China is old [1] and broke [2]. It won't be able to afford to attack Taiwan - for reference, 1930s Japan and Germany had way more young people. Japan was also rich from its empire, while Germany transitioned away from gold standard to afford its wars. 2022 Russia thought the war would end in 3 days.
Also, as we see from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, drones and missiles are effective at taking out the world's second largest navy. Taiwan has very accurate and effective homegrown missiles [3]. China would need to amass a ton of ships which would be easily detected, staff them with only sons from families, and try to move them across a 100 mile straits while under the barrage of US/Japan/Taiwan missiles and drones.
Lastly, China is quickly transitioning to state run economy much like Soviet Union [3], which means innovations and growth will be gone forever, especially in tech industries.
> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving
Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell.
"The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies. It found that the share of total market capitalization held by state-controlled enterprises, in which the government holds a stake of 50% or more, rose to 50% by the end of 2023, the highest proportion in five years"
Aren't you presenting a false dichotomy here? Perhaps they are having their cake and eating it too, so to speak. Not to comment on the supposed economic malaise of the moment.
Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!
This is sound analysis sans ideological bs. The system lacks a self-correction mechanism.
The profit driven system is supposed to self-correct. We see this today, with Boeing for example (yes /s).
Now beyond snark, we can ask is the same thing happening to us that happened to the "commies" with the 'defense and national security' establishment raising troubling doppelgangers of "state industry" from the body of "market driven" neo-liberal capitalist societies?
So, we see issue is not really "ownership" but rather establishments ..
In fairness, there is a good chance Boeing is self-correcting now. After deaths and lawsuits. If it were a governmental entity, it’s plausible that would not happen and the company would continue as before.
At least that’s the idea, I think. May as well steel man the argument.
Eh, Boeing is a defacto state owned enterprise. Check out their board composition if you don’t believe me.
Or are you more complaining about the lack of honesty in these defacto situations?
In China, any company larger than a tiny one is state controlled anyway - someone from the CCP needs to have a board seat, and everyone knows what happens if you anger the party.
Considering the the stated goals of the Chinese government and past actions, I can’t see how anyone would consider the state owning a major share of a Chinese company to be either a net negative or neutral at best.
It's a bit hilarious that there are attempts to convince people on a board for hackers and startup founders that state owned enterprises are great and amazing!!
I think it’s good to be clear headed and acknowledge empirical evidence when it’s there. Context is useful in understanding the mechanisms of society!
“This thing goes against my orthodoxy therefore I refuse to see it” is exactly the sort of attitude that gets you far away from success.
For the record, I was merely saying it’s possible for a state owned enterprise to do things quickly, even if in practice most of them don’t. So much of the world is just about having the right kind of people at the right place, and that’s true in the public sphere and the private one.
I mean the topic of this thread is basically on how we have a bunch of well performing, pretty fast Chinese companies. This is happening despite these companies having a lot of buy-in from the state (down to outright ownership).
One might start trying to say "well a bunch of money from the state isn't enough to consider it a state owned enterprise", but then the contention is a bit more specific than just about being state owned.
I invite you to share your evidence that all private enterprises are strictly superior to any state owned enterprises, as that is clearly the stronger (and less likely to be valid) position.
I used to think it’s open mindedness but I think it’s more hubris.
The other day a guy was complaining about being in jail for a time and how unfair it was that he had a criminal record. Lots of open minded people praising him.
Then a new user called him out for trying to get with a 12 year old. Yikes.
Regardless, China figured out some formula that has been incredibly successful the last couple decades. While I have doubts about this approach being sustainable, hindsight is 20/20 and we can’t predict the future.
The "formula" was capitalism, introduced by Deng Xiaoping, which lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty.
However, Deng also introduced China's 1-child policy (decidedly not capitalism), which is now beginning to seriously strain the system. The future is indeed uncertain.
Sure, then by all means share your evidence or data for a successful foreign state owned enterprise vs private enterprises in that country and other countries
Aramco’s not a perfect example, as it was built up as a private corporation, and only nationalized as a relatively mature corporation. It also has a state-sanctioned monopoly on a very low-cost, high-price commodity. On the other hand and to be fair to Aramco, the Venezuelans managed to make a mess of their state oil monopoly.
I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy?
Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demographic implosion will do it. But it does not seem like your daddy's communism....more like a capitalism-communism fusion that combined with nationalistic pride and a desperation to account for all the over production might lead to surpassing what the soviet union could only dream of.
The money has already been made by those in power and the only way to make more is to follow the government gravy train. For the last decade that has meant batteries, EVs, semiconductors, displays are all so heavily subsidized (factories are built with free government loans) that doing anything else (other than buying property) makes no sense. That doesn't mean the people aren't motivated, smart, and ingenious, but they won't be making back the $T in loans.
The lie flat movement is a legitimate movement that touches upon the same problems the youth are experiencing elsewhere around the world but it appears to be a fizzling movement everywhere. Even the US equivalent of quiet quitting and utter hopelessness is waning in the US with the slow demise of the far left and right.
Its easy to see this in the US. Ignore the news and Twitter and look at results. This election cycle Justice Democrats: the poster child of the progressive left has no choice but to just defend their existing seats having already lost one and some of their top stars nearly losing their seats last cycle.
Ignoring the age issue in the far right (not enough young people replacing the dying elders in the movement), we have repeated losses in special elections due to their stance on abortion indicating their current plan of action is not in sync with where the country is. That does not look long term promising for the movement. Either they move left or they will continue to cede power at all levels of the government.
No one doubts that Chinese people work incredibly long hours. They do so because there’s been a strong link between input and output. The harder you work, the wealthier you get. That has been incredibly motivating … so far. In an economy that isn’t growing quite so fast, people might not see the same returns for their labour that they did between 2001-19. They might not work as hard.
That’s speculation though. What we do know is that the CCP is changing the way of managing the economy. Between 1992 and 2019 they leaned heavily on the private sector for growth. They would do anything they needed to help private enterprise succeed. That approach paid rich dividends, it’s obvious.
Xi Jinping is going a different way now though. He reckons he knows better than Deng, the architect of the Chinese economic miracle. His approach is to pick winners and losers. It may succeed because he’s picked good horses so far - EVs, solar panels, AI, semiconductors. And state led capitalism has had success in China, with major players like Huawei doing well despite major headwinds.
Because of this shift in approach you can’t extrapolate from the success of 2001-19 and say China’s future success is inevitable.
If you define hard work as intellectually challenging work, there absolutely is a strong link between hard work and wealth in China. Even the corrupt bureaucrats have to pass a difficult exam to become bureaucrats.
Which one and why is cheating nepotism not as widespread as with everything else? In a company or functioning democracy in competition, if you nepotism, you kill the company..
> Only if the person picked via nepotism isn’t competent.
It'd be interesting to know how much this phenomenon would explain the stability of otherwise culturally ossified regimes that stood for four or five centuries before collapsing, where government was built almost entirely out of extreme nepotism in which the ruling potentate had 50 or 60 kids to choose from, and thus had a shot at picking the most capable from the, er, top of the class.
Or the most ambitious /ruthless pick themselves, taking the old man and/or their dangerously competitive siblings out of the picture.
Either way there is a little more competition involved then what we normally think of with a modern family unit.
No drugs at private schools? The machinery catering to wealthy parents is good at 3 things, placatting parents, preventing scandals, creating interelite connections. It's not good at educating, no matter how expensive. There is simply put absolutely no incentives to work
Those seem like pretty critical skills to teach someone in the ruling elite actually.
Doing those things at scale is ‘work’ even if it isn’t what most people consider work.
Learning how to sweat a pipe is useful if that’s what you’re going to need to do to put food on the table.
Learning how to placate powerful sponsors, not get caught doing naughty things, and networking among other power brokers is how you put food on the table as a ruling elite isn’t it? Or at least avoid being burned at the stake.
And not something they’re going to teach effectively at your neighborhood public school.
This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy?
Exactly. The OP didn't know any English teachers in China, or else they can verify that Chinese workers in private enterprises nap on the job/play on their phone/waste a ton of time, to get through the long working hours.
Interestingly I’ve heard this observation about American managers in US multinational businesses in Europe, that they seem to performatively do the long hours, for the sake of their own managers view of them, but that little of it is actual productive time.
I’ve not really observed it myself, and I’d suspect that part of it might be very different styles or ways of working. But maybe there’s a grain of truth there.
There is an argument to be made then when a country is on the rise and developing rapidly there is a sense of PMA(Positive mental attitude) among the people. Maybe you are just projecting American stagnation on Chinese?
You would be astonished how many people want to live a calm and good life, with making money as just one mean, and hence secondary, if you would come out of your capitalist bubble.
No state owned enterprises in the history of the world has the quality you've just described - fiercely competitive, nationalistic pride, desperation.
China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
Unless you want to keep your head in the sand and pretend this is the soviet union all over again, you better start paying attention to how fast they are iterating.
>China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
Yeah this is the Peter Zeihan thesis but you know what, it might take a while for this to play out and in the meantime, China may not leave the arena until after they have taken out a large chunk of the western incumbents.
You're really gonna take a statement from a CEO that it's important for the government to intervene in order to protect his profits at face value? Elon's made some stupid decisions in the past but I don't think he's stupid enough to be honest. Not lobbying for protectionist measures even if they aren't needed would probably be some sort of corporate malpractice.
When it comes to getting advice on where the EV market is going, I am definetly going to listen to the guy who is the leader of EVs in the US. Would I take relationship advice from him? Probably not, but we are talking about the EV market here.
I - that's a truly stunning mindset I don't have words. Why would you consider the market leader of a market a reliable source for information on the market? Maybe this is obvious to me coming from a world where all banks have their own analysts and all but the idea of trusting a market leader is just insane. Information asymmetry is so important to capitalism he's obviously not going to provide the full picture. There are entire university departments dedicated to coming up with clever estimates for how much drugs cost to develop to justify high prices. This sounds like, would you trust a pharma CEO if they were providing advice on where the pharma market is going? Or a tech CEO on where the tech market is going? Elon is, as you clearly stated, the leader of EVs in the US. Why would you take his advice on the EV market!? The base assumption is that he's going to be quite strongly motivated to stay leader of the EV market, why would you think he cares about giving you accurate advice?
>Why would you consider the market leader of a market a reliable source for information on the market?
You seem to be ignoring how they literally created and led this market over the last 15+ years. I get how you are so blinded by your hate of one man that you completely ignore the facts on the ground but do you have to make it so obvious?
> Maybe this is obvious to me coming from a world where all banks have their own analysts and all but the idea of trusting a market leader is just insane. Information asymmetry is so important to capitalism he's obviously not going to provide the full picture.
This would be a plausible statement if it hasn't been disproven time and time agin over the last 10 years. See the entire short industry that got burned by their analysts. I was there on day 1 of the /r/Realtesla a subreddit dedicated to pushing the thesis of following industry experts and analysis. In 2019 they were convinced that Tesla was structurally bankrupt.
The hard lesson I learned after years of failed predictions based on analysis is that banks and analysts only have a snapshot of a current moment in time and do not consider the fast moving nature of innovation led companies.
They have gotten this wrong with many tech companies but especially Tesla. Just to give you one example: all the analysts and shorts were certain that Tesla would fail in 2018 due to their live up to the minute counts of materials going in and out of the factories. They had live video feeds of everything happening outside the factory. They failed to predict Musk using a loophole in California laws to set up a giant tent and get production levels increased. That changed the entire calculus.
Musk has repeatedly proven the analysts wrong and so I'd ask why would you continue to trust them? Their motivation is to get people to pay their fees yet it seems as if they suffer no major consequences for continually getting it wrong.
Going back to what Musk said(which you obviously didn't even bother reading): "If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
You might be able to make the argument that he is self serving in his comments but this quote is a poor hill to die on.
I mean, if you're just going to ignore the core point then I guess feel free. The disconnect seems to be that you think it's somehow reflects poorly on Elon that he's good at his job! Being self serving is good, controlling information to maximize your leverage is good, these are good things. Especially in a competitive market! The stupid decisions I'm referring to tend to be ones like buying Twitter or tweeting nonsense that causes him to lose control of the narrative. I don't care whether he actually thinks that not having trade barriers means Tesla will be wiped out, all that matters is that lobbying for trade barriers is the right move for the business. Also what's your obsession with trusting people? Why would you trust analysts? Or any source of information? Every source of information is biased, incomplete, and useful.
They've been massively increasing their defense spending, though you're right, it's not a majority of GDP.
In addition, they've been trying to massively increase their military capacity, but throwing money at it only does so much: you also need young men, and there's not that many that think being in the military is a great idea, and people aren't having kids any more. At least in the old Soviet Union, there was no lack of young men being raised.
The last blurb in the article is the most damning part.
"Ma spends much of his time abroad, especially in Japan where he is a visiting professor at Tokyo College, a research institute run by the University of Tokyo"
Jack Ma has no hope for China, as evident by his action. The long internal post may have been requested by the Chinese government, or his staff, to somehow rally Alibaba's failing image. But Jack sees the real pictures on the ground in China. And he chooses Japan.
And the young in China knows it too. That's why the young are laying flat. and sneaking through Mexico into US. and fleeing to Cambodia and Myanmar for work.
Of course he has no hope. I recall he suddenly disappeared for a long time after criticizing the Chinese government. It seems entirely possible he was held against his will for forced reeducation. Hard to believe in the country that does that to you.
The young in China are so disillusioned, they are buying gold in droves this year [1] (instead of putting it in bank, or invest in stock market or real estate)
Just a best guess: I think essentially he's been officially hobbled in China but not technically under house arrest, so-to-speak. There's not much future for him in China. His wealth is likely a key-stroke away from being confiscated and he knows it.
> a phenomenon we see in the entire developed world, or possibly the entire world
No. The difference is the talented and otherwise ambitious are being sacrificed by an older generation to an exceptional degree in China. That's happening elsewhere, too. But because the political systems are not dictatorships, they're able to adapt.
No, NEET stands for "Not Employed, Educating, or Training" and Hikikomori translates literally to "Pulling Back In". Both phenomena result in the individual abdicating his productivity in deference to pursuits such as resolving crises and introspection.
Tang Ping on the other hand is a phenomenon where the individual only produces as much as his environment demands of him. If he contracted with his employer to work 9 to 5, he will work 9 to 5 and not a second more. If his work description is producing Powerpoint slides, he will produce Powerpoint slides and only Powerpoint slides. If he is remote work, he will quit rather than come into the office. He will then use the freed up time and energy on other pursuits he deems worthy.
The Soviet work ethic was "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work". It wasn't about doing the bare minimum for your job, it was about finding creative ways to do much less than the bare minimum.
So Tang ping is quiet quitting, i pretty much do the same 95% of the time.
The boss pays me from 9 to 5 so once its 5 and no important deadline i stop at 5 and live my life.
Tanping is just slacking. Tanping kids still work. But it's still the same phenonmenon as the developed world, PRC single kids who grew up with silver spoon and high expectations realizing that they're pretty mid, and can't out compete their "betters". So they slack and take life easier. It's basically the normal distribution in every western workplace. Workers with prospects still grind to work their way up the (involution) rat race . Western media portrays it as big deal, but it's not even western "antiwork" work level of subversive.
Emerging PRC analogues to NEETs/Hikikomori are "full time kids". TLDR is high savings rate and culture = kids live with parents and do bumfuck while looking for jobs they think are their level. Some will settle for employment beneath them, some will live off their parents dime if their parents can support it. Cause is PRC went from single digit to 60% tertiary rate in last 20 years, there's too much talent/competition last few years as graduating classes got larger and larger but not enough jobs uni kids want.
I think it's a bit more serious than that. Those self same "mid" kids would've had no problems meeting expectations if they'd been born 10 or 20 years ago because China was experiencing one of the most unprecedented growth periods in history.
If growth stalls but expectations of what "success" looks like in life remain the same then inevitably the more rational amongst them will look and see that just achieving a "normal" life seems incredibly difficult.
Those same mid kids would likely work a medicore blue collar job but be able to afford real estate after a few years of saving while the market was low. Some of them might be lucky and have first mover entreprenured their way to being million/billionaires despite not being very bright (like Ma). Same lament as kids in west when their parents worked mid jobs and could raise a family. Dual income young professional households who can't buy a house while their parents without degrees have multipe + land in cottage country. Now PRC kids dealing with same shit kids in west are, academic inflation + increase cost of living + easy speculative R/E wealth is gone. Meanwhile no one wants to do "hard" work because they spend too much time in school to do manual labour. They want top 10% income air conditioned office jobs befitting their degree.
I'm not saying it's not serious, it's also not particularly special to PRC. Like the few tanping kids I hear about IRL in PRC are like your typical western kids with comfortably wealthy boomer parents who can afford to fuck around because they got safety net/inheritance down the line. Everyone else grinding while joking about tanping, like antiwork folks in the west bitch about their conditions, but eat continue to eat shit all the same.
the difference is that there isn't 1 billion people in the west -- US (330M) + Europe (500M) still isn't close. lots of space in the US to move to, also.
and the ability to be extremely vocal about it -- which could get you sent to jail or otherwise ruin your life via social credit scores.
point is, the kids in China have it notably rough.
Only because there is a term for it in Chinese, it doesn't mean this problem unique to China in any way. And it also didn't start in 2022 when "quiet quitting" became popular, it's a tale as old as time.
By buying BYD, you are supporting the Chinese government, which is actively supporting Russia [1]
By buying BYD, you are supporting Chinese government's deep subsidization of BYD and its heavy loss per vehicle, to dump on and destroy US/Europe/Japan auto industries and its labor forces
Most people buying BYD abroad are not in those countries. Australians, for example, don't very much care if they are destroying US/European/Japan auto industries, and are sort of liberated by the lack of any car manufacturing in their own country.
well, Australians should care. Australia is part of aukus which is security pact along with US and UK meant to push back against China. Less they've forgotten, Australia was engaged with trade war with China earlier when China slapped unreasonable tariffs on Australia due to Australia wanting to investigate the origin of covid that killed thousands of Australians.
They just want affordable cars, price is going to win over anything else. A bunch of anti trade US folks aren't going to move the empathy needle with them. The developing world that BYD is mainly selling to is going to care even less.
As an Australian, I can tell you our view is more nuanced than "we are a vassal state of the USA".
> Less they've forgotten, Australia was engaged with trade war with China earlier
Oh, we haven't forgotten. The war was triggered by madness from both sides. Madness from someone taking violent exception to a nickname like Pooh is to be expected. Whatever your private opinions on that, it's understood here one must be pragmatic in your public positions when dealing with such people when they are your biggest trading partner. Even innocent mistakes could cost you billions. Our prime minister fanning conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID wasn't an innocent mistake, it was fiscal insanity. He was ousted in a landslide at the next election. And despite China being being our biggest trading partner, we won that war. It hurt China far more than it hurt us. It turned out Australia is far better and faster at rejigging its international trade than China.
> Australia wanting to investigate the origin of covid that killed thousands of Australians.
Australian's see it differently. What hurt us was the refusal of OECD countries to honour agreements to ship vaccines we had bought and paid for. With no vaccines (the one we did produce ourselves, AstraZeneca, got unapproved after we had produced huge quantities of it) we had to shut down internal borders, trade and large parts of our economies to prevent the spread, until we could get the vaccines. It was a difficult time. Yet despite those challenges, Australian emerged from COVID sooner, and with less economic damage that most other countries.
But you are right in thinking Australian's in general are anxious about what is happening in China. It's constantly in the news. I'd be stunned if Australian citizens weren't better informed on China is doing in the South China Sea, of it's real estate crash, and premier Xi's actions than USA citizens. But you know what? We watch what Trump is doing in the USA equally closely, and it causes us just as much anxiety. Trump closing the USA off from the rest of the world would likely have far worse consequences for us than a trade war with China that we won. When it comes to damage inflicted on it's citizens, nothing beats a countries own incompetent management. Trust me, we know. Or if you don't trust me ask someone from Türkiye, or Venezuela. On the up side, I do have a lot of faith in the USA's political institutions. They've survived a lot worse than Trump.
There is a lot of animosity even from our closest allies that Americans are often too arrogant and take respect for granted. We are just allies, we agree with some things, but those countries are going to go their separate ways if it fits their needs better.
Sure, that happened with Europe, when Europeans laughed at trump wanting to terminate nato for not contributing to their promised defense spending. then Russia attacked. Europeans are now firmly allied with US against Russia and China.
When China attacks Australia again, either via a trade war again, or a territory war like Chinese ships water torpedoing Philippine ships or China killing Indian soldiers, perhaps Australians will then change their mind, at least the ones that had dollar signs only in their head.
People respected Australia before for standing up to China and calling China out for covid origins.
> then Russia attacked. Europeans are now firmly allied with US against Russia and China.
Trump said he would use Russia to destroy Europe, and was more interested in blackmailing Ukraine then helping them ward of Russian aggression. It’s no wonder Trump is so popular in Russia and hated very much in rest of Europe.
I think this is a big problem in the EV race. Most Western companies are still unwilling to get their hands dirty, even as China's grip on raw materials and refining has become a serious geopolitical threat.
You can build a manufacturing base, but can you also "build" the workforce willing to work for manufacturing sector wages while keeping the prices competitive?
China hasn't been a low-wage country since 2016. They're able to continue to build cheaply because they built an efficient and comprehensive supply chain with increasing levels of automation and robotization. BYD factories are full of robots.
1. Wages in the US are still way higher than China.
2. Cost of manufacturing something is much more than just raw workers' wages. There's environmental regulations and protections as well, insurances, taxes, pension contributions, etc all being significantly less in China than the US or the west.
Especially the environmental part. Also work accidents. If a worker in China looses a thumb, it's no biggie, If a worker in the US does, he'll sue and win a 6 figure payout.
All these make manufacturing in the US much more expensive even if wages were to be the same.
Slowing down China innovation rate is essential for defeating Russia, since China is actively supporting Russia.
It doesn't matter what you're doing you know, China is in a Great Depression and will be there for 30 years. It will be even poorer, older, and isolated in 30 years. Also, if you believe what you say, move to China. Stop hiding in the comforts of a democratic country.
I'd love to see the studies mentioning 10% efficiency gains if you have a chance. also, do these studies balance against cost of running the models? remember, that's why stability.ai has collapsed.
It's not a matter of time, cars and the car industry are treated as national security. Chinese EV cars will be even more tariffed in US and Europe in 2024/2025
Xiaomi isn't dumping (yet), but BYD is, and US is already keenly aware of Chinese dumping of electric vehicles years ago, that's why US currently has the 25 percent tax on Chinese made autos that Trump started in 2018, and Biden has continued since [1]. And that has so far prevented BYD and its Chinese EV peers (90 makers so far, but looking like 2-3 bankruptcy each month) from entering US market. Republican lawmakers and Trump are also looking to apply a 100% tariffs [2]
Europe, the slow hare to US's rabbit, finally woke up in 2023, but just barely. They kicked off an inquiry into tariffs on Chinese EV vehicles in October 2023, and would take up to a year to finish [3]. These tariffs looks to be retroactive, as they have started requiring Chinese EV vehicles to be registered [4]. Europe, albeit slow witted, probably isn't going to willingly allow China to kill its own car industry, especially since China is actively helping Russia in attacking Europe.
Take off your rose colored Chinese dictatorship worshipping glasses. China is in a Great Depression and will be there for 30 years. It will be even poorer, older, and isolated in 30 years.
Also, if you believe what you say, move to China. Stop hiding in the comforts of a democratic country while wishing free countries to fall
At this point, arguing about democracy feels like the political equivalent of saying "I went to Paris, and spent the whole time moaning that I couldn't get Del Taco." I guess it doesn't matter if a country is raising its quality of life metrics, or advancing up the economic ladder. Whether the population is content or satisfied with its leadership? Nope. The only relevant metric for human achievement is the invention of a multi-party electoral system.
Except it's even worse than that. It's so easily reduced to parody because it was a strawman to begin with. We don't really give a flying ** about democracy; if that were true, would we have backed the string of strongmen running South Korea in the first 35 years of its independence? Would we ever let a single dime reach Saudi Arabia? I wish our leaders would be honest about it though-- if we just said "we have economic and military hegemony and it's our mission to preserve it", then nobody will waste their efforts trying to find middle ground and win-win solutions.
We should ask why China is winning hearts and minds overseas: maybe they're prioritizing the things people actually need? They don't come in and airdrop a half-baked democracy on a country with little interest in it. They've been loose with the economic aid, and have strayed away from the Western/IMF "let's demand massive austerity and privatization" gameplan. There's nothing stopping the US from doing the same things, but with a bigger bankroll to play with.
Now, could we try some strategic empathy, learn about other people around the world, why they despise us, and maybe try to arrest the collapse of the West?
Also, as we see from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, drones and missiles are effective at taking out the world's second largest navy. Taiwan has very accurate and effective homegrown missiles [3]. China would need to amass a ton of ships which would be easily detected, staff them with only sons from families, and try to move them across a 100 mile straits while under the barrage of US/Japan/Taiwan missiles and drones.
Lastly, China is quickly transitioning to state run economy much like Soviet Union [3], which means innovations and growth will be gone forever, especially in tech industries.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
[2] https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/global/frugal... https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/325...
[3] https://www.eurasiantimes.com/taiwan-smashes-chinese-warship...
[4] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-sta...