because we think China has NOT taken the best from the Western world. In fact, quite the opposite.
- netwanderer3 7y ago
  You're right. I should have clarified myself better. Those best elements were mostly applied to building wealth for China and strengthening their economy only. Other aspects related to political ideologies which will always be very different from the West, and I believe those topics should always be avoided on HN. We have to understand that China has never been able to enjoy such economic power at this level throughout their history, so they have been waiting for this position for such a long time. Their current position may potentially reshape future history of human civilization. When you have the entire country concentrating all their effort on one and only one objective, the rest will have to take a backseat. For example, China didn't have to spend trillion of dollars going to war which was also another reason why they were able to laser focus on just one single goal. This definitely doesn't mean it would make China the most balanced country overall as everything in life is always a trade off. One may gain in one area but would always lose in another. I'm not saying people should be afraid of China, I'm only saying they should not lock themselves up in the old world, and instead be ready and willing to learn from others because obviously China must have been doing many things right to get here.
  - 7y ago
bizkitgto 7y ago
You're kind of ignoring the giant elephant in the room - China is a authoritarian regime, and Emperor Xi recently declared himself Emperor for Life. Criticize Emperor Xi and be sent to the gulag. Not to mention the new dystopian Chinese Social Credit System. Did we forget about the millions of deaths resulting from the Cultural Revolution? Is China a country you would choose to live in for the rest of you life? How about your children?
- hungryhobo 7y ago
  I think you are the exact kind of people mentioned by gp
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  This is the exact opposite of what an 'elephant in the room' is. Webster: >Definition of elephant in the room : an obvious major problem or issue that people avoid discussing or acknowledging Your comment is not saying anything new that hasn't been repeated ad nauseam already. Your comment is not enlightening anyone about the hitherto unknown great evils of China. Any topic remotely involving China will illicit dozens of responses such as yours with the exact same hysterical, copy-pasted examples. The fact is, people can't seem to stop discussing or acknowledging the problems or issues mentioned - which is fine I guess, but they are certainly not the elephants in the room you describe them to be.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    "Elephant in the room" may not have been the best term—but what he was reacting to was that the GP specifically doesn't mention China's authoritarianism. That is the issue I have with China, not some east vs west superiority complex.
    - tepidandroid 7y ago
      Must every sentence containing the word China also include the word authoritarianism?
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I'm critical of China because they're an authoritarian regime with an awful human rights record, whose citizens wholly lack free expression and privacy. If China was to improve their record on human rights, I would have no problem with them or their position on the world stage.
westiseast 7y ago
I disagree with why Western commentators struggle to accept China’s ‘success’ - it’s not sour grapes or jealousy as you suggest. China is breaking all of the established rules that have guided western societies for decades/centuries: Governments work for the people. Authoritarianism doesn’t work. Faking and copying will fail. Hubris leads to a fall. China’s political model and economic models have worked exceptionally well on a number of levels for 3-4 decades now, but to a lot of people, it still just looks like an authoritarian government forcing present and future generations to make vast sacrifices (health, quality of life, freedoms, rights) for the benefit of the CCP. Time will tell.
- chillacy 7y ago
  That just sounds like another way of saying we should be learning from this. Even if the trade offs aren’t worth it for us we shouldn’t be surprised when stuff that “shouldn’t work” does in fact work.
  - westiseast 7y ago
    Maybe - the neoliberal dogma of the last 40 years has been that you can’t have economic prosperity without democratic reform and liberal politics. China has shown categorically that this isn’t true. However, China might still prove the West correct in the long term. The breakneck economic development and oppressive political system has stored up a lot of huge problems, any of which could see the country slump into serious decline or worse.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > China might still prove the West correct in the long term. The breakneck economic development and oppressive political system has stored up a lot of huge problems, any of which could see the country slump into serious decline or worse. I don't see how China can develop into the next phase of economic development with such an oppressive system. Industry and constrained science can clearly advance under such control. But media, branding, and cultural influence are much more strongly hindered by an oppressive state. Before China can shift from building products and things into building brands and ideas, they will need to open up their society to compete globally.

bsenftner 7y ago

The end of my MBA program was a trip to China, with a week spent in Shanghai. a portion of our trip was meeting with the then CEO of China IBM and he toured us through the most ambitious project I'd ever heard: the Chinese Government hired IBM to create a nationwide western medical infrastructure - they needed everything from the health science courses in high school, university majors, nursing and medical universities, and hospitals and pharmacies by the thousand. This was a giant jaw dropping ambitious effort, and from what we could see the entire effort was being executed with the latest organizational and educational models known at the time from the west. I thought it was like taking the entirety of the Harvard Review and attempting a mass implementation of all that thinking in a real world project. After the trip was over, I remember thinking that such forward thinking investment was going to make China unbeatable within my lifetime. Looks like that is becoming true already, 14 years later.

asark 7y ago
The US is strangled by responsibility-avoidance everywhere, public and private sector. Layers and layers of consultants and bureaucrats to make sure no-one ever makes a decision without being able to point a finger elsewhere, repeat recursively for each added layer. No one with the will and authority to call people on this behavior and cut through the BS—the people at the very top are doing it, too, in fact it's most of what they do—so it works, and so it keeps happening, on a larger and larger scale.
- 75dvtwin 7y ago
  I agree with you, @asark But I would change "..strangled by responsibility avoidance..' Into US business business are forced into culture of 'plausible deniability'. If you do not follow that culture, your business, if successful, will be virtually and very quickly devoured by lawyers or partisan politicians seeking their racketeering tax. Both of those professions essentially became licensed racketeers in the Western world. I would also build up on your premise, and say that it is not that China is advancing at incredible pace, it is that our own West Europe and US have been slowed down by the above internal nemeses.
hangonhn 7y ago
This is the dangerous allure of an authoritarian state and China has been here before -- many times. Replace "western medical infrastructure" with "a massive wall to keep the barbarians to the north out" or "a massive canal to connect the two rivers" and you'll get the same effect. Authoritarian states, which China really basically pioneered during the Qin dynasty, can accomplish great things when its powers are wielded correctly. The problem is that when the people or person in charge is incompetent, crazy, and/or lazy then the whole thing just goes to hell. The often tried and just as often unsuccessful solution is to have good court officials and properly educating the heir-apparent but the cycle of dynasties and the catastrophe that follow their overthrows suggests that it is not a good long term solution. In fact, these violent overthrows often erases many of the accomplishments of the peaceful periods. This is sort of the problem democracy solves: accountability allows the leader(s) to be changed in a non-violent way. The problem with democracies is that it is almost by definition very average in progress. It is slow and steady but the overall trend is positive. It takes a very long term view to appreciate the steadiness of progress in democracies. The US is on track to overtake the majority of Chinese dynasties in term of longevity.

slothario 7y ago

America copied a lot of ideas from England during the industrial revolution. From my cursory understanding of things it seems like copying technology is how you get up to speed, before you can start really innovating yourself. I think a lot of the ideas about how China isn't capable of innovation for cultural reasons is frankly rooted in racism. Not long ago they were a developing country, and they are rapidly, rapidly getting up to speed. If you were raised by subsistence farmers, you can rise above that but it's hard to become a technological prodigy. But there's a whole generation of Chinese people being raised in a modern, prosperous economy, and I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be capable of the same contributions that Western students will make.

zwaps 7y ago

I find your perspective very interesting, because I think most Westerners would really strongly disagree that China "took the best elements from the West". I think we agree that China took whatever it could to make itself powerful. But if you ask a Western person, is it really the power of our countries that defines greatness? If I think of any country and what makes it great, I always end up thinking about things that definitely do not exist in China. I think the greatest moments of civilization are found in compassion, humanism, freedom, the fight for liberty, the preservation of peace, philosophy, art, music, poetry, scientific pursuit even against church&state etc. China doesn't care about these things, at all, or is overtly hostile to them if they compromise efficiency. China is not the first country to be very efficient while having concentration camps. People are afraid not because they don't respect China, nor because they think China is inferior. We are concerned because we think China has NOT taken the best from the Western world. In fact, quite the opposite.

netwanderer3 7y ago
You're right. I should have clarified myself better. Those best elements were mostly applied to building wealth for China and strengthening their economy only. Other aspects related to political ideologies which will always be very different from the West, and I believe those topics should always be avoided on HN. We have to understand that China has never been able to enjoy such economic power at this level throughout their history, so they have been waiting for this position for such a long time. Their current position may potentially reshape future history of human civilization. When you have the entire country concentrating all their effort on one and only one objective, the rest will have to take a backseat. For example, China didn't have to spend trillion of dollars going to war which was also another reason why they were able to laser focus on just one single goal. This definitely doesn't mean it would make China the most balanced country overall as everything in life is always a trade off. One may gain in one area but would always lose in another. I'm not saying people should be afraid of China, I'm only saying they should not lock themselves up in the old world, and instead be ready and willing to learn from others because obviously China must have been doing many things right to get here.
- 7y ago

bizkitgto 7y ago

You're kind of ignoring the giant elephant in the room - China is a authoritarian regime, and Emperor Xi recently declared himself Emperor for Life. Criticize Emperor Xi and be sent to the gulag. Not to mention the new dystopian Chinese Social Credit System. Did we forget about the millions of deaths resulting from the Cultural Revolution? Is China a country you would choose to live in for the rest of you life? How about your children?

hungryhobo 7y ago
I think you are the exact kind of people mentioned by gp
tepidandroid 7y ago
This is the exact opposite of what an 'elephant in the room' is. Webster: >Definition of elephant in the room : an obvious major problem or issue that people avoid discussing or acknowledging Your comment is not saying anything new that hasn't been repeated ad nauseam already. Your comment is not enlightening anyone about the hitherto unknown great evils of China. Any topic remotely involving China will illicit dozens of responses such as yours with the exact same hysterical, copy-pasted examples. The fact is, people can't seem to stop discussing or acknowledging the problems or issues mentioned - which is fine I guess, but they are certainly not the elephants in the room you describe them to be.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  "Elephant in the room" may not have been the best term—but what he was reacting to was that the GP specifically doesn't mention China's authoritarianism. That is the issue I have with China, not some east vs west superiority complex.
  - tepidandroid 7y ago
    Must every sentence containing the word China also include the word authoritarianism?

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

I'm critical of China because they're an authoritarian regime with an awful human rights record, whose citizens wholly lack free expression and privacy. If China was to improve their record on human rights, I would have no problem with them or their position on the world stage.

westiseast 7y ago

I disagree with why Western commentators struggle to accept China’s ‘success’ - it’s not sour grapes or jealousy as you suggest. China is breaking all of the established rules that have guided western societies for decades/centuries: Governments work for the people. Authoritarianism doesn’t work. Faking and copying will fail. Hubris leads to a fall. China’s political model and economic models have worked exceptionally well on a number of levels for 3-4 decades now, but to a lot of people, it still just looks like an authoritarian government forcing present and future generations to make vast sacrifices (health, quality of life, freedoms, rights) for the benefit of the CCP. Time will tell.

chillacy 7y ago
That just sounds like another way of saying we should be learning from this. Even if the trade offs aren’t worth it for us we shouldn’t be surprised when stuff that “shouldn’t work” does in fact work.
- westiseast 7y ago
  Maybe - the neoliberal dogma of the last 40 years has been that you can’t have economic prosperity without democratic reform and liberal politics. China has shown categorically that this isn’t true. However, China might still prove the West correct in the long term. The breakneck economic development and oppressive political system has stored up a lot of huge problems, any of which could see the country slump into serious decline or worse.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > China might still prove the West correct in the long term. The breakneck economic development and oppressive political system has stored up a lot of huge problems, any of which could see the country slump into serious decline or worse. I don't see how China can develop into the next phase of economic development with such an oppressive system. Industry and constrained science can clearly advance under such control. But media, branding, and cultural influence are much more strongly hindered by an oppressive state. Before China can shift from building products and things into building brands and ideas, they will need to open up their society to compete globally.