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> I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and China taking its place. What gives me hope is that we’re not driving in North Korean or Russian cars

> I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and China taking its place. What gives me hope is that we’re not driving in North Korean or Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes. The Soviet Union tried to be a leader in all these fields. I know China is not Russia, but in many things it is. How many Western companies, for example, have the government sit on their board? Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don’t see why it would be different now.

kelnos 3y ago
I think there are different levels to "things working" though. A country can be using an economic and governing system that ultimately doesn't work, but still have enough weight to throw around for a while, enough to do plenty of damage to others. Russia is clearly showing that right now in Ukraine. Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country may never be the same. China may pull something similar (and be more successful at it) in Taiwan in the near future. I do worry about Chinese products in the classes you mention. OP notes that China became the world's largest automobile exporter in 2023 (by units sold, not by revenue). China still can't rival Intel or AMD in chips, but they're gaining ground all the time, and have some decent (though not superb) competitors in the ARM market, with inroads into RISC-V, I believe. The Comac C919 airliner isn't exactly all over yet, and I don't know how safe, relable, and airworthy it is (not that Boeing has done well in that regard lately), but it exists, regardless of whether or not the allegations that they stole IP from US manufacturers is true.
- huijzer 3y ago
  > Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country may never be the same. You can also say: Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is today. I agree completely with you that China has enough weight to do plenty of damage in the short term. In the long term, I paraphrase something Stephen Kotkin said: The West has gained more and more friends over time. After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have become friends. Maybe the relationships are not perfect, but they are pretty good if you ask me. Some healthy back and forth and discussing without major drama. Finland has joined NATO and Sweden will soon also. Maybe one day even Ukraine. And maybe India one day?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - graemep 3y ago
    > Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is today. On the other hand Russia has never been more in China's camp than it is now, and I think that loss is far greater than the possible gain of Ukraine and the NATO expansion. > After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have become friends. Yes, over that period, but that is no longer happening. Power is shifting to other countries - China, India, etc. and they are not "friends". Quotes because I think the idea of friendship in international relations is mistaken. > and maybe India one day? India has very different values and interests to the west, and while it is likely to ally with the west against China, I cannot see it in anything else. It is not backing the west over Ukraine, for example.
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      > I think that loss is far greater than the possible gain of Ukraine and the NATO expansion. That wasn't a loss. Russia was never in the western camp. The "loss" is the loss of the hope that they would become so. I'm not sure how realistic that hope ever was.
      - graemep 3y ago
        That is true, but Russia getting closer to (or dependent on) China is a loss anyway.
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        The Western camp has never invented any framework that would let Russia be in it. What it could offer was: you sit here and sell us cheap oil and gas, while we court all your neighbours to stop associating with you and associate with us instead. But it did not have any meaningful participation format for Russia, only that it should be increasingly lonely. Not to mention stuff like visa waiver or student exchange programmes. In the end even at the best of relations the integration was actually tiny. When confronted with this, the West will usually deflect and blame it all on Putin, which is also not constructive: This does not offer any plan to a regular Russian, especially seeing how close EU politicians were to Putin at that time and how they did not care if he stays for as many terms as he wanted to.
whatshisface 3y ago
The CCP is using its authority to make its citizens the slaves of the world. They do this by manipulating the currency and internal environment to stop living standards and wages from rising to Western levels, while trying to avoid interference with economic activity that does not threaten the government. Key nationalized sectors under-perform (like their oil industry) while others work much like they do in America. That doesn't make them a centrally planned economy, any more than FED's currency planning makes the US economy centrally planned in nature. They have a "central plan," which is to drive all of their money towards reinvestment, but it's not a planned economy. Going beyond a statement of facts, I assume the reinvestment is supposed to eventually lead to owning the world, but that isn't working out in Africa and all of the western infrastructure they finance has turned into yet another way for depressed Chinese living standards to transfer wealth to the countries the government is trying to get on top of. (It might feel intrusive to find out that a Chinese company owns a toll road you frequently use, but what actually happened is they froze their capital in a fixed asset, freeing an American firm to start a new project.) It reminds me of how the US's own foibles, mainly of a neocolonialist/military interventionist type, have done nothing to benefit us but have weakened domestic security and the security of our interests abroad.
- sooheon 3y ago
  > to drive all of their money towards reinvestment Can you be specific about how this is done?
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Being a hybrid planned/market economy, CCP still has much of a say in what businesses prosper & which do not. China has very little in the way of a consumer sector, quite the opposite of the US consumerism. This means there's very little for consumers to spend their money on versus a US consumer. China's savings rate as a result of these pressures hovers around 50%, compared to the low 4% in US / 10% in UK / 20% in Germany & Northern EU countries. Saving such a high % of income means more money is available in the banking system to be lent out to businesses for investment. So China has an export driven market in which they sell goods to the world, and then re-invest it to build more capacity to build more exports to..
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
smolder 3y ago
Our cars are full of Chinese parts. The makers home country is hardly relevant, today.
torginus 3y ago
Top down government planning is the only thing that has consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially things like semiconductors or spaceflight. Watch some Asianometry. The guy explains how Japan's semiconductor industry was built on high-level planning and industry/academia collaboration with long-term planning and workshare division rather than competition between companies, to develop the necessary technologies for semiconductor manufacture. Same thing happened in the US. R&D heavy industries cannot be bootstrapped without deep government pockets and expert oversight, and a risk tolerance that cannot be justified on balance sheets.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  > Top down government planning is the only thing that has consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially things like semiconductors or spaceflight. That's what gave us Intel processors? SpaceX? Google? ChatGPT? I strongly disagree with your reading of events. (Yes, there was government involvement in the origins of the semiconductor industry, and in the origins of US spaceflight. No, top down government planning is not the only thing that has consistently worked. Having the government seed things and let private businesses run with it has worked pretty well.)
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Intel (Fairchild) has the following in their biography: > By the end of the 1970s they had few new products in the pipeline, and increasingly turned to niche markets with their existing product line, notably "hardened" integrated circuits for military
- Aloha 3y ago
  How was America's semiconductor industry built? Yes, the megabucks put in by the government for Apollo and Military Programs were important, they created static demand - but the government neither planned nor built the technologies needed. It largely happened organically.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  I think that just came down to capital requirement thresholds. Some circumstances required the collective funding because the payoff window was so long.
schnitzelstoat 3y ago
But a lot of that is due to protectionism and sanctions/restrictions. I used to have a Huawei phone, now I don't because it can't use the Google App Store. Here in Europe, there was a lot of controversy over the electric car tariffs too - as China produce high quality, cheap electric cars that could help us with the Green transition, yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect Volkswagen shareholders.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  > yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect Volkswagen shareholders. Well, 10% tariffs, which isn't exactly prohibitive.
- berserk1010 3y ago
  How is it that some europeans like yourself don't realize that China is actively supplying military goods and funding to Russia, to help Russia attack Europe?? Why would you want to pay for cars that help to grow your enemy to cause your countries to fall?
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  One of the biggest Volkswagen shareholders is the state of Lower Saxony. A bad arrangement for many reasons, and this is one of them.
yodsanklai 3y ago
> What gives me hope is that we’re not driving in North Korean or Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes. Most of the things we're using in the western world have parts manufactured in China. Less and less in the US or western europe.
- berserk1010 3y ago
  percent of parts manufactured in China is declining over time, and quickly.
paganel 3y ago
China is already number one on the EVs industry, so if we continue going down that route of forced electrification of our cars there's a big chance many of us will be indeed driving Chinese cars going forward. Granted, neither North Korea nor Russia are big in that industry.
evanjrowley 3y ago
>Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don’t see why it would be different now. Countries have national currencies and central banks. Countries have borders where imports / exports are taxed and inspected for safety, illegal smuggling, etc. The US made Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to maintain liquidity in the mortgage market. All these things are not perfect, but what's the alternative? Where do you draw the line?

kelnos 3y ago

I think there are different levels to "things working" though. A country can be using an economic and governing system that ultimately doesn't work, but still have enough weight to throw around for a while, enough to do plenty of damage to others. Russia is clearly showing that right now in Ukraine. Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country may never be the same. China may pull something similar (and be more successful at it) in Taiwan in the near future. I do worry about Chinese products in the classes you mention. OP notes that China became the world's largest automobile exporter in 2023 (by units sold, not by revenue). China still can't rival Intel or AMD in chips, but they're gaining ground all the time, and have some decent (though not superb) competitors in the ARM market, with inroads into RISC-V, I believe. The Comac C919 airliner isn't exactly all over yet, and I don't know how safe, relable, and airworthy it is (not that Boeing has done well in that regard lately), but it exists, regardless of whether or not the allegations that they stole IP from US manufacturers is true.

huijzer 3y ago
> Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country may never be the same. You can also say: Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is today. I agree completely with you that China has enough weight to do plenty of damage in the short term. In the long term, I paraphrase something Stephen Kotkin said: The West has gained more and more friends over time. After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have become friends. Maybe the relationships are not perfect, but they are pretty good if you ask me. Some healthy back and forth and discussing without major drama. Finland has joined NATO and Sweden will soon also. Maybe one day even Ukraine. And maybe India one day?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- graemep 3y ago
  > Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is today. On the other hand Russia has never been more in China's camp than it is now, and I think that loss is far greater than the possible gain of Ukraine and the NATO expansion. > After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have become friends. Yes, over that period, but that is no longer happening. Power is shifting to other countries - China, India, etc. and they are not "friends". Quotes because I think the idea of friendship in international relations is mistaken. > and maybe India one day? India has very different values and interests to the west, and while it is likely to ally with the west against China, I cannot see it in anything else. It is not backing the west over Ukraine, for example.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    > I think that loss is far greater than the possible gain of Ukraine and the NATO expansion. That wasn't a loss. Russia was never in the western camp. The "loss" is the loss of the hope that they would become so. I'm not sure how realistic that hope ever was.
    - graemep 3y ago
      That is true, but Russia getting closer to (or dependent on) China is a loss anyway.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      The Western camp has never invented any framework that would let Russia be in it. What it could offer was: you sit here and sell us cheap oil and gas, while we court all your neighbours to stop associating with you and associate with us instead. But it did not have any meaningful participation format for Russia, only that it should be increasingly lonely. Not to mention stuff like visa waiver or student exchange programmes. In the end even at the best of relations the integration was actually tiny. When confronted with this, the West will usually deflect and blame it all on Putin, which is also not constructive: This does not offer any plan to a regular Russian, especially seeing how close EU politicians were to Putin at that time and how they did not care if he stays for as many terms as he wanted to.

whatshisface 3y ago

The CCP is using its authority to make its citizens the slaves of the world. They do this by manipulating the currency and internal environment to stop living standards and wages from rising to Western levels, while trying to avoid interference with economic activity that does not threaten the government. Key nationalized sectors under-perform (like their oil industry) while others work much like they do in America. That doesn't make them a centrally planned economy, any more than FED's currency planning makes the US economy centrally planned in nature. They have a "central plan," which is to drive all of their money towards reinvestment, but it's not a planned economy. Going beyond a statement of facts, I assume the reinvestment is supposed to eventually lead to owning the world, but that isn't working out in Africa and all of the western infrastructure they finance has turned into yet another way for depressed Chinese living standards to transfer wealth to the countries the government is trying to get on top of. (It might feel intrusive to find out that a Chinese company owns a toll road you frequently use, but what actually happened is they froze their capital in a fixed asset, freeing an American firm to start a new project.) It reminds me of how the US's own foibles, mainly of a neocolonialist/military interventionist type, have done nothing to benefit us but have weakened domestic security and the security of our interests abroad.

sooheon 3y ago
> to drive all of their money towards reinvestment Can you be specific about how this is done?
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Being a hybrid planned/market economy, CCP still has much of a say in what businesses prosper & which do not. China has very little in the way of a consumer sector, quite the opposite of the US consumerism. This means there's very little for consumers to spend their money on versus a US consumer. China's savings rate as a result of these pressures hovers around 50%, compared to the low 4% in US / 10% in UK / 20% in Germany & Northern EU countries. Saving such a high % of income means more money is available in the banking system to be lent out to businesses for investment. So China has an export driven market in which they sell goods to the world, and then re-invest it to build more capacity to build more exports to..

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

smolder 3y ago

Our cars are full of Chinese parts. The makers home country is hardly relevant, today.

torginus 3y ago

Top down government planning is the only thing that has consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially things like semiconductors or spaceflight. Watch some Asianometry. The guy explains how Japan's semiconductor industry was built on high-level planning and industry/academia collaboration with long-term planning and workshare division rather than competition between companies, to develop the necessary technologies for semiconductor manufacture. Same thing happened in the US. R&D heavy industries cannot be bootstrapped without deep government pockets and expert oversight, and a risk tolerance that cannot be justified on balance sheets.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
> Top down government planning is the only thing that has consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially things like semiconductors or spaceflight. That's what gave us Intel processors? SpaceX? Google? ChatGPT? I strongly disagree with your reading of events. (Yes, there was government involvement in the origins of the semiconductor industry, and in the origins of US spaceflight. No, top down government planning is not the only thing that has consistently worked. Having the government seed things and let private businesses run with it has worked pretty well.)
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Intel (Fairchild) has the following in their biography: > By the end of the 1970s they had few new products in the pipeline, and increasingly turned to niche markets with their existing product line, notably "hardened" integrated circuits for military
Aloha 3y ago
How was America's semiconductor industry built? Yes, the megabucks put in by the government for Apollo and Military Programs were important, they created static demand - but the government neither planned nor built the technologies needed. It largely happened organically.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
I think that just came down to capital requirement thresholds. Some circumstances required the collective funding because the payoff window was so long.

schnitzelstoat 3y ago

But a lot of that is due to protectionism and sanctions/restrictions. I used to have a Huawei phone, now I don't because it can't use the Google App Store. Here in Europe, there was a lot of controversy over the electric car tariffs too - as China produce high quality, cheap electric cars that could help us with the Green transition, yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect Volkswagen shareholders.

dukeyukey 3y ago
> yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect Volkswagen shareholders. Well, 10% tariffs, which isn't exactly prohibitive.
berserk1010 3y ago
How is it that some europeans like yourself don't realize that China is actively supplying military goods and funding to Russia, to help Russia attack Europe?? Why would you want to pay for cars that help to grow your enemy to cause your countries to fall?
amadeuspagel 3y ago
One of the biggest Volkswagen shareholders is the state of Lower Saxony. A bad arrangement for many reasons, and this is one of them.

yodsanklai 3y ago

> What gives me hope is that we’re not driving in North Korean or Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes. Most of the things we're using in the western world have parts manufactured in China. Less and less in the US or western europe.

berserk1010 3y ago
percent of parts manufactured in China is declining over time, and quickly.

paganel 3y ago

China is already number one on the EVs industry, so if we continue going down that route of forced electrification of our cars there's a big chance many of us will be indeed driving Chinese cars going forward. Granted, neither North Korea nor Russia are big in that industry.

evanjrowley 3y ago

>Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don’t see why it would be different now. Countries have national currencies and central banks. Countries have borders where imports / exports are taxed and inspected for safety, illegal smuggling, etc. The US made Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to maintain liquidity in the mortgage market. All these things are not perfect, but what's the alternative? Where do you draw the line?