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40 sats \ 2 replies \ @Cje95 16h \ parent \ on: Totally forgot the government was shut down again... Politics_And_Law
Ehhhh the Chinese really are not innovating as much as you would think. Just to highlight some of the areas I work in.... they cannot make cutting edge semi conductors at all. The ones that they have announced and released a few made it out of China and they underperformed compared to a generator or two go Nvidia and AMD chips. Its not only because of ASML though ASML relieve on a very very specific and really top secrete optic manufacturer in Germany for their machines.
In the energy space they are literally taking facilities like NIF (National Ignition Facility) and scaling it up and ITER and using stolen data/blue prints they didnt do anything new. Even in their nuclear sector they are ramping up molten salt reactors something that the DOE built and operated in the 50s and 60s before making it all open source.
They really havent done anything out of the blue that has caught me off guard. What they are doing though that the US is not able to is due to the vertical integration/management of the CCP and its companies they can devote super sized work forces to specific things and pay the workers next to nothing.
I would say within the last 5ish years Xi has really clamped down on free market in China. If you have a different idea then the party you go away.... I mean Jack Ma only recently has returned. When the banks were failing I want to say late last year might have been earlier this year they deployed armed forces to suppress. They leverage their national security law of 2017 and the revised part from 2023 to in their minds "legally" seize private material/research
Their growth has been sparked by introductions of free-market forces into select areas of their economies.
What I was referring to is the rise of China from a subsistence farming economy to an industrial power. The liberalization of their economy is what I have heard people use to explain their rise more than anything else. I was not making an argument about innovation vs. the US. In the 90s China was nothing compared to what it is today. They are far from free and what you say doesn't surprise me. They, like us are probably regressing away from freedom.
For the record, I think mankind would be much better off if all nations were free to trade and each person was free to do what he/she wants to do. I sometimes imagine that we would find cures for cancer and other ills much faster if Africa was developed with strong economies where young people could learn science. Where the profit motive was stronger than the motive to use violence to gain power.
I celebrate any people pulling themselves out of poverty. It just bugs me when Americans specifically and people in the west more generally do not realize why we are so prosperous.
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The USSR killed itself with socialism. Reagan and Thatcher deserve credit too but I firmly believe that the USSR would have either dropped socialism or collapsed even without Reagan. Given enough time. Socialism is like poison. You might be able to tolerate it in small doses but given enough exposure over time an economy will collapse. When you give people more freedom, over time the opposite occurs. That's my point. I don't think enough people on the right get just how disastrous socialism actually is. If they did, their actions would be very different.
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