Aside from geography, attracting talent from all over the world is the one edge the US has a nation over countries like China. But now the US is trying to be xenophobic like China, restrict tech import/export like China but compete against 10x population and lack of similar levels of internal strife and fissures.
The world, even Europe is looking for a new country to take on a leader/superpower role. China isn't there yet, but it might get there in a few years after their next-gen fighter jets and catching up to ASML.
But, China's greatest weakness is their lack of ambition and focus on regional matters like Taiwan and south china sea, instead of winning over western europe and india.
That's a strength. Them not having interest in global domination and regime change other than their backyard is what allows them to easily make partners in Africa and LATAM, the most important regions for raw materials.
It is a strength, if their goal is to have a stable and prosperous country long term, and that seems to be what they want. good for them. But nature abhors a vacuum, so there will always be an empire at the top of the food chain. Such empires want to maximize wealth for their people and secure them against threats, that's why invasions and exploitation of weaker countries happens. That game hasn't changed. Friendly relations work, until you need a lot of resources from a country that doesn't want to give it up. Or, like with the US, when they're opening up military bases next to your borders and you need a buffer state. Or, when naval blockades and sanctions are being enforced against your country for not complying with extra-sovereign demands.
History shows that countries content with what they have collapse or weaken very quickly.
China will have a population crisis in a few decades for example, and it won't have the large manufacturing base and its people will be too used to luxuries to go back to slaving for western countries for pennies. Keep in mind that the current china itself is so great and prosperous because of all the invasions it did against western china and satellite states like Vietnam and north Korea (the US isn't special in this regard).
"while the CCP accuses the West of predatory interest rates, the average Chinese rescue loan carries an interest rate of about 5 percent, more than double the IMF’s standard 2 percent. As of Oct. 1, 2025, despite higher U.S. interest rates, the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights lending rate stands at only 3.41 percent, still significantly lower than what China charges struggling nations for so-called relief."
These countries paying these loans are the ones least able to pay them back, and at more than double IMF loans, they are really putting them in a vise.
Without immigration, the US would have faced the same problems.
How can they have international hegemony before they clear their regional order? China is more interested in aligning Taiwan than invading; though it’ll probably invade if it can’t align it diplomatically.
China is probably not interested in continuing the current Western-style order but to implement their own sino-stuff. At least with the CCP at the helm.
The world has been bipolar and multipolar before in history, and it can be again. The unipolar period of American dominance is ending.
Do I infer correctly that you believe that China has less internal strife and fissures than the US has?
My point was, the non-immigrant birth-rate is very low, so arguably the US should have arrived at the same demographic crisis as japan, china and south korea. Not only that, immigrants attend college at a much higher rate than native-born too.
They're all over Africa and south Asia. But unlike the US/West they don't exert political influence. When they build infrastructure for example, they set up worker camps, isolated from the local population. they only employ their own imported people and clean up and leave quietly afterwards.
They're acting like good business partners, instead of a superpower wielding it's might and extending its influence. it's good for business for all involved parties for sure, and smart too. But not having strong influence means for example, the US can come in, outbid them, bail out african loans to China and they lose that source of commerce.
Also, the U.S. has a fertility edge over China, which skilled immigrants do not contribute to. The birth rate of the groups comprising most skilled immigrants (Asians) is very low, much lower than for other Americans.
You did the equivalent of showing some stat showing black and brown people do violence and crimes and saying “see how uncivilized they are” ignoring everything else.
Skilled immigrants may not contribute to birth rate much, but immigrants as a whole contribute to the workforce across the spectrum. More working age people means less demand for unskilled labor, more demand for skilled labor and more competition for higher achievements to qualify for skilled work.
There are millions of phd's and super-talented engineers, but it is a small percentage of those that actually innovate and invent new things. And for them to do that, you need a corporate/commercial sector funding it. Even someone flipping burgers at mcdonalds is a consumer contributing to economic activity, which in turn contributes to funding competitive R&D and risk taking.
Simply having lots of people and free schools won't do much on its own. You need R&D funded, you need companies and the government itself to invest in risky scientific endeavors. Highly skilled jobs need to pay well. For example, there is a metric crapton of talent in Europe that flocks to the US for the pay alone, even though most of them hate it here. Even Candian pay across the border is dismal. That's why Europe doesn't have Nvidias, Intels, Googles,etc..
This very site alone belongs to US venture capitalists which are a product of capital available, a pipeline of educated labor domestically as well as immigrants. The products and services companies sell is mostly funded by consumers buying things, they can buy those things because they have jobs that pay well. The guy who flips burgers at mcdonalds buys a nintendo switch, the help desk worker nvidia gpus,etc... if your population is too old, those things don't happen, old people conserve money and their economic activity doesn't go as far.
Have you heard of the vitality curve? It's how in virtually everything involving human contribution, 10-20% carry the "thing" 10-20% are detrimental to it and everyone in between is needed to keep it from crumbling. I believe that's why performance reviews are always in quintiles. Either way, I don't know if the top 10% that give the US an advantage are immigrants, but some of them for sure. and a lot of the papers I'm seeing from the US in recent years have not been from US sounding names. But the middle 60% or so, it doesn't matter where they're from, you need enough people that are skilled and competent to keep the ship afloat.
If all the variables are the same, China has more people so it wins by default. The US however can attract talent from all over the world for the top 10% talent and have them compete. I don't know the stats but let's say 95% of educated people are native born. That still doesn't mean the competition for top jobs is adequate. To compete with China, the US's top 10% talent must have more quality to make up for the lack of quantity. Quality isn't measured by numbers and it isn't a product of random lack you can improve by increasing quantity. it's a product of competition and the incentives and rewards at the end, which includes compensation but more than that - the quality of life money affords.
In other words, whether immigrants are smarter or not, they can either contribute to the economy by being good and reliable consumers and laborers that create more economic activity and drive the demand and opportunities for skilled work, or, they can drive up the compeition for skilled work, driving up quality.
What you have in the US, is a lot of educated people are into things like health care these days, because that's where the demand is. Even immigrants. But in east asia, it's much worse, they do needs lots more health care workers and care givers for the elderly, which even there, they're using more and more immigrants.
The bulk importing of immigrants only serves to stabilize the economy. The importing of educated immigrants and workers (Most of YC would collapse without H-1B lol) drives competition and increases quality (innovation,inventiveness,etc..).
You can have more americans, even have more americans attend more college. But you can't kick out americans that refuse to pursue education or are content with mediocrity. You can filter out immigrants by telling them they don't have enough education or money (we've been doing this for a long time in the US), but you can't do that with natural born americans.
If you work in tech, this should be of no surprise to you.
But, the value illegal immigrants bring to the US economy cannot be understated. Purely from a economic standpoint, illegal immigrants are a huge asset. There are other portions of the population that are largely a liability.
It's not like illegal immigrants are taking skilled work americans could be doing. And let's be honest, even without illegal immigrants, a lot of unskilled work will be replaced by AI/automation.
I personally, have no problem against humane and lawful enforcement of immigration laws. But given that it is a determent to the economy, perhaps more serious and concerning crimes should be enforced? Perhaps the targets should be employers of illegal immigrants? Perhaps zip tying children and locking them in cages and denying them basic hygiene is not the right approach? I think the details is where it gets controversial, most sane people would agree that laws should be enforced.
You still can’t become a Chinese citizen. You can come to USA or Europe and build a life for yourself. While some people go to China to make some money for a few years you can’t really build a life. So I think US and Europe will still attract talent long term, and I don’t think you can discount that. China used to have the benefit of low cost labor, but that’s going away. What do they have to offer when that’s gone?
Chinas population isn’t 10x. It’s 4x. If you believe the numbers (the idea that local governments over report is not a fringe theory).
But it’s really only the wealthy coastal regions that matters in this comparison, and in that regard the population sizes are much closer. Yeah they can exploit cheap labor from the poor interior. But the US is doing something similar in some ways with central/southern America. The Hukou system means that China does act like a bunch of separate states in many regards, rather than one truly unified country.
> You still can’t become a Chinese citizen.
This Wiki page says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_nationality_law
> Foreign nationals may naturalize if they are permanent residents in any part of China
> You can come to USA or Europe and build a life for yourself.
> Yeah they can exploit cheap labor from the poor interior. But the US is doing something similar in some ways with central/southern America.
The English-speaking lands where the US is now have seen two internal conflicts that killed at least 1% or so of the population: the American revolution, which killed about 1% of the population of the American colonies (but significantly less of the combined entity of England plus its American colonies) and the US Civil War, which killed about 2.4%.
Historically, China has been significantly less stable than that. Here is a link to a summary: https://chat.deepseek.com/share/16duc6iflzhav114dx
Here are 3 excerpts from that summary:
>The Transition from Yuan to Ming Dynasty (Mid-14th Century) . . . This period was one of the most devastating in human history. Plague and widespread warfare ravaged China. The population is estimated to have fallen from around 120 million at the Yuan peak to about 60-65 million at the start of the Ming. The death toll was catastrophic, easily exceeding 1% by an order of magnitude.
>The Ming-Qing Transition (c. 1618-1683) . . . While debated, estimates suggest a population decline of 20-40 million from a late-Ming peak of around 160-200 million. This includes deaths from war, famine, and plague.
>The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). This is the deadliest civil war in human history. Most conservative estimates place the death toll at 20-30 million people, with some estimates going as high as 70-100 million when including famine and disease. With a total population of around 400-450 million at the time, this represents a death toll of at least 5-7% of the entire population.
Imagine if the primary mission of the US Army was to put down internal rebellions and that everyone involved admitted that this was the main mission. That was the situation in China from 1949 to about 10 years ago, when it becomes no longer possible to identify with confidence the primary mission because Beijing added a second important mission, namely to use its navy and islands in the South China Sea to protect the sea lanes by which China imports oil from the Persian Gulf and exports manufactured goods around the world.
Historical stability of China isn't relevant either, I think the modern PRC government of china is all that matters for practical purposes.
Historically, China has been around for like 3 millennia, so it isn't a fair comparison, or a meaningful one.