News on China's scientific and technological development.

ougoah said:

I'm talking about technology. South Korea is at least an equal of Japan already. Computing, robotics, ship building, electronics, consumer goods, industrial goods and equipment, machinery etc. A united Korea operating at peak (obviously ideal assumptions and immediate arrival at ideal status) would be at least two Japans considering South Korea is still on the up and up and not even peaking.

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I think SK has some more to go to dislodge Japan and its comprehensive strength it accumulated over the course of a half century. Remember the Japanese hush hush controls of export licenses to SK for raw materials ( etch chemicals et all ) that remains not fully resolved to this day? What can SK control to hurt Japan as to get back ? Is there anything that SK manufactures that would severely impact Japanese industrial operations ?

ougoah said:

South Korea is an absolute beast in tech for their size. A united Korea properly set off and organised would easily be many times Japan overall... as has been the case throughout most of East Asia's history.

South Korea only shows China that it is still underperforming! China properly organised and completing development would allow it to be roughly 3 USAs at USA peak.

At the moment, Chinese on average consume and emit roughly 1/3 the average American in terms of energy, overall resources and contribution in emissions. If we want to use a parallel in energy density converted to be analogies for productivity in an individual, on average the Chinese person is roughly still only 1/3 a Korean or Japanese or American. There is much room to develop still and much more progress to be made and gained. Nominally, due to China's huge population this is already enough to make it such a power today but China has nowhere near finished developing. The education for under 40yo today is a remnant of the 1980s and 1990s. It is decent but nowhere near as good as the education in China after 2000s. In about 20 to 30 years time we'll see even greater progress in China as it goes towards completing development and the generational demographics make all this much more obvious.

I mean it's not like 70 year old Chinese people today can be considered for going back to complete high school or whatever they missed. South Korea has completed their journey. They have social problems like everyone else and economic ones too but they ought to be considered a developed nation. Their car industry workers get paid more than American ones (and they're also more competitive).

Once the average Chinese person is as educated and productive, we will see Chinese per capita emissions be a little higher than developed East Asian nations and probably around per capita emissions from Americans and Australians and so on (current highest per capita polluters). This is a decent measure but you gotta account for the industrial set up e.g. Chinese have a lot of heavy industry that manufactures for the world and if these move to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand etc even in smaller fractions of total, you'll see China's emissions drop while those countries go through the roof.

Per capita GDP is also quite revealing and although China's is less than 1/3 US, it doesn't account for severely undervalued RMB and intensely overvalued American FIRE sectors and numbers moving on a screen "income". In truth, both emission and income indicators are roughly commensurate with overall development. Basically China can get three times "better" and more "powerful" just to be as productive overall as the average Japanese or South Korean. This is quite achievable since throughout history it has been the case. Not only that, I'd say pockets of China should surpass Japan and SK's performance while other pockets remain at parity.

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I'm not disagreeing with using emissions per capita as a way to get a general look of a country (in terms of industrialisation, tech, development etc.).

Was just pointing out that emissions per cap will not be that defining/useful in the future for measuring those things (due to more green energy and the likes).

Also I fully agree that China has a lot more room to grow.

Also another thing about gdp, the US gdp can be considered to be quite 'inflated' (renter economy, and the way of calculating it is different, nominal gdp of China could increase by 1 to 3 trillions if they mirrors the US).

And in the same way also economies of South Korea, Japan (actual median is lower much lower than average per capita, and while the same would be said for China, it is less of a big difference especially when considering PPP).

Xsizor said:

I think SK has some more to go to dislodge Japan and its comprehensive strength it accumulated over the course of a half century. Remember the Japanese hush hush controls of export licenses to SK for raw materials ( etch chemicals et all ) that remains not fully resolved to this day? What can SK control to hurt Japan as to get back ? Is there anything that SK manufactures that would severely impact Japanese industrial operations ?

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Japan may not depend on South Korea at all but South Korea barely depends on Japan. One example does not take away the clear trend of South Korea having displaced so much of Japan's previous core industries and exports. This trend will not remove Japan and that's not what I'm saying at all. It is simply South Korea managing to carve out a chunk of the pie and a big slice it is as well. They do well for a nation of their size. Something China should look to as motivator. China needs to continue working towards attaining a similar level of per cap productivity and living standards which lift up the performance of a lot more.

Korea and Japan are two different things. and there products especially the high ends are looked very differently.
Samsung even today has major Research centers in Europe and Russia.
Korea will have to pay much more to keep those relationships.
Japan approach is much more domestic.
KHI, MHI, Toray are much bigger suppliers to Civilian aerospace. where quality and reliability are paramount.
These people have tested on mass scale and they know difference in reliability when dealing with desert heat.

Yes while South Korea dislodged many of Japan's traditional industries, Japan simply moved up the value chain in areas like DUV, chemicals etc. Fragrance, cosmetics, timber, things you don't see because many of it is B2B. Commercial aircraft parts. Things that South Korea are weak at and higher up the chain.

Also historically, Japan has contributed more in terms of novels, poetry, teamaking. The Tale of Genji, ukiyoe painting. Goes contrary to the Japanese are more barbarian narrative. Korea did invent movable type though.

I will agree Japan has been more militaristic than Korea

Well my point was to refute the suggestion that Japan "contributed more to culture historically" than Korea. This is simply objectively untrue until we hit the 20th century.

Koreans also had poetry and literature. Pretty much everyone has that. Japan's "tea culture" is 100% identical to some ancient and modern Chinese tea culture. Like Japan's tea culture is basically 10% of China's tea culture in one provincial area. It is akin to saying a burger place in Nepal shows that Nepal has burger culture and then using that to suggest it has superior fast food culture to USA. While there is nothing wrong with Japanese tea culture at all no more than there is anything wrong with a Nepalese burger joint, it simply isn't evidence of having cultural superiority over Koreans throughout history.

Japan has long been a major B2B supplier. They did supply the Soviets (yes that far back) with submarine component manufacturing machinery and equipment. Japan is a tech beast. Don't let any of this make you think I don't believe that. South Korea simply has been smashing it in the last few decades and smashing it pretty quietly since they aren't constantly condemned and attacked by media and psychological warfare. We should simply recognise that South Korea is a technology and industrial powerhouse at a scale where they already outdo Japan in several fields. Japan! One of the best of the best in technology.

Japan also had Nippon Steel scandal that rivals VW's "Dieselgate" and Toshiba scandal (more than one of those). They are far from infallible and all that only fanboys perpetuate. Everyone is human.

South Korea is building towards having a Sumitomo (comprehensively) and they have the technical abilities to get there. Their education culture however is probably a little too harsh and too much.

China has in the last twenty years also become an absolute powerhouse from B2B supplies like machinery, robotics, industrial equipment, and things like space industry, telecommunication, computing, electronics, gadgets, now commercial nuclear power stations (only fourth gen and commercial thorium one iirc?) and so on. Even more exciting is that China does invest in the types of big and expensive projects that capitalists aren't always into. China has all manners of propulsion research and exotic sciences done by both state and private organisations that simply do not exist in Japan because there are no immediate customers or ways of immediately gaining monetary returns on technologies like those. The only others that do such things are the US and Russia to the same scale. European projects are a lot more civilian science based and funded than these three. China only has these going on because it has the domestic political initiative to create and sustain these programs between top Chinese research universities, CAS, all the national research labs and PLA, and of course to a smaller degree (for commercial stuff) private businesses.

pmc said:

Korea and Japan are two different things. and there products especially the high ends are looked very differently.
Samsung even today has major Research centers in Europe and Russia.
Korea will have to pay much more to keep those relationships.
Japan approach is much more domestic.
KHI, MHI, Toray are much bigger suppliers to Civilian aerospace. where quality and reliability are paramount.
These people have tested on mass scale and they know difference in reliability when dealing with desert heat.

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I'm fairly certain there are plenty of Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Indian, UK, Russian etc suppliers to civilian aerospace of just Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, and Bombardier (countries not USA, France, Brazil, and Canada is the point).

Japan isn't unique in supplying civilian aviation. So many suppliers in various countries have been doing this for the main duopoly for years if not decades.

Desert testing of cars is universally standard practice. Even 1980s Chinese cars did desert testing. Nowadays many have giant autoclaves and testing facilities that can simulate conditions far better than deserts, poles, and dust storms etc.

Samsung and Hyundai are South Korea's two crown jewels like TSMC is for Taiwan or Sumitomo for Japan, Huawei, CATL, BYD, SMIC, SMEE etc are for China and so on. Koreans paying to keep those relationships is a weird thing to say. Those research centres are a source of "biodiversity" so to speak. It creates resilience and can improve Samsung.

Japan keeping a domestic approach isn't necessarily only good. They clearly miss out on things. Microsoft had offices in China (might still do) and so on. They take advantage of the talent and people in a country. That's what some of these multinationals do. There are American engineers working for Dutch Philips corp inside the USA in facilities owned by Philips where profits go into the Netherlands and shareholders when they create some new product. The work and gain given by those American engineers working at Philips, contribute to Philips the company and Netherlands the country (to some degree). It isn't a bad thing to have foreign offices and using foreign talent. In fact it is downright stupid to refuse that option as some weird self imposed rule.

ougoah said:

Microsoft had offices in China (might still do)

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MSRA is one of the best Microsoft labs outside Redmond. Also the Whampoa of the Chinese AI industry.

Look I don't want to beat a dead horse, but Koreans also had poetry and literature is a weak argument. Certain countries have contributed more to world literature than others; eg England also had poetry and literature - only? I don't want to get into nationalism, and I certainly am no Japanese dude.

I was merely suggesting that the argument a united Korea would trounce Japan is something I disagree with.

I've read an anthology of Korean traditional literature before, and to be rude, it is 70% boring monk sermons. They certainly weren't as sexually liberated or lyrical about war devices. Call it decadent, it is a form of literary expression.

You can continue arguing with pmc and Xsizor about how much brighter Korea is than Japan; I'm done here.



I read this book while on holiday in Indonesia a few years ago. It's written by the leading English professor of Korean literature, Peter Lee. It's good but I just cannot fathom how it can have the breadth or depth of Japanese traditional literature. Warlike, militaristic, barbarian, but Japanese produced some fine literature over the centuries.

Crang said:

Look I don't want to beat a dead horse, but Koreans also had poetry and literature is a weak argument. Certain countries have contributed more to world literature than others; eg England also had poetry and literature - only? I don't want to get into nationalism, and I certainly am no Japanese dude.

I was merely suggesting that the argument a united Korea would trounce Japan is something I disagree with.

I've read an anthology of Korean traditional literature before, and to be rude, it is 70% boring monk sermons. They certainly weren't as sexually liberated or lyrical about war devices. Call it decadent, it is a form of literary expression.

You can continue arguing with pmc and Xsizor about how much brighter Korea is than Japan; I'm done here.

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You were the one who said (and I paraphrase) that Japan has been culturally superior to Korea throughout history (guessing overall judgement) and promoted this statement with "Japan has poetry and literature and tea culture".

So naturally I simply responded by raising the fact that pretty much all human civilisations with language had poetry and literature. So much of Japan's come directly from China. For starters, their entire language or at least the foundations of it. To the point that a non Japanese speaking Chinese person can go to Japan and understand and piece together meaning for 50% of the written language.

You were the one who raised this poetry and literature argument. It is a weak argument. That's my position lol.