4 ms·

Are you familiar with Chinese politics and society? It’s not a great Sino melting pot. The language barrier alone will stop Chinese cultural hegemony.

mrtksn 2y ago
They have a lot of problems I'm reading about but there will be a void with the fall of the US from global superpower status and that void wouldn't be left unattended. Anyway, with the banning of TikTok it's pretty clear to me: No more global companies without hard tech. The US used to be the bastion of free global trade but they resigned. Anything that relies on things like network effect or branding will become local because countries can enforce it. If some country has the engineering capacity to build a website where people post texts and media and others like and share that media then the American version wouldn't be allowed. Therefore, the US economy will become as powerful as having about 300M citizens, not as global power. China has huge number of citizens, they win by default as long as they can do the hard tech good enough and they apparently can do that. US embargoes only pushed them to make their local alternatives and they made them pretty good, whatever they make they make it for over a billion people. EU has a version of this problem, that is they don't have one large chunk of people who speak the same language and trade on the same rules. The trading on the same rules is something that EU fixed a lot but the EU is still fragmented and this makes EU companies anaemic because they can't get huge without going global. When the global trade is gone, the US will have the same issue(probably still better situation than EU but much worse than China).
- COGlory 2y ago
  The US has been embargoing industries since its Independence. I doubt TikTok will be a remotely meaningful event in the history of the nation.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    The things don't stay the same outside of the US, therefore you can't expect that doing the same thing will always result in the way. There are very few technologies where the US or EU has an edge over China. Embargoes helped a lot with that. In fact it becomes absurd, for example the EU/US/UK wants to make the world a better place by replacing ICE cars with electric ones. China builds great cars for cheap in huge amounts and the EU/US/UK act like Gavin Belson saying "I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do". There you lose the environment claims, even if EU/US/UK have a point. The west lost the technological edge, the Americans like to claim that EU regulated too much but in the American case it appears that not regulated billionaires didn't invest in tech but resorted into rent seeking and now they expect the politicians to protect them from the Chinese companies who allegedly received unfair support from their governments but nonetheless they made better products. I don't know I'm not a clairvoyant or expert analyst in this stuff, I'm just pessimistic on the near future of humanity and the west will be the bigger losers because they lost the plot.
    - hmmmcurious1 2y ago
      Why are you giving a free hand to China to do as it likes and then blame the west for following its interest? Why do you give China a pass at forcing any western business to always enter a joint enterprise with chinese firms if it wants to do business in China? Seeing a lot of critique about the blunders of the west for trying to have more leverage and no critique for chinese practices.
      - mrtksn 2y ago
        I'm not giving China a free pass for anything. The stuff you are talking about paved the way for Chinese catching up and eventually surpassing the west but that doesn't change the outcome. I'm not a China fan at all, in fact I'm very concerned that the west will imitate China and in fact banning TikTok was a sign of it. Banning is the Chinese way.
        gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
        The Chinese don’t support free trade. Why should the US support free trade with China? Why not embargo them until such time as China opens up? This isn’t a hypocritical contradiction. The US supports free trade with those who support free trade. They suppose power imbalances with those who support power imbalances.
        mrtksn 2y ago
        The US becomes a China with crazy politics and poor infrastructure then. A shitty world where the citizens are a commodity that can be pushed around to consume from companies who such at R&D but good at lobbying. Remember when the US was pro-free speech and criticised dictatorships for blocking social media? Kiss good bye to that, now it's US that blocks it. Chinese citizen experience, imported into the west. If Trump wins, there's Project 2025 where they plan to replace every government position with party loyalists - Just like China.
        talldayo 2y ago
- oezi 2y ago
  A lot of people aren't as optimistic about China anymore because they constricted their population pyramid too much (one child policy), haven't reached first world affluence and are now facing an aging population. By 2100 China might be down to 850m people and the US might even grow to 450m. Economic prowess is all that matters in the end, because economic power allows for military and industrial hegemony.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    That's true, they have huge demographics issues. But the west has them too at different extent. Also, Chinese don't operate on western principles therefore you can't expect same outcomes. Aging population issues are much different when you have enough production base that can sustain old people with small number of young people(they no longer rely on manual labour as much as they used to). In the west aging population means reduction in consumption(therefore reduced investments, economy slowdown etc.), but in countries like China that doesn't have to be a problem, they can simply keep producing as needed. When the west was preoccupied with investing all the money into optimising advertisement, they invested in wast infrastructure. I'm personally more concerned about the west than China. Well, of course I would be since I'm part of the west but yeah I think you get the point.

mrtksn 2y ago

They have a lot of problems I'm reading about but there will be a void with the fall of the US from global superpower status and that void wouldn't be left unattended. Anyway, with the banning of TikTok it's pretty clear to me: No more global companies without hard tech. The US used to be the bastion of free global trade but they resigned. Anything that relies on things like network effect or branding will become local because countries can enforce it. If some country has the engineering capacity to build a website where people post texts and media and others like and share that media then the American version wouldn't be allowed. Therefore, the US economy will become as powerful as having about 300M citizens, not as global power. China has huge number of citizens, they win by default as long as they can do the hard tech good enough and they apparently can do that. US embargoes only pushed them to make their local alternatives and they made them pretty good, whatever they make they make it for over a billion people. EU has a version of this problem, that is they don't have one large chunk of people who speak the same language and trade on the same rules. The trading on the same rules is something that EU fixed a lot but the EU is still fragmented and this makes EU companies anaemic because they can't get huge without going global. When the global trade is gone, the US will have the same issue(probably still better situation than EU but much worse than China).

COGlory 2y ago
The US has been embargoing industries since its Independence. I doubt TikTok will be a remotely meaningful event in the history of the nation.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  The things don't stay the same outside of the US, therefore you can't expect that doing the same thing will always result in the way. There are very few technologies where the US or EU has an edge over China. Embargoes helped a lot with that. In fact it becomes absurd, for example the EU/US/UK wants to make the world a better place by replacing ICE cars with electric ones. China builds great cars for cheap in huge amounts and the EU/US/UK act like Gavin Belson saying "I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do". There you lose the environment claims, even if EU/US/UK have a point. The west lost the technological edge, the Americans like to claim that EU regulated too much but in the American case it appears that not regulated billionaires didn't invest in tech but resorted into rent seeking and now they expect the politicians to protect them from the Chinese companies who allegedly received unfair support from their governments but nonetheless they made better products. I don't know I'm not a clairvoyant or expert analyst in this stuff, I'm just pessimistic on the near future of humanity and the west will be the bigger losers because they lost the plot.
  - hmmmcurious1 2y ago
    Why are you giving a free hand to China to do as it likes and then blame the west for following its interest? Why do you give China a pass at forcing any western business to always enter a joint enterprise with chinese firms if it wants to do business in China? Seeing a lot of critique about the blunders of the west for trying to have more leverage and no critique for chinese practices.
    - mrtksn 2y ago
      I'm not giving China a free pass for anything. The stuff you are talking about paved the way for Chinese catching up and eventually surpassing the west but that doesn't change the outcome. I'm not a China fan at all, in fact I'm very concerned that the west will imitate China and in fact banning TikTok was a sign of it. Banning is the Chinese way.
      - gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
        The Chinese don’t support free trade. Why should the US support free trade with China? Why not embargo them until such time as China opens up? This isn’t a hypocritical contradiction. The US supports free trade with those who support free trade. They suppose power imbalances with those who support power imbalances.
        mrtksn 2y ago
        The US becomes a China with crazy politics and poor infrastructure then. A shitty world where the citizens are a commodity that can be pushed around to consume from companies who such at R&D but good at lobbying. Remember when the US was pro-free speech and criticised dictatorships for blocking social media? Kiss good bye to that, now it's US that blocks it. Chinese citizen experience, imported into the west. If Trump wins, there's Project 2025 where they plan to replace every government position with party loyalists - Just like China.
        talldayo 2y ago
oezi 2y ago
A lot of people aren't as optimistic about China anymore because they constricted their population pyramid too much (one child policy), haven't reached first world affluence and are now facing an aging population. By 2100 China might be down to 850m people and the US might even grow to 450m. Economic prowess is all that matters in the end, because economic power allows for military and industrial hegemony.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  That's true, they have huge demographics issues. But the west has them too at different extent. Also, Chinese don't operate on western principles therefore you can't expect same outcomes. Aging population issues are much different when you have enough production base that can sustain old people with small number of young people(they no longer rely on manual labour as much as they used to). In the west aging population means reduction in consumption(therefore reduced investments, economy slowdown etc.), but in countries like China that doesn't have to be a problem, they can simply keep producing as needed. When the west was preoccupied with investing all the money into optimising advertisement, they invested in wast infrastructure. I'm personally more concerned about the west than China. Well, of course I would be since I'm part of the west but yeah I think you get the point.