5 ms·

Hardware tech, to be specific. Plenty of room left in software services still. The east can compete on price but user experience is incomparable.

jampekka 2y ago
A lot of consumer tech with very competitive UX is coming out of China. They are also getting very strongly into e.g. web frontend tech. I see no reason why the west would have any special advantage in this.
- csomar 2y ago
  They are ahead of Europe (at least in car UX) but quite behind of the US. This is the last stronghold that the US has but given the recent layoffs and transition toward "AI everything", I am not sure if the US tech industry will survive this too. Time to start learning Chinese.
  - uhhhhhhh 2y ago
    I would rate Europe over US by far for car UX. My north American vehicles universally have the worst interfaces. My European Cars typically the best and Japanese/others in between.
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    What US car UX is ahead of Europe?
  - numpad0 2y ago
    I assume you have Tesla center screen and CarPlay/Android Auto in mind, but those aren't that highly regarded outside the US...
vbezhenar 2y ago
Chinese hardware docs are very scarce if you don't know mandarin and don't have Chinese connections. So to compete on software West might encounter unexpected difficulties. You need good platform docs to develop good software. Probably not a problem for big companies.
- yoz-y 2y ago
  That feels like something AI could solve.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Last time I did this, someone who knew the language described the attemped Chinese in dispagaging terms: 在中文和任何拉丁-德语语言之间进行转换是机器翻译仍然难以完成的任务；我不知道为什么，但它比英语-西班牙语或英语-C 等语言的转换要困难得多。
    - selimthegrim 2y ago
      What are C languages?
      - ben_w 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language) etc
        makeitshine 2y ago
        In the above Chinese this doesn't really make sense.
        ben_w 2y ago
        Thus demonstrating the point I was making with (and demonstrated by) the "attemped Chinese": machine translation isn't good enough yet. (This Chinese is from Google Translate).
      - makeitshine 2y ago
        It's shorthand for something or it's a typo. It doesn't make sense otherwise.
WiSaGaN 2y ago
What user experience are you talking about? Chatbot? Or software in general? Cause Tiktok beats Facebook out of water. Chatbot for English communities sure, I also prefer Claude over Deepseek in terms of project support and UI. But this is because they are focusing on Chinese communities, Doubao has much better features that is used by Chinese. It's not really comparable even if all US chatbots were accessible in China. Once LLM tech slows, I am sure Chinese chatbots would beat the American ones in terms of user experience.
ptero 2y ago
So far. China has been focused on becoming a world's factory for 30 years. They started moving up the food chain fairly recently. Give it another generation and if China will not walk off the ledge with either government or societal issues (which, granted, is where they are slowly going IMO) they will own the UX and design as well. My 2c.
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  They’ve been moving up the food chain for 30 years. The only difference is recently that upward movement has begun to surpass the US. Given that the US has been number one for a really long time now it doesn’t sit well with a lot of the patriotic identity people have about the US. People either can’t accept reality or the make up some excuse about unfair economic practices. The last thing they want to admit is that China is more competent or more superior.
  - ptero 2y ago
    > They’ve been moving up the food chain for 30 years. Organically, sure. If a company has an opportunity to build higher value components profitably it would likely take it. But that is slow. What I mean is state pouring massive amounts of money, every year for many years, into as-is unprofitable areas to build not just the products but education, infrastructure and support needed for the local companies to become competitive. WSJ had a good article in the last few days on China's containership building which AFACR said the government poured over 10 billion at the time to become the world's shipbuilder. This is the time of effort I am talking about and, as far as I know, it is fairly new.
    - ricardobeat 2y ago
      $10B is a drop in the ocean. If all it took was a bit of money the US could have stayed ahead. For perspective, they’ve earmarked $800B for clean energy subsidies, that AI fund is $500B. You can’t buy back entire supply chains and a workforce, it takes generations.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
Software is more trivial than hardware. That’s why you see bootcamps for software but not for hardware. China can easily eclipse the US on the software front. And they have.

jampekka 2y ago

A lot of consumer tech with very competitive UX is coming out of China. They are also getting very strongly into e.g. web frontend tech. I see no reason why the west would have any special advantage in this.

csomar 2y ago
They are ahead of Europe (at least in car UX) but quite behind of the US. This is the last stronghold that the US has but given the recent layoffs and transition toward "AI everything", I am not sure if the US tech industry will survive this too. Time to start learning Chinese.
- uhhhhhhh 2y ago
  I would rate Europe over US by far for car UX. My north American vehicles universally have the worst interfaces. My European Cars typically the best and Japanese/others in between.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  What US car UX is ahead of Europe?
- numpad0 2y ago
  I assume you have Tesla center screen and CarPlay/Android Auto in mind, but those aren't that highly regarded outside the US...

vbezhenar 2y ago

Chinese hardware docs are very scarce if you don't know mandarin and don't have Chinese connections. So to compete on software West might encounter unexpected difficulties. You need good platform docs to develop good software. Probably not a problem for big companies.

yoz-y 2y ago
That feels like something AI could solve.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Last time I did this, someone who knew the language described the attemped Chinese in dispagaging terms: 在中文和任何拉丁-德语语言之间进行转换是机器翻译仍然难以完成的任务；我不知道为什么，但它比英语-西班牙语或英语-C 等语言的转换要困难得多。
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    What are C languages?
    - ben_w 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language) etc
      - makeitshine 2y ago
        In the above Chinese this doesn't really make sense.
        ben_w 2y ago
        Thus demonstrating the point I was making with (and demonstrated by) the "attemped Chinese": machine translation isn't good enough yet. (This Chinese is from Google Translate).
    - makeitshine 2y ago
      It's shorthand for something or it's a typo. It doesn't make sense otherwise.

WiSaGaN 2y ago

What user experience are you talking about? Chatbot? Or software in general? Cause Tiktok beats Facebook out of water. Chatbot for English communities sure, I also prefer Claude over Deepseek in terms of project support and UI. But this is because they are focusing on Chinese communities, Doubao has much better features that is used by Chinese. It's not really comparable even if all US chatbots were accessible in China. Once LLM tech slows, I am sure Chinese chatbots would beat the American ones in terms of user experience.

ptero 2y ago

So far. China has been focused on becoming a world's factory for 30 years. They started moving up the food chain fairly recently. Give it another generation and if China will not walk off the ledge with either government or societal issues (which, granted, is where they are slowly going IMO) they will own the UX and design as well. My 2c.

ninetyninenine 2y ago
They’ve been moving up the food chain for 30 years. The only difference is recently that upward movement has begun to surpass the US. Given that the US has been number one for a really long time now it doesn’t sit well with a lot of the patriotic identity people have about the US. People either can’t accept reality or the make up some excuse about unfair economic practices. The last thing they want to admit is that China is more competent or more superior.
- ptero 2y ago
  > They’ve been moving up the food chain for 30 years. Organically, sure. If a company has an opportunity to build higher value components profitably it would likely take it. But that is slow. What I mean is state pouring massive amounts of money, every year for many years, into as-is unprofitable areas to build not just the products but education, infrastructure and support needed for the local companies to become competitive. WSJ had a good article in the last few days on China's containership building which AFACR said the government poured over 10 billion at the time to become the world's shipbuilder. This is the time of effort I am talking about and, as far as I know, it is fairly new.
  - ricardobeat 2y ago
    $10B is a drop in the ocean. If all it took was a bit of money the US could have stayed ahead. For perspective, they’ve earmarked $800B for clean energy subsidies, that AI fund is $500B. You can’t buy back entire supply chains and a workforce, it takes generations.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

Software is more trivial than hardware. That’s why you see bootcamps for software but not for hardware. China can easily eclipse the US on the software front. And they have.