13 ms·

There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.

by _hypx_ 3y ago

Barrin92 3y ago
China has literally already built the second largest tech sector on the planet on restrictions like this
- bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
  Yes, but the restrictions have mostly been a thin veil for programmers. If this trend continues, we will see the real effects of GFW on China software development.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- eru 3y ago
  China has a thriving hardware industry. Partially built on not enforcing restrictions. The rest of their tech sector is so-so. They do have a big internal market and a population eager for technology. It would be interesting to tease apart how much the restrictions hinder in some places, and perhaps help in a few others.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    I kinda wonder how do you evaluate a thriving software economy in China's case. A bit like Japan, I feel they're not going straight at the OS vendors (Microsoft/Apple) as these will bend over backward to accomadate them anyway, and in every area they've been actively blocked they made their own rival version (e.g. cloud services) Is there anything we can point at to say "Chinese don't have the skills to do it" ?
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      How anyone can look at over a billion unique people and say "Chinese this" or "Chinese that" is as far beyond me as anything.
      - makeitdouble 3y ago
        I think I'd take a "Ethiopians can't build an AWS rival", even if Ethiopians are unique and intelligent. But that wouldn't be true for China (don't know market sizes, but I'd assume Tencent's cloud offering for instance is somewhat viable ?)
        KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
        Ethiopians may not, but Indians and to a lesser extent, Nigerians can. The next economic boom after Asia will be in West Africa.
        whatshisface 3y ago
        ...why couldn't Ethiopians build an AWS rival? Google can't build an AWS rival because (ultimately) AWS already exists in the market and has economies of scale. If Ethiopia banned AWS I cannot think of a single reason a cloud hosting provider with perhaps smaller data centers due to the smaller size of the market would show up in Ethiopia.
      - eru 3y ago
        Of course, you can't make universal claims, because there are enough outliers. But you can easily talk about averages and about statistical distributions. Eg I'm fairly confident in saying 'the typical Chinese person eats a fair amount of rice'.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        In the same way that anything done in America is reduced to 美国人 in China.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      That weird to say. Many of the SWEs working on OS in the west are Chinese. They have the skills, but it’s just too easy for China to use Android or Linux, or to get the nice Apple experience, then to spend much investing in making their own OS for nationalistic reasons. They have larger problems in terms of semiconductor development and jet turbines that need gobs of resources and have much more national security impact.
      - eru 3y ago
        Linux is an interesting example. There's no need to make your own Linux, because no sanctions etc can keep you from using Linux. That's also part of why eg the US hasn't needed to make their own Linux. There's no risk that your Linux supply chain will be cut off in case of a war.
- Retric 3y ago
  They built it by kicking everything else out of their internal market. It’s however questionable how competitive they are on the global stage. Take Baidu Maps it launched in 2005, by 2016 it had 348 million users per month, but was still limited to China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now days it covers the world but a foreign user finds the UI is still largely in Chinese rather than being localized. That’s just one example, but it’s obvious large swaths of their tech sector only exist because of protectionism.
  - aragonite 3y ago
    Google was hardly kicked out in 2010. And in 2018 they were going to re-enter under essentially the same political conditions (Dragonfly), but it was pressure from American politicians/the public that deterred them from doing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
    - Retric 3y ago
      Protectionism need not be binary. As one example, Chinese users of Google and many foreign companies websites hosted inside China experienced random slowdowns making them significantly less appealing to users. This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China.
      - aragonite 3y ago
        I remember when those complaints surfaced. However, re: > This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China ... I'm reasonably sure that happened after Google's exit from China, and the slowness complaints were about accessing Google services outside the GFW either in HK or abroad. (Not all Google services overseas were blocked: for example, Google+ was accessible albeit unreliable and slow.) I don't recall any slowness complaints about Google.cn (which was hosted inside China) when it was still a thing.
        3y ago
palata 3y ago
If you take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world. And still moving faster, it feels.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world These developments started before Xi became dictator. That’s a turning point for China. Today, Chinese drones are no longer a class ahead of their peers. Which is surprising, because they once were.
  - palata 3y ago
    > Today, Chinese drones are no longer a class ahead of their peers. They are more like 3-4 classes ahead, yes. The gap keeps increasing, it's quite amazing. Or was that not your point?
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > are more like 3-4 classes ahead, yes On what metric? The only one I can think of is cost, which is still within an order of magnitude ahead on account of economies of scale and efficiency of production. On raw capability, this is totally incorrect.
      - palata 3y ago
        > On what metric? Do you have one kind of drone that DJI produces (mini, mavic, phantom, matrice, ...) that you would not choose over... well over anything else? I mean without political considerations (like commercial war and the fact that DJI got banned in the US, exactly because nobody can compete). Just based on the product.

There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.

by _hypx_ 3y ago

There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.

Barrin92 3y ago

China has literally already built the second largest tech sector on the planet on restrictions like this

bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
Yes, but the restrictions have mostly been a thin veil for programmers. If this trend continues, we will see the real effects of GFW on China software development.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eru 3y ago
China has a thriving hardware industry. Partially built on not enforcing restrictions. The rest of their tech sector is so-so. They do have a big internal market and a population eager for technology. It would be interesting to tease apart how much the restrictions hinder in some places, and perhaps help in a few others.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  I kinda wonder how do you evaluate a thriving software economy in China's case. A bit like Japan, I feel they're not going straight at the OS vendors (Microsoft/Apple) as these will bend over backward to accomadate them anyway, and in every area they've been actively blocked they made their own rival version (e.g. cloud services) Is there anything we can point at to say "Chinese don't have the skills to do it" ?
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    How anyone can look at over a billion unique people and say "Chinese this" or "Chinese that" is as far beyond me as anything.
    - makeitdouble 3y ago
      I think I'd take a "Ethiopians can't build an AWS rival", even if Ethiopians are unique and intelligent. But that wouldn't be true for China (don't know market sizes, but I'd assume Tencent's cloud offering for instance is somewhat viable ?)
      - KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
        Ethiopians may not, but Indians and to a lesser extent, Nigerians can. The next economic boom after Asia will be in West Africa.
      - whatshisface 3y ago
        ...why couldn't Ethiopians build an AWS rival? Google can't build an AWS rival because (ultimately) AWS already exists in the market and has economies of scale. If Ethiopia banned AWS I cannot think of a single reason a cloud hosting provider with perhaps smaller data centers due to the smaller size of the market would show up in Ethiopia.
    - eru 3y ago
      Of course, you can't make universal claims, because there are enough outliers. But you can easily talk about averages and about statistical distributions. Eg I'm fairly confident in saying 'the typical Chinese person eats a fair amount of rice'.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      In the same way that anything done in America is reduced to 美国人 in China.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    That weird to say. Many of the SWEs working on OS in the west are Chinese. They have the skills, but it’s just too easy for China to use Android or Linux, or to get the nice Apple experience, then to spend much investing in making their own OS for nationalistic reasons. They have larger problems in terms of semiconductor development and jet turbines that need gobs of resources and have much more national security impact.
    - eru 3y ago
      Linux is an interesting example. There's no need to make your own Linux, because no sanctions etc can keep you from using Linux. That's also part of why eg the US hasn't needed to make their own Linux. There's no risk that your Linux supply chain will be cut off in case of a war.
Retric 3y ago
They built it by kicking everything else out of their internal market. It’s however questionable how competitive they are on the global stage. Take Baidu Maps it launched in 2005, by 2016 it had 348 million users per month, but was still limited to China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now days it covers the world but a foreign user finds the UI is still largely in Chinese rather than being localized. That’s just one example, but it’s obvious large swaths of their tech sector only exist because of protectionism.
- aragonite 3y ago
  Google was hardly kicked out in 2010. And in 2018 they were going to re-enter under essentially the same political conditions (Dragonfly), but it was pressure from American politicians/the public that deterred them from doing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
  - Retric 3y ago
    Protectionism need not be binary. As one example, Chinese users of Google and many foreign companies websites hosted inside China experienced random slowdowns making them significantly less appealing to users. This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China.
    - aragonite 3y ago
      I remember when those complaints surfaced. However, re: > This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China ... I'm reasonably sure that happened after Google's exit from China, and the slowness complaints were about accessing Google services outside the GFW either in HK or abroad. (Not all Google services overseas were blocked: for example, Google+ was accessible albeit unreliable and slow.) I don't recall any slowness complaints about Google.cn (which was hosted inside China) when it was still a thing.
      - 3y ago

palata 3y ago

If you take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world. And still moving faster, it feels.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world These developments started before Xi became dictator. That’s a turning point for China. Today, Chinese drones are no longer a class ahead of their peers. Which is surprising, because they once were.
- palata 3y ago
  > Today, Chinese drones are no longer a class ahead of their peers. They are more like 3-4 classes ahead, yes. The gap keeps increasing, it's quite amazing. Or was that not your point?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > are more like 3-4 classes ahead, yes On what metric? The only one I can think of is cost, which is still within an order of magnitude ahead on account of economies of scale and efficiency of production. On raw capability, this is totally incorrect.
    - palata 3y ago
      > On what metric? Do you have one kind of drone that DJI produces (mini, mavic, phantom, matrice, ...) that you would not choose over... well over anything else? I mean without political considerations (like commercial war and the fact that DJI got banned in the US, exactly because nobody can compete). Just based on the product.