6 ms·
I can just see it now: "Competition is bad, arrest him immediately!"
by PatrolX 7y ago
I can just see it now:
"Competition is bad, arrest him immediately!"
- dmix 7y agoThere's a reason all of the big western companies left China. I'd bet money China's economy could be growing 10x faster if it had independent courts and foreign companies who become successful weren't treated like criminals. Just imagine how many of us would be moving to China to start companies and how much more VC money would be flowing in. And all of the global HQs and products and innovation that would be happening there. China's growth has been massive but it's a shadow of what it could be. Their growth rate should have been closer to SK, Singapore, and Taiwan by now. But they decided to go backwards: https://croakingcassandra.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/ip-1.png?w=700 https://croakingcassandra.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/ip-1.p... https://www.nextbigfuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/screenshot-by-nimbus-28-1.png https://www.nextbigfuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/scr...
- zaptheimpaler 7y agoHaving a bunch of US companies making profits in China isn't necessarily good for China. If the choice is between, say letting AWS in and building their own. Building their own would put 5000 of their own people to work, the broad technical demographic it will take, and build up all the surrounding industries like servers, networking etc. All the profits stay within China, and they now have more skilled people who can start other companies etc. IMO its clearly a better long-term strategy, even though it will cost more in the short term.
- wolco 7y agoLong term they will fall behind without stealing.
- zaptheimpaler 7y agoIts so weird how there were no complaints about China for the past decade or two while they were just making your iPhones, but the second they put their own interests ahead of the US all I hear & see is about how crooked & corrupt they are...
- marvin 7y agoThere has been plenty of criticism of China's authoritarian policies and human rights abuses, from all of the Western world, for decades. Someone better versed on the topic could probably describe it better than me, but everything from communist policy, the great leap forward, the Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong persecution, the lack of rule of law and so on, has been criticised since it first happened. US authorities seem to have only stepped up the criticism recently as China has become more of a viable adversary on the global stage though. The US government doesn't particularly care about the ethics of most countries, and will mostly criticise it when it's in their own interest. There's also stuff that's only come to light in the last few years. Chinese authorities flexing their power in ways that directly affect US interests is one of these.
- zaptheimpaler 7y agoOf course im sure there have always been critics but the bar is not any instance of criticism - thats an awfully low bar. its the wide shift from being nowhere in mainstream consciousness to pervasive. As an uniformed reader of mainstream media and social networking sites, China was just not on the radar a few years ago. Politicians didn’t talk about it, people didn’t talk about it, news didn’t talk about it.
- marvin 7y agoThis doesn’t reflect my impression as a Northern European. The criticism and sentiment has certainly stepped up in the last year, probably in part due to focused efforts by US authorities, but it’s been quite vocal all along. Famously, Norway was in the doghouse of China for 7 years after giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, and government officials discussed human rights issues with Chinese officials up until that point. The media covered this in detail, along with the human rights abuses in question. Maybe what you’re describing is true for the United States. I wouldn’t know.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoLiterally like 99.9% of all economists who don't work for the Trump administration would disagree with this, and 100% of the ones who study the effects of international trade.
- 55555 7y agoI don't think you are right but if you are then I don't think those economists are right. There is a balance to strike. If your country is behind them protectionism can be powerful.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoLet me illustrate: My consulting company does business in China, and when we do, we (out of self-interest, since we don't speak Chinese and it's hard to do logistics without that) partner with Chinese companies. My company has some of the leading experts in a very niche thing. In the current state, the companies we partner with get to learn from us and gain expertise. The alternative if protectionist policies stop us from doing business in China isn't for those people to become experts on their own -- that's not possible. The alternative is for them either not to gain expertise at all or to have to get it in a more difficult and expensive way. Protectionism can benefit a fledgling industry (not a whole country) in the short term in a limited set of cases (at the expense of dragging down the rest of the economy), but in most cases the protected industry is going to fall behind even more without the information transfer that comes from business leaders doing business there.
- bananabreakfast 7y agoYes, of course. Your protectionist and nationalist knee-jerk reaction and gut feeling is certainly more trustworthy than all of the world's economists.
- ethbro 7y agoWould the leadership rather be absolute leaders of a slower-growing, still-globally-significant economy? Or lesser leaders of a faster-growing one? I don't think the economic growth benefits outweigh their priorities.
- vkou 7y agoNon-democratic, non-free China's economy has been growing 5 times faster than democratic, free India's. This is despite both countries starting from the same, largely rural, highly impoverished starting point 60 years ago.[1] So, yes, they'd rather be the absolute leaders of a faster growing economy, than the non-leaders of a slower-growing one. [1] China was even worse off, actually, since it spent the first half of the twentieth century torn apart by civil war, European colonialism, civil war again, a brutal Japanese invasion and occupation, and then some more civil war, followed by two decades of self-inflicted political purges and repression. India only had to contend with two of these problems!
- dmix 7y agoIndia's massive bureaucratic system runs far deeper and more local than China ever has. The amount of paperwork and payoffs for even basic stuff in India is insane. China on the other hand is mostly free and liberal up until you start being successful. Acting like India isn't engage in authoritarian mass intervention, even though its in a more decentralize fashion is totally wrong. The only benefit is they have more independent courts and you can succeed with influence buying without the top-down threat that the CCP does to cripple foreign competitors in domestic firms favours. India has a different sort of economic interference - but also one that's far easier to fix. Something Modi repeatedly promised and keeps failing to do. This video is a good overview of how the Indian gov cripples business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVwIZzGHxwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVwIZzGHxwc
- ethbro 7y agoThe assertion was not that China is growing slower than India, but that the current Chinese economy is growing slower than a more liberal Chinese economy.
- powowow 7y agomeanwhile Sam Altman is writing essays about how China enjoys greater freedom than America. If you think I'm kidding: https://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove https://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove
- jacquesm 7y agoCringe.
- StavrosK 7y agoWhere did you get "China enjoys greater freedom than America" from "I can do this one thing in China more easily than in SF"? It's true, by the way. I was in SF for a week a few months ago and the constant need to watch what I say was exhausting. I couldn't even joke around with my gay friend because people were getting offended on his behalf, much to his dismay.
- 3001 7y agowhat exactly is wrong with his argument? He is saying groupthink is bad.
- 7y ago
- vkou 7y ago> There's a reason all of the big western companies left China. Are we on the same page, here? Name two.
- Y-Bopinator 7y agoThey were forced out