I think the main reason alibaba got beat down was because it was moving from "tech" into finance offering unregulated loans and jack ma criticizing regulators did not help at all.
And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.
Alibaba is like Amazon, they are known for commerce but have branched out into so many other things, they even have or had a quantum computing effort. Most Chinese companies work under the ask for forgiveness rather than permission creed, because I think that’s how the only way they can do anything at all as the government itself moves slowly, if your project is successful it will be blessed after the fact as always the true way (eg wepay and Alipay started like that). Ma’s mistake was in at least not pretending it wasn’t like that.
There are still issues to solve. With a randomized queue order of matching trade pairs, in order for you to maximize the probability of your trade succeeding you could flood the market with buy or sell orders with price x and amount y.
Though I guess you could group orders by price & amount, which would negate some of this. Per trade fees could also help mitigate it.
As someone with severe Asian flush, with an overactive ADH gene (gene that converts of alcohol to acetaldehyde) and 2 defective ALDH2 alleles (gene that breaks down acetaldehyde into harmless byproducts), I wish there is a way to repair these genes using MRNA. I don't feel even the mildest buzz from alcohol but I instantly get a hangover when I drink.
mRNA injections won't do it. You'd need a CRISPR for that. And someway to get the rest of your body to take up the cells with the new genes, and you're a little late for most of your cells. I think you're better off searching for non-alcoholic alternatives in the short-medium term.
Slow adoption of firearms by the Chinese was less to do with the crossbow than the fact that the Manchus occupied China during a period when firearms was coming of age. The Manchus famously despised gunpowder weapons in favor of the bow and arrow which they held in extremely high regard. After all it was the bow that in part helped them defeat the disintegrating Ming empire which invested heavily in gunpowder weapons like cannons.
In their early years of Western expansion, the firearms units was always staffed by the Han Chinese and were of low status.
Hmm. That makes sense. Probably also why the Qing underestimated naval cannons at around the time of the Opium Wars.
I was thinking though, about how long the Chinese had gunpowder, and even bombs before the gunpowder formulas proliferated through the Silk Road, pre-Ming.
The Qing also fielded firearm units. The Manchu bows and arrows evolved to taking the role of short-range weapon, ceding the long-range to firearms. Maybe it was a case of not going all in with firearms.
Why didn't the German government massively subsidize Green energy?
How on earth is it right to criticize a government for subsidizing green energy in the face of climate change? The reason why solar panels are so cheap today was because Chinese companies achieved economies of scale due to governmental support. This is a GOOD thing.
European countries were way ahead of the curve 10 years ago in terms of these green technologies but chose to do nothing. Their solar companies could have been world leaders as long as governmental policies supported them too. They would have been wiping others out. How can anyone blame China for investing/subsidizing in green energies? The way I view it, it's their just rewards for at least taking this aspect of green technology seriously while others did next to nothing in terms of subsidies.
> Why didn't the German government massively subsidize Green energy?
But they did? (Sorry if Iʼve misunderstood you.)
“According to a 2016 study commissioned by a neoliberal think tank, €150 billion have been spent so far, and the bill is estimated to reach half a trillion euros by 2025.”[1]
That was started by the Schröder government (1998–2005) and rather half-heartedly continued by the Merkel government (2005–2021), decreasing the subsidies.
China has even benefitted from German subsidies.
“Germany long aimed to be a front runner in the solar energy industry, but waning subsidies and rising competition from China have clouded its outlook. To add insult to injury, the Chinese boom has been generously supported by German financial aid.” … “According to KfW officials, it was precisely the subsidy policy's goal to help Chinese solar producers achieve a breakthrough, in order to promote the environmentally friendly technology internationally.”[2]
One theory is that churros came from the fried Chinese doughstick youtiao.
The habit of eating raw fish in Japan probably developed indigenously but many of the words the Japanese use to describe sushi and raw fish came from China which to the surprise of many has a very strong food culture of eating raw fish and meat up till the Ming dynasty in
the 14th century.
Look at what confucius wrote in the book of rites 2500 years ago:
食不厌精，脍不厌细
(you'll not get sick of good food, and you'll not get sick of kuai(raw fish /meat) that is sliced thinly.)
or
脍，春用葱，秋用芥
(kuai, eat it with spring onions in spring and jie in autumn. jie is a chinese mustard. )
The chinese probably adopted the habit of eating raw fish in the past from people from southeast asia.
And while sashima is almost certainly developed indigenously in Japan, the predecessor of the modern Sushi in japan (fish preserved in rice) is most likely developed in China.
Food history is so interesting but largley neglected.
Baozi is unlikely to have come from the Ottomans via the Mongols.
The Song dynasty chinese were already eating baozi and writing about it in their books and documents in the early 11th century, before the Ottomans were established or Genghis Khan was born.
And Baozi is just another name for Mantou in ancient China which is a name for the food which is even older stretching back to the Han dynasty over two millenia ago.
OK, maybe you are right but {{citation-needed}}. It seems Wikipedia asserts Song but has no references. As they are sequential the big picture is still similar. Song was very multicultural/pluralistic, even if thry appeared in the Song this virtually supports an import hypothesis.
And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.