Comment by rayiner

China has pursued a phased approach to growth. Instead of trying to pull everyone up at once, it’s trying to get top tier cities to a high level of development before moving to other cities. Shanghai already has a GDP per capita (PPP) that’s comparable to Madrid. But there are provincial capitals with almost 10 million people that are less than half or less than a quarter of that.

Visiting cities is also a misleading way to compare the U.S. in particular to anywhere else. I have family in town in Mississippi that has less than 10,000 people. But the town has a household income over 60% of the national household income. Cost of living adjusted, they’re about as well off as someone in a top tier city. Someone with a median household income can afford a newly renovated, 4 bedroom, 2,500 square foot house.

I've been in China in 2015 and like anywhere else in the world it was very mixed: some urban areas like central NY or central Madrid and Milan (or much shinier) and some rural areas like 200 year ago, but inevitably with electronics.

Basically in every country of the world you can travel one hour from big cities and get in a place deep in the fields or the woods with very different needs and dynamics from the city. They could be different countries and maybe both cities and countryside will be better off if we could have fractally composed states with different laws and regulations.

I mean, you have those kind of luxuries even in the poorest of countries in Asia, it’s just that there’s still a huge discrepancy between rich and poor, city vs countryside.

It’s not difficult to find areas in all these countries that are significantly less developed than Spain/Portugal’s underdeveloped areas. It’s just not as black and white as you seem to suggest.

(I come from EU but have been living in various countries in Asia for over a decade)

Not to disagree with you too much, but

> I am still shocked Spain/Italy and USA are considered 'first world' countries.

They're a mix. Rural southern Italy isn't the same as e.g. Milan or Venice. I've walked from 1st world to third world within a few blocks in San Francisco. It's a slightly longer walk in Cape Town.

> I was surprised by the penetration level of the mobile devices - everything had a QR code, you could buy/sell/send money,

I've has exact same experience in places in Africa (1). Yes there's poverty and crime, but also if the technology is affordable, effective and reduces the need to handle cash then it's adopted fast enough.

People's understanding of that part of the world is also decades out of date. Mobile devices actually "leapfrogged" the wired telecoms network rollout (2), but that was decades ago. Africa is huge and diverse, and it is not going to be China this decade, but also it's changing fast.

And it might be China-aligned as China positions to be a reliable trading partner with affordable goods. It's possible that affordable Chinese solar-battery electricity systems will cause another leapfrog. This includes Chinese EVs (3).

1)

https://www.m-pesa.africa/

https://www.payshap.co.za

2) https://mg.co.za/news/tech/2014-06-12-cellphones-create-a-te...

3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo---4TAIEA&t=528s

In 2017 maybe. This chart shows last year’s Neurips accepted papers by country and institution (top 50). What is missing here is that the papers from American institutions also have mostly Chinese authors. Europe is sliding and Singapore has more papers than Canada.

There is a clear trend.

https://www.reddit.com/r/accelerate/comments/1pi64q0/papers_...

US is still winning because of their hardware dominance. Also they have astronomical budgets and much better financing. They throw money at an industry until they win. Whereas China throws lots of (educated) people at it. 38% of top AI researchers today have Chinese education and origin^. And hardware dominance will change in the upcoming years.

^ https://archivemacropolo.org/interactive/digital-projects/th...

From the Hoover Institution’s analysis of the team behind DeepSeek:

“We find striking evidence that China has developed a robust pipeline of homegrown talent. Nearly all of the researchers behind DeepSeek’s five papers were educated or trained in China. More than half of them never left China for schooling or work, demonstrating the country’s growing capacity to develop world-class AI talent through an entirely domestic pipeline. And while nearly a quarter of DeepSeek researchers gained some experience at US institutions during their careers, most returned to China, creating a one-way knowledge transfer that benefits China’s AI ecosystem.”

That was from a year ago.

Consider that on top of this the country was starved of access to Nvidia chips - and therefore accelerated its development of Ascend chips, and it’s clear they are undeniably leaders in AI research and development. Not the only ones, but the achievements are crystal clear.

Okay but I cannot stress this enough: no one cares.

It's international politics. The rules are optional, and written on the back of whoever agrees to enforce them.

If you're going to run around declaring AI is a strategic advantage vital to national security, then guess what? Stealing it is a great idea. That you stole it is only a problem if it means you're not developing the ability to support that work locally as well, and China seems to be doing very well at building it's local talent and support network.

If you ever listen to Russian propaganda, there's a similar theme: every big idea, everything good, all of it was definitely first developed in Russia - only Russians could ever have thought of it. Of course, Russia isn't actually a world leader in any of those things, or able to execute on them.

Which is what America is sounding like more and more these days.

What about EVs, solar, or batteries? They are leading these fields for some time.

This isn’t even controversial assuming you’re talking about the real world, economists freely admit that. It only holds for spherical markets in a vacuum.

What do you mean, I don't follow.

Also, yes, often.

How is the efficient market hypothesis applicable here?