The China Thread

[Admiral Yi]

Shelf, I don't think anyone is missing the point that IP theft helps the party stealing the IP.

[Sheilbh]

Sure. I'll try and express it a little better.

I think IP theft buttresses the lazy (and I think sometimes racist) assumption of China being incapable of cutting edge innovation. In effect that it's a society incapable of creativity and actually the IP theft is a response to that inability to innovate domestically. The help from stealing it is basically a crutch.

Rather it is a tool that has been used to enable Chinese innovation both by catching up initially. But also in recent years in effect as a time-saver to get to the frontier of innovation (eg Deepseek). The help from stealing is boost to acceleration.

[Tamas]

Yes, China is not the best example.
Maybe France? Ish.
Or mid 20th century Japan. They didn't have the same problems as modern China but still got things done at speed - they lost that by the 70s/80s though and today take forever for everything too.

Maybe it's as simple as there is more power now behind those interested in freezing the status quo. How this manifests (crucifictions, police crackdowns, extensive building regulations) vary with the age.

[Jacob]

I think the point is that the IP theft puts China in a great position to innovate which they are doing - that being a counterpoint to those who believe China cannot innovate, only steal and copy.

IMO what China is doing is akin to the Meiji restoration - rapidly adopting broad swathes of Western advances, fitting it into their own needs and social characteristics.

[The Minsky Moment]

IMO what China is doing is akin to the Meiji restoration - rapidly adopting broad swathes of Western advances, fitting it into their own needs and social characteristics.

Also they are militarizing.
Which did not end up working out so well.

[Josquius]

Meiji also went through a huge amount of societal and political reform - lest we forget Japan's descent into fascism was a solidly post war thing.

Though I suppose we could squint and see that analogy with China too. Everything seemed to be developing on that front too until 2008/the Olympics protests and xi

[Admiral Yi]

I think the point is that the IP theft puts China in a great position to innovate which they are doing - that being a counterpoint to those who believe China cannot innovate, only steal and copy.

IMO what China is doing is akin to the Meiji restoration - rapidly adopting broad swathes of Western advances, fitting it into their own needs and social characteristics.

The simplest refutation of the claim China can't innovate is for China to innovate.  The fact they are stealing IP doesn't prove they can.

[Sheilbh]

I think the point is that the IP theft puts China in a great position to innovate which they are doing - that being a counterpoint to those who believe China cannot innovate, only steal and copy.

IMO what China is doing is akin to the Meiji restoration - rapidly adopting broad swathes of Western advances, fitting it into their own needs and social characteristics.

I agree and I think they are already innovating. I think it is a dangerous complacency - so they quote Senator Cotton in April, "China does not innovate - it steals". It's both. In all sorts of areas China is now at the cutting edge but also really able to innovate at the point of commercialisation - how do you scale up a new product for mass use. That used to be America's specialty.

I think broadly there's just a lot of complacency from convenient myths that might not be true. Whether that's "China can't innovate" or all the stats are lies or, you know, autocracies can't survive beyond a certain point. I think it's worth examining those prejudices because even in some areas where there may be some truth, I think there are other signs that there is more going on.

Meiji also went through a huge amount of societal and political reform - lest we forget Japan's descent into fascism was a solidly post war thing.

I agree-ish on political reform (I think the transformation from Mao-era to post-Mao, even under Xi, is not insignificant) but take your point more broadly. But I think there have been vast amounts of social reform in China since they started on this process. If you are basically the age of my mum and turned 18 in the late 70s when Deng takes over, zooming forward to now I think life is unrecognisable in so many ways.

I think one really important difference between Meiji and China is how vast and decentralised China was (and to an extent still is). The biggest province of China has a population of over 100 million people. I think a big part of what China's achieved in the last 50 years (and to some extent under Mao) has been basically through the knitting together through politics and physical infrastructure of those provinces. Plus I think, crucially, the country-city ties and urbanisation which has been a huge social change.

[Jacob]

The simplest refutation of the claim China can't innovate is for China to innovate.  The fact they are stealing IP doesn't prove they can.

My impression is that China is innovating in a number of areas (for transparency: some of this is the result of a search):

• Quantum computing
• Solar and battery power
• AI powered robotics
• Electric vehicles
• Drone technology (consumer, industrial, military)
• Magnetic Field Facilities
• Robo-taxis
• Deep sea robotics
• Space exploration
• Logistics
• Manufacturing
• Biotech (Artificial synthesis of glucose)
• App-based economy/ E-Commerce
• High speed trains
• Facial recognition and the surveillance state
• Nuclear and plasma technology
• Xi Jinping thought ( :p )

I'm not enough of an expert to evaluate the degree to which the claimed innovations are pure puffery, mere IP-theft masquerading as innovation, iterative improvements on acquired IP, and pure blue-sky new ground (though IMO iterative innovation is the bread and butter of innovation). On the face of it though, it seems that China is innovating fairly steadily these days - enough at least that I think evidence is required to dismiss it out of hand.

[Jacob]

I agree-ish on political reform (I think the transformation from Mao-era to post-Mao, even under Xi, is not insignificant) but take your point more broadly. But I think there have been vast amounts of social reform in China since they started on this process. If you are basically the age of my mum and turned 18 in the late 70s when Deng takes over, zooming forward to now I think life is unrecognisable in so many ways.

Yeah, I think of the experiences of my in-laws: being sent away during the cultural revolution, witnessing Red Guard factions fighting each other (with tanks, not just fist-fights); living through the optimism of the opening up under Deng; seeing the brutality of the Tiananmen crackdown (which wasn't just in Beijing - the protests and crackdown were nationwide; my wife remembers seeing buildings on fire while sitting on the back of her father's bike as a small kid); to the increased economic growth and optimism about opening up pre-Xi; to the current global power competition, technological advancement, and political tightening under Xi.

It's quite the journey.

I think one really important difference between Meiji and China is how vast and decentralised China was (and to an extent still is). The biggest province of China has a population of over 100 million people. I think a big part of what China's achieved in the last 50 years (and to some extent under Mao) has been basically through the knitting together through politics and physical infrastructure of those provinces. Plus I think, crucially, the country-city ties and urbanisation which has been a huge social change.

That's a great observation.

[Jacob]

Also they are militarizing.
Which did not end up working out so well.

Yeah.

The big question, I suppose, is what the West's trajectory is. Is the US in a significant decline? Will Europe become more relevant militarily?

During the Meiji restoration, the US was clearly on the ascendant and the big European powers were at or near their respective apexes.

How different is the relative distribution of power going to be compared to back then?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, I think of the experiences of my in-laws: being sent away during the cultural revolution, witnessing Red Guard factions fighting each other (with tanks, not just fist-fights); living through the optimism of the opening up under Deng; seeing the brutality of the Tiananmen crackdown (which wasn't just in Beijing - the protests and crackdown were nationwide; my wife remembers seeing buildings on fire while sitting on the back of her father's bike as a small kid); to the increased economic growth and optimism about opening up pre-Xi; to the current global power competition, technological advancement, and political tightening under Xi.

It's quite the journey.

Yeah I think it's extraordinary and continues to be pretty repeatable given the pace of change. I think the comparison with a Brit, or Canadian over the same period really shows quite how significant the change is.

I also think it will have an impact on the political class in, I think, really important ways that I think are possibly underexamined. I think it's really important that the generation of leaders facing Tiananmen had direct experience of the Cultural Revolution. It was before the collapse of the Soviet Bloc (though, in retrospect, that was underway) and I can't help but think their fear was not liberal democracy but disintegration and chaos. I think the experience of Xi's generation of both the Cultural Revolution and then also reform and opening is key - I think in part that's why they're skipping a generation.

Totally separate but I also think we generally need to re-frame 1989 and how we interpret it as I think we need to have Berlin and Beijing as part of the same picture/analysis.

Edit: This is a total aside but I do wonder if there's something more generally about the social. political context of political generations. For example the impact of that 1989 Western "victory" in Europe (and how peaceful and smooth it was) for people coming up that time who were senior civil servants and politicians in the 2000s and 2010s (and vice versa - the trauma of the loss and shock therapy from a Russian/post-Soviet perspective).

[The Minsky Moment]

China is much stronger now relative to other leading nations than Japan was during the Meiji Restoration and up through the beginning of WW2.  Orders of magnitude stronger.

OTOH the other only significant power that poses a threat to the US and Europe is Russia, which is far weaker than say Germany in the same period.

From a power perspective, PRC is more equivalent to Imperial Germany, and like Imperial Germany they are an industrial powerhouse that imports lots of oil.  Also like Imperial Germany, they are not necessarily locked into being a revisionist power, although internal politics and leadership choices have pushed them in that direction.

[The Minsky Moment]

AS for innovation, its very hard to make judgments without real subject matter expertise in the particular industry and technical areas, that most of us here  don't have.

The PRC is lapping the world in patent application filings and churns out ungodly numbers of research papers, but there are serious questions of quality vs quantity.

More significant perhaps is the rapid rise of R&D spending, which is now close to or equal to total US spend.  Again, one can question quality and efficiency of that spend, but at those levels, an educated and skilled work force, which China has, is going to accomplish something.

On the flip side, very bad things are happening on the public side of US R&D spend. And even more concerning is that the cornerstone of US technology dominance has been its extraordinary system of research universities - this entire system is now under attack with huge disruptions in contracts and grants.  If I were a determined US adversary with the goal of weakening US military power and technological superiority, and I were able by some mechanism to influence US internal politics, my first target would probably be to undermine the university system.  Can't emphasize enough how dangerous that policy has been.

TLDR - while there are reasons to be skeptical of PRC's current level of innovation at the technological frontier, they are putting a lot of effort in at a time when the US is making retrograde moves.

[crazy canuck]

I think the point is that the IP theft puts China in a great position to innovate which they are doing - that being a counterpoint to those who believe China cannot innovate, only steal and copy.

IMO what China is doing is akin to the Meiji restoration - rapidly adopting broad swathes of Western advances, fitting it into their own needs and social characteristics.

The simplest refutation of the claim China can't innovate is for China to innovate.  The fact they are stealing IP doesn't prove they can.

Yes, that would be a simple refutation of the claim.  If the claim was factually accurate. Problem is, it is not