Evolutionary dead end, whichever way they go. The only way out is reunification, peaceful or otherwise.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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And their conclusions are wrong because of the breathtaking ignorance. Even when the author mentions Joseph Needham, he clearly hasn't looked further and snaps back into the tired (and wrong) stereotype of the creative Westerner inventing things and the robotic boring Asian engineer that copies, brings it to production or at best maybe makes some fine tuning refinements. The level of intellectual and ethnic arrogance still drips reeking from the article.
Just look in the comment section for that article and you see someone claiming Scotland was more inventive than China, which he claims was an under performer. Utterly preposterous and clearly also someone who has not read or learned about Joseph Needham, his massive seminal work about the technology of China, and what he learned about China: namely that it was probably the most inventive society throughout most of human history even while under Imperial dynastic rule.
This is why the West will lose. Even when they are being out competed they cannot reflect on their failings or give up their implicit racist assumptions. It would probably take something like a Chinese Star Destroyer hovering over the White House. However even then, they might still try to claim that it was stolen from a top secret US military design and therefore not original creative work.
What helps me to clear biases is to play a role reversal game. Say if I think the US is doing something unreasonable, I just try to think what if China did the same, or vice versa.
For this particular instance, one should ask that until the industrial revolution, what did the rest of the world invent that's on the magnitude of gunpowder, paper, etc.? The Europeans were the first to industrialize, and that seems to make some think that not only will they be the first to everything from that point onward, but they were primed to be the first to everything from the beginning of human history. Rather unsound logic, I'd say.
To me the answer to why the Europeans industrialized first is rather simple. It's competition. China had no need to do so, it's been the pre-eminent power in its part of the world for millenia. When China was in prolonged period of chaos, plenty of inventions were made. Europe was in perpetual competition between its various nations, and that created the impetus to evolve. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, isn't it?
China saw the need to modernize 100 years or so ago, and it's now the preminent industrial power in the world. In many metrics it's also the preminent scientific power already, but that'll become more obvious within the next 10-20 years IMO. The competitive impetus is there, and the resources are getting there as well. If China does get to the top though, the competitive impetus will diminish, and that'll likely be when the fall of the current iteration of China will begin.
They made the same claims about Japan. The country which invented the 3 1/2" floppy disk, Flash memory, green/blue/violet/white LEDs, lithium ion batteries, carbon nanotubes, etc.
Chinese inventions will happen naturally as the market matures. Leading edge research also cannot be done outside well equipped scientific facilities. As China continues building more of these Chinese fundamental research results will grow.
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Scott Ritter was also wrong for believing that North Korea's economy is going to take off because of upgrading its relationship with Russia. He thinks that China missed an opportunity to develop NK because it was still sticking to sanctions, while Russia is already moving ahead. His boomer mindset is still too biased to the European side of history than the Asian side of history. Russia may want to step up its economic relationship with NK, but even the Russian economy needs China to stay as strong as it is. China is the economic bedrock for both nations. Both cannot do well without China in the picture.
China will always be far more important to NK than Russia. Russia appears to be NK's primary source of military equipment and technology. While China is NK's only true economic partner, and the only serious military ally. NK's economy is able to function today despite the sanctions because of China. It is not yet taking off because of its own self-imposed limitations. As far as NK is concerned, it feels relatively contented, and China is not gonna force it to open up. Any new Russian contribution to the NK's economy is still gonna be dwarfed to China. NK's military could do well with more modernization from Russia, but it still needs an economy to buy new stuff.
As long as NK stays friendly, or doesn't collapse, China is gonna be fine with it. NK is the gatekeeper of Manchuria, the historical runway from which invaders have used to invade Beijing. Right now, NK is doing business with a friendly Russia, so this is no issue for China. The West is making up stories as if there is a tussle of influence between China and Russia. I see no real issues here. Russia has given China plenty of leeway to expand its influence within its own neighbourhood in Central Asia. So China is just returning the favour to Russia with regards to NK.
This is not 100% true. The North Korean TEL vehicles are clearly of Chinese origin.
Well also time and place matters. Look at where western Europe is on the map. It's next to the Atlantic ocean right? Therefore they were in a position to take over resources from less developed places. When you got excess resources, it's a lot easier to have time and money to do stuff with it. Notice how before the age of exploration, Europe wasn't much. Hell look at the rest of Europe that wasn't near the sea like the eastern part. Why didn't they enter the industrialization so fast? Guess when you have no excess resources from looting, it's much harder to develop. Also they weren't sitting on loads of coal like the UK.
Crossing the Pacific is very hard so China can forget about going to the Americas. All the resources they could get out of SEA islands is nothing compared to the Americas.
Nvidia makes the shuffles but no one knows where to dig for nuggets of profit.