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Tangential comment: I'm a fan of Kevin's blog - think he has quite a unique perspective having worked in US politics and Tech but having a good understanding o

Tangential comment: I'm a fan of Kevin's blog - think he has quite a unique perspective having worked in US politics and Tech but having a good understanding of Chinese tech too. I also appreciate Lillian Li's Chinese Characteristics. Does anyone have any other good recommendations for coverage of Chinese tech? I worry that a lot of tech innovation is one-directional. There are far more Chinese tech workers who understand English (and have worked in the west) than the inverse (tech workers from the West who are Chinese speaking tech workers)

TrainedMonkey 5y ago
> There are far more Chinese tech workers who understand English than the inverse. This is a really interesting observation. I will make one as well - there are far more people speaking English on aircraft carriers than all other languages combined by a significant margin. No idea what that means in the grand scheme of things, but hey we are making geopolitical observations. See https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-dominance-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-domina...
- djtango 5y ago
  That's a great share thanks - interesting to consider all the ways the English speaking world has exerted an edge indirectly. The observations don't necessarily have to be geopolitical (although it seems talk about China always is these days). For example, PinDuoDuo hit 800M users in 6 years[1] And from Kevin's InterConnected blog, the Chinese CBDC's initial "small-scale" testing did 70M transactions[2] Seems like Chinese dev needs to be prepared for scale in ways most of us never have to dream of - would be interesting to know if they're adopting best practices we could learn from. [1] https://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/articles/pinduoduo-intensifies-agriculture-modernization-drive-as-users-surpass-800-m https://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/articles/pinduoduo-inte... [2] https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/ https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/
- agency 5y ago
  This is kind of a tangent but I recently watched Wolf Warrior, an over-the-top Chinese military action movie that is also basically wall-to-wall propaganda for the PLA (not that this military-entertainment complex stuff is unique to China of course. You don't get to put all the latest shiny military tech in the new Transformers movie unless you play ball with the DoD). In a climactic scene[1] after our heroes are attacked by the bad guys (a bunch of American ex-special forces mercenaries), while a voiceover speech is laying it on pretty thick ("To a soldier the most beautiful place in the world is the border of the People's Republic of China, because it is what they fight and die to protect"), they rip off the patches they were wearing for the wargames they were participating in before the attack and slap on patches with the flag of China which say "I fight for China" in English. Thought that was kind of interesting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCc0DWSZHCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCc0DWSZHCs
  - detaro 5y ago
    wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple language versions of that scene, to make sure everybody gets it.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    The Wolf Warrior movies are very entertaining to watch if you are a fan of classic American non-apologetic action movies. Basically the same thing but in Chinese ...
Taniwha 5y ago
China is roughly 1/5 of the world's population, that means that it has roughly 1/5 of the world's smart people ... for a bunch of political/historical reasons up until this generation they haven't had the same chance to shine that others have, this generation have been catching up and taking their place in the world - the language barrier has made a lot of tech transfer one way, the recent western protectionism is only making this worse, it wont stop smart people doing smart things. I think that the US has been biting itself in the ass for a while now. Used to be it was the magnet for tech, but regressive immigration policy over the past generation has made it far harder for smart people to move there, meanwhile the internet has made actual geographical location less important (I moved to the US 40 years ago, and left 20 years later). I do think that China is a big part of the future, the world is a safer place if we trade rather than play at childish brinkmanship. The best thing we can do in the world is to grow large middle classes everywhere who have too much to lose b y going to war
throwaway4good 5y ago
The technical stuff seems to be all Chinese on sites like bilibili, gitee etc. For a more business perspective there are some twitter-accounts - maybe: ruima, danwwang ...

TrainedMonkey 5y ago

> There are far more Chinese tech workers who understand English than the inverse. This is a really interesting observation. I will make one as well - there are far more people speaking English on aircraft carriers than all other languages combined by a significant margin. No idea what that means in the grand scheme of things, but hey we are making geopolitical observations. See https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-dominance-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-domina...

djtango 5y ago
That's a great share thanks - interesting to consider all the ways the English speaking world has exerted an edge indirectly. The observations don't necessarily have to be geopolitical (although it seems talk about China always is these days). For example, PinDuoDuo hit 800M users in 6 years[1] And from Kevin's InterConnected blog, the Chinese CBDC's initial "small-scale" testing did 70M transactions[2] Seems like Chinese dev needs to be prepared for scale in ways most of us never have to dream of - would be interesting to know if they're adopting best practices we could learn from. [1] https://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/articles/pinduoduo-intensifies-agriculture-modernization-drive-as-users-surpass-800-m https://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/articles/pinduoduo-inte... [2] https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/ https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/
agency 5y ago
This is kind of a tangent but I recently watched Wolf Warrior, an over-the-top Chinese military action movie that is also basically wall-to-wall propaganda for the PLA (not that this military-entertainment complex stuff is unique to China of course. You don't get to put all the latest shiny military tech in the new Transformers movie unless you play ball with the DoD). In a climactic scene[1] after our heroes are attacked by the bad guys (a bunch of American ex-special forces mercenaries), while a voiceover speech is laying it on pretty thick ("To a soldier the most beautiful place in the world is the border of the People's Republic of China, because it is what they fight and die to protect"), they rip off the patches they were wearing for the wargames they were participating in before the attack and slap on patches with the flag of China which say "I fight for China" in English. Thought that was kind of interesting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCc0DWSZHCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCc0DWSZHCs
- detaro 5y ago
  wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple language versions of that scene, to make sure everybody gets it.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  The Wolf Warrior movies are very entertaining to watch if you are a fan of classic American non-apologetic action movies. Basically the same thing but in Chinese ...

Taniwha 5y ago

China is roughly 1/5 of the world's population, that means that it has roughly 1/5 of the world's smart people ... for a bunch of political/historical reasons up until this generation they haven't had the same chance to shine that others have, this generation have been catching up and taking their place in the world - the language barrier has made a lot of tech transfer one way, the recent western protectionism is only making this worse, it wont stop smart people doing smart things. I think that the US has been biting itself in the ass for a while now. Used to be it was the magnet for tech, but regressive immigration policy over the past generation has made it far harder for smart people to move there, meanwhile the internet has made actual geographical location less important (I moved to the US 40 years ago, and left 20 years later). I do think that China is a big part of the future, the world is a safer place if we trade rather than play at childish brinkmanship. The best thing we can do in the world is to grow large middle classes everywhere who have too much to lose b y going to war

throwaway4good 5y ago

The technical stuff seems to be all Chinese on sites like bilibili, gitee etc. For a more business perspective there are some twitter-accounts - maybe: ruima, danwwang ...