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About one third of China's politburo, including Xi Jinping, have degrees in Engineering. The West's leadership is all attorneys or finance.


The US could probably use a few engineers, but on the other hand I think the CCP could use a few finance people.


Based on what, China is too successful as it stands? Maybe they need to handicap themselves to appear less threatening?

The contribution that the finance people in the US made was to - accurately - identify that if they moved all the investment overseas then the US wouldn't need to work as hard. They were correct. The result has been massive leaps and bounds in Asian prosperity and living standards. Which is good for the world, but probably not the sort of strategy that the US wanted to adopt. Typically countries are supposed to promote the interests of the people living inside the borders instead of build up competitors. I dunno, maybe it was intentional but it'd have been cleverer to invest more in the US.

There is a pretty good chance that China implodes because of the authoritarian and bureaucratic streak their government has. But the US's financiers are, if anything, one of the key ingredients helping it revert to the mean from an economically dominant position.


> but probably not the sort of strategy that the US wanted to adopt

only after having enjoyed the lowered cost goods and such. But there's a price to everything, always. And if you're not paying that price up front, it's gonna come to roost at some point.

> There is a pretty good chance that China implodes because of the authoritarian and bureaucratic streak their government has.

i dont think so. China's gov't has been stable enough for long enough, that the people it is governing over don't feel the need to overthrow them. And i don't see any trigger for this either - the average wealth and wellbeing of the chinese citizen has only grown better over the decades. Even now, where there's an economic slowdown, you don't have people starving in the streets.

It is merely wishful thinking that the west's media want to push, that there's a governance problem in china.


Based on China constantly handicapping their capital markets with boneheaded decisions. Their stock market is a wreck sending a lot of their best companies abroad in search of capital.


That seems more like a case of "authoritarianism is bad" than "finance people are good".


It can happen in democracies too. I can think of a few specific ones off the top of my head.


Democracy isn't incompatible with authoritarianism. Absent strong checks and balances, they tend to be entirely too compatible.


> sending a lot of their best companies abroad in search of capital.

which is fine, because china's method is one where they (the CCP) retains ultimate control despite foreign financing - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/variable-interest-entit...

basically, this legal entity has not been 100% "legal" and undisputed in the chinese legal system - it's vague, and deliberately left so. It allows the CCP any reason to crackdown on any company's foreign ownership (by simply declaring this VIE structure illegal and void).

The CCP has two goals with this method (queue conspiracy music here). The first is to ensure state control all the time, even if the CCP isn't financially invested in said company. The second, and imho, a bit more insidious, is to prevent the local capital markets from developing too maturely.

The reason the CCP don't want the citizenry to have easy and low cost access to capital markets, is to prevent wealth from being built up by ordinary citizens in large numbers (like how it is in the west). Wealth is power, and the CCP don't want power to spread out to ordinary citizens, except as rising economic prosperity (ala, good jobs, cheap access to goods/services etc). It's the reason why they crushed the real estate property sector when they did. It is why stock markets are very difficult to invest in for ordinary citizens.


>CCP don't want the citizenry to have easy and low cost access to capital markets

It's more like like PRC is still a developing country with substantial amount of poor people and little social safety/welfare net. CCP doesn't want people, especially the poor, who mostly skew old, had/has absolutely retarded financial literacy except savings, to investment (gamble) their nest egg. Trading in the 2000s when stock market was bananas. Mass speculation / herd mentality / scams. Government had to intervene so folks didn't lose their shit with no fall back.

Stockmarket is easy to invest in for ordinary citizens, IMO that's why it's being controlled / profitability (and losses) mitigaged. Reality is if you have mostly retail (individual) investors vs institutional, and individuals = a billion superstious traders is recipe for market volatility, which is net bad. People think professional financiers are the answer, but IMO that's just goign to self select for financiers who knows how to play to the masses.


> investment (gamble) their nest egg.

investment, done according to well known economic theories (such as market index investing), is not like gambling. People who do gamble (like wallstreetbets style) might lose, but i don't believe most people, if they're allowed a bit of education, will do that. The degenerate gamblers will always gamble anyway.

> Stockmarket is easy to invest in for ordinary citizens

try investing in foreign companies/indices - you will find that ordinary citizens cannot easily do it. They'd have to do it via a HK broker, or have sufficent capital to have a private banker. There's also a lot of capital flow restrictions (that i'm not too privy to, but it's there). Sure it might be easy to invest in the chinese shanghai index as a chinese citizen, but that's too concentrated and is akin to gambling.


>if they're allowed a bit of education

PRC had like 3-10% tertiary education in 90s-00s. IMO the masses are not going to absorb a bit of education. They'll still speculate, bandwagon etc if there's money to be made. It's not so much degenerate gambling as degenerate heresay malinvestment not thinking they're gambling when they actually are. A shares in the 00s was basically a casino, but investors thought they could beat the house because latest XYZ tip. % of educated in society much higher now, but problem is uneducated still around and retiring, i.e. potentially even worse casino reopens.

>investing in foreign companies/indices

No this is definitely controlled out of capital flight concerns. Since the cohorot who would benefit from this are the top quantile, whose capita CCP definitely wants to control.


> Typically countries are supposed to promote the interests of the people living inside the borders instead of build up competitors

Maybe the optimal solution isn’t always doing a Prisoner’s Dilemma betrayal of the competitor.


Typically the leadership of countries does whatever benefits them personally, rather than (actually) care about the interests of the people living inside its borders.

The rare cases where that doesn’t happen, it’s usually because the people living inside the borders actually hold them accountable/align interests. Or people get really lucky.


In the case of the US, the latest president is a failed businessman who is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress.

According to media I’m supposed to hate China but I don’t hear Xi Jinping spouting nonsense like that.


I guarantee you he's not that concerned about trans people, abortion or immigration. They are great ways to sow division though.


You can hate the Chinese system for how it limits human rights, cracks down harshly on dissent, and stifles many creative outlets. Hating China or the Chinese people, which are like anywhere, generally lovely people, is silly.

There's plenty of nonsense coming from the mouth of the Party, but it doesn't make the US news, because it's not aimed at the US. There's also a lot less news overall which discusses and critiques the Party and what its representatives say, for obvious reasons.


lol, abortion is perfectly legal in China, the government doesn't control women's bodies.

Certain policies are more set and less up to discussion after a period of experimentation. Political system in China is more geared towards not letting human or interest groups desires reflected in national policies. Instead, national policies reflect the common good and common sense. And political system helps to unify common sense, values, individual knowledge. There is healthy level of diversity, but also a necessary level of unity to prevent extreme polarization, left and right fighting.

For example, no prostitutions, human trafficking, surrogacy, so women from disadvantaged communities are not taken advantage of after decades of that happening in Qing and ROC era. Instead, they are given opportunity to have a proper education, such as in STEM. And they have the opportunity to work in 5G, AI, semiconductors, EVs, batteries, medicine, which interestingly, USA government doesn't want Chinese citizens to work on. U accuse China has no human rights, but China moved from the country with the worst women's rights to one amongst the highest amongst East Asian countries. In my view, women's societal standing in China is equal or higher than South Korea and Japan. And leaps better than India, the largest "democracy" and country closest to China's level 100 years ago.

No drugs, harsh on drug trade, production. So disadvantaged communities are not exploited by drug dealers. We will not let what is happening in the US with fentanyl crisis happen to us. U accuse China caused US"s fentanyl crisis because we make the drugs. Lol, so if we make the drug then why don't we have fentanyl crisis? Shouldn't be its much easier to sell and traffic it where it is produced? Drug issue is a demand problem, there is a demand in the US, no matter how much you squash the supply, people will find a way to make it. U need to end it at the demand side.

Climate policy is set now, no debate on some company can get lax air pollution policies to help their bottom line. Economic policy is free market, center right, but with basic social safety net in health care, pensions, poverty, high level of social safety net in education, security, crime levels.

We worked hard to lower the price of solar panels, so the world has an alternative energy source in age of global warming. Yet, u accuse us of evil intent to dominate and overcapacity and now expanding hydrocarbon production. So, is global warming not an issue anymore? Or was global warming a narrative used to attack China? The reason we worked hard on lower price of solar is in a perfect free market, solar has to compete with coal and natural gas. And it takes technology and innovation to reduce cost. Cost reduction is a good thing, Moorse law is also cost reduction, if we don't have cost reduction, we will still be using Pentium 3s. So, sorry a lot of solar companies went down, because they can't compete on technology, supply chain, and manufacturing. Ur competitor is not Chinese solar companies, ur competitor is cheap coal and gas. Unless ur solar industry is banking on government subsidies for the rest of their lives. But wait, I thought the west is against government subsidies.

U say Chinese government stifles many creative outlets. When Chinese people work on, dream and create 5G, tiktok, DJI, EVs, solar panels, batteries, semiconductors, AI, phone apps, games, USA is attempting to kill them all, taking away Chinese people's freedom, rights to survival, development and dream. So Chinese people can only do certain things approved by US government? The only thing we approved to do is to overthrow our own government? Or civil war in our country? Or have our country broken into many pieces? Everyone has the right to pursuit of happiness, not Chinese people according to USA.

And how interesting the West is stifling Chinese speech by saying their Chinese propaganda? Speech is "free" if it agrees with West narrative, it is propaganda when it does not.

I used to admire the USA, but not these days. When Chinese people are doing better, being empowered, USA 's response is to attack, oppress, sabotage Chinese people's livelihood. Instead of "it's nice to see good human progress", "we have trade and commerce disputes, but let's resolve that by making the pie bigger for everyone". Tesla and Apple can sell their products without government led market and non-market obstruction, let me know if I can buy a BYD or Huawei in the USA. And US import tariffs of Chinese goods is now much higher than the reverse.

USA accuse us stealing your jobs, no, your own companies shipped these jobs overseas, you should ask your own companies, not attacking some mom and dad working in factories to support their kids in another country. USA is already the richest country on Earth, your problem is most of your wealth is concentrated on top 1%, instead of distributing your wealth better, or help the people in need, you attack regular mom and dads' livelihoods in another country, making them not able bring food for their families. And most people cheer for this and think it is moral? Great values you got there.


Gedhun Choekyi Nyima (born 25 April 1989) is the 11th Panchen Lama belonging to the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, as recognized and announced by the 14th Dalai Lama on 14 May 1995. Three days later on 17 May,

the six-year-old Panchen Lama was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared by the Chinese government,

after the State Council of the People's Republic of China failed in its efforts to install a substitute.

Since his kidnapping, the whereabouts of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima have been unknown. Chinese officials state that his whereabouts are kept undisclosed to protect him. Human rights organizations termed him the "youngest political prisoner in the world". No foreign party has been allowed to visit him.

As of 2024, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has not been seen by any independent observer since his disappearance in 1995.


> For example, no prostitutions

Maybe I'm misreading, what do you mean by this? China has plenty of prostitution in case that's what you meant.

> the government doesn't control women's bodies.

Peng Shuai might have something to say about that. Or she would, if doing so wouldn't have cost her career.


It's not rare across East Asia that prostitution is outright illegal without exceptions, except its enforcement is selectively applied based on never spoken but established criteria. Same for pornography.

I think it's also probably true that Chinese government don't control specifically women's bodies. Chinese spoken languages always used singular they by default.


Why does China government prop housing bubble instead of letting it deflate?


> the government doesn't control women's bodies.

孩政策


Trump is not a great business man, but one thing they are good at is playing the media. I assure you Trump, the person, couldn’t care less about trans people, for better or worse. The fact that you’re even talking about trans at all, as opposed to the fact that they’re a felon, proves it all.


You can use “he” as a pronoun for Trump, he won’t be offended and your writing will be clearer.


The entire democratic party is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress.


Women’s rights, gay and trans rights and human rights were hard fought for. Defending them is progress.


Apart from human rights, it's up to those individual groups to defend them, not to society as a whole. That's why you've got Trump, because other parts of society are pissed off with DEI policies.


Equality is ensured by the society as a whole not just the marginalized minority who already have limited rights and voice.


Sounds good except the direction in which that last one has been pushed now puts it in direct conflict with the first two. So it's no longer progress.


There is nothing incompatible about womens rightsn and trans rights lmao


Claiming a political party cares too much about human rights is an interesting complaint...


Is this why China is such a great and technically advanced country?


It is but it has its risks/downsides. Engineers want to build and architecture everything which is why China has shit ton of rail, metros, bridges, etc... but also they don't want to hear anything about costs/ROI/Profitability/PMF or any of that annoying economic speak :)

Law is a weird one and maybe I am wrong but I think law leadership is the worst of all. They have no understanding of neither engineering or economics.


Engineers have no trouble crafting a solution that fits within a given budget.

The real problem, with all of it, is surplus. What happens to the resources you didn't actually have to spend, once an efficient solution has been engineered?

If you let engineers decide, they spend it on over-engineering. If you can do it for ten million but there is a billion dollars in the budget, you can also do it for a billion dollars and then square away lots of implausible edge cases and improve materials efficiency by a sliver etc. But this is wasteful because those things have diminishing returns or a poor cost/benefit ratio and you ended up spending a hundred times more than was necessary for a couple of percent improvement in the result.

If you let politicians decide, they spend it on cronies. This is wasteful, because obviously.

What you have do is to figure out how to make the surplus end up back in the hands of the taxpayer without letting any of these resource parasites get their hands on it.


It is the mix. Not the pure … obviously when nearly all leaders are engineers you have a problem. But if some are not, and others learn. Even for a lawyer leader group, they can learn or have a whole institution that is effectveky independent from them.

It is the mix. And whether you listen and learn. In spite of your ideology or policies. Btw is trump a lawyer …


Everything needs balance at the end.




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