Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I state that China advanced immensely but nowhere close to the level of the hype now.

I'm laser-focused on the developing markets (although China is already past that stage). Moreover, I hold investments in mutual funds for emerging markets, including those with stock in Tencent (for instance).

But I can't name anything in China except:

* bigger supercomputers

* bigger bitcoin mining facilities

* clone cryptocurrencies

* bigger number of patents filed by Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu

* hiring of Andrew Ng and then him quitting Baidu

* proliferation of cashless payments

* excellent team work of techies and business people resulting in WeChat, which would not have succeeded elsewhere

* I no longer buy the claims of ML applications (speech recognition, face recognition) surpassing human accuracy - I've been hearing these for years and then reading refutations, but yes, sure, let's assume a few algorithms were tweaked successfully

Does it all work, yes. It's far beyond the China where I was doing business a decade ago wondering whether the developers I was in contact with have a functioning brain. But is it "more advanced than Silicon Valley" - nowhere close to it, it's well-managed cookie-cutter tech. If anything, the credit goes to the Chinese tech-savvy business people not prone to the American corporate waste syndrome and forced to dive deeper into the tech.

Can you name 3 (three) projects where the tech was not licensed or borrowed elsewhere and is indeed so advanced it did not surface elsewhere? I'd be sincerely interested to learn of such.




I don't know if China's advanced, but I do know if you're making electronics, you want to be in China. Everything I order comes with about a month lead-time from Shanghai. They've also started making some really good electronics. Rapid prototyping is really important, and I think becoming more important all the time, since robotics is becoming both cheaper and better.

I haven't heard of anything 'pure tech', but there's a big network effect to having the world's electronics industry on your doorstep. If you're building a microscope, you don't have to wait for months for the parts to arrive. If you're building a new kind of centrifuge, you have a massive pool of great engineers who can do it for you, just a phonecall away.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: