Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything.
There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent projects were quite serious, which undermined the Chinese government’s confidence in these efforts. A few years ago, there was even a so-called “transparent computing” scam project that was awarded a national-level prize.
Corruption and fraud can slow China’s progress, but they will not affect the final outcome. This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process.
In fact, aside from high-end chips, China already dominates the mid- and low-end chip segments.
I don't disagree with you on the conclusion, but man I just wish people stopped believing in fairy tales about countries like this. America does it too. Why are people so allergic to materialism? I'm not saying culture is irrelevant but saying china's success is due to "Chinese way of thinking" or america was dominant because of the "american dream" is an adult believing santa-tier take.
Material conditions shape history
To speak to this importance, it wasn't long ago that the sentiment I heard about the country was that it isn't, or wouldn't be, ascendant due to their "culture".
It's the Schrodinger's cat of cultures. Or maybe generalities about culture aren't to explain for economic and political velocity.
But it's undeniable that culture and how that's reflected in governance have a huge impact: South vs North Korea.
> But it's undeniable that culture and how that's reflected in governance have a huge impact: South vs North Korea.
Considering that north and south korea share the same "culture", wouldn't they be an example against your assertion?
Isn't the bigger impact that one is sanctioned by the world's sole superpower and the other is not?
Yeah, also it shows the comment is ignorant of history.
In the immediate aftermath of the Korean war, the North was actually more prosperous than the South. That changed with time, dramatically so, but initially it'd be reasonable to see the north as having better economic prospects.
> I'm not saying culture is irrelevant but saying china's success is due to "Chinese way of thinking" or america was dominant because of the "american dream" is an adult believing santa-tier take.
I don't know that it's a fairy tale. Certainly, it helps nations project more influence than they really have. But it's not nothing, commonly-shared philosophy is useful. It matters, because it differs, and that impacts things.
(as an American) America definitely does not share this philosophy. The idea that "Corruption and fraud can slow China’s progress, but they will not affect the final outcome." is not something most Americans would ever say about America as we struggle with mostly-unchecked corruption and fraud, and have zero enforcement over the consequences of such. It is absolutely effecting the final outcomes of the US, and in a massively negative way.
> Material conditions shape history
Sure, but not just material conditions. "Hope for the future" plays a bigger role than many people give it credit for.
>Why are people so allergic to materialism?
At the risk of starting a fight... I would point at America's religious history, and the continuing threads of that today that increasingly see scientific/materialist thought as a direct threat to their ideas of how a society ought to be organized.
I mean yeah avoiding materialism in political debates is great for people dominating the material realm. I don't think that's an accident
Because a shared cultural identity is vital to maintain a cohesive society that can muster the collective resources to get shit done?
The world is shaped by psychology and the actions of a very very few individuals at the peak of their respective societies. Material conditions merely enable success brought by cultural motivation.
Your argument really only holds water if you consider all humans to be fungible worker drones and that culture doesn't exist. The human factor is the critical factor in all of history. Material wealth does not magically produce innovation. The Romans could have started the industrial revolution a thousand years earlier, they had effectively unlimited resources. They simply lacked the cultural spark to pursue that line of research and industry. They even literally invented a steam engine a thousand years before modern times.
This is a country with its own written language, writing system, calendar, the internet, and so on; a country with the world’s largest single ethnic population; a country whose cultural traditions were established two thousand years ago; a country with an independent ideology. Are you saying that Western societies would rather believe this is a country of large-scale surveillance, that its people live under a social credit system with no individuality or freedom, than believe that its people possess a distinct and stronger sense of collective consciousness?
I think you are writing your comments conditioned on not just what you are responding to but also a lot of internal assumptions about their intentions. The person you are responding to said or implied nothing about surveillance or Western assumptions about China. They are making the claim (apologies to them if I am misrepresenting) that societies or governments achieve extraordinary goals (i.e. goals that they were not expected to achieve within a certain time-frame) because of the physical, economic and social conditions and not because of cultural elements. Cultural explanations are post-hoc i.e. they are used after the fact to boost morale or give a sense of unity. More concretely, if China, the US, the EU, Japan, India, Russia can launch spacecrafts to the moon, so can Nigeria and Kenya given enough time, resources and the right incentive structure even if they are culturally very different from the countries above.
Does this include the material conditions of human bio diversity? You deny "way of thinking" is itself a material differentiation but could that not be an expression of material conditions over time reshaping separate groups of people to act and think differently, who were through differing selective pressures, environments, adaptations and historical contingencies themselves "shaped" differently?
Or do you yourself have a religious belief in strict human blank slate equality?
I'm not saying relevance of culture, human bio-diversity, etc. are zeroes in terms of impact. I just get frustrated because they seem to be the only things talked about at the expense of any discussion about actual material conditions or control and distribution of resources
ideologies are part of the material conditions
> Why are people so allergic to materialism?
They are made so in the Angloamerican West. The establishment wants them to focus on 'values' instead. Because if the people started thinking about material conditions, they would topple the system that concentrates 99% of the wealth in the hands of the 0.1%.
Well if you have pay attention this user you would realize he is a very classic example of an educated and proud Chinese. No offense but an unusual amount of Chinese uniformly think and talk like that thanks to the education.
Why would you assume culture is immaterial? And to make this less emotional let’s take the micro scale; don’t you think the culture of doing engineering doesn’t affect outcomes team to team within the same company, or company to company within the same country or even country to country within the same company?
a perfect example in this context would be when a company is successful and it's attributed to culture not product market fit, funding or luck
I understand your point about misattribution but it cuts both ways. How about when a company is better than competitors because they executed better because they had a superior organizational culture. Or not successful and this is due to poor culture.
YC sets the prime examples. It is never product at the expense of who the team is and in what proven way they have worked together and plan to execute at scale.
> Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything.
That's how everyone who industrialized/advanced approaches everything. China isn't the only country with the "can do" or "if you can do it, we can do it" attitude. The US is a prime example of the "can do" attitude. Do you think when britain industrialized, the US decided only britain is capable of industrializing and gave up? Of course not. Heck, china isn't even the first asian country with the "can do" attitude. The japanese, during the 1800s, decided that if europeans can industrialize, so can they. So on and so forth.
> Corruption and fraud can slow China’s progress, but they will not affect the final outcome. This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process.
It isn't a "chinese way of thinking". It is assumed everywhere that some level "corruption and fraud" is baked into any large scale investment or endeavor. It's simply a matter of managing it so as not to consume the whole project.
The PRC motto is not about "can do", it's about "able to do". Can Palau build a commercial airliner when Boeing and Airbus workforce is 10x their population? No that's simply out of their reach.
That's really the crux behind the original statement, there are not many (really currently any) country in the world other than PRC who has the complete industrial chains and workforce numbers to build anything that already exist if they pour enough resources into it. They're the only country whose manufacturing sector has every industrial category classified by UN. That's the context behind the quote (directed at domestic doubters), every other country in the world has to pick and choose what to specialize in, PRC doesn't, so as long as item is not made by god, PRC can figure out how to build it.
The geopolitical reality today (i.e. the amount aggregate S&T complexity that has accumulated from past 100 years) is there may not be anything others can build that PRC eventually can't due to size of PRC talent and industrial base, the reverse is not necessarily true. There's a shit load of advanced industries that are simply out of most small/medium even large countries reach because their size precludes them from coordinating enough people or industrial resources for undertaking.
> The PRC motto is not about "can do", it's about "able to do".
Who cares? "Can do" assumes "able to do".
> Can Palau build a commercial airliner when Boeing and Airbus workforce is 10x their population? No that's simply out of their reach.
That's why I limited it to : "That's how everyone who industrialized/advanced approaches everything.".
> That's really the crux behind the original statement, there are not many (really currently any) country in the world other than PRC who has the complete industrial chains and workforce numbers to build anything that already exist if they pour enough resources into it.
China is a subset of the american world order. The PRC's industrialization is a creation of the US/Japan/EU.
> PRC can figure out how to build it.
So can the US. Are you saying china can create something we can't figure out?
> The geopolitical reality today (i.e. the amount aggregate S&T complexity that has accumulated from past 100 years) is there may not be anything others can build that PRC eventually can't due to size of PRC talent and industrial base, the reverse is not necessarily true
I'd say there is nothing that china cannot build.
> There's a shit load of advanced industries that are simply out of most small/medium even large countries reach because their size precludes them from coordinating enough people or industrial resources for undertaking.
That just means small/medium countries will collaborate.
FYI: China is smaller than the west. China is much smaller than the west and its allies combined. There is no denying china has some advantages. But china also has disadvantages. Linguistically, politically, culturally, geographically, historically, etc. China's industrialization, just like japan's industrialization, was predicated entirely on western knowledge/tech and access to western trade routes.
>"Can do" assumes "able to do"
> industrialized/advanced approaches everything
Can do, does not in fact translate to able to do, for advanced/industrialized economies. It takes about 150k workforce to build long body civil aviation industry. US as country can muster that critical mass. EU has to muster that as a bloc (as you recognized). Developed economy <200m pop without bloc can't. That precludes most of the world. 50 years ago, there was less complexity, and many more smaller players "can do" their way to long body civil aviation, now they can't, they are not "able to do", the scale has grown and those smaller economies don't even approach/"can do" in the first place.
>So can the US. Are you saying china can create something we can't figure out?
>small/medium countries will collaborate
US has projected technical talent shortage in semi in 100,000s. Hence US only try to reshore fabs vs PRC semi brrrting talent to execute industrial policy to indigenize entire semi supply chain i.e. it's something US maybe can figure out, but can't execute, again not able to do on it's own, so it doesn't even try. That's really the crux behind original quote, EUV is made by people... but the broader context is EUV (and supply chains) is made by consortium of countries, i.e. common rhetoric is EUV is made by the world, how can PRC replicate global effort? The answer is EUV is made by a small handful of countries with fraction of PRC population, PRC talent pool and industry large enough to single hand speed run global coordination. Hence PRC is able to do everything, even things that require others to do as bloc.
>China is a subset
>predicated entirely on western knowledge/tech >I'd say there is nothing that china cannot build.
Was a subsect. Now much of their dependencies are gone. That dependency made clear by export controls is why many PRC industry doubters existed 5-10 years ago who definitely thought there were things China could not replicate, EUV supply chain is one of these. The other is a competent national football team. But domestic industrial chain and talent generation has expanded so much so fast that much of doubt gone. The motto, was specifically made in this context. PRC techno-optimist look at all the other concurrent major indigenization projects and the underlying meaning morphed to PRC can build not just what another country can build, what another bloc can build, but everything... simultaneously, i.e. post war US hyper hegemony type of sole player. It is not your generic can do attitude, it's can do anything, and everything at the same time. Continental scale, industrial sovereignty/autarky tier of ambition.
>smaller than the west and its allies
It's roughly the same size by pop, unless you through in 3rd party India then when might as well as through in global south for PRC. But if we're talking about useful indicators, PRC produce more talent i.e. about same as OECD which is more than US+co. Industrially, PRC produce as much as core US+co block, US+co produce more by value add. Both are flow measures. But if we look in raw output / actual material production / output, PRC can be substantially larger than west combined. Many raw inputs (ree steel aluminum etc) small intermediate goods PRC make more than RoW combined. The exception is of course the pinnacle that PRC hasn't figured out, thrown industrial printing press at. But things like auto, spacelaunch, semi, civil aviation can go the way of PRC shipbuilding, one of the mature strategic industries where PRC now produces more than RoW combined.
I understood OP's saying more as "appetite for doing".
Ignoring the practical reality that you need resources, capacity, good planning, and so on to actually do something. I understood OP as saying the mindset in China is that they want to do it all. They are willing to invest even in things that would have poor ROI, if they can come into an industry and undercut by taking a smaller margin they will.
If so, that is a difference in attitude. In the west, we are only interested in returns that beat our alternatives. Capital is divested based on maximizing return on investment. This is why we even allowed many industries in the first place to move to China and we exited those segments domestically.
> That's how everyone who industrialized/advanced approaches everything. China isn't the only country with the "can do" or "if you can do it, we can do it" attitude. The US is a prime example of the "can do" attitude. Do you think when britain industrialized, the US decided only britain is capable of industrializing and gave up? Of course not. Heck, china isn't even the first asian country with the "can do" attitude. The japanese, during the 1800s, decided that if europeans can industrialize, so can they. So on and so forth.
A reminder: the difference is that Japan has already failed in areas such as mobile internet, robotics, Fifth-generation computers, and space technology....LLM and so on. Japan is still clinging to the substantial profits of its internal combustion vehicle industry, and in battery technology it has fallen far behind.
States may disappear, nations may vanish, and once-advanced countries can become backward. Most of them will never return to their former national glory. “If others can do it, we can do it” only becomes a true national characteristic if it is persistently pursued, strictly implemented, and internalized into the national mindset. Japan clearly does not fall into this category.
In fact, only China and the United States possess this mindset. Germany and Japan have small national territories, making it easy for them to fall into early industrial leadership and then rest on high-profit laurels without further ambition. Essentially, it is not a national character. Look at Japan’s reliance on fax machines and Yahoo, or the chaos in Germany’s train system—it shows that this is an advantage created by a particular population with a special disposition, useful only for a limited time. The pace of deindustrialization in these two countries is also very fast: Japan now heavily depends on tourism, and Germany has become something of a joke.
If you browse YouTube or other video platforms, you can see that the people of China and the United States have, and continue to have, the national confidence and “hands-on” culture of the world’s largest industrial powers. In the U.S., there are many farm owners and ordinary laborers who are skilled at making and producing things—they are the foundation of the country. Capitalism merely led the U.S. down a different path.
> A reminder: the difference is that Japan has already failed in areas such as mobile internet, robotics, Fifth-generation computers, and space technology....LLM and so on. Japan is still clinging to the substantial profits of its internal combustion vehicle industry, and in battery technology it has fallen far behind.
So what?
> Japan clearly does not fall into this category.
A country that rose to become a major power in the 1800s. Got destroyed during ww2. Then rose again to be a mjor power.
> In fact, only China and the United States possess this mindset.
If that was the case, post ww2 germany and japan would not exist.
> Germany and Japan have small national territories, making it easy for them to fall into early industrial leadership and then rest on high-profit laurels without further ambition.
Have you no understanding of history prior to the last 10 years?
> This is how we approach everything.
> This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process.
Is there any evidence that this kind of homogeneous "national character" is objectively real? Or is it just another story that people tell themselves?
I don't agree. I think this comes out of necessity. What else a developing country can do in order to develop itself? Everyone believes they are unique and different, I don't agree.
was the American dream real at any point? Sounds like the same to me. Just a less individualistic dream.
I'm also skeptical of narratives of a pre-ordained future for America based on the American Dream or any other teleological belief system.
It's always felt pretty intuitive to me that shared goals in a culture should have some real effect on outcomes.
It doesn't mean absolutely everyone takes part, of course, but it does mean it's a 'thing' that people may take part in with support from many of those around them if they choose.
Looking at the inverse: If you're going against the cultural wind, you're just going to have a much harder time doing whatever it is.
It just seems like this must show up in outcomes, it would be strange if it didn't.
Does it need to be homogenous? In the end, only a few people are needed to create companies and drive the vision.
That's what I was asking. I was replying to a commenter who used "how we approach everything" and "Chinese way of thinking" when explaining China's economic dominance, which at least implies it. I was questioning that, is all.
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> Your comment seems rooted in fear and anger.
It's rooted in neither. Care to explain why you came to that conclusion? Fyi I'm neither American nor Chinese.
I was replying to a commenter who used "how we approach everything" and "Chinese way of thinking" when explaining China's economic dominance. I was questioning whether there is any such "national thinking" in any society, still less in a society of ~1.4bn people.
Fwiw I think that China's achievement, since the mid 20th century, of lifting so many people out of extreme poverty in such a short time is extremely creditable. As is its recent action on deploying clean energy technology. I'm much less impressed with its authoritarian political system. And of course I worry about military conflict.
It's the story the new generations tell themselves that's taken hold last few years. IIRC context is SMEE chairman (maker of PRC litho machine) said EUV is made by man, not god. Became rally for PRC industry and national confidence. X is made by man, not god for anything PRC needs to catchup on. Which circles back to Qian Xuesen, foreign people can build rockets, why can't we. Or more recently, foreign people are good at XYZ events, why can't we. AKA anything they can do we can do.
The bigger undercurrent is divide between faction of people who think EUV impossible or possible. Between boomer/doomers (older, never do better than west types) and young techno-optimists, faction generation/education divided. TLDR PRC technical talent skews young, and techwar as spurned wave of scifi optimists, techno nationalists and industrialist party way of thinking. It's not homogeneous but it's dominant, especially in S&T after quick ascendancy.
As a non-American, I think that Americans are special in that they have the right combination of hard work and personal initiative and efficiency. To oversimplify, Europeans are efficient workers, but unlike Americans, they use their efficiency not to produce more but to work less and enjoy life. East Asians are hard workers but they tend to favor group cohesion over maximizing individual potential, which is not as efficient.
I am not saying that one culture is better than another, but I think the American way is particularly productive, particularly stressful too.
I feel this is true of Americans and Europeans. And as an American, I've been migrating myself more and more into the European mindset. I put in my 8 hours, and I'm done, then I do non-work related activities for the next 8 hours, then I sleep for the next.
As a non-American, but one who worked in US companies for decades, I feel Americans are influenced by economic gigantism.
The American experience is of triumphing with audacious, go big or go home schemes that others wouldn't or couldn't attempt.
To cherry pick one example, during WWII the US created airstrips on tiny pacific islands to fight the Japanese. Few people imagined it was possible to freight in the bulldozers, machines and materials to accomplish this, and it was game changing.
And of course we have the Manhattan project. Railroads. Gigantic IT companies like Oracle, IBM, Apple and more lately Google.
These successes fed into American exceptionalism.
This has its pros and cons.
In a world on the cusp of incredible discoveries, it let audacious American megacorps capture the high ground.
But explosive capitalist success has costs and masks underlying issues. Many people have had the experience of starting work at US Megacorp and being astonished at the waste, ineptitude and back stabbing that happens - yet somehow the corporate continues to thrive and throw off mountains of money.
The experience of that easy money breeds an unhealthy version of American exceptionalism where people start to believe they will and should succeed - just because American.
Things are different elsewhere in the world.
Up and comers make do with what they have and struggle upwards while the USA cruises.
Just one example are the thriving Chinese fabbing companies like JLCPCB. Every tech product contains a PCB. It's pretty obvious now that PCB manufacture is an absolute core competency in tech going forward.
Any two man upstart tech company can use JLCPCB's free online tools to design a PCB, then click to have the factory fabricate the board, solder on all the components and connectors, and have it in the customer's hands a few days later. True on demand manufacturing.
What would have cost thousands of dollars, taken months and required a team of experts a few years ago now takes days and costs a few bucks.
The US is nowhere in this relatively new but critical industry. The only US competitors are stuck in a local minimum where they get assured business at generous prices from security-sensitive govt agencies who can't outsource to China, but they can't remotely compete on price with their Chinese competitors on price or even quality and timeliness.
I often think of the USA as a melting pot in the truest sense. You have a little bit of different cultures percolating and bubbling in the fondue pot. Interesting things can come out of it...
But when the fondue "decides" to melt in a certain way, you get the unified ideas which seem impossible (like your airstrip example). Perspectives from all cultures aligned under one roof, while also aligned in direction.
As an American every self made millionaire I've known outside of software is the opposite of this. American success was about the small business made big. It's leaders were people who often built the company themselves. Who started with an idea themselves, who who grew in the kind of environment you outlined in the last part of your post. But those people are all old now, and the environment barely exists anymore. And they normally made their success in a non-glamorous industry making non-glamorous things.
You outline Jack Welch style American business, but that was a reinventing of American business to 'save it' (stock market 'keep the line going up' saving it, not actual saving it as long term GE was left worse off). This isn't the successful American business style that built the country originally.
Your airstrip to me sounds like basically what any American agriculture guy would have done, and in fact probably did do, all the time. My 2002 white Chevy pickup driving 70s millionaire neighbor does this sort of thing all the time in the forest he manages. He does more road work than the local government in crazy remote forrest
I like your takes. As an American, I agree.
The grass is greener though. Europe's work to live, not live to work aligns more with my sensibilities.
Everybody wants (western) Europe's QoL and American's money. What lies in the middle is tiny and every such place is top notch - Switzerland, maybe Singapore, maybe some more.
Small to tiny, highly cohesive, dont shy hard work and dont have unsustainable social utopias
Everybody wants (western) Europe's QoL and American's money. What lies in the middle is tiny and every such place is top notch - Switzerland, maybe Singapore.
You’re not addressing the parent’s question about how any of this is about the “Chinese way of thinking”. In fact, in offering a purely material explanation for China’s success, that it simply has more people and resources, you’re actively arguing against the idea.
I think the places where American inefficiency is most visible is in construction, urban planning, and healthcare.
America blows a significant amount of its money by having its citizens drive everywhere with no option to take a train, bus, bicycle, or low-speed e-scooter. Americans take a crazy percentage of their income and just dump it into the stagnant automotive industry. Americans blow between $5,000-10,000 a year on transportation. It’s so crazy that there is a pretty long list of American cities where moving from the suburbs to the most walkable part of the metro area of that city will net you more square footage in your dwelling after removing the $750/month expense of owning a personal vehicle.
Then you can’t even really fix this problem in America because construction costs are wildly inflated. China can build a high speed rail network for the entire country for the price of a handful of miles of subway in manhattan. Projects take an insanely long time, e.g., California high speed rail. Multiple US cities have a housing cost crisis because houses aren’t being built fast enough, and that’s more money in the economy being blown on rent and financial products rather than productive endeavors.
Hangzhou metro has 12 subway lines. In 2014 they only had one.
Finally, healthcare. America just blows double the amount of money on healthcare of the next most expensive country, with worse outcomes in part because they sit in their cars all day.
I don’t even think some of the problems you’ve brought up with America like the school system are as big of problems. America has really good public schools and universities, so good that Chinese people still come to the US to get educated en masse, even at pretty standard and average state schools.
The current government doing stupid shit like discouraging research and immigration is certainly not helping though.
Regarding your last point, back when my political views were "evolving", I had thought about if, instead of handing foreigners diplomas and kicking them out of the country as fast as possible, we should do the opposite: have student visas require that the recipient stay in the US at least five years after graduation, and then fast-track them through the permanent residency -> citizenship pipeline. It made no sense to me why we'd educate someone to get a degree in chemical engineering, possibly from a rival nation, and then send them back to where they came from. We should "brain drain" other countries, not the other way around.
Those foreign students usually pay for the education they receive, they might not be willing to do so (or as much) if there are strings attached. Besides, I don't think any country should aim on brain draining any other country, that kind of selfishness will be counterproductive long-term. Who knows, might be what we're seeing right now (the US self-sabotaging). Karma's a bitch.
I like the idea of incentivizing people to stay, but I don’t know how we could “require” it. I don’t want the U.S. to implement exit visas or egress control.
Maybe this could be done with a different mechanism like an incentive to stay or an escrow deposit that you get back once you’ve met the requirements.
I think a streamlined path to real citizenship would be an incredible incentive for a lot of people.
I think the world would be better on the whole if such people returned home and improved their countries. The US cannot brain drain the entire world for its own benefit.
That seems like a pretty good idea that’s worth trying.
I think the current logic is that foreign students pay the full unsubsidized sticker price, so it’s basically a profitable transaction.
Show me these magical cities where an extra $750/mo in rent lets you both move from the suburbs to downtown, and increase your sq footage!
Certainly! Here’s my source: https://youtu.be/kYLPUsn0X
The top 5 or 10 of these you’re basically getting close to equivalent square footage or better once you replace your vehicle spending with housing spend.
Well, the video isn't available. And it's a big ask to make way out there claims and then expect people to watch whatever that video was to fully understand whether the claims are true or not. This is basically asymmetric warfare in trolling.
"Here's my wild claim, to verify it go spend your time watching a video!"
I saw the video a few days ago. It uses some napkin math but the author does at least use a spreadsheet / toy model to arrive at their conclusions.
Ohhh okay ty "throwaway920102" will take your word for this.
Ray is a reasonably well-known current/former professional city planner who does look at data to make his content.
The videos he makes do sometimes use napkin math but in the way a city planner does napkin math - with data.
They also don’t claim to be a comprehensive study and each video is accompanied by a pretty thorough disclaimer on what methods are being used.
Odd and unfortunate that this one was taken down.
Was trying to be at least a little helpful "irl_zebra", not to suggest the video was sufficient evidence.
Interesting, I have never seen CityNerd take a video down. I’ll summarize it below my next couple of paragraphs.
Criticizing a source for being in video format and therefore taking time to digest is an invalid criticism. If I linked you a scientific study you’d still have to take time to read it to properly evaluate it. Just because a source in video form doesn’t make it not a source, and it’s not asymmetric trolling warfare. I’m literally just providing a source that aligns with my perspective and opinion, and trying to have a good faith discussion.
I will also point out that every YouTube video provides a full automated transcript on the desktop version of YouTube.
The gist of the video was that some selected American cities presented in a “worst to best” list have an interesting effect going on where people who live in suburban car-dependent areas can potentially live in their metro area’s most walkable neighborhoods with rich urban fabric without sacrificing a lot of square feet or potentially even gaining more space in their home by removing the cost of owning a car and putting that into their rent instead. Ray Delahanty, a (former?) professional city planner, ran through some data on this based on median rent in various neighborhoods and an assumed TCO of personal vehicle ownership of around $750 a month. Metro areas like New York City fared poorly but others presented an interesting trade-off potential.
Obviously, it was something of a simplified discussion that doesn’t take into account every life factor that determines whether car ownership is a requirement, but he is a guy who lived without a car in Las Vegas of all places, so I think the general point was to present a thought experiment on what kind of lifestyle you can get if you change your perspective to consider the idea of ditching your car entirely and no longer pay the very high average costs that Americans incur to own, operate, store, and maintain their vehicles.
Seriously, delusional take. I live in Manhattan and I’m considering a move to Westchester (large suburban county just north of NYC). Average cost per sq foot to buy in Manhattan is about $1500, and it’s about $400 in Westchester. That’s before you touch the other differences in cost of living (taxes, childcare, groceries, etc).
Manhattan is not one of those areas, and is actually one of the worst on the list. Mostly this applies to a lot of smaller cities, here’s my source:
https://youtu.be/kYLPUsn0X3E
So some or even many people explain America’s success as a result of diversity. If that’s true then either China will need to import a diverse population (axis of diversity is uncertain), or else diversity is irrelevant and they will succeed as a more or less undiverse population (whether people are actually Han doesn’t matter so long as they believe and the government classifies them as Han). It’ll be interesting to see.
Diversity is just short hand for US needs to brain drain from around the world, the success is system that disproportionaly increase size of US skilled workforce vs rest, so people better play nice with each other (worked well until not). When PRC went from making 1% of of global technical talent to 50%, and able to retain them or in this case redrain them, they win talent game for generations (at least until 2070s). They will output more stem in next 20 years than US will increase population, births + immigration, i.e. their technical workforce will be 2-3x US. "Diversity" can't brain drain enough to make a dent on those ratios.
"diversity" is an overbroad concept that covers many disparate social practices, a lot of which have nothing to do with technological progress.
I guess that the more focused question is whether China needs to import some amount of tech talent to succeed, at least temporarily. The reporting on this EUV prototype does suggest that that is what they did, giving foreign researchers special visas and whatnot.
China is in a bad place long-term with an inevitable population decline.
Long term is after you and I die, before that they'll reap the greatest high skill demographic dividend in human history that can put everyone else in a bad place long term first.
Which developed country doesn’t have a demographics problem?
Google the top 25 cities in China Skylines.
Your going to feel humbled.
Very impressive. Here are some other interesting google searches:
- "world-wide coal consumption by country"
- "countries with the most executions in 2024"
- "freedom in the world report"
- "world press freedom index"
- "climate change performance by country"
Enjoy.
Now divide "coal consumption", "executions" and " CO2 emission" by capita, it is also interesting.
Hopefully, this century, we can shed some of the 'dominating' mindset that has led to technological exclusionism in the first place. Not that catching up to the state-of-the-art isn't warranted, but that progress will become pocketed once more if we keep falling for the same economic traps.
It's interesting how this comes up when the west is the one that is trying to catch up :)
Fair enough, but the point still stands: innovation of equal benefit compared to isolationism once more with a hefty share of underhanded copying, which will ultimately result in similar technical capabilities anyways.
While historically this has been difficult to achieve, when innovation cycles shift there is an opportunity to shift ingrained practices too.
It’s only a matter of time, but time matters, as they say.
You should know that what China is doing was tried in the past. It is an old story. When the microchip was brand new (invented in the USA) the Soviets realized they needed the tech for military purposes. So they built a closed city devoted to silicon research called Zelenograd. It was staffed with very bright physicists and engineers.
But Zelenograd didn't make the Soviets a computing superpower. In fact they were always behind and fell further and further as time went on. The reason is that the Zelenograd scientists were given copies of US chips and told to clone them. By the time they finished cloning one chip the US had already invented several that were much more advanced. Unable or unwilling to forge their own path, even though they were smart enough to do so, they could not truly develop the in-house expertise needed to match the ever accelerating pace of innovation.
The Soviets never did catch up. Americans tightened security and they just fell ever further behind. By the 1980s they did not even have any attempt to develop an internal internet.
That China is running secret projects to try and clone ASML's machines isn't surprising because for all it has changed, it's still a communist state and its leaders still think in communist ways. They don't understand or appreciate distributed wisdom, so are mentally unable to truly understand how innovation works. Government projects like that are destined to fail - they will clone yesterday's machines tomorrow, and just like the Soviets, will fall further and further behind.
The thing that saves China is that its private sector actually does exist and is much more developed, so the Chinese government projects aren't the only way it can make progress.
The history of Soviet electronics manufacturing is fascinating, but there are some huge differences and I actually don't think the private sector is the largest. One is the pace and type of innovation. In the 70s and 80s the landscape was incredibly dynamic and technology went through several huge changes. If you wanted to run a clone of the US tech industry then, you would need a distributed, dynamic effort across many fields and not a top-down directed Manhattan Project. In 2025 we do have rapid technological change, but things are much more consolidated. In terms of strategically important recent innovations I can only think of EUV and AI. That's much more Manhattan-Project-able.
The other difference - which is even more significant - is that China is already far ahead in advanced manufacturing. The US was lightyears ahead of the Soviets in advanced manufacturing, which is what allowed us to win in the 70s and 80s. Now, we're so far behind it's not even funny. Sure, the West still makes some ultra-precise machines for EUV, but look where most of the components in those machines are made...
At the start of the microchip age, the US wasn't that far ahead. The techniques for manufacturing microchips weren't anything special and the Soviets could do so easily. The problem was the top-down mandate to clone, not lack of internal capability.
The analogy with Russia is too obtuse to be useful. Russia never was an economic exporting powerhouse with tons of manufacturing know-how and willing engagement in the larger international capitalist economies. I am no fan of the PRC, but there is plenty of intellectual, innovation, and economic competition within China to make your analogy unlikely to be helpful.
That said, the U.S., if it wants to stay ahead, also needs to fight trends toward reducing competition via de facto monopolistic behaviors by mega corporations with co-opted governmental protections.
Soviet Russia at that time was a global superpower that had developed nuclear weapons and was winning the space race. It only exported heavily to other communist states, but it definitely could do advanced tech and manufacturing.
Modern PRC and USSR aren't exact analogues, but the approach of their governments is clearly similar in this case.
Soviets winning space race during microchip era? I think you have mildly mixed up decades. Soviets were leaders till US put people on the moon, that was so far beyond what soviets were capable of this race stopped, and they just focused on ICBMs.
Soviet tech was sturdy and more primitive (thus more sturdy), much cheaper and they were willing to deliver it to anybody.
I wasn't attempting to be extremely precise with dates. My point was only that the Soviets and the US were technologically comparable in that era. Yes, the US put in huge efforts and were able to overtake them in the space race, largely due to a stronger economy rather than some unique technological skill.
The argument that never fails to appear: China’s failures are blamed on communism, while China’s successes are attributed to capitalism.
It never fails to appear because it's correct and obviously so. Look at when China started to become rich and what they changed around that time.
What do you think would have happened if 1989 had went a different way, China today is already united with Taiwan and basically a billion+ person version of Taiwan.
They would be less successful?
IMO, the difference between East and West is money allocation. In west, especially in the US, there are a lot money in the private sector, they will take the risk and fund moonshot projects; in China, the state will (have to) play that role. Yes, 90% of the projects will fail in the portfolio, that's part of the game.
There’s a NYT’s interview several months back where the journalist phrased it as in America, you have to prove success first to get funded. But in China, funding comes first and the successful companies emerge.
Which isn't at all accurate. Venture capital specifically exists to fund first, in the pursuit of success later - and the US has been by a dramatic margin the leader in doing that for the past ~60-70 years.
China has this process at the city state level. They can leverage their pegged currency to keep their citizen’s purchasing power lower than it should be to fund anything.
A downside is that their consumption economy is low, all their geo neighbors view them as a threat (reducing exports long term), and this contributes to high unemployment as productivity increases.
VC still requires startups to find themselves and prove something first. China basically has a program to do X and anyone can sign up to be a part of that program. All are funded and the winners emerge. I’m broadly generalizing that process but that’s not how VC approaches it.
So instead of "Come pitch us your varied and unique ideas and convince us how our investment will 1000x the returns" it's more like "we need this capability in this industry. Here is a pool of money for you to start figuring it out. We'll focus on the more successful companies over time until they can stand on their own and compete internationally."
I can't imagine why China is so dominant in so many areas when they explicitly plan and invest in capabilities they want to have instead of just relying on the market to "naturally" provide these capabilities or constantly relying on the same handful of inept and corrupt companies to deliver on national needs.
I think thats misunderstanding. China studied the US and learned from the US, the funding is almost the same way except the state funding has objectives other than returns. US has the best financial system, (well most effective and powerful). There is no way China can do better than the US, what we are seeing is that the objectives are very different.
That sounds more like Europe than America.
Europe is like the US, money is owned by private but they are old money, not new tech billionaires, and does not take the risks as the US. In China, money is owned by the state, and they are willing to take the risks as the US. In this way, I think China is more similar to US than Europe.
I wonder how much scam there is on US side...
To be honest, maybe only Americans themselves really understand it. Our understanding of them is that they have poured vast amounts of money into areas outside of technology.
“transparent computing” -> this shit: https://www.science.org/content/article/critics-pounce-china...
The final outcome is affected by the final 10%, you can even call it 1%, for which the semi-corrupt or "communistiquesque" countries never (seemingly) have the will or sheer talent for.
> "communistiquesque" countries never (seemingly) have the will or sheer talent for.
I don't have the data to back it up, but I think that there is actually the same amount of will and talent in China as in the West
Based on the population size and school system, I'd conjecture there's more... though there is brain drain and emigration to consider.
I'd rather be in China than the USA right now.
Are you being facetious or are you ignorant of what it's actually like over there?
https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
Or even worse, do you actually support their views on human rights?
In China you don't criticise the dictatorship and don't be a Muslim and your quality of life improves every year and you get many cool products and services. In the USA they are disappearing people at random and they are banning the import of products and services from the places that are producing them (mostly China).
The US disappeared a local business owner down the street from me in a sleepy suburb because he happened to be walking to his business one morning while brown.
ICE/BP was looking for someone else, but saw another brown person while waiting, and took the opportunity to grab him, too.
He was imprisoned for more than a month and shuffled around the country before anyone bothered to look at his identification or acknowledge their validity.
Are you aware of what's going on in the US right now?
NYT: Those Deported to El Salvador Were Shackled, Beaten, and Sexually Assaulted[1]
And if you're saying to yourself, "what do I have to worry about, I'm not brown", well, do you have kids who you don't want to have abducted and zip-tied naked in the middle of the night by paramilitaries using grenades and rappelling from helicopters into your home[2][3]?
> Neighbors like Eboni Watson say they ducked for cover as they heard several flash bangs.
> "They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other," Watson said. "That's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where's the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, 'fuck them kids.'"
> “It was heartbreaking to watch,” she said. “Even if you’re not a mother, seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.”
> "They just treated us like we were nothing," Fisher said.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/world/americas/el-salvado...
[2] https://www.rawstory.com/it-was-heartbreaking-naked-zip-tied...
[3] https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chicago-federal-agents-surr...
around 13 millons graduates each year and > 50% of them are STEM
The level of cope... The US and the west in general is on a much more dire trajectory than China (which is facing its own demons, no doubt about that)
There is not much left of communism in China besides the name, it's more akin to a government steered economy, which arguably is very similar to what the west had when we moved at our peak speed, albeit more authoritarian. They still have what we mostly lost: a long term historical view of geopolitic.
>There is not much left of communism in China besides the name,
After living 2 years in China and visiting the country every year for the last 12 years, I disagree with you.
Many not minor things in China are still very aligned with communism.
How the university system works, land property, production in unpopulated areas and small towns, participation of the government in industry, etc…
It's most accurate to say that China is still run by folks who are committed communists. These planners, by virtue of their decades of experience, understand the social value of markets and broad based technological growth, and want to wield those even better than liberal planners.
Yeah but then again most people think "if it's not capitalism it's communism", there is a whole spectrum and China definitely does not belong in the communist part of the spectrum anymore. It's a mix of authoritarian socialism and state capitalism, you can add many other words to the mix but communism isn't at the top of it anymore
New things deserve new definitions, we have to get out of the ww2 lingo where everyone is a nazi, a fascist, a communist or a capitalist, it's overly simplistic and muddies the water. 2025 China is completely different than 2000 China which itself is completely different than 1980 China.
> since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves.
This implies copying what someone else did. Rather than inventing something new. I know it's not what you meant but if it wasn't made by God it's because it's already made by someone else. The sentence says to me more about copying than some relentless pursuit. The people who invented the thing to copy, those were more relentless presumably.
And then again the Chinese invented plenty over the years. These generalizations are bit meh.
I don't see why copying is unnatural or even bad. Maybe within a single economy or a group of economies which share a common understanding and laws, chosing to discourage copying to incentivise other citizen innovators makes sense.
But in the global context, between adversarial nations, or even countries that don't see each other as equal, it is absolutely foolish not to copy. Since everything is framed in terms of game theories, what is even the benefit of not copying and being a "good boy" country?
In fact in this situation a country's IP is almost its liability and not its asset. Because it should cost the holding country money and resources so their citizens' IP is protected. And these resources are better off preserved for more crucial knowledge.
None of this even makes the copier's actions bad or immoral. They have a moral imperative to succeed.
Some copying creates a first mover disadvantage in game theory in regards to capital resource allocation. It requires second order thinking to understand, but it’s not super complicated.
Yes but thats not the copyers problem is it? Risk is inherent in all things the second order requires that you keep advancing by attracting resources.
It depends on the sophistication of your analysis.
What are possible problems you can imagine a copyer having?
You’re not wrong to think that way. But now there’s less and less left for China to “copy,” and it’s hard to argue that many things aren’t being invented by China itself.
Perhaps the real question is this: why is it that places that used to be technologically advanced no longer produce new, original inventions? Is it fear of China copying them? Did the U.S. decide not to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet because it was afraid China would copy it? Did it stop working on battery technology because it feared China would copy that too?
The joke is, if you want a consumer good to exist, but you don't want to do it yourself and you want it for cheap, just make a flashy Kickstarter for it, buy marketing, then cancel the Kickstarter and wait for Chinese"clones" to hit the market!
Can't wait to see the first Nobel prize in physics being awarded to a scientist who is actually a product of Chinese academy. Any moment now.
Nobel prizes in physics are awarded typically with lag of 20-30 years. In early 2000s China was still a relative backwater economically (and academically). In 2000 US R&D spending was over 8 times China's. Now China has likely surpassed USA. It surpassed EU already in about 2014.
Working in academia, the rise of China academically is palpable. There's an avalance of Chinese research published, and a reasonable chunk of it very high quality, and getting better.
https://www.statista.com/chart/20553/gross-domestic-expendit...
https://itif.org/publications/2025/06/30/china-outpacing-us-...
Nobel prizes are almost as sus as Oscars now. Corina Machado tells you all you need to know.
The peace price is different, and it's been a bit of a hit and miss at least since Kissinger got it.
And the economics prize, though it's not officially really a Nobel prize.
But the core science prizes, AFAICT, are pretty spot on. Of course there are always many worthy contenders of a prize and one can quibble should this or that person really deserve to get it instead of another person, but I haven't heard of any outright frauds or some trivial advancement getting the prize.
It's still very political - with a small p.
For example the recent nobel prize for Chemistry being awarded to David Baker, Dennis Hassabis and John Jumper.
Why the hell is David Baker on that list? He was just the head of a very big lab that was working in the traditional way using largely physics based approaches, making incremental progress.
AlphaFold blew that whole approach out of the water.
They cite the design of Top7 back in 2003 - it's not at the level of impact as Alphafold.
The impact of Alphafold is obvious to all - the importance of the 2003 Baker paper doesn't stand out to me from 1000's of other possible candidates - that's where self-promotion, visibility and politics plays a part.
The 2003 Baker paper has 2249 citations over 22 years. The 2021 AlphaFold paper has had 43876 citations in 4 years..........
Reminder that there are two different organizations that award “Nobel” prizes; one is the actual organization and the other is the Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden. Not the same people, etc.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but it will happen sooner or later.
Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention.
What I would consider as the most impactful inventions of the last decade would be things like mRNA, Generative AI, and reusable rockets - all came from the US and the US is maintaining the lead in them.
> What I would consider as the most impactful inventions of the last decade would be things like mRNA, Generative AI, and reusable rockets - all came from the US and the US is maintaining the lead in them.
This so myopic. The covid mRNA vaccine that Pfizer made billions from was done by BionTech a company in Germany led by immigrant turks.
Sure some American's recently got the Nobel prize for the pseudouridine modification - and whiles that's enabling it's not sufficient - you also need LNPs and a whole bunch of other stuff to make it all work - some of which was invented in America and some of which wasn't.
The nature of international science is collaboration.
The danger the for the US right now is it's cutting itself off from one of the biggest sources of innovation right now - China.
I’m sorry, but you are completely missing the point.
Nobody disputed that mRNA, like all science, has many inventors. And that many people in the west as a whole has worked on the technology. Everything you said about the contributions to mRNA is correct, and doesn’t diminish US’s critical part in it.
The point was, and remains, that saying that the US has stopped becoming innovative, is just nonsense.
Aren't we are talking about relative innovation?
Of course the US is still innovative - I think the question is whether countries like China are simply copying or now out innovating in some areas.
Their appears to be a lack of acknowledgement in the US about the current rate of innovation coming out of China these days - the days of only cheap knock-offs ( as with Japan before them ) is largely over.
In the areas I know - I see increasingly impressive innovation coming out of China right now.
The way the US is treating China right now is counter productive in my view. The biggest risk isn't the Chinese stealing US innovation - the biggest risk is the US cutting itself off from a key source of new ideas.
In my view the next Biontech is more likely to come from China than Germany.
I don't know why the US is treating it as a zero-sum game.
> Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention.
So you think that, as an advanced military project that should have been kept under the strictest secrecy, the Chinese somehow obtained it and, based on that, developed their own sixth-generation fighter—and even managed a successful test flight while the U.S. is still at the PowerPoint stage? I don’t know which scenario would be worse for the United States.
Well, if we compare what we know about China's NGAD, which is almost nothing, with what we know about US NGAD, which is also almost nothing, we can safely conclude almost nothing.
China doesn’t yet have the jet engine technology to compete with American 5th gen fighters. I certainly don’t think the US or anyone else should be complacent, but the US has a substantial lead for now.
Some relevant info here: https://www.flyajetfighter.com/the-ws-15-engine-enters-servi...
Not sure fighters matter as much these days - Russia has air superiority in terms of jets over Ukraine - but it uses them infrequently - appears the problem is the ground based counter measures are quite effective and much cheaper.
If they want to attack by air - drones and missiles rather than planes appear to be the way to go.
Similarly aircraft carriers - they can only really be used now to bully small countries. To anybody with significant missile/drone tech they are just massive, slow, sitting ducks.
What matters is drones and missiles etc and how fast you can churn them out. Who would win that?
The US is going to have to find a way to live with countries like China and India, rather than trying to suppress them.
The current US policy of trying to dismant all the organisations that were set up post world war II in order to keep the peace is madness.
>Russia has air superiority in terms of jets over Ukraine
No, no they do not. Russia has more fighter jets than Ukraine yes but that's not what "Air superiority" is, let alone "Air supremacy" which is what the USA designs for.
If you cannot suppress air defense networks, you do not have anything close to air superiority. If you cannot fly missions in an airspace, you do not have superiority.
>What matters is drones and missiles etc and how fast you can churn them out. Who would win that?
Drones and missiles still don't replace airframes. Do not mistake "Is new and the battlefield is still teasing things out" with "Is dominant forever". China definitely doesn't seem to think they are replacing airframes, and in fact is doubling down on making platforms that are aligned with US doctrine, like modern stealth fighters, carriers, and networked battlespace management.
Torpedo boats did not kill Battleships. Battleships were only replaced when their job could be done from longer range by an Aircraft carrier.
>To anybody with significant missile/drone tech they are just massive, slow, sitting ducks.
Only China with their legit Hypersonic weapons has a strong case for nullifying the carriers. US doctrine has included "Defend from 200 incoming weapons targeting the carrier" since the 60s when the Navy first built an entirely automated and networked fleet system to ensure that those incoming get tasked appropriately, and anti-missile defense is never a guarantee, but it works well enough that the sinking of the Moskva was utterly shocking to those familiar with it, and implies terrible things about Russian naval readiness.
The previous threat model of these carriers was supersonic bombers launching high speed cruise missiles 200 at a time from 100 miles out. Shaheds are not a threat. That's why the Navy started running primary 5inch gun practice against them. They are the same threat model as a helicopter because they are slow.
>The current US policy of trying to dismant all the organisations that were set up post world war II
Agree
>in order to keep the peace is madness.
What? That's uh, not what they are doing. See Venezuela.
All of the US military is a waste including 6th generation fighters. We hope china copies our disinformation campaign. In fact as the usa has been taken apart almost all of our big secrets are just disinformation
- stealth (not really) - aliens (sure....) - 6th gen jets (where are the jets?)
The reality is that everything that you do in peacetime is just to scare the enemy and will have very little effect in war. Since the US doesn't have as much industrial capacity the only winning war is nuke from space first or learn to get along
The Chinese are ahead at too many things at this point to think they're only good at copying
And it is not like making a copy for cheaper isn't something that requires skill and innovation. Or then iterate on that copy. Didn't Roomba just fail to these copies. If west was truly so much more innovative and better shouldn't they as company be infinitely ahead still?
That depends heavily on where the cost saving came from. For a long time China made cheap copies with extremely cheap labor, though that may no longer be the case as it seems they're innovating on the manufacturing process these days.
I never said that, or that there's something wrong with copying. I just said the sentence implies copying. Which it does.
And in fact this meme Chinese only copy is crap as I point out in my last paragraph. Over the centuries the Chinese were the first at quite a few things.
But the sentence says what it says.
And that copying was largely enabled by our greedy western bean counters that outsourced so many things in the first place.
Which in turn was fueled by the consumers' desire for cheap stuff, and for their portfolios to earn them a lot of money to be able to retire early and live comfortably while letting a cheaper workforce far away do more and more of the dirty and dangerous jobs.
The "bean counters" are under pressure just like everybody else. They didn't come up with their targets and incentives out of nowhere.
That's a fair point! I am myself wondering how much of this is policy and how much is the "natural way".
That's what happens when wages are relatively stagnant compared to increases in productivity.
To be fair, they were uncoordinated actors in a prisoner’s dilemma competition.
This was the role of government to manage but there weren’t enough non-lawyers at positions of power to understand fixes.
Now with the massive fraud seen in local states, civilians will rightfully trust institutions less and the downward trend will continue.
All is copied in one way or another, progress in a vacuum is truly artificial and those who've been singularly credited for certain inventions likely have so because of the luck of the draw.
If I was in china's position and so much is at stake, how can I go towards engineering all the tech from scratch when I can reverse engineer existing tech from west?
You wouldn't and you shouldn't. You should copy. It's what I would've done also. It's just what it is.
It's also the foundation of the US economy. Look up the cotton gin patent some time. And the early days of Hollywood.
And textile production and the industrialization of New England.