How does Chinese tech stack up against American tech?(economist.com)
economist.com
How does Chinese tech stack up against American tech?
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21737075-silicon-valley-may-not-hold-its-global-superiority-much-longer-how-does-chinese-tech
63 comments
What China manages to do quite well is stop rentiers from stifling innovation. This is a remarkable achievement. There's corruption in China but the CPC has made it very clear that corruption that threatens national growth won't be tolerated.
Contrast this to America where an enormously large and powerful rentier class have come to completely dominate not just the economy but the government itself. These corporations have managed to carefully stifle and misdirect innovation in order to ensure their rents aren't threatened. Old school media and publishers have neutered ebooks and tried again and again to kill Netflix and any distribution vector they don't control. Banks have made it so Americans are only now just getting payment flexibility that others have enjoyed for decades. ISPs have killed net neutrality and will do their best to become the new railroads, making sure to take a piece of every pie even if it sets the country back. Note that these corporations didn't do it alone. Every step of the way the government was there to help powerful rentiers.
Contrast this to America where an enormously large and powerful rentier class have come to completely dominate not just the economy but the government itself. These corporations have managed to carefully stifle and misdirect innovation in order to ensure their rents aren't threatened. Old school media and publishers have neutered ebooks and tried again and again to kill Netflix and any distribution vector they don't control. Banks have made it so Americans are only now just getting payment flexibility that others have enjoyed for decades. ISPs have killed net neutrality and will do their best to become the new railroads, making sure to take a piece of every pie even if it sets the country back. Note that these corporations didn't do it alone. Every step of the way the government was there to help powerful rentiers.
Every high growth era is defined by the abundance of "new adopters" - people who do not have habits or who are willing to change their habits. What happens with populations is that they do things a certain way for long enough periods of time that they don't want to do it another way.
This has little to do with Chinese policy, and a lot to do with the fact that Chinese life is moving from extremely rural/poor to middle class and thus, had no prior opportunities to do things like reading physical books, so no habits or preexisting preferences to overcome.
This has little to do with Chinese policy, and a lot to do with the fact that Chinese life is moving from extremely rural/poor to middle class and thus, had no prior opportunities to do things like reading physical books, so no habits or preexisting preferences to overcome.
In what age did Chinese had no opportunities to read physical books? That was at least half a century back
I meant, reading physical books as a recreational activity because you're living on a farm with subsistence wages and lack the income or time to do so. China was a country with 750 million people living on less than $2 a day in 1990.
Not to mention the burning of books and disdaining of intellectual pursuit in the cultural revolution.
Not to mention the burning of books and disdaining of intellectual pursuit in the cultural revolution.
> What China manages to do quite well is stop rentiers from stifling innovation
Tell that to the dying startups that have to stand up against Tencent and Alibaba. Beijing is littered with them. Let's not forget the various Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Tell that to the dying startups that have to stand up against Tencent and Alibaba. Beijing is littered with them. Let's not forget the various Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Any successful Chinese business is or becomes a Chinese state-owned business. The only difference is that the Chinese govt is the rentier, versus multiple ones in the US.
You can't become a state-owned business. You either are (because you have government ties in the first place), or are not (and you are doomed, sorry for that). People have no chance to succeed unless born to the right parents. Even Chinese people admit that. The problem is not how many, but who the rentier is.
Vendor lockin is a big issue. Why should I buy a book that I can't use the way I want because of DRM, I can't get in my native language and is completely tied to a company? Oh, and it also costs more...
It is insane but greed has made the above commonplace across all aspects of the digital world.
Personally I think ebooks are still worth it, even if I have to buy it, strip the DRM (which is illegal) before reading it (on an eink display of course). But it has never been ready for mainstream (will it ever?) and it is not the techs fault.
We still don't even have a decent movie streaming service, and even if one existed it wouldn't matter because the content you want to watch makes that choice for you.
A decade ago we had awesome home theater software, they still exist but they aren't compatible with the media that is offered today. For that we need another device (chromecast) which is probably the dumbest device you can buy but somehow that is the best option available for consumers in 2018.
It is insane but greed has made the above commonplace across all aspects of the digital world.
Personally I think ebooks are still worth it, even if I have to buy it, strip the DRM (which is illegal) before reading it (on an eink display of course). But it has never been ready for mainstream (will it ever?) and it is not the techs fault.
We still don't even have a decent movie streaming service, and even if one existed it wouldn't matter because the content you want to watch makes that choice for you.
A decade ago we had awesome home theater software, they still exist but they aren't compatible with the media that is offered today. For that we need another device (chromecast) which is probably the dumbest device you can buy but somehow that is the best option available for consumers in 2018.
This is actually not too different from the e-book market in China, which is even more fragmented. There are at about a dozen well known e-book readers, and the books are not shared among different apps. Even crazier, Tencent published two different e-reader apps, both having large amount of users
Yes, DRM makes ebooks about 20% as useful as they should be. I don't think I'd mind paying more for ebooks if I could grab pieces of the text I find interesting and collate them with my own notes in a document that lives in an app designed for documents (like word, or Evernote, or Bear, or HTML.....)
Some random thoughts to what could be going on, in no particular order:
1. Yarr, pirate it. Easier to consume things when you have few qualms as to how to obtain it.
2. Nothing lasts forever. Lock-in only exists if you can't let go for the next thing that comes along.
3. Upward mobility in quality of life and social class leads to a renaissance.
1. Yarr, pirate it. Easier to consume things when you have few qualms as to how to obtain it.
2. Nothing lasts forever. Lock-in only exists if you can't let go for the next thing that comes along.
3. Upward mobility in quality of life and social class leads to a renaissance.
> 1. Yarr, pirate it. Easier to consume things when you have few qualms as to how to obtain it.
Don't some e-Book readers disallow you from reading things that you didn't download from them (or they don't support epub)?
> 2. Nothing lasts forever. Lock-in only exists if you can't let go for the next thing that comes along.
But you also can't migrate your old library to the new one, which is the main problem with lock-in (the issue isn't that you physically cannot switch away, it's that you cannot switch away without losing things that you've bought into).
Don't some e-Book readers disallow you from reading things that you didn't download from them (or they don't support epub)?
> 2. Nothing lasts forever. Lock-in only exists if you can't let go for the next thing that comes along.
But you also can't migrate your old library to the new one, which is the main problem with lock-in (the issue isn't that you physically cannot switch away, it's that you cannot switch away without losing things that you've bought into).
Kindles don't have that restriction, and they're by far the biggest ebook reader family on the market. Yeah, they only support MOBI, but that's just a simple file format conversion that Calibre (FOSS, available on all major platforms) can easily handle.
> Don't some e-Book readers disallow you from reading things that you didn't download from them (or they don't support epub)?
If theory 1 is true, then the readers without this user hostile approach will thrive. Obviously pirates don't care for DRM locked devices.
> But you also can't migrate your old library to the new one, which is the main problem with lock-in (the issue isn't that you physically cannot switch away, it's that you cannot switch away without losing things that you've bought into).
My point was mental, not physical. People might naturally just drop old stuff for new shiny things. If things appear plentiful compared to the old ways, this attitude is easier to adopt. Do you regret throwing away your coffee cup in the morning?
If theory 1 is true, then the readers without this user hostile approach will thrive. Obviously pirates don't care for DRM locked devices.
> But you also can't migrate your old library to the new one, which is the main problem with lock-in (the issue isn't that you physically cannot switch away, it's that you cannot switch away without losing things that you've bought into).
My point was mental, not physical. People might naturally just drop old stuff for new shiny things. If things appear plentiful compared to the old ways, this attitude is easier to adopt. Do you regret throwing away your coffee cup in the morning?
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do you regret throwing away your family photos? your car? your friendships?
The true problem with piracy is actually not the issues that others have mentioned with readers disallowing sideloaded files.
The main issue with piracy is that both Amazon and Apple have far more advanced typesetting systems in the custom file types (Kindle Format 8 and iBook format) that you get when you buy from their store.
The .epub format its still based on what, XML? .epub makes up most of what you see when you pirate. If you look closely you can see that most epubs actually are really badly typeset compared to the versions of the store.
The main issue with piracy is that both Amazon and Apple have far more advanced typesetting systems in the custom file types (Kindle Format 8 and iBook format) that you get when you buy from their store.
The .epub format its still based on what, XML? .epub makes up most of what you see when you pirate. If you look closely you can see that most epubs actually are really badly typeset compared to the versions of the store.
I wish there was a guarantee that when you bought a legal eBook from Amazon that it would be well edited.
I bought the Kindle version of A Deepness In The Sky recently and it's full of what seem like OCR errors. Missing punctuation, spelling errors like "A1" instead of "AI", the word "hands" mysteriously in italics for a chunk of the book... There's no way anyone read it before putting it up for sale. I wrote to them in their formatting feedback form thing but that's just gone into the void.
I bought the Kindle version of A Deepness In The Sky recently and it's full of what seem like OCR errors. Missing punctuation, spelling errors like "A1" instead of "AI", the word "hands" mysteriously in italics for a chunk of the book... There's no way anyone read it before putting it up for sale. I wrote to them in their formatting feedback form thing but that's just gone into the void.
1. Piracy is rampant, so paper books never had much of a chance in China. Paper books are still cheaper than the ebook versions because of piracy; official books bought at the xinhua book store can be plenty expensive, but no one buys there.
2. China still uses more cash on a percentage basis than the USA and most western countries. China basically skipped credit cards. I still prefer the new UnionPay tap-to-pay NFC cards, much better than scanning a QR code on your phone.
2. China still uses more cash on a percentage basis than the USA and most western countries. China basically skipped credit cards. I still prefer the new UnionPay tap-to-pay NFC cards, much better than scanning a QR code on your phone.
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I must point out Alipay (and the like; I’ll just mention Alipay from now on for brevity) is not built to circumvent credit cards, in that there is nothing to circumvent. There is literally no way to pay except cash before Alipay; credit card usage is impossible except for the highest end of stores. Alipay is not created to replace credit cards, but because China is unable build a wildly workable credit system at all. If you factor in the most recent advancements (NFC without signature), credit cards are definitely surperior in most aspects.
What makes people feel that <insert developed country name> is lagging behind is not really credit cards, but legacy tech surrounding it. This is inevitable since credit cards have been around for a long time. China, starting from a clean slate, might seem to be in a better state currently, but moving from credit cards to Alipay is like re-writing your Objective-C app with React Native because it used some legacy APIs and no longer compiles. The problem is teal, but the solution is totally wrong.
What makes people feel that <insert developed country name> is lagging behind is not really credit cards, but legacy tech surrounding it. This is inevitable since credit cards have been around for a long time. China, starting from a clean slate, might seem to be in a better state currently, but moving from credit cards to Alipay is like re-writing your Objective-C app with React Native because it used some legacy APIs and no longer compiles. The problem is teal, but the solution is totally wrong.
+1 on adoption rates. I recently was recommended a random Chinese trucker video on Youtube. No english and I think they were in the remote Northern parts of China. These guys in the middle of no where and these guys are using wechat payments for delivery of goods.
You make it sound like it's some kind of moral upside to adopt new technologies when it's just the result of having a vacuum of world solutions. Happened before with mobile technology adoption, countries with bad infrastructure will adopt the new generation of that technology sooner.
Does it mean China is more vital? Not necessarily, it simply means they are filling a gap.
Does it mean China is more vital? Not necessarily, it simply means they are filling a gap.
I retain more of what I learn when I have a paper book. It's also nice to be able to grab a paper book put away my laptop and leave my phone in another room and just read for an hour. It's too hard to do that with ebooks.
It's very easy to do that with a Kindle Paperwhite. And more likely that the book you want to read is actually with you at the time you want it.
Everyone is talking about software, and maybe that's because this goes without saying, but China's hardware production capabilities are just staggering. Embedded development has a hugely promising future, especially as microchips continue to add richer feature sets for lower power (and money) costs. And China has been taking that idea of the future and sprinting with it. 'IoT' is a popular buzzword, but IMO the success of companies like DJI better reflects China's growing expertise in blending together a broad range of technical disciplines, many of which are comparatively scorned by educational institutions in the US.
Lately I've been floored by the fact that ARM Cortex-M0 and -M3 development boards (48-72MHz, 8-20KB RAM, 64-256KB flash) cost less than $2 each. They blow 'Arduinos' out of the water by an order of magnitude on both cost and capability, as do the similarly-cheap ESP8266 WiFi development boards.
What ever happened to making useful things?
Lately I've been floored by the fact that ARM Cortex-M0 and -M3 development boards (48-72MHz, 8-20KB RAM, 64-256KB flash) cost less than $2 each. They blow 'Arduinos' out of the water by an order of magnitude on both cost and capability, as do the similarly-cheap ESP8266 WiFi development boards.
What ever happened to making useful things?
>What ever happened to making useful things?
Lots of things.
Lots of things.
- The patent debacle that started in the Clinton administration
- Not enforcing anti-competition laws allowing companies to consolidate.
- Companies giving away all their IP to China in exchange for cheap labor.
- Allowing our tech manufacturing sector to rot on the vine.
I think Silicon valley's biggest contribution is innovation. All the Chinese or Indian startups I see (no matter how big their size) are generally China's answer to Uber/WhatsApp/Facebook or India's answer to Amazon.
I've yet to see one startup which is America's answer to some chinese/indian startup. I hope that day comes soon.
I've yet to see one startup which is America's answer to some chinese/indian startup. I hope that day comes soon.
> I've yet to see one startup which is America's answer to some chinese/indian startup. I hope that day comes soon.
What about Twitch, which makes its money from sponsorship and virtual gifts to streamers, a model pioneered in China and then Korea? Or the US esports leagues which copy, again Korea and China?
There are many technologies which appear later in the US but Americans think are indigenous (and the reverse as well -- I don't mean to pick on the US, simply responding to your comment). Consider chip cards (commonplace in Europe for 20+ years, still not well adopted in the US) or text messaging (adopted very late in the US).
What about Twitch, which makes its money from sponsorship and virtual gifts to streamers, a model pioneered in China and then Korea? Or the US esports leagues which copy, again Korea and China?
There are many technologies which appear later in the US but Americans think are indigenous (and the reverse as well -- I don't mean to pick on the US, simply responding to your comment). Consider chip cards (commonplace in Europe for 20+ years, still not well adopted in the US) or text messaging (adopted very late in the US).
I know of AfreecaTV that launched in 2005, and Twitch (Justin.tv) which launched in 2007. But what was the pioneering China platform?
yy.com I believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YY.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YY.com
Very true. As a Korean, it really annoyed me that there were products that Korea or Japan had the first foot out on but could not go globally because it's not based on USA.
Although nowadays I don't think that's so much the case. Currently, I think America has more ideas coming out because it really is more innovative
Although nowadays I don't think that's so much the case. Currently, I think America has more ideas coming out because it really is more innovative
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I think there are 2 things at play here:
1. Survivor bias. It's always easier to adapt a successful business model to your regional market by applying minor tweaks to it, than to create something completely from scratch.
2. Market size. The U.S. GDP is almost 10x the size in the Indian one. If you are creating an online business based on some non-regionally-specific idea, there is just no reason for you not to target U.S. first.
1. Survivor bias. It's always easier to adapt a successful business model to your regional market by applying minor tweaks to it, than to create something completely from scratch.
2. Market size. The U.S. GDP is almost 10x the size in the Indian one. If you are creating an online business based on some non-regionally-specific idea, there is just no reason for you not to target U.S. first.
Well if you ever used any Chinese apps recently you’ll find they are nothing like anything you’re familiar with. Many major Chinese companies might have started with copying some idea from Silicon Valley, but that was long time ago. China now has an entire ecosystem of softaware/hardware/services that’s different from the rest of the world.
Speaking of American startups copying from China, I’ll give you an example: https://www.spin.pm
Speaking of American startups copying from China, I’ll give you an example: https://www.spin.pm
That's practically died. Startups that come out now are mainly seeking luxury crowds or user attrition from facebook/whatsapp/etc. We are innovation saturated with the few areas left to innovate taking more time and funding than investors are willing to invest in. You can see this pattern in the demands to work faster/harder for the glory of being an entrepreneur, or fail and lose it all until your next quick idea...
...perhaps except for messaging apps. Messaging apps in America are almost all trying to emulate WeChat's success as a standalone platform in China.
I did a quick Google search and see that Whatsapp was founded in 2009, one year before wechat, which has similar features (but please correct me if I'm wrong).
WeChat is crazy big in China, to the point where you use it to pay for almost anything. It has allowed even the extremely rural to digitise their payments - every stall has a QR code that you can scan and transfer money to. The payment feature scales up very quickly, allowing you to do everything from book cabs through the app through to splitting restaurant bills with other people.
It's more than just a messaging app - it's more like a mash-up of WhatsApp, PayPal, Twitter and Facebook.
Things that WeChat had before WhatsApp were things like "Moments" which WhatsApp adopted quite recently (and in a more simpler way) as "Status"[0] and they also had very strong business integration which WhatsApp only recently began to flirt with through WhatsApp for Business[1].
[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000031/
[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000637/Introducing-the-WhatsApp-...
It's more than just a messaging app - it's more like a mash-up of WhatsApp, PayPal, Twitter and Facebook.
Things that WeChat had before WhatsApp were things like "Moments" which WhatsApp adopted quite recently (and in a more simpler way) as "Status"[0] and they also had very strong business integration which WhatsApp only recently began to flirt with through WhatsApp for Business[1].
[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000031/
[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000637/Introducing-the-WhatsApp-...
> The payment feature scales up very quickly, allowing you to do everything from book cabs through the app through to splitting restaurant bills with other people.
Weixin Pay's pricing for money handling seems pretty competitive compared to Western systems. 0.1% to transfer out of their system to your bank if you are transferring >$3200 USD, and 0.6% to process a payment [1]. I wonder when Weixin Pay and startups like Payoneer [2] will get tired of the friction imposed by the current banking interchange systems, and set up their own identity and interchange solution to start breaking 1% on all of a transaction life cycle's service fees (from payer removing from their account and paying, to payee accepting and debiting to their account, perhaps including forex conversion, to final settlement).
[1] https://chinachannel.co/take-wechat-payments-small-business/
[2] https://www.payoneer.com/fees/
Weixin Pay's pricing for money handling seems pretty competitive compared to Western systems. 0.1% to transfer out of their system to your bank if you are transferring >$3200 USD, and 0.6% to process a payment [1]. I wonder when Weixin Pay and startups like Payoneer [2] will get tired of the friction imposed by the current banking interchange systems, and set up their own identity and interchange solution to start breaking 1% on all of a transaction life cycle's service fees (from payer removing from their account and paying, to payee accepting and debiting to their account, perhaps including forex conversion, to final settlement).
[1] https://chinachannel.co/take-wechat-payments-small-business/
[2] https://www.payoneer.com/fees/
No, they don't have the same features. That's why he described WeChat as a platform rather than a messaging client- the extent to which it dominates online life in China has no analogue in the US.
wechat is a bit different, not a good one to talk about, it was started by Tencent QQ Messenger (From back in the period when everyone had a messenger client like MSN, Yahoo, etc.) and was based on similar communication principles with a mobile twist.
WhatsApp didnt have the features WeChat did.
For example, Apple's iMessage and Facebook's Messenger development over the past few years has basically been to become increasingly like WeChat. Whether it's stickers or payments or animations, etc.
For example, Apple's iMessage and Facebook's Messenger development over the past few years has basically been to become increasingly like WeChat. Whether it's stickers or payments or animations, etc.
Facebook is ripping off a larger variety of apps than WeChat, it seems more like they're trying to push into Snapchat's market share.
I'm not familiar with payments being a feature on iMessage or Messenger, though. Unless you mean just the money transfers to friends, which existed on Facebook's desktop Messenger first IIRC, so it doesn't appear to be ripping off WeChat (which in my experience doesn't really support money transfers in quite the same way, unless we're talking about hongbao).
Also, weren't stickers a thing on Kakao Talk and LINE before WeChat?
I'm not familiar with payments being a feature on iMessage or Messenger, though. Unless you mean just the money transfers to friends, which existed on Facebook's desktop Messenger first IIRC, so it doesn't appear to be ripping off WeChat (which in my experience doesn't really support money transfers in quite the same way, unless we're talking about hongbao).
Also, weren't stickers a thing on Kakao Talk and LINE before WeChat?
Wechat supposedly ripped off a lot of features from LINE, but since LINE is a Japanese/Asian thing, most Americans know even less about that than WeChat.
line is from naver (korean company), but apparently no one in korea uses line... (100% kakao)
surprised to see Line everywhere else in asia though (seems initial popularity decides a lot for these messenger apps - or some extremely unique features that can't be copied)
surprised to see Line everywhere else in asia though (seems initial popularity decides a lot for these messenger apps - or some extremely unique features that can't be copied)
Line was originally Japanese, it was just acquired by a Korean company, explaining the lack of market share in that country. I think Kakao predates pretty much all modern messengers, including Kik, so it's kind of surprising they never reached out of Korea very much.
Isn't WeChat a LINE clone, which wasn't exactly innovating but simply taking advantage of a cultural niche.
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China can only “win” if English usage gets better there. Because to win means to get Europe e.g. to see them as example. But we understand too little of Chinese in general, the culture and the language. We do however almost all get taught murican, I mean English at high school (have to note that few year after my high school time, you can now study Chinese and do some exams on it)
Well, China itself has more than 1 billion people, and there is still plenty of room to grow its domestic market. That market is large enough to sustain tons of companies. More and more Chinese actually feel they’ve wasted too much time learning English, which is only need for a small number of jobs
I read similar stories about Japan in the 1980s
I also remember Back to the Future Part II
Yeah so much great high quality software coming out of China. Many of these apps aren’t even a national security risk!
They're not a national security risk for China though.
A backdoor's a backdoor, whether it's in an American product or a Chinese one.
That's a political rhetoric. But most popular software has backdoors in the form of automatic updates.
The paper cites a few things
> But now the number of cited AI papers by Chinese scientists is already at 89% of the American level
Every article that wants to claim that China AI is on par with American AI claims this. But US has 10X the amount of AI scientists as China, which means Chinese AI scientists produces 10X amount of papers as American scientists. Quantity over quality, spurred by government cash rewards. Lots of noise, no bite.
> China’s e-commerce sales are double America’s. Chinese firms are collectively 53% as big as America’s, measured by market value
That's because China has 1.3B population, about 4X times more than America's 350B. However, it is projected that China will have peak population in this decade, and will be around 800M population sometimes in 2100. America has alot better demographics, vs China who has one of the oldest, and whose working population will contract by a few hundred millions by 2050
> Chinese non-tech firms are relatively primitive and only 26% as digitised as American ones. As for investment, Chinese tech’s absolute budget is only 30% as big as that of American tech. And it is still small abroad, with foreign sales of 18% of the total that American firms make.
that's the gist of the article. China is nowhere near as big as America's tech currently. And China is on its way to the lost decade (that's why xijingping recently wanted the provinces to focus on things other than GDP, since the local governments are levered to the hill with debt)
> But now the number of cited AI papers by Chinese scientists is already at 89% of the American level
Every article that wants to claim that China AI is on par with American AI claims this. But US has 10X the amount of AI scientists as China, which means Chinese AI scientists produces 10X amount of papers as American scientists. Quantity over quality, spurred by government cash rewards. Lots of noise, no bite.
> China’s e-commerce sales are double America’s. Chinese firms are collectively 53% as big as America’s, measured by market value
That's because China has 1.3B population, about 4X times more than America's 350B. However, it is projected that China will have peak population in this decade, and will be around 800M population sometimes in 2100. America has alot better demographics, vs China who has one of the oldest, and whose working population will contract by a few hundred millions by 2050
> Chinese non-tech firms are relatively primitive and only 26% as digitised as American ones. As for investment, Chinese tech’s absolute budget is only 30% as big as that of American tech. And it is still small abroad, with foreign sales of 18% of the total that American firms make.
that's the gist of the article. China is nowhere near as big as America's tech currently. And China is on its way to the lost decade (that's why xijingping recently wanted the provinces to focus on things other than GDP, since the local governments are levered to the hill with debt)
> However, it is projected that China will have peak population in this decade, and will be around 800M population sometimes in 2100.
WOW! Population declines have hugely negative effects on economics like GDP. I don't know if that has been factored into their GDP estimates but that makes me extremely question their GDP growth.
WOW! Population declines have hugely negative effects on economics like GDP. I don't know if that has been factored into their GDP estimates but that makes me extremely question their GDP growth.
Other things in the paper
> AMERICANS, and friends of America, often reassure themselves about its relative decline in the following way
The decline is a myth; US is doing really well. US has a 3% gdp growth, which is huge when you realize the base is 19 Trillion! Contrast that with China, whose provinces just announced 20-30% fake revenue and putting the funny consistent 7% gdp growth in realm of accounting fraud.
> Uncle Sam may have ceded the top spot to China in exports in 2007, and manufacturing in 2011
Not with all of the protectionism and tariffs coming to hit China, from US, EU, and Japan. China can't get around import tariffs by shipping from Vietnam, South Korea, or Africa anymore. Solar panel and refrigerators now, steel and aluminum next. Apple's 300B investment amongst others will revitalize US manufacturing.
> China’s unicorns, a proxy for the next generation of giants, are in total worth 69% of America’s,
Xiaomi's 40B unicorn valuation is all the way from 2014. It's losing to Oppo and Huawei in China. Meituan Dianping is burning cash rapidly like Uber, same as Didi Chuxing.
> AMERICANS, and friends of America, often reassure themselves about its relative decline in the following way
The decline is a myth; US is doing really well. US has a 3% gdp growth, which is huge when you realize the base is 19 Trillion! Contrast that with China, whose provinces just announced 20-30% fake revenue and putting the funny consistent 7% gdp growth in realm of accounting fraud.
> Uncle Sam may have ceded the top spot to China in exports in 2007, and manufacturing in 2011
Not with all of the protectionism and tariffs coming to hit China, from US, EU, and Japan. China can't get around import tariffs by shipping from Vietnam, South Korea, or Africa anymore. Solar panel and refrigerators now, steel and aluminum next. Apple's 300B investment amongst others will revitalize US manufacturing.
> China’s unicorns, a proxy for the next generation of giants, are in total worth 69% of America’s,
Xiaomi's 40B unicorn valuation is all the way from 2014. It's losing to Oppo and Huawei in China. Meituan Dianping is burning cash rapidly like Uber, same as Didi Chuxing.
I came across two examples recently. First, in China e-books have taken over paper books, not just in volume, but in publishers' minds [1]. Second, payment systems like AliPay are becoming the dominant in just a few years, completely circumventing credit cards [2].
Now, neither of these are technological breakthroughs in themselves. The Kindle has been around for over 10 years, and Apple Pay and its precursors are not news, either. However, neither of those technologies has had the impact on their respective markets that the creators hoped for. Paper books are still frequently cheaper than their Kindle versions, and there have hardly been any noteworthy straight-to-Kindle publications. Likewise, Apple Pay, which is only a replacement for your physical card, but still a transaction mostly owned by Visa/MasterCard, and not Apple, is still far from a dominant purchase mechanism, even in the Bay Area. All in all, the pace of adoption of disruptive technologies in the US is pretty poor.
So, as an entrepreneur, I'd be much more worried not about inventing the cool new tech before China, but actually getting people hooked on it.
[1] https://www.economist.com/news/business/21731860-tencents-ch... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/