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689 points taubek | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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rayiner ◴[] No.43632822[source]
Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries.

We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but four times bigger. Is that a world where “Designed by Apple in California, Made in China” still makes sense? What will be America’s competitive edge in that scenario?

What seems most likely to me in the future is that the US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now. Dominating finance and services won’t mean anything when both the IP and the physical products are being produced somewhere else.

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stronglikedan ◴[] No.43635923[source]
> Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes.

The vast majority of us were over that decades ago. Please catch up for the sake of all humanity.

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Symbiote ◴[] No.43637718[source]
Yesterday your vice president referred to the Chinese as "peasants".
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IncreasePosts ◴[] No.43638615{3}[source]
Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is there a word for that kind of person?
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1. blargey ◴[] No.43638950{4}[source]
That number has been falling since 2012 and was around 22% as of 2023 (ignoring the hand-wavy conflation of the entire agriculture sector and stereotypical rural farmers)

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/employment-in-agriculture...

You could just as easily massage statistics to call the US a nation of gig workers or something, but neither is productive or informative.