20 ms·

How long before this strategy backfires? When does the CCP hurt itself because it stifled innovation? When does it have political problems because it suppressed

How long before this strategy backfires? When does the CCP hurt itself because it stifled innovation? When does it have political problems because it suppressed the wrong thing? I can't tell if this style of governing is super robust or a house of cards.

temporalparts 6y ago
I'm sure it's hurting CCP right now. Being closed off from the rest of the world does have its consequences. It probably just doesn't hurt CCP enough to matter in the short term. It'll probably take closer to half a century before we can truly understand if the cumulative effects of the pain will amount to anything significant.
- dheera 6y ago
  Well yes and no. If they are open to the rest of the world a lot of money would end up in Silicon Valley. If Facebook and Google ran ads all over China, a nice big cut of that revenue goes to the IRS instead of China's government.
  - PradeetPatel 6y ago
    Given that China already has its own equivalent of Facebook and Google, possibly backed by the government. Penetrating that market may prove to be a significant challenge.
    - majormajor 6y ago
      That's the parent comment's point: closing the doors led to them being able to build and establish that in-house stuff instead of sending money to other countries...
  - temporalparts 6y ago
    The money would only flow there if the services Silicon Valley is producing is worth the money to the purchasers. None of these transactions are zero-sum and tech isn't the only thing in the world that matters.
    - dheera 6y ago
      Well yes but China has its own replacements that are worth even more to the purchasers because they are highly localized, to a degree that a multi-language global product would never be able to accomplish.
    - TheOperator 6y ago
      Silicon Valley is infamous at this point for running loss leaders to lock people into their ecosystem with the expectation of being able to milk people dry later. The fact that the services are "worth the money" doesn't mean it's economically in China's interests to allow for easy access to them.
mywittyname 6y ago
They seem to be doing pretty well, economically-speaking. I suspect, so long as they can continue to provide good lives for their professional class, the country will continue to grow in world influence. The professionals that drive growth and innovation probably desire to live in a less authoritarian society, but life is generally good enough for them to remain complacent, and turn a blind-eye to injustice.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  > They seem to be doing pretty well, economically-speaking. This is all relative. In an absolute sense, China's level of economic development on Bulgaria, Mexico or Kazakstan. They've had a long period of high growth, but that's only because of the abject poverty the Maoists left the country in. Before Deng's reforms, the country was essentially North Korea. China's prosperity is much more of a "most-improved award" rather than a gold medal. Their current system has certainly proved better than Stalinism, but that's a pretty low bar. There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    > There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy. Isn't it already? Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. And in exchange it's developed Shenzhen, which has pretty much no competition in its niche. And as far as tech goes, on the whole China is still behind the USA, but at the same time solidly ahead of every other country. The entirety of the EU area doesn't have a Baidu or Bytedance, let alone a Tencent or Alibaba.
    - peteretep 6y ago
      > Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. That’s just it. It’s grown because it had massive amounts of cheap labour but now it doesn’t. Can they transition into a competitive economy up the food chain?
adventured 6y ago
China is through the period of easy gains in their economic expansion from the days of early developing nation status. The next 10-20 years will answer your question (including, critically, what Xi does from here forward and what comes after Xi). If their model stifles - and or to the extent that it does - it'll become apparent as economic gains get increasingly difficult going forward and the segments they begin to compete in are much more challenging (the US in software, Germany in high-value manufacturing, going after semiconductors, aerospace, building quality automobiles, et al.). There have been potent signs all across their economy for numerous years now that growth has become far harder and more expensive to acquire, how innovation maps to that context will be interesting to watch. Their style of governing is very clearly not super robust. If it were they wouldn't need to so extremely tightly control their people in every possible manner. They regularly reveal how fragile the system is in their behavior, including how very easily their party ego is injured (which partially reveals how fragile they view their own position, that they're so obsessed with maintaining the facade of omnipotence; they fear any cracks). That also doesn't mean it's a house of cards, the CCP has proven they have staying power, even if it's expensive ground to hold.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
Hard to say because they seem to be letting others do the innovating and then they just copy what works.
- echelon 6y ago
  I saw this yesterday. https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1351114653263409156 https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1351114653263409156 Doesn't look good for the US.
- throwaway888abc 6y ago
  That is the new norm, no ? >Love how you robbed the Intercom content and css 1:1 and still being upvoted. Well, all the best with sales. >Thank you for your reply. Intercom is way more advanced. About clone, All big companies take design and ideas from each other, without any issues. So am not new to game. t "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." Steve Jobs [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25491413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25491413
Barrin92 6y ago
Probably very long. Given the success of the Chinese ecosystem compared to other regions on the globe, including a lot of democratic countries without significant limits on expression, it doesn't seem to be very important. The first answer is that innovation can be channelled towards military or surveillance technology instead. The government has no problem with research into facial recognition, enterprise software, drones, and whatnot. Under the so called 'military-civil fusion' strategy its if anything encouraged and heavily bolstered. Another point that has become fairly popular among the more conservative or nationalist Chinese intellectuals is that free expression in the workplace is if anything, harming the US because it's seen as divisive and hindering research. There were a lot of comments with negative overtones when it came to BLM, and stuff like the internal Google Maven protests. For a lot of nationalist Chinese commentators free expression in the West is seen as damaging state capacity and the ability of large firms to work effectively.
- liquidify 6y ago
  If China's system is really "open source" then this is really dumb. Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation. I don't see how this could possible benefit them over any measurable amount of time. Sure, they can do private repos for sensitive stuff, but the benefit of an open system like github is not in the closed off stuff... it is in the openness and propensity to inspire collaboration. Without the openness, they will only fall behind from the second they enable their one way information shield.
  - easterncalculus 6y ago
    > If China's system is really "open source" then this is really dumb. I get the sense from reading this that we're both aware that with China that won't be the case. > Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation. In a sense I feel like this relies on an exaggeration of the benefits and requirements of open source that most people in the west would have. Thinking about it right now I can see two questions. 1) Do we really need a free and open (as in free speech) internet to bring many people's code contributions and skills together? 2) Is having a walled off system actually better, on the reasoning that developers in China make the best "chinese software" (meaning software that will do well in or be useful to China)? I think the answer to the first is that the need for free speech for open source at first seems necessary, and is certainly still helpful, but not ultimately needed for this to work. China can block topics like on any other site and chances are the people that still want to contribute ultimately will, just like people still use Wechat, Baidu, etc. I would think that as it stands you can still have a large group of hard-working contributors without some 'sensitive' topics coming up. I really think that the benefits of the open source model aren't as tied to the principles of western countries as a lot of people would initially assume, myself included. The second question might be worth looking into some more, in terms of market research and what is successful in China. Plus Chinese developers are probably more used to having to work with the government in regards to censorship and surveillance, which GitHub could shut the doors on pretty fast. Either way I don't think that having restricted topics is going to cripple the benefits of having a much larger contributor/talent pool and open source code. Not having freedoms isn't as good of course but I don't think open source software depends on them as much as some might say.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zarkov99 6y ago
They do not need their own innovation, that would require pesky freedoms, they can just steal it from freer societies. China has been been very good at keeping their cake and eating it for 30 years.
addicted 6y ago
It's already hurting them greatly. If the US hadn't retreated from diplomacy in favor of acting more like a mob boss, China would have been hurt far more. Most countries are looking to move away from Australia, but the absence of a countervailing power is what's stopping them. Alternatively, the CCP got more aggressive with their suppressive tactics because of the US's diplomatic retreat, but I dont think this is the case. I think the CCP's behavior is a natural consequence of Xi Jinping basically giving himself a life term. With no opportunity to ever lead the party through a peaceful transfer of power, all the leadership hopefuls will probably be looking for alternative solutions. And even if they aren't, Xi is almost certainly gonna be paranoid that they are, and that would mean increasingly severe crackdowns on the people of the country.
secretcombos 6y ago
The CCP is a communist kleptocracy. They'd rather steal IP than innovate on their own. It's been reported that 1 in 5 corporations have their IP stolen by China: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-stole-their-ip-within-the-last-year-cnbc.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...
throwaway189262 6y ago
Possibly never. The reason China's isolationist policies work is their massive population is big enough to form a mini world without a ton of knowledge gaps. The US and maybe western Europe could be in a similar position, if they wanted to. IMO the reason you don't want to be isolationist(as a big country) is more about political clout than tech. China has no "soft power" because their firewall works both ways. The US and western Europe have military prescence and political allies worldwide because the free flow of information and technology fosters all sorts of political, corporate, and cultural mixing. What influence China has on its neighbors (and worldwide to an extent) is maintained through pressure and threats, because frankly, their ultra nationalist policies just don't make many friends. I personally don't think this is sustainable long term but it is yet to be seen. Instead of allies wanting you to succeed, other nations are encouraged to obstruct as much as possible to weaken you and your unwelcome influence. You can see this unfolding in the last few years with increasing tariff and trade restrictions on China. And I don't see it letting up until Xi is out

temporalparts 6y ago

I'm sure it's hurting CCP right now. Being closed off from the rest of the world does have its consequences. It probably just doesn't hurt CCP enough to matter in the short term. It'll probably take closer to half a century before we can truly understand if the cumulative effects of the pain will amount to anything significant.

dheera 6y ago
Well yes and no. If they are open to the rest of the world a lot of money would end up in Silicon Valley. If Facebook and Google ran ads all over China, a nice big cut of that revenue goes to the IRS instead of China's government.
- PradeetPatel 6y ago
  Given that China already has its own equivalent of Facebook and Google, possibly backed by the government. Penetrating that market may prove to be a significant challenge.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    That's the parent comment's point: closing the doors led to them being able to build and establish that in-house stuff instead of sending money to other countries...
- temporalparts 6y ago
  The money would only flow there if the services Silicon Valley is producing is worth the money to the purchasers. None of these transactions are zero-sum and tech isn't the only thing in the world that matters.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Well yes but China has its own replacements that are worth even more to the purchasers because they are highly localized, to a degree that a multi-language global product would never be able to accomplish.
  - TheOperator 6y ago
    Silicon Valley is infamous at this point for running loss leaders to lock people into their ecosystem with the expectation of being able to milk people dry later. The fact that the services are "worth the money" doesn't mean it's economically in China's interests to allow for easy access to them.

mywittyname 6y ago

They seem to be doing pretty well, economically-speaking. I suspect, so long as they can continue to provide good lives for their professional class, the country will continue to grow in world influence. The professionals that drive growth and innovation probably desire to live in a less authoritarian society, but life is generally good enough for them to remain complacent, and turn a blind-eye to injustice.

dcolkitt 6y ago
> They seem to be doing pretty well, economically-speaking. This is all relative. In an absolute sense, China's level of economic development on Bulgaria, Mexico or Kazakstan. They've had a long period of high growth, but that's only because of the abject poverty the Maoists left the country in. Before Deng's reforms, the country was essentially North Korea. China's prosperity is much more of a "most-improved award" rather than a gold medal. Their current system has certainly proved better than Stalinism, but that's a pretty low bar. There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.
- scarmig 6y ago
  > There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy. Isn't it already? Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. And in exchange it's developed Shenzhen, which has pretty much no competition in its niche. And as far as tech goes, on the whole China is still behind the USA, but at the same time solidly ahead of every other country. The entirety of the EU area doesn't have a Baidu or Bytedance, let alone a Tencent or Alibaba.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. That’s just it. It’s grown because it had massive amounts of cheap labour but now it doesn’t. Can they transition into a competitive economy up the food chain?

adventured 6y ago

China is through the period of easy gains in their economic expansion from the days of early developing nation status. The next 10-20 years will answer your question (including, critically, what Xi does from here forward and what comes after Xi). If their model stifles - and or to the extent that it does - it'll become apparent as economic gains get increasingly difficult going forward and the segments they begin to compete in are much more challenging (the US in software, Germany in high-value manufacturing, going after semiconductors, aerospace, building quality automobiles, et al.). There have been potent signs all across their economy for numerous years now that growth has become far harder and more expensive to acquire, how innovation maps to that context will be interesting to watch. Their style of governing is very clearly not super robust. If it were they wouldn't need to so extremely tightly control their people in every possible manner. They regularly reveal how fragile the system is in their behavior, including how very easily their party ego is injured (which partially reveals how fragile they view their own position, that they're so obsessed with maintaining the facade of omnipotence; they fear any cracks). That also doesn't mean it's a house of cards, the CCP has proven they have staying power, even if it's expensive ground to hold.

BitwiseFool 6y ago

Hard to say because they seem to be letting others do the innovating and then they just copy what works.

echelon 6y ago
I saw this yesterday. https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1351114653263409156 https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1351114653263409156 Doesn't look good for the US.
throwaway888abc 6y ago
That is the new norm, no ? >Love how you robbed the Intercom content and css 1:1 and still being upvoted. Well, all the best with sales. >Thank you for your reply. Intercom is way more advanced. About clone, All big companies take design and ideas from each other, without any issues. So am not new to game. t "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." Steve Jobs [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25491413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25491413

Barrin92 6y ago

Probably very long. Given the success of the Chinese ecosystem compared to other regions on the globe, including a lot of democratic countries without significant limits on expression, it doesn't seem to be very important. The first answer is that innovation can be channelled towards military or surveillance technology instead. The government has no problem with research into facial recognition, enterprise software, drones, and whatnot. Under the so called 'military-civil fusion' strategy its if anything encouraged and heavily bolstered. Another point that has become fairly popular among the more conservative or nationalist Chinese intellectuals is that free expression in the workplace is if anything, harming the US because it's seen as divisive and hindering research. There were a lot of comments with negative overtones when it came to BLM, and stuff like the internal Google Maven protests. For a lot of nationalist Chinese commentators free expression in the West is seen as damaging state capacity and the ability of large firms to work effectively.

liquidify 6y ago
If China's system is really "open source" then this is really dumb. Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation. I don't see how this could possible benefit them over any measurable amount of time. Sure, they can do private repos for sensitive stuff, but the benefit of an open system like github is not in the closed off stuff... it is in the openness and propensity to inspire collaboration. Without the openness, they will only fall behind from the second they enable their one way information shield.
- easterncalculus 6y ago
  > If China's system is really "open source" then this is really dumb. I get the sense from reading this that we're both aware that with China that won't be the case. > Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation. In a sense I feel like this relies on an exaggeration of the benefits and requirements of open source that most people in the west would have. Thinking about it right now I can see two questions. 1) Do we really need a free and open (as in free speech) internet to bring many people's code contributions and skills together? 2) Is having a walled off system actually better, on the reasoning that developers in China make the best "chinese software" (meaning software that will do well in or be useful to China)? I think the answer to the first is that the need for free speech for open source at first seems necessary, and is certainly still helpful, but not ultimately needed for this to work. China can block topics like on any other site and chances are the people that still want to contribute ultimately will, just like people still use Wechat, Baidu, etc. I would think that as it stands you can still have a large group of hard-working contributors without some 'sensitive' topics coming up. I really think that the benefits of the open source model aren't as tied to the principles of western countries as a lot of people would initially assume, myself included. The second question might be worth looking into some more, in terms of market research and what is successful in China. Plus Chinese developers are probably more used to having to work with the government in regards to censorship and surveillance, which GitHub could shut the doors on pretty fast. Either way I don't think that having restricted topics is going to cripple the benefits of having a much larger contributor/talent pool and open source code. Not having freedoms isn't as good of course but I don't think open source software depends on them as much as some might say.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zarkov99 6y ago

They do not need their own innovation, that would require pesky freedoms, they can just steal it from freer societies. China has been been very good at keeping their cake and eating it for 30 years.

addicted 6y ago

It's already hurting them greatly. If the US hadn't retreated from diplomacy in favor of acting more like a mob boss, China would have been hurt far more. Most countries are looking to move away from Australia, but the absence of a countervailing power is what's stopping them. Alternatively, the CCP got more aggressive with their suppressive tactics because of the US's diplomatic retreat, but I dont think this is the case. I think the CCP's behavior is a natural consequence of Xi Jinping basically giving himself a life term. With no opportunity to ever lead the party through a peaceful transfer of power, all the leadership hopefuls will probably be looking for alternative solutions. And even if they aren't, Xi is almost certainly gonna be paranoid that they are, and that would mean increasingly severe crackdowns on the people of the country.

secretcombos 6y ago

The CCP is a communist kleptocracy. They'd rather steal IP than innovate on their own. It's been reported that 1 in 5 corporations have their IP stolen by China: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-stole-their-ip-within-the-last-year-cnbc.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...

throwaway189262 6y ago

Possibly never. The reason China's isolationist policies work is their massive population is big enough to form a mini world without a ton of knowledge gaps. The US and maybe western Europe could be in a similar position, if they wanted to. IMO the reason you don't want to be isolationist(as a big country) is more about political clout than tech. China has no "soft power" because their firewall works both ways. The US and western Europe have military prescence and political allies worldwide because the free flow of information and technology fosters all sorts of political, corporate, and cultural mixing. What influence China has on its neighbors (and worldwide to an extent) is maintained through pressure and threats, because frankly, their ultra nationalist policies just don't make many friends. I personally don't think this is sustainable long term but it is yet to be seen. Instead of allies wanting you to succeed, other nations are encouraged to obstruct as much as possible to weaken you and your unwelcome influence. You can see this unfolding in the last few years with increasing tariff and trade restrictions on China. And I don't see it letting up until Xi is out