3 ms·

The stone cold fact is that China has n-times engineers than USA, mostly working for the same American companies who outsourced their RnD, and engineering decad

The stone cold fact is that China has n-times engineers than USA, mostly working for the same American companies who outsourced their RnD, and engineering decades ago, and working on mostly the same things. It strikes me every time hearing such argument from people completely oblivious to the above fact.

noir_lord 5y ago
It's not just a numbers game (though as Stalin said - quantity does have a quality all of it's own). Life is rarely that simple - there are also sociological/societal causes plus the required surrounding infrastructure. China has made dramatic leaps in technological capability but they still can't make a good competitive jet engine and they've been pouring resources into that for literally decades. Even if you have the plans (and realistically they probably do) just the metallurgy alone is an absolute nightmare. There are a handful of countries that can do it reasonably well and only a couple of companies that can do it approaching the state of the art. General Electric and Rolls Royce (with P&W following behind) - there are a few other smaller companies and CFM International which is GE and one of the smaller companies, Safran (used to be Snecma). That is just one area - in the long term who knows but in the mid-term China will do well to achieve equivalency in a number of areas (and in fairness they know this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025)
- adolph 5y ago
  I’d be more inclined to quote and think in terms of Brooks than Stalin since the latter was speaking to tanks iirc, and the former to something more akin to scientists: “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” The US probably also suffers from a surfeit of “scientists” as the Thiel theory would have it, just not as bad of a problem as China. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel/
  - noir_lord 5y ago
    Indeed that is probably a better analogy. You also have to consider culture as well, some cultures tend towards innovation more than others - which I guess fundamentally is how 'free' people are to try things and whether it's top down control or not. Innovation has many fathers.

noir_lord 5y ago

It's not just a numbers game (though as Stalin said - quantity does have a quality all of it's own). Life is rarely that simple - there are also sociological/societal causes plus the required surrounding infrastructure. China has made dramatic leaps in technological capability but they still can't make a good competitive jet engine and they've been pouring resources into that for literally decades. Even if you have the plans (and realistically they probably do) just the metallurgy alone is an absolute nightmare. There are a handful of countries that can do it reasonably well and only a couple of companies that can do it approaching the state of the art. General Electric and Rolls Royce (with P&W following behind) - there are a few other smaller companies and CFM International which is GE and one of the smaller companies, Safran (used to be Snecma). That is just one area - in the long term who knows but in the mid-term China will do well to achieve equivalency in a number of areas (and in fairness they know this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025)

adolph 5y ago
I’d be more inclined to quote and think in terms of Brooks than Stalin since the latter was speaking to tanks iirc, and the former to something more akin to scientists: “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” The US probably also suffers from a surfeit of “scientists” as the Thiel theory would have it, just not as bad of a problem as China. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel/
- noir_lord 5y ago
  Indeed that is probably a better analogy. You also have to consider culture as well, some cultures tend towards innovation more than others - which I guess fundamentally is how 'free' people are to try things and whether it's top down control or not. Innovation has many fathers.