China Has Overtaken America

The original Paul Krugman quote

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

Oh no, he made a mistake one time... When I was in 5th grade I added 2 numbers wrong, that must mean my whole career has been a lie.

Predictions are wrong more often than observations, I expect.

McKinsey advised AT&T that the total market for cell phones would be just a handful. McKinsey is going strong.

You're right, he missed that one. Do you think his total track record is poor?

Please let's not dip into the cosmic hashtable. It's boring and offtopic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096 (June 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622773 (March 2020)

China has mostly decoupled from the US (both for imports and exports) [1]. They will automate around their demographics issues (they build and install more robots than any other nation in the world) [2]. They export cleantech to the world [3]. What does the US build besides systems of rent seeking?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45580229

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/business/china-factory-ro... | https://archive.today/RoygE

[3] https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

Why shouldn't you? You learn 3 new characters a day with no effort whatsoever via SRS and pass the HSK1 in 2 months. If you like it, you keep on studying and improving, if you don't like it, at least you will be able to greet the taxi driver when you go there (but won't understand their reply).

Decades ago I had Chinese coworkers and decided to ask them to teach me a word or two a day. I immediately discovered I could not tell the difference between the five tonal sounds of "ma" and so never got very far at all.

No. I can speak Chinese, I’m an engineer, I’ve had collegues in both China and Taiwan that I’ve worked with. It’s never been useful to me as an engineer (socially is another matter). I guess if I could speak at a really high level it could have some use. But getting there is incredibly hard unless you live in a Chinese speaking country.

I'm old enough to remember when everyone was trying to learn Japanese back in the 80's.

It would be difficult to work in China, their green card equivalent is difficult to obtain.

The economic conditions in China right now are very bad for the average person, pretty high unemployment.

Even if you don't learn Chinese, I've been consciously adding http://v2ex.com to my doomscrolling regimen and running it through Google translate. It's a popular Chinese webforum, and while I wouldn't say it's exactly Chinese HN, it's a close enough approximation. It's interesting to see I have some of the same concerns and questions as someone halfway around the world in a totally different language and culture.

Here's an example from the front page, English title is: As a backend programmer writing front-end with the help of cursor, what is the most suitable front-end framework/solution

The comments mentioned all the usual suspects, Angular, Vute, React, next, etc.

https://www.v2ex.com/t/1165949

One thing that some users here would appreciate is their footer:

• Please do not copy and paste AI-generated content when answering technical questions

It's really hard to get anywhere with. I was in Hong Kong a while and gave up. I tried Cantonese and Mandarin. That's another thing with 'Chinese' - there are actually about 200 versions spoken although the written symbols are the same.

At least with Japanese if you read a phrase from the guide book they understand but with Chinese if you don't get the intonation right they can't figure what you are on about.

They are mostly happy to do business in English though - it's not a bad place to cultivate business ties.

Probably good to have to pad it under language skills in resume but not a very important concern.

Learning Chinese is not easy. That being said, one does not need to know Chinese in order to work with peers or business partners from China. For working in China, while knowing the local language is certainly an advantage, it is not a requirement, especially in science and technology. I have met a few scientists and exchange scholars in China. They basically only know how to say "Good morning," "Thank you," or "Sorry, I don't know how to say it in Chinese." One can expect co-workers to speak English. Buses and subways in big cities announce stops in English. There is English on road signs. Restaurant menus may not have English, but they likely have photos, or perhaps you can just surprise yourself anyway.

There is a new K visa that is granted to anyone holds a STEM degree from a well-established college anywhere in the world. People can come to China first and then look for a job. This K visa is less than a month old, so it is unclear how it works. Getting a job is a different story. Past data shows that non-state-owned small businesses created more than 90% of new jobs. Perhaps because they have not fully recovered, the job market is tight.

It is incredibly hard.

Well it’s on the way there but it’s not yet. American democracy still has some spine left I hope. But we are closer than we have ever been I think.

As an example, I don’t think Trump can make Sundar Pichai or Tim Cook disappear and then retreat from public life, like what happened with Jack Ma. To be clear I do not hold any of these individuals in high esteem, I am just illustrating the power of Xi Jinping, compared to Trump’s.