
China charts a path into European science - pseudolus
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-01126-5/index.html
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cerealbad
whether china does this because they cannot transition into services quickly
enough and they need to manufacture a new capital stream to purchase their own
products or because of some benevolent world connection plan is largely
inconsequential, where there is political will there is a way.

a) china offers to triple your standard of living in the next decade through a
massive transnational infrastructure project that will allow increased trade
and job opportunities, growing local export sectors and connecting you into
the largest economic region in the world.

b) continue to be brain drained by germany and scandinavia while their large
agrobusiness interests buy your farmland on the cheap and create a monoculture
base of gmo exports to feed their growing welfare states, in the name of human
rights and european unity of course.

this is going to be a hard choice for easte-.... western eurasia. crimea and
syria are just russia and america trying to get a station on this
supercontinental train. the general tone towards china's plans, reminds me of
the attitude towards japan and the shinkansen project in the 60s. sometimes
pragmatic long term thinking beats moonshots. a traveler in 2050 will likely
be on a high speed train from europe to asia than on a spaceship to low earth
orbit.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3LLgzO_PrI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3LLgzO_PrI)

~~~
sbacic
I don't think it's either of those things. I suspect China is doing it as a
way to get a foothold in EU politics. Smaller, poorer countries are easier to
bribe, coerce or just plain intimidate than say France or Germany.

Furthermore, those investments will do nothing to fix the problems those
countries have. My biggest concern is that those countries will not be able to
honor their obligations to China and the consequences of that.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Smaller, poorer countries are easier to bribe, coerce or just plain
> intimidate than say France or Germany._

Not to mention, many of those countries are already being bullied and coerced
by France and Germany anyway, so they may see some international abuse as the
lesser of two evils.

Now, if countries like Romania could get their act together and stop accepting
the free _outward_ movement of _people who they 've just paid to educate_,
maybe the equation changes.

~~~
lifty
And how would you stop accepting the outward movement of people educated in
Romania? Not sure if you are proposing to restrict freedom of movement, but
that would be pretty hard to pass, and frankly scary. As I see it, the only
reasonable way to fight the brain drain is to make it attractive for young
people to stay in Romania.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Not sure if you are proposing to restrict freedom of movement, but that
> would be pretty hard to pass, and frankly scary._

My thought is that they should create some form of obligation or tuition
option for the schools so that they don't subsidize people who ultimately
leave their economy. You stay in Romania, your tuition is subsidized like
normal, if you leave Romania and become resident elsewhere, you pay a bill to
recover the cost of educating you.

Obviously they can't, as a matter of civil rights, prohibit people who are not
criminals from leaving the country, but they have tools to enforce agreements
like that at least with EU member states, and states they generally have
relationships with regardless (i.e. UK).

~~~
sbacic
A couple of problems with this idea - one, the people emigrating and their
parents paid for that tuition through taxes. Second, what about all the people
who finish college and stay in Romania, but work in some dead end job that
doesn't even need higher education?

And lastly, this would mean keeping the people most dissatisfied with the
current state of the country _in_ the country. No corrupt government would
want that. Much better for them to leave and not cause any trouble.

~~~
microcolonel
> _their parents paid for that tuition through taxes_

The way that (modern) governments finance programs like this is exactly the
opposite of your model of it. Your parents didn't pay to subsidize your
education, the next generation did (this is in part why birth/immigration
rates falling is taken as such bad news).

> _Second, what about all the people who finish college and stay in Romania,
> but work in some dead end job that doesn 't even need higher education?_

The next ones will know from that more about the demand for educated people,
and adjust accordingly; at least they mainly wasted time and not money on
getting into that dead-end job.

> _And lastly, this would mean keeping the people most dissatisfied with the
> current state of the country in the country. No corrupt government would
> want that. Much better for them to leave and not cause any trouble._

Sure, but should we govern based on what the government wants? The people
benefit when the legitimately dissatisfied are heard rather than just swept
under the rug.

As for it being a corrupt government that encourages the people most likely to
become dissidents to leave the country, what does that say about the countries
receiving those dissidents? Is it moral to accept masses dissatisfied people
from a country that suffers more from politics than from geography? Is that
moral even when that country does have enough semblance of free expression
that you could conceive of dissidents making a difference from the inside?

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basetop
"Europe has a special place in the venture because it was the final
destination of the original Silk Road."

Is this really true? Wasn't China the final destination of the original silk
road. Isn't it why we call it the "silk" road.

My understanding was that the silk road was primarily a loose idea of trade
links between the middle east, india and china. Europe was an afterthought.

You could argue Europe is the final destination today since it is china
wanting to get access to europe. But in the past, wasn't it the other way
around?

But more to the point, Europe ( especially western europe ) is significantly
wealthier than China. Why is it that China is investing in poorer european
countries and not the wealthy western european countries? They can find money
to fund wars all over the world, but can't find money to invest in
tech/science in central and eastern european countries?

~~~
sbacic
I suspect that the reason wealthy WE countries aren't investing in EE and the
Balkans is that it is in general, a poor investment (due to corruption and
brain drain).

The real question should then be - why _is_ China investing in those same
countries?

~~~
forkLding
You can actually gain a lot from investing in "poorer" Eastern European
countries, like a lot of tech outsourcing occurs there because the
intellecutual labour is much cheaper yet the quality of work is comparable to
Western European standards.

A lot of products or scientific research can be made at a much cheaper price
in East Europe and maybe even at a higher quality. The issue for Western
European countries is that they don't need to and likely don't have the huge
budget that China has to put into foreign investment. Also although China may
seem like it is investing a lot, it's not much in terms of its budget so it
seems much more affordable to China.

Also China is also investing in Western Europe as well, they are more or less
doing a scattershot approach as can be seen by the German acquisition. Its
probably just that Western Europe isn't as receptive and doesn't need as much.

