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I should add that there is a way out for china -- high skilled production, but they are really shooting themeselves in the foot on that one. High skilled produ

I should add that there is a way out for china -- high skilled production, but they are really shooting themeselves in the foot on that one. High skilled production requires input of low-skilled labor, and after several decades of what looked like it could be a rapprochement, since the ascendancy of Xi Jinping, china has increasingly alienated its closest neighbors (phillipines, vietnam, taiwan, japan, south korea, india), some of whom would be ideal sources of low-skill inputs. And a LOT of their tech comes from copying the west. That will get you only so far; to be truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena you need to have a source of creativity and critical thought which after a short period of flourishing, I hear is being repressed by the state again these days (I don't know for certain, I'm not in china).

SamReidHughes 5y ago
China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply, and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. Personally I think they'll do better than many are expecting, the biggest threat to their success being their own governance.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. They are working hard on eliminating the language barrier.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      I'm talking about the various Chinese dialects, which my understanding is share a written language.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        They don't; what do you think it would mean for two different languages to "share a written language"? Everyone is trained to read and write Mandarin; writing other dialects is not encouraged. But more than that, China is hard at work at ensuring that all Chinese speak Mandarin.
        coupdejarnac 5y ago
        Mandarin isn't the written language fyi.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Yes, it is.
        whoevercares 5y ago
        Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. There are simplified and traditional Chinese in written form. Mandarin is close to how Northern Chinese speak and can be written in both form without any difficulty and most of times equivalent Edit: perhaps you mean other Chinese dialects use different words to describe something - commonly seen in Southern dialects which inherits more from ancient Chinese. However for many common esp professional sentence the written form is universal Source: I’m native Chinese
        bmn__ 5y ago
        > Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. […] Source: I’m native Chinese You are confusing written language with writing system, probably due to domestic and global propaganda efforts that have been going on for 70 years. This really undermines the scientific effort of linguists and just sows confusion, as evidenced by your mislabelling languages as dialects, and forcing the rest of the world to invent new words like "topolect" for existing concepts that the communist party does not like to be true. My writing system is the Latin alphabet. I can write the languages Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian etc. etc. with it. Another writing system is the Cyrillic alphabet. I can write Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian etc. with it. So the writing system is an orthogonal concept to the written language. As an analogue, the writing system we are discussing is the Chinese characters. One can write with it for example Cantonese, classical Chinese, Hokkien, Japanese, Mandarin, Zhuang, among others. The distinction between traditional and simplified you mentioned is minor and not a fundamental property of the language written with it. Example: Cantonese can be and is written in both simplified and traditional. > the written form is universal That's not true. The languages Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin belong to the same family (Sinitic) but have different grammar, lexicon and word order; these differences are also reflected in writing.
  - parrellel 5y ago
    God, so many dead languages.
- nyokodo 5y ago
  > China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply Whose fertility has for the last several decades taken a historically massive hit from one child, sex-selective abortion and the policy of taking young rural women to single-sex urban dorms to provide their once cheap labor. A rural region with increasingly middle aged farmers with a rapidly shrinking highly gender imbalanced youth is not a recipe for medium to long term abundant labor supply. Certainly, China’s economy is a profligate debt fueled fever, however, their biggest bill coming due is the demographics.
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    They're doing okay on the TFR front compared to South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. And their past birth rate being <2.0 helps a lot to limit the likelihood of revolution and keeps them from consuming all their natural resources. The problems you describe are financial. The misallocation of resources associated with the debt fueled fever is a spent cost. They can deal with the population pyramid by letting the old be poor.
    - nyokodo 5y ago
      > They're doing okay on the TFR front compared to South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. According to highly suspect official Chinese statistics. > The misallocation of resources associated with the debt fueled fever is a spent cost. It’s not a sunken cost because it’s ongoing and must be ongoing as if it ended the whole Chinese economy would sink. > They can deal with the population pyramid by letting the old be poor. They’re not exactly rich to begin with. Or by poor do you mean let them starve? Nor is that a recipe for staving off revolution!
angelzen 5y ago
Clone legacy tech, leapfrog at the cutting edge. Masterful strategic execution, hats off to China. One example. Drones have proven to be a strategic gamechanger in the 2020 Azeri-Armenian war. In the same league with the musket, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the carrier. Who is the world leader in commercial drones? DJI, a Chinese company. US market share? 76%. It's not even close. https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war-changed-djis-drone-market-share-the-latest-from-drone-industry-insights/ https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war...
- ChemSpider 5y ago
  Is this for professional drones (say > US$ 2000) or including all the RC toy drones?
- dnautics 5y ago
  > leapfrog at the cutting edge is there anything cutting edge about DJI products aside from volume? TBH I think probably the only thing truly special about DJI is that their software interface actually works, but in the world of "all software" it's still pretty janky (the bar is low in drone-world).
  - angelzen 5y ago
    I'm addressing the condescending Western trope, IMHO stemming from denial, that China somehow lacks 'a source of creativity and critical thought' to be 'truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena'. Commercial drones, mobile computing, 5G, Internet. High skill high growth industries that barely existed 25 years ago where China is at least on par with the West, and with evergrowing market share.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Well I'm an American born asian, and I've worked with 1) Chinese professors, postdocs and grad students and 2) Chinese postdocs who did their undergrad in the US. The difference in creativity levels is night and day.

SamReidHughes 5y ago

China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply, and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. Personally I think they'll do better than many are expecting, the biggest threat to their success being their own governance.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. They are working hard on eliminating the language barrier.
- bmn__ 5y ago
  The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    I'm talking about the various Chinese dialects, which my understanding is share a written language.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      They don't; what do you think it would mean for two different languages to "share a written language"? Everyone is trained to read and write Mandarin; writing other dialects is not encouraged. But more than that, China is hard at work at ensuring that all Chinese speak Mandarin.
      - coupdejarnac 5y ago
        Mandarin isn't the written language fyi.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Yes, it is.
        whoevercares 5y ago
        Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. There are simplified and traditional Chinese in written form. Mandarin is close to how Northern Chinese speak and can be written in both form without any difficulty and most of times equivalent Edit: perhaps you mean other Chinese dialects use different words to describe something - commonly seen in Southern dialects which inherits more from ancient Chinese. However for many common esp professional sentence the written form is universal Source: I’m native Chinese
        bmn__ 5y ago
        > Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. […] Source: I’m native Chinese You are confusing written language with writing system, probably due to domestic and global propaganda efforts that have been going on for 70 years. This really undermines the scientific effort of linguists and just sows confusion, as evidenced by your mislabelling languages as dialects, and forcing the rest of the world to invent new words like "topolect" for existing concepts that the communist party does not like to be true. My writing system is the Latin alphabet. I can write the languages Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian etc. etc. with it. Another writing system is the Cyrillic alphabet. I can write Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian etc. with it. So the writing system is an orthogonal concept to the written language. As an analogue, the writing system we are discussing is the Chinese characters. One can write with it for example Cantonese, classical Chinese, Hokkien, Japanese, Mandarin, Zhuang, among others. The distinction between traditional and simplified you mentioned is minor and not a fundamental property of the language written with it. Example: Cantonese can be and is written in both simplified and traditional. > the written form is universal That's not true. The languages Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin belong to the same family (Sinitic) but have different grammar, lexicon and word order; these differences are also reflected in writing.
- parrellel 5y ago
  God, so many dead languages.
nyokodo 5y ago
> China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply Whose fertility has for the last several decades taken a historically massive hit from one child, sex-selective abortion and the policy of taking young rural women to single-sex urban dorms to provide their once cheap labor. A rural region with increasingly middle aged farmers with a rapidly shrinking highly gender imbalanced youth is not a recipe for medium to long term abundant labor supply. Certainly, China’s economy is a profligate debt fueled fever, however, their biggest bill coming due is the demographics.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  They're doing okay on the TFR front compared to South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. And their past birth rate being <2.0 helps a lot to limit the likelihood of revolution and keeps them from consuming all their natural resources. The problems you describe are financial. The misallocation of resources associated with the debt fueled fever is a spent cost. They can deal with the population pyramid by letting the old be poor.
  - nyokodo 5y ago
    > They're doing okay on the TFR front compared to South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. According to highly suspect official Chinese statistics. > The misallocation of resources associated with the debt fueled fever is a spent cost. It’s not a sunken cost because it’s ongoing and must be ongoing as if it ended the whole Chinese economy would sink. > They can deal with the population pyramid by letting the old be poor. They’re not exactly rich to begin with. Or by poor do you mean let them starve? Nor is that a recipe for staving off revolution!

angelzen 5y ago

Clone legacy tech, leapfrog at the cutting edge. Masterful strategic execution, hats off to China. One example. Drones have proven to be a strategic gamechanger in the 2020 Azeri-Armenian war. In the same league with the musket, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the carrier. Who is the world leader in commercial drones? DJI, a Chinese company. US market share? 76%. It's not even close. https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war-changed-djis-drone-market-share-the-latest-from-drone-industry-insights/ https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war...

ChemSpider 5y ago
Is this for professional drones (say > US$ 2000) or including all the RC toy drones?
dnautics 5y ago
> leapfrog at the cutting edge is there anything cutting edge about DJI products aside from volume? TBH I think probably the only thing truly special about DJI is that their software interface actually works, but in the world of "all software" it's still pretty janky (the bar is low in drone-world).
- angelzen 5y ago
  I'm addressing the condescending Western trope, IMHO stemming from denial, that China somehow lacks 'a source of creativity and critical thought' to be 'truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena'. Commercial drones, mobile computing, 5G, Internet. High skill high growth industries that barely existed 25 years ago where China is at least on par with the West, and with evergrowing market share.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Well I'm an American born asian, and I've worked with 1) Chinese professors, postdocs and grad students and 2) Chinese postdocs who did their undergrad in the US. The difference in creativity levels is night and day.