8 ms·

It's literally happening lol. When you were a kid China was making shoes and their GDP is 10% of the US. Now they're making drones / evs / high end electornics

by jurli 2y ago

It's literally happening lol. When you were a kid China was making shoes and their GDP is 10% of the US. Now they're making drones / evs / high end electornics and it's 80%. This is why people's perception is so unreliable because it's impossible to notice things when they happen over a lifetime

talldayo 2y ago
When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations. If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.
- joshbaptiste 2y ago
  As a sovereign nation rises in power you'll notice how it slowly starts losing favor from USA
  - roca 2y ago
    If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal. In the 1990s everyone thought Japan was going to be the next superpower and that was just fine.
    - ijidak 2y ago
      Ha! Do you remember the panic induced by a rising Japan in the late 80's and early 90's. The fear of the "Red Sun Rising". The fear that Japan was going to own most of the valuable real estate in America. The forcing of Japanese car companies to onshore to protect American jobs. Blaming of Japanese industrial policy as being unfair competition. It was the collapse of the Japanese growth engine in the mid 90's that finally ended the American panic. The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power. Whenever powers rise to threaten that duality there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington.
      - lmz 2y ago
        > The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power. Wait, how did the UK get in there? Especially in this post-brexit century...
      - roca 2y ago
        I remember those years pretty well. There was a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of concrete action, very much unlike the situation with China now.
    - suraci 2y ago
      > If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal Correction: If it accepts the stationing of U.S. troops and succumbs to U.S. financial policies, it's not a big deal Japan and Germany have paid a huge price to demonstrate their friendship to the U.S. That was not 'just fine'
      - rangestransform 2y ago
        It’s a shame that Americans don’t reap the maximal benefits from it, but why should the hegemon not take advantage of lesser states?
      - roca 2y ago
        What does "succumb to US financial policies" even mean? The situation has waxed and waned but in general West Germany and Japan at the government level have been pretty happy to have US troops stationed there while facing off against the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China. The Ukrainians and the Baltics would love to have some US troops stationed there right now.
    - tw1984 2y ago
      are you kidding? the US forced Japan to sign the plaza accord effectively ending Japan's rise. that was followed by 30 years close to zero economic growth. you are not mature enough to discuss such topic if you believe the US will be happy to be taken over by some democratic friends.
      - gregw2 2y ago
        I am intrigued by the notion that the Plaza Accord was a lynchpin that stopped Japan, and I'm sure better minds have debated it than me, but I don't quite see how a currency accord that didn't shift the trade flows or even the dollar that much, and which was reversed a couple years later in the Louvre Accord, really killed Japan's rise. My perception is that Japan, after some great success, went through a normal semi-inevitable asset bubble, but their response was uniquely Japanese. Rather than letting firms and the social contract of lifetime employment (particularly for older workers) go bankrupt, their firms and country decided to absorb the losses for a generation and stagnate. Economically it was a very suboptimal approach but socially/morally I'm less confident it was the wrong call.
        niceguy1827 2y ago
        Arguing about the Plaza Accord is really a moot point. The real argument is that in the 80s, Japan-bashing was a real thing, just like the China-bashing today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the_United_States#Since_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the... https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese-is-growing-poll-shows.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese...
    - FpUser 2y ago
      >"... and that was just fine." No it was not. The US had taken whole bunch of steps to prevent this from happening and those steps were anything but "let's free market decide" and "compete on merits". It is a real problem for any country or block. As soon as it looks like it threatens leading position of the US all the gloves come of. Obviously not specific to the US. Any other country would do the same given a chance.
      - roca 2y ago
        What steps are you thinking of? Nothing like what is currently happening with China, I'm sure of that.
- caycep 2y ago
  The question in a rational mind is, why would it even bother? US/China partnership is the most economically successful in world history, even more so than US/UK or AUKUS. But the downside of CCP government structure is that paranoia at the top ranks has a good probability of overruling rationality. Albeit US cannot speak as US-centric paranoia/"exceptionalism" may do the same thing...and the electorate voted to self destruct the government despite US economy being the strongest in decades.
  - bugglebeetle 2y ago
    > US economy being the strongest in decades The vast majority of its people do not share in that success and have seen a declining standard of life relative to prior generations whereas in China, the opposite is quite demonstrably true, despite increasingly similar concentrations of wealth and political power.
    - roca 2y ago
      On the contrary, real wages in the USA are the highest they've ever been. Social media and fentanyl are making people unhappy but for most people it's not an economic problem.
      - bugglebeetle 2y ago
        Sure thing, Dr. Pangloss. > Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first-time-us-homebuyers-is-38-an-all-time-high.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first... > U.S. homelessness rose 18 percent in 2024, continuing multi-year upward trend > https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18-percent-in-2024-continuing-multi-year-upward-trend https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18... > analysis of government data estimates that people in the United States owe at least $220 billion in medical debt. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/ https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-m...
- freehorse 2y ago
  > When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations. Maybe in western media depictions it would seem so, but eg china invests more and more in europe over the years. Moreover, BRICS are roughly half of world's population. Perceptions of what "the world" or "international relationships" mean are sometimes distorted in the west.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Not sure where that comes from. By any measure China is more integrated into the rest of the world than ever before. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of-each-country-1960-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of... Whether China can beat NATO in a head to head military contest is one question, but separate from whether they can take Taiwan, for example.
- FpUser 2y ago
  >"If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China." The "rest of the world" is not limited by NATO. And China is not fighting "the rest of the world". It trades with it, invests and does all kinds of other things. But sure keeping one's head in a sand is a nice position.
kayewiggin 2y ago
> making drones / evs / high end electornics China does have a current advantage on lithium battery and rare earth materials - dumb technologies that US and allies can replicate fairly quickly, less than a year. EUV and 3nm and below on the other hand, will take decades, since it involves a number of different and deep technologies controlled by dozens of companies. China has thrown $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines. > 80% GDP China's demographics will more than HALF to 500M by 2100, if not earlier, while US grows to close to 400M by then. Someone actually theorizes that China's population is already only 800M right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw Also, a lot of that GDP is debatable in 2024, when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.
- FooBarWidget 2y ago
  So why aren't US and allies demonstrably replicating EVs (and other kinds of green technology) quickly? Tesla is still pretty much the only serious player. Why are CEOs of major western carmakers painting a very different picture than what you describe here? Where are the serious EU/US battery makers that are globally competitive? It looks to me like the EU has chosen the worst of all options: put up tarriff barriers while also not having serious domestic EV makers, and also not stimulating domestic EV development.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Western consumers don't want to buy EVs (mostly).
    - FooBarWidget 2y ago
      Yeah I mean, with the sad state of the Dutch electric grid, the poor coverage of chargers, and the disappearing consumer subsidies, I wouldn't want either. So why aren't governments also building the infrastructure they need to help stimulate demand for EVs? Not taking global climate disaster serious enough? Building EVs and supporting infrastructure is a lot more complicated than just having a bunch of blueprints.
lolinder 2y ago
And now they're at the point where the population pyramid is collapsing. It's hard to make any predictions about the future when they got here riding a baby boom and now their ratio of elderly to working age is about to go through the roof. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2023/
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  Japan, Germany, Italy, and numerous other countries are all much worse off. Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today. Germany and Italy, to take but two examples of large Western economies, haven't had native above-replacement TFR since ~1970. Even in the US, TFR is well below replacement right now, and in fact is basically comparable to China's TFR from 2010-2017. > https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf US population growth is sort of immigration-dependent, which, let's put it this way, isn't an unalloyed good thing.
  - joshuahedlund 2y ago
    > Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today. What metric do you have in mind here? It looks like Japan’s population has dropped ~2% from peak in the last 25 years. China is projected to lose ~8% in the next 25. Or if we look at percent of population over 65, Japan is at ~30% today. China is projected to jump from <20% to 40% by 2050. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1359964/world-population-age-65-years-country-forecast/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1359964/world-population...
    - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
      > percent of population over 65 Yeah, Japan is at 29.6% today. China is at ~15% right now and is estimated to be at 26% by 2050. That's not China in your link. It's Hong Kong, which has an older-skewing population.
  - lolinder 2y ago

by jurli 2y ago

talldayo 2y ago

When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations. If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.

joshbaptiste 2y ago
As a sovereign nation rises in power you'll notice how it slowly starts losing favor from USA
- roca 2y ago
  If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal. In the 1990s everyone thought Japan was going to be the next superpower and that was just fine.
  - ijidak 2y ago
    Ha! Do you remember the panic induced by a rising Japan in the late 80's and early 90's. The fear of the "Red Sun Rising". The fear that Japan was going to own most of the valuable real estate in America. The forcing of Japanese car companies to onshore to protect American jobs. Blaming of Japanese industrial policy as being unfair competition. It was the collapse of the Japanese growth engine in the mid 90's that finally ended the American panic. The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power. Whenever powers rise to threaten that duality there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington.
    - lmz 2y ago
      > The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power. Wait, how did the UK get in there? Especially in this post-brexit century...
    - roca 2y ago
      I remember those years pretty well. There was a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of concrete action, very much unlike the situation with China now.
  - suraci 2y ago
    > If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal Correction: If it accepts the stationing of U.S. troops and succumbs to U.S. financial policies, it's not a big deal Japan and Germany have paid a huge price to demonstrate their friendship to the U.S. That was not 'just fine'
    - rangestransform 2y ago
      It’s a shame that Americans don’t reap the maximal benefits from it, but why should the hegemon not take advantage of lesser states?
    - roca 2y ago
      What does "succumb to US financial policies" even mean? The situation has waxed and waned but in general West Germany and Japan at the government level have been pretty happy to have US troops stationed there while facing off against the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China. The Ukrainians and the Baltics would love to have some US troops stationed there right now.
  - tw1984 2y ago
    are you kidding? the US forced Japan to sign the plaza accord effectively ending Japan's rise. that was followed by 30 years close to zero economic growth. you are not mature enough to discuss such topic if you believe the US will be happy to be taken over by some democratic friends.
    - gregw2 2y ago
      I am intrigued by the notion that the Plaza Accord was a lynchpin that stopped Japan, and I'm sure better minds have debated it than me, but I don't quite see how a currency accord that didn't shift the trade flows or even the dollar that much, and which was reversed a couple years later in the Louvre Accord, really killed Japan's rise. My perception is that Japan, after some great success, went through a normal semi-inevitable asset bubble, but their response was uniquely Japanese. Rather than letting firms and the social contract of lifetime employment (particularly for older workers) go bankrupt, their firms and country decided to absorb the losses for a generation and stagnate. Economically it was a very suboptimal approach but socially/morally I'm less confident it was the wrong call.
      - niceguy1827 2y ago
        Arguing about the Plaza Accord is really a moot point. The real argument is that in the 80s, Japan-bashing was a real thing, just like the China-bashing today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the_United_States#Since_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the... https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese-is-growing-poll-shows.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese...
  - FpUser 2y ago
    >"... and that was just fine." No it was not. The US had taken whole bunch of steps to prevent this from happening and those steps were anything but "let's free market decide" and "compete on merits". It is a real problem for any country or block. As soon as it looks like it threatens leading position of the US all the gloves come of. Obviously not specific to the US. Any other country would do the same given a chance.
    - roca 2y ago
      What steps are you thinking of? Nothing like what is currently happening with China, I'm sure of that.
caycep 2y ago
The question in a rational mind is, why would it even bother? US/China partnership is the most economically successful in world history, even more so than US/UK or AUKUS. But the downside of CCP government structure is that paranoia at the top ranks has a good probability of overruling rationality. Albeit US cannot speak as US-centric paranoia/"exceptionalism" may do the same thing...and the electorate voted to self destruct the government despite US economy being the strongest in decades.
- bugglebeetle 2y ago
  > US economy being the strongest in decades The vast majority of its people do not share in that success and have seen a declining standard of life relative to prior generations whereas in China, the opposite is quite demonstrably true, despite increasingly similar concentrations of wealth and political power.
  - roca 2y ago
    On the contrary, real wages in the USA are the highest they've ever been. Social media and fentanyl are making people unhappy but for most people it's not an economic problem.
    - bugglebeetle 2y ago
      Sure thing, Dr. Pangloss. > Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first-time-us-homebuyers-is-38-an-all-time-high.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first... > U.S. homelessness rose 18 percent in 2024, continuing multi-year upward trend > https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18-percent-in-2024-continuing-multi-year-upward-trend https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18... > analysis of government data estimates that people in the United States owe at least $220 billion in medical debt. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/ https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-m...
freehorse 2y ago
> When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations. Maybe in western media depictions it would seem so, but eg china invests more and more in europe over the years. Moreover, BRICS are roughly half of world's population. Perceptions of what "the world" or "international relationships" mean are sometimes distorted in the west.
janalsncm 2y ago
Not sure where that comes from. By any measure China is more integrated into the rest of the world than ever before. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of-each-country-1960-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of... Whether China can beat NATO in a head to head military contest is one question, but separate from whether they can take Taiwan, for example.
FpUser 2y ago
>"If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China." The "rest of the world" is not limited by NATO. And China is not fighting "the rest of the world". It trades with it, invests and does all kinds of other things. But sure keeping one's head in a sand is a nice position.

kayewiggin 2y ago

> making drones / evs / high end electornics China does have a current advantage on lithium battery and rare earth materials - dumb technologies that US and allies can replicate fairly quickly, less than a year. EUV and 3nm and below on the other hand, will take decades, since it involves a number of different and deep technologies controlled by dozens of companies. China has thrown $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines. > 80% GDP China's demographics will more than HALF to 500M by 2100, if not earlier, while US grows to close to 400M by then. Someone actually theorizes that China's population is already only 800M right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw Also, a lot of that GDP is debatable in 2024, when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.

FooBarWidget 2y ago
So why aren't US and allies demonstrably replicating EVs (and other kinds of green technology) quickly? Tesla is still pretty much the only serious player. Why are CEOs of major western carmakers painting a very different picture than what you describe here? Where are the serious EU/US battery makers that are globally competitive? It looks to me like the EU has chosen the worst of all options: put up tarriff barriers while also not having serious domestic EV makers, and also not stimulating domestic EV development.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Western consumers don't want to buy EVs (mostly).
  - FooBarWidget 2y ago
    Yeah I mean, with the sad state of the Dutch electric grid, the poor coverage of chargers, and the disappearing consumer subsidies, I wouldn't want either. So why aren't governments also building the infrastructure they need to help stimulate demand for EVs? Not taking global climate disaster serious enough? Building EVs and supporting infrastructure is a lot more complicated than just having a bunch of blueprints.

lolinder 2y ago

And now they're at the point where the population pyramid is collapsing. It's hard to make any predictions about the future when they got here riding a baby boom and now their ratio of elderly to working age is about to go through the roof. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2023/

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Japan, Germany, Italy, and numerous other countries are all much worse off. Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today. Germany and Italy, to take but two examples of large Western economies, haven't had native above-replacement TFR since ~1970. Even in the US, TFR is well below replacement right now, and in fact is basically comparable to China's TFR from 2010-2017. > https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf US population growth is sort of immigration-dependent, which, let's put it this way, isn't an unalloyed good thing.
- joshuahedlund 2y ago
  > Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today. What metric do you have in mind here? It looks like Japan’s population has dropped ~2% from peak in the last 25 years. China is projected to lose ~8% in the next 25. Or if we look at percent of population over 65, Japan is at ~30% today. China is projected to jump from <20% to 40% by 2050. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1359964/world-population-age-65-years-country-forecast/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1359964/world-population...
  - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
    > percent of population over 65 Yeah, Japan is at 29.6% today. China is at ~15% right now and is estimated to be at 26% by 2050. That's not China in your link. It's Hong Kong, which has an older-skewing population.
- lolinder 2y ago