Misunderstanding China

As of 2018, many folks are still misunderstanding China as evidenced by the comments I read in Seeking Alpha, a financial web site. Many must be living in caves for the last 5 years. Most still think China is backward, stealing our jobs by selling low-cost products and stealing intelligent properties. It may be true 10 years ago, but most are not any more.

First, there are many countries having lower wages than China and most are not successful in competing against China. You need infrastructure and many skills beside wages. Secondly, China is moving to higher-value products.

China paves the road for the future generations by investing heavily in infrastructure and researches. The living standard has been raised but not comparatively to the profits they gain from the global trades.

Most developed countries except the resource-rich countries have to go through copying (and sometimes stealing) and low-cost, low-quality products such as Japan and S. Korea. China’s exception is the scale and the speed (over 9% for over 10 years).

We’re doing just the opposite. Partly it is due to our political system. The voters have to buy votes. If they cannot see the short-term results, they will not invest. Secondly we have to protect our workers and we would not be competitive globally even we are still leading in many sectors.

Here are three Chinese achievements from the bottom to the top from many (Ali Pay, stealth fighters, sub way system, space exploration, AI... Google “China achievements 2018”.

High-speed rail. It has more than 50% of the total high-speed rail in the world even they started late. Public transportation is usually not profitable based on income alone but some routes are. It makes sense in China primarily due to the dense population.

Super computer. As of 11/2017, China has the top two super computers and the total in the number of the top 500 super computers is higher than us. US bans the importing of high-performance processors to China. The top super computer comprises of processors developed in China with efficient energy. Intel lost $1 billion order.

AI is the race war between China and US.

4G network. China is among the three countries that build 4G network and is now working on 5G. US is not one of them.



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The above is from my book "Can China Say No?". Click here for more info in Amazon.com.