> why aren't they leading in the generation of unique IP?
Chinese manufacturing methods currently surpass America’s in many domains.
More directly, China is poorer than America per capita. A smart kid given few resources will be outperformed by a duller kid in a gifted environment. That’s slowly changing, however, which is where this turns into a forward-looking risk.
> anyways understanding China as if it were one giant entity operating in lockstep is peak western thinking
This is a lazy dismissal. I’ve seen the same thinking in India and Japan. Stereotyping foreign cultures as monoliths is conserved for obvious reasons across human civilisation.
One aspect of China and so many countries outside of the west is just how unequal they are that people keep forgetting. Yes China is communist, at the very least in name. It is also incredibly unequal.
So there are rich kids in China. And while inequality means per-capita less rich kids, but they tend to be much richer than a US rich kid, and China is easily 5 times bigger, so ... no shortage of very rich kids. And yes, some of them are smart.
So no, it is not that there are no smart kids with resources in China. In fact quite the opposite.
Perhaps it's like most countries outside of the west. I've seen this play out several times with Iranians. It's the environment, the government, the ideology. Iranians, the ones that managed to maintain some wealth, know what they're doing. They're pretty smart. A bunch of them go back every few years. In Iran, they don't achieve much. Outside of Iran, they achieve a lot. The same people. At least there resources would be a better explanation, but that's not it. In reality the Iranian state will brutally stamp out any public display of culture (because Iranian culture is anything but islamic. In fact, don't even call it Iranian. It's Persian). So what's left is Persians outside of Iran and drug parties.
> and they don't bother to translate it for our benefit.
There are organizations aside from the Chinese government that speak Chinese and could translate into other languages. I'm thinking specifically of any news reporting organization.
> They also have different values
They also span five different time zones. The values are no more consistent in their society then it is in any other.
Intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition to generating new technology.
I don’t have firsthand experience, but I have heard that China is attempting to restructure their education programs which have been historically 100% aimed at test taking which is not a good way to produce leaders, original thought, and value to society. The elites of China still send their children abroad to study.
That's not the problem you keep hearing about. China is incredibly unequal. The education program is aimed at test taking because the only way to do anything is to first climb the ladder in the communist party. How do you get into the lowest rung of the communist party? How do you start climbing the ladder?
Well, a test, the "Gaokao". There's your explanation. You need to know math, and of course exactly how Xi Jingping (and the CCP) is a god and the solution to all the worlds problems (there's 3 volumes about it which you have to know by hard: "习近平谈治国理政")
If anything, Chinese people outside of China show that their education aimed at test taking works damn well. China doesn't let them out anymore, but it's not lack of ability.
>Then why aren't they leading in the generation of unique IP?
The simple answer is that they are still in the "copying" stage.
China is what, like 30k GDP on a PPP basis? I think they are still in the stage where the marginal returns on simply copying stuff are higher than frontier research for most of the industries they are in.
They don't have the problem of something like Switzerland, where we need to figure out what a 110k GDP PPP looks like (the countries above us right now cannot be replicated for obvious reasons). China can mix match its way to 40,50,60,70k PPP for the next 10 years.
Those are midwits. Truly intelligent people see past the facade and don't really go into the topics with others outside of subject matter expert groups. Because the areas being focused on by the general population or media are so deviated from the cause or solution.
So, are they suppressed? I highly doubt that's the proper word.
I feel like high iq people are more likely to succeed in the USA, than a communist country. This comes from someone whos parents grew up and lived in a communist nation.
I think you are conflating relative meritocracy where the USA is better than some of the worst meritocracies from absolute meritocracy where IQ alone will help you succeed. There are tons of research articles (https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/myth...) on the subject.
Some of the high IQ individuals are succeeding in USA but definitely not even close to all of them.
Feels unnecessarily jingoistic, China succeeding will not come at our expense. Unlike the US, they don’t want to project their values across the globe.
Don't forget most of Africa, where it's a lot of "Oh, so sorry you got in massive debt to us for that clean water system. You know, a nice Chinese naval base would look great right over there."
The CIA was operating for a long time in Tibet and got the Dalai Lama kicked out. Taiwan wouldn't even exist if it weren't backed by forgeign powers, namely the US and UK. The US dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia. The US has conducted thousands of drone strikes in Pakistan, and of course, they fought a war in Korea.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Anyways understanding China as if it were one giant entity operating in lockstep is peak western thinking.
Chinese manufacturing methods currently surpass America’s in many domains.
More directly, China is poorer than America per capita. A smart kid given few resources will be outperformed by a duller kid in a gifted environment. That’s slowly changing, however, which is where this turns into a forward-looking risk.
> anyways understanding China as if it were one giant entity operating in lockstep is peak western thinking
This is a lazy dismissal. I’ve seen the same thinking in India and Japan. Stereotyping foreign cultures as monoliths is conserved for obvious reasons across human civilisation.
So there are rich kids in China. And while inequality means per-capita less rich kids, but they tend to be much richer than a US rich kid, and China is easily 5 times bigger, so ... no shortage of very rich kids. And yes, some of them are smart.
https://www.instagram.com/richkidsofchina/
So no, it is not that there are no smart kids with resources in China. In fact quite the opposite.
Perhaps it's like most countries outside of the west. I've seen this play out several times with Iranians. It's the environment, the government, the ideology. Iranians, the ones that managed to maintain some wealth, know what they're doing. They're pretty smart. A bunch of them go back every few years. In Iran, they don't achieve much. Outside of Iran, they achieve a lot. The same people. At least there resources would be a better explanation, but that's not it. In reality the Iranian state will brutally stamp out any public display of culture (because Iranian culture is anything but islamic. In fact, don't even call it Iranian. It's Persian). So what's left is Persians outside of Iran and drug parties.
They also have different values, so sometimes their movies and TV seem a little "off" for us. We don't find the same things funny, or heroic.
There are organizations aside from the Chinese government that speak Chinese and could translate into other languages. I'm thinking specifically of any news reporting organization.
> They also have different values
They also span five different time zones. The values are no more consistent in their society then it is in any other.
Any chinese here that can share their view?
Accepting this as fact is peak western thinking.
https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/nature-index-resear...
I don’t have firsthand experience, but I have heard that China is attempting to restructure their education programs which have been historically 100% aimed at test taking which is not a good way to produce leaders, original thought, and value to society. The elites of China still send their children abroad to study.
Well, a test, the "Gaokao". There's your explanation. You need to know math, and of course exactly how Xi Jingping (and the CCP) is a god and the solution to all the worlds problems (there's 3 volumes about it which you have to know by hard: "习近平谈治国理政")
Looks like (three of) this book: https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-Simplified-Chin...
If anything, Chinese people outside of China show that their education aimed at test taking works damn well. China doesn't let them out anymore, but it's not lack of ability.
The simple answer is that they are still in the "copying" stage.
China is what, like 30k GDP on a PPP basis? I think they are still in the stage where the marginal returns on simply copying stuff are higher than frontier research for most of the industries they are in.
They don't have the problem of something like Switzerland, where we need to figure out what a 110k GDP PPP looks like (the countries above us right now cannot be replicated for obvious reasons). China can mix match its way to 40,50,60,70k PPP for the next 10 years.
So, are they suppressed? I highly doubt that's the proper word.
Less ambitious? Perhaps, but not suppressed.
I feel like high iq people are more likely to succeed in the USA, than a communist country. This comes from someone whos parents grew up and lived in a communist nation.
Some of the high IQ individuals are succeeding in USA but definitely not even close to all of them.
Who’s working on gene editing for IQ maxxing?
Tell that to Pakistan, Taiwan, Cambodia, Korea and checks notes Tibet.
What dispute do they have with Pakistan? You mean India?
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