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20 September
19 September
From one piece Economic Size and Economic Power 2 beliefs · paulkrugman.substack.com
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Their words
China is not yet big enough to be the hegemon, but the United States truly is not big enough to be the hegemon. So we are just not in that world anymore.
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Their words
actually, there are three economic superpowers in the world by this measure. There’s the United States, there’s China, which is clearly number one, and then there’s the EU, which are roughly co-equal.
18 September
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Their words
Globally, the most obvious reason nations have stopped fearing Trump is the debacle in Iran.
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korrents.com
China is the world's most cyberpunk country.Their words
China is definitely the world's most cyberpunk country at this point.
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korrents.com
Export controls work, and claims that they merely make Chinese companies work harder or catch up are propaganda.Their words
Export controls work. "Export controls just make Chinese companies work harder or catch up" is propaganda ass shite
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Their words
Osama bin Laden's one concrete strategic goal was to end the American military presence in the Gulf and on the Arabian Peninsula. A generation later, Donald Trump's war on Iran has apparently delivered it for him
17 September
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Their words
The current problem with prices might be one part AI construction boom, but it is one part Trump's tariffs and one part Trump's war in Iran as well.
16 September
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Their words
Jensen is a maximally cynical commercial and political actor whose one and only goal is to sell Nvidia chips to whoever he can, especially China.
Trump Goes Full Hoax on AI Existential Riskthezvi.substack.com
From one piece When discussing AI policy, start with China 3 beliefs · marginalrevolution.com
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korrents.com
AI policy discussions should start with China rather than treating it as an afterthought.Their words
Whatever your ideas for regulating AI, I say start with China. Do not put China as an afterthought at the end of your proposal, mentioned in a vague wish that something good ought to happen and that maybe the future of humanity can be secured.
When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com
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Their words
If you are reading proposals or for that matter tweets for AI regulation, and the writer does not deal with these China issues in a forthright and very specific manner, you should be very suspicious indeed.
When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com
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korrents.com
China declined U.S. nuclear-talk proposals in 2023 and broke off meaningful arms control talks.Their words
During the 2023 U.S.-China nuclear talks, America proposed missile-launch notifications, a nuclear crisis hotline, and processes to limit the use of outer space for military conflict. China declined all of those. Blame the U.S. if you wish (do we always keep our word?), but that is what happened. China also broke off meaningful arms control talks.
When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com
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Their words
the fact that they're flying so quickly shows that Xi is unpopular in China.
15 September
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Their words
one way to understand a data center is that it's a device for burning natural gas, the latest excuse (after Ukraine and Iran) for the fuel that Big Oil is counting on to keep its business model afloat even as the world turns away from internal combustion cars and crude demand begins to drop.
The Two Horsemen, Riding in Formationbillmckibben.substack.com
14 September
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Their words
The winner would then be the AIs, not us. That is not to say that the China issue is not real, hence the export controls and attempted international agreement.
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korrents.com
Migrations are part and parcel of software engineering and a skill to invest in, not special one-offs to avoid.Their words
migrations (e.g. replacing one service with a new one, or switching database engines, or whatever) are part and parcel of software engineering and are a skill that you should invest in and get good at, not avoid or treat as special one-offs.
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Their words
Now if they get scared of AGI, they'll slow down their own models.
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Their words
We need the CCP to realize that AI can bring them down from within.
13 September
12 September
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Their words
Next in regulatory capture will be banning open source and/or Chinese models, mark my words
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Their words
nobody was willing to do it because it had been seen as kind of against the norms of the economic system. And as actors like the United States and China do this, it becomes more acceptable.
11 September
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korrents.com
Since 2024, the leading open-weight AI models have come from Chinese labs rather than American ones.Their words
The leading open models have all come from Chinese labs since ~2024.
10 September
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Their words
I don’t think it’s responsible for high long-term rates, any more than Bill Clinton was responsible for high rates in the late 1990s. This looks like the natural market response to the rush to invest in AI.
From one piece @paulg on X 2 beliefs · x.com
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korrents.com
American labs leading is good because Chinese lab employees would be unable to warn the public about threats.Their words
This is why it's a good thing that American labs are in the lead. If Chinese labs were, their employees wouldn't be able to warn us about threats.
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Their words
But Chinese labs will encounter the same threats within a year, in complete silence.
9 September
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korrents.com
Governments running pressure campaigns tend to wishfully overestimate how close the adversary is to collapse.Their words
A second pathology is the administration's wishcasting that Iran is just days away from collapsing.
The Trump Administration Strategy Faildanieldrezner.substack.com
8 September
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korrents.com
Frontier Chinese AI labs are moving toward more restrictive licensing terms for their open models.Their words
Chinese model makers at the frontier, however, are becoming more restrictive
7 September
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korrents.com
All of AI engineering is involution: a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output.Their words
I’m more and more convinced that all of AI engineering is Neijuan (内卷, meaning curl inwards). In China it describes a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output.
Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?lucumr.pocoo.org
6 September
5 September
4 September
3 September
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Their words
We are going to keep doing this ‘omg the new Chinese model is so good, America is cooked’ cycle for a while. Best get used to it.
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Their words
it's someone who gets what they want in any situation. And so, if you invest in them and you have stock in their company and they have stock in this company, your interests are aligned. If they get what they want, you get what you want, so that's why investors want people who are formidable.
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open sourceAnthropicOpenAIChina
Their words
in this whole USA vs China thing OpenAI and Anthropic aren't relevant because they're positioned differently them building better models doesn't hurt china at all the competitor has to be - american - open source - enough compute to do inference at scale that can shift things
2 September
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korrents.com
Investing in strong fundamentals and invisible supports makes good outcomes follow naturallyTheir words
Invest in building strong fundamentals, invisible supports, and outcomes flow like water.
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Their words
the Trump administration's deferential posture towards Russia and China has alienated allies. But on the other hand, it has gained the United States nothing in the way of strategic stability.
So How Is The Concert of Trump Going?danieldrezner.substack.com
1 September
31 August
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korrents.com
The U.S. military campaign against Iran is failing and has imposed massive strategic costs on the United States.Their words
the United States is not winning that war and the strategic costs have been massive.
29 August
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Their words
I read every DM people send me, even if I don’t reply to all. I’m constantly learning about new ideas, ways to improve our product, where we’re falling short, who could join our company next, where to invest… very grateful for the @x platform.
27 August
25 August
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Their words
This is a computer system made for pros, and I mean that in the sense of professional computer lovers. People who are willing to invest time and energy into learning how their system works, and reap the benefits that come from that investment.
24 August
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korrents.com
Planning a day or a week in advance works because it pays the brain's decision cost once rather than dozens of times.Their words
Every decision has a cost in terms as we've seen the brain having to put in invest fuel to make that decision. So if you're having to do that every time you make a decision, that can seem very burdensome. Whereas if you did it once in a big way where you planned it out for the day or the week, maybe the costs in terms of the activation energy required for the brain is much lower for you if you do that.
21 August
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Their words
Frontier Labs are incented to be fearful as it provides a moral justification for staying closed. Chinese Labs take the consistent position of doing what’s good for all and being open. So the little guys find themselves in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the Chinese…
20 August
19 August
18 August
From one piece The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China’s space program 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
A Chinese crewed landing on the Moon before America returns would be a defeat for the free world.Their words
If China can land humans on the Moon before the United States returns, it will represent a huge geopolitical win.
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Their words
This will likely serve as a wake-up call to those not paying attention to the US-China space race—which, to be clear, is the vast majority of Americans.
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Their words
In all of NASA’s and China’s plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the South Pole of the Moon matter the most.
17 August
16 August
15 August
14 August
13 August
11 August
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korrents.com
AI risk is probably a totally manageable problem that will be brutally mismanaged, the way pandemic response was.Their words
it's just so easy for me to imagine the situation being like totally manageable but brutally mismanaged in practice in the same way as like maybe CO could have been avoided in the first place if the like Chinese response to CO was less of like a cover up and more of a like pandemic response and similarly like I could imagine a world where like the US response to CO was like way more functional but just like sometimes the the the response to societal problems is extremely dysfunctional.
10 August
8 August
7 August
6 August
1 August
From one piece Real talk about the exchange rate 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
China's real exchange rate should appreciate through higher domestic inflation, not currency revaluation.Their words
My view is that an appreciation of China's REER is very much to be desired, but the real (haha) way to get there is through higher inflation domestically, and that means different macro policies.
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korrents.com
Complaining about China's trade surpluses and excess capacity has not worked and will not work.Their words
I think complaining about trade surpluses and excess capacity has not worked, and is not going to work.
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korrents.com
China's tolerance of deflation has caused widespread underemployment and unemployment among its youth.Their words
Policy decisions have condemned a generation of Chinese youth to widespread under- and un-employment.
30 July
29 July
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korrents.com
The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities.Their words
The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities
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Their words
the other piece of advice I would have is try to identify what is the what is the exponential in the world that has both the steepest curve and will go the longest. And you know many decades ago this curve was was Moore's law and that probably was you know that was at the time like clearly the right thing to invest on. I think right now it's AI progress
From one piece Chartbook 462: China shocked - beyond 1.0 and 2.0 to the "Big One". 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The original point of the China Shock 1.0 discourse was not to foreground the unfairness of Chiense competition, so much as the malfunctioning of US policy and societal institutions in the face of concentrated globalization shocks.
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Their words
It wasn’t just the West that drew conclusions from China shock 1.0. Beijing learned from China Shock 1.0 too.
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Their words
China shock 2.0 threatens high status manufactured goods: European cars and engineering.
+ 2 more
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korrents.com
The second China shock is landing on Europe, where the first one landed on the United States.Their words
In China shock 1.0 the key target was the US. In China shock 2.0 it is Europe.
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korrents.com
China's industrial lead was manufactured by deliberate state industrial policy rather than by market forces alone.Their words
What China is delivering in the 2020s is an industrial policy shock of global scale.
28 July
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Their words
it it won't work to try to repatriate uh the the manufacturing that left the US. Um that's a uh you you don't you don't beat China at its own game. What you do is invent the future, invent the next wave of manufacturing uh and build that here.
26 July
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Their words
You don't invest in companies, you invest in people.
25 July
24 July
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Their words
For Chinese-based consumer electronics like this, the hardware is usually a lot better than the software.
23 July
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Dislikedrcmnd.app
RoombaTheir words
matic vacuum (they gave me one so I have to disclose but it's GREAT, all the Roomba and Chinese ones suck)
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Lovedsponsoredrcmnd.app
Matic vacuumTheir words
matic vacuum (they gave me one so I have to disclose but it's GREAT, all the Roomba and Chinese ones suck)
22 July
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korrents.com
France and Germany will ban Tesla's full self-driving to protect their own car industry.Their words
The French and Germans will ban Tesla FSD to protect their car industry that's being decimated by Chinese EVs and Tesla Allowing Tesla full self driving would make it so popular that it'd probably the end of their car industry Because no French or German car has self driving like Tesla, many customers would probably flock to Tesla
21 July
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Remembering Indonesia from My GrandpaTheir words
What stands out about Hsieh's version is that her roots occupy such a unique spot in history: her grandparents were Chinese born in Indonesia, which means they got caught between the rock of the Cultural Revolution and the hard place of anti-communist backlash.
20 July
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Their words
And what they found is there's kind of this um bell-shaped curve between energy availability and brain volume. And in general, brain volume, right, the more the better, right, we think. And so if you're chronically calorically restricted, your brain is smaller um because you just don't have the resources to invest in, you know, the structure um and to maintain it. At the other end, you see the same thing. So if you're chronically in a chronic state of chloric excess, you also tend to have a smaller brain on average.
18 July
17 July
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korrents.com
Restricting US AI models does not work: China builds better ones and everyone switches to them.Their words
US: restricts US AI model because too dangerous China: builds better Chinese AI model Everyone: switches to Chinese AI model This is why restricting models probably doesn't work, it's much more preferable (for US) to have everyone on US AI models so at least they can monitor what everyone is doing
15 July
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korrents.com
Under rising uncertainty, people should shorten their planning horizon rather than invest in a distant future.Their words
When uncertainty rises, your horizon should become shorter-term.
14 July
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Readaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
How NOT to InvestTheir words
Ritholtz does exactly that, running through such surefire ways to wreck your wealth as ignoring taxes, paying excessive fees, misinterpreting data, overreacting to short-term trends, and trading too much.
12 July
From one piece A self-absorbed giant 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Chinese writers' preoccupation with China alone is what limits China's soft power abroad.Their words
To come to my key point: this self-concentration limits China’s ideological influence in the rest of the world and its soft power.
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korrents.com
China had more ideological influence in the world during the Cultural Revolution than it has today.Their words
Paradoxically, China might have had more soft power when it followed self-destructive policies of Maoist Cultural Revolution.
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korrents.com
China's economic success has produced no transferable blueprint that other poor countries could follow.Their words
China’s tremendous success had not resulted in a blueprint that could be followed from Afghanistan to Zambia on how to become rich in four decades.
+ 1 more
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korrents.com
China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.Their words
It surely does not “produce” one quarter of world culture or intellectual activity (if the latter is defined as influential books, of fiction and non-fiction, politics, history; films, plastic arts, music, theater etc.)
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Their words
Today's world is becoming tripolar. It is NYT vs CCP vs BTC. That's the American Establishment vs the Communist Party of China vs the Global Internet.
7 July
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Their words
it's more important to invest in trains that can get more riders than just the railfans; taking a line from 0% to 5% modal split is less important than taking it from 20% to 40%
Prioritizing Rail Expansion in New Englandpedestrianobservations.com
29 June
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Their words
Well, PRC HSR construction costs relative to the amount of tunneling aren't particularly low. France's are lower; Germany's are inconsistent, depending on whether money is wasted on excessive tunneling or on other things.
25 June
18 June
From one piece Re-engineering the Semiconductor Supply Chain with Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And then frankly speaking, I look back nine of the 10 company I invest halfway they change their business plan because market have changed.
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Their words
So I think power, thermal, those become the bottleneck. So I think I always look at from what is the problem we try to solve? Is it real? Is customer crying for it?
10 June
9 June
From one piece Sarah Paine - Why Putin and Xi can't escape geography 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And what's fascinating is today when China claims whatever its historical lands are, they either choose the Mongol Yuan Dynasty or the Manchu Qing Dynasty when the Han were subjugated people.
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Their words
And also, for China, with its geographical setup as it is, uh the seas are going to be open to it only in peacetime. In wartime, this has nothing to do with anyone doing anything to them. It's just facts.
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Their words
One, you're surrounding yourself by failing states. You can look at Russia and China and they're surrounded by some of the most dysfunctional places on the planet and you go, "Gee whiz, are they unlucky or they complicit?"
+ 2 more
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Their words
And Russia's never had a commerce-driven economy. China much more so under Deng Xiaoping, but recently Xi Jinping has been privileging the crony sector over the private sector and neither one has stable government institutions.
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Their words
So, China and Russia certainly have maritime ambitions, but I'm not clear they actually understand what goes into a full maritime paradigm.
From one piece Mental Models That Change How You Think | Bill Gurley 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
the investor community writ large has slowly become aware of and believes it strongly in increasing returns and power laws. And so over time, if they all believe that, they're going to be more willing to invest on the come and take risk.
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Their words
the competitive dynamic in China is more intense because it's more intense. Everyone's chosen to go open source and that creates a system that in my mind is capable of innovating far faster than the competitive system we have here. All the models learn from one another.
7 June
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korrents.com
Incumbents are unseated by a fundamentally different product, never by better features or better marketing.Their words
I invest in the deep technologies that are going to unseat the incumbents because it's going to change the market or the product in such a dramatic way that customers will choose this.
4 June
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Their words
So, what you need is that basically demand to be bounded, like a hard bound, not even like a soft sort of like diminishing sensitivity. You need for them to eventually say, "I've had enough. I don't want to spend any more money." And for that money to not enter as investment.
27 May
17 May
14 May
13 May
8 May
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Their words
So we just could not see a way this could happen by chance and once we saw that we really felt quite convinced that this was a real signal and that really somehow there has been natural selection to increase the genetic changes that today manifest themselves as more years of school at predicting more years of schooling.
27 April
16 April
15 April
From one piece Jensen Huang – Will Nvidia’s moat persist? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And so you just have to first realize that chips exist in China. They manufacture 60% of the world's mainstream chips, maybe more. It's a very large industry for them. They have some of the world's greatest computer scientists.
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Their words
We have got to acknowledge that most of the advanc advances in AI came out of algorithm advances not just the raw hardware. Now if most advances came from algorithms and computer science and programming tell me that their army of AI researchers is not their fundamental advantage.
14 April
9 April
7 April
23 March
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Their words
So you get this rapid, incredible great talent, rapid innovation because of open source and just, you know, the nature of friends, and, and insane competition. Among the company, what emerges is incredible stuff. And so this is the fastest innovating country in the world today
18 March
14 March
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Their words
players who are also commentators give better commentary than people who are just commentators. Stock analysts who never invest have zero skin in the game.
13 March
From one piece Dylan Patel — The single biggest bottleneck to scaling AI compute 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
As we move from, you know, hey, [clears throat] these companies are selling tokens where they provide the entire uh reasoning chain and all that to uh selling automated, you know, white collar work, right? Automated software engineer, send them the request, they give you the result back and there's a bunch of thinking on the back end that they don't show you. The ability to distill out of American models into Chinese models will be harder.
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Their words
And Huawei has a bigger pool in China. It's very arguable that Huawei, if they had TSMC, would be better than Nvidia.
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Their words
Um, just shipping out all the engineers and blowing up the fabs means China has a stronger semiconductor supply chain than the rest of the world, right?
+ 1 more
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Their words
I think they'll have working tools. I don't think that they'll be able to manufacture a bunch yet, right? You know, there's they're sort of having it work and then there's production hell, right?
5 March
28 February
22 February
18 February
13 February
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Their words
The counterarguments against it are I'll politely call them fishy. Um, uh and yet it doesn't happen and we sell the chips because there's there's so much money. There's so much money riding on it.
12 February
From one piece Speed Can Reindustrialize America 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
It has a surplus of STEM graduates that are often underemployed, while "Hukou" residency restrictions complicate hiring hourly labor in coastal factories.
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Their words
Second, technologies and market structure are contextual, where the US can't simply emulate China's manufacturing.
10 February
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Their words
The "homework problem" described above might be much worse in practice for end users who aren't motivated to invest in their email triage systems, even if it will save them time in the medium term.
1 February
13 January
1 January
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Likedrcmnd.app
The Chinese Tragedy of King LearTheir words
Nan Z. Da’s The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear also has an experimental form. Da is a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins who emigrated from Hangzhou before she was 7.
29 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
BreakneckTheir words
Wang argues that the US & China each have a dominant form of government problem-solving
25 December 2025
From one piece Chinese Labor Isn't Just Cheaper; It’s Better. We Need to Fix That. 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Between 2015 and 2025 US manufacturing wages rose 40%, while the cost of purchasing a home rose 93%.
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Their words
Yes, the labor is cheaper, but that’s not really why.
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korrents.com
Rebuilding American manufacturing is a decades-long educational and cultural project, not something tariffs can do.Their words
America needs an educational and cultural transformation to compete with China and reverse the decline in living standards that Americans have suffered over decades.
21 December 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the FutureTheir words
It's powerful because it's simple without being simplistic and, like Rogoff's book, is interspersed with engaging personal stories that deepen the substantive argument.
18 December 2025
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Their words
the UAE's tech aspirations are clearly downstream of a deeper affinity with the West.
16 December 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
I Deliver Parcels in BeijingTheir words
Perhaps the best of the various gig-worker memoirs published in recent years.
13 December 2025
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Dislikedrcmnd.app
Google MapsTheir words
Google Maps essentially really doesn't work in China, the location of our hotel Aman in Beijing for example was completely wrong
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Lovedrcmnd.app
AmapTheir words
But Amap is great! Especially since it can be used in English and I think it transliterates your searches to Chinese and the Chinese place names back to English
12 December 2025
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Their words
But I do believe that the story in Mesopotamia owes its inception to a disastrous flood, but nothing global. Nothing that touched America or China or Birmingham.
10 December 2025
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Their words
With so many professional money managers afraid to act, with most of the public in the grip of fear and anger, you should put your cash and your courage to work.
23 November 2025
From one piece China bows to de-industrialization 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
There's even a case to be made that those policies actually depressed the manufacturing share of GDP: by boosting output and capacity above where they would have been otherwise, subsidies probably contributed to the sustained decline in prices for China's manufactured goods over the past few years, weighing on their share of nominal output.
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korrents.com
A declining manufacturing share of GDP as an economy matures reflects economic success rather than decline.Their words
Both of these trends are a consequence of economic success, in terms of higher output and productivity: at least some of what is decried as "de-industrialization" is good actually. It is also good for China's planners to recognize that reality and not distort the economy in pursuit of an impossible outcome.
17 November 2025
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korrents.com
Only the US and China have substantial startup activity left; the rest of the world cannot really do startups.Their words
I just realized the only 2 countries left with actual substantial startup activity now are literally only the US and China The rest of the world can't really do startups, doesn't have the funding, can't grow them and it's more like performative hobby projects for their governments Which might tell us where the future wealth will be concentrated in the world
16 November 2025
15 November 2025
31 October 2025
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korrents.com
A Chinese crewed landing on the Moon before America returns would be a defeat for the free world.Their words
I am far from certain that NASA can regain anything like the vigor necessary to respond decisively to the Chinese threat, but I am determined that the free people of Earth not live under a Red Moon
NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
27 October 2025
24 October 2025
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korrents.com
Young children learn a new language through immersion far more effectively than adults do.Their words
If I took my daughter to China for a year, and we just lived there with no language instruction, I'd come back knowing approximately six Mandarin words and she'd be fluent.
19 October 2025
14 October 2025
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
GLM 4.6Their words
I keep an eye on China’s open models, and it’s impressive how quickly they catch up. GLM 4.6 and Kimi K2.1 are strong contenders that slowly reach Sonnet 3.7 quality
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
Kimi K2.1Their words
I keep an eye on China’s open models, and it’s impressive how quickly they catch up. GLM 4.6 and Kimi K2.1 are strong contenders that slowly reach Sonnet 3.7 quality
9 September 2025
4 September 2025
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Their words, before
There are obvious pricing problems in this scenario. With a new fab, a company can’t turn a profit selling a lagging-edge chip at the price that was previously dictated by a fully depreciated fab. Prices have to go up.
Their words now
The COVID super-cycle, plus a new China supply line that does not care about capacity economics, points to a forever glut.
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Their words
Why don't Chinese dragons look like Mexican dragons or equivalent thunderbirds or whatever? Well, because it probably wasn't influencing them. If they were all seeing the same skeleton, they'd probably all produce the same kind of mythical animals.
30 August 2025
29 August 2025
24 August 2025
15 August 2025
From one piece China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmer 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
In terms of things that are causing us to lose to China, tariffs are neither here nor there because, as we've discussed, we're not sensitive to cost on power. But the environmental regulations that are actively preventing us from deploying renewable energy in the United States, like this is the reason Texas is winning. Texas is out deploying California 10 to1.
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Their words
It absolutely asymmetrically helps China. We're not currently working with China. They don't plan to, but like the physics is very obvious, you know, and synthetic fuels have been around for 100 years.
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Their words
China is surrounded by 15 countries who are mostly hostile to it, right? with no good like mountain ranges or rivers or anything to really separate them. And then they get all their oil, almost all their oil from the Middle East, right in countries that they don't control, don't have strong diplomatic relationships with on fleets of oil tankers that they can't defend because their navy doesn't have the ability to to operate effectively in the Indian Ocean.
+ 1 more
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Their words
so the mainstream view would say, well, China has cheaper labor, which is no longer true, uh, say compared to Mexico, and it's got lower environmental regulations, uh, which is true, and that it is more businessfriendly, which is absolutely crazy.
13 August 2025
From one piece Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
One interesting point is that, in China, you ask the companies to innovate first, and then you regulate after, right? So, that has led to things like P2P platforms. It’s led to lots of kind of financial innovations, some of which has actually been very helpful and good, some of which had been disastrous, but the intention to regulate after the fact is to really not slow down or hinder the innovation. This is a very different approach from Europe. You regulate first, and then companies have to work around that.
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Their words
Another big misunderstanding, and a fundamental one, is that people somehow think that the state suppresses the private sector. It’s not at all as simple as that. For the most part, if we look at the local government’s incentive system, they want to help the best, private companies, which are the most promising, because it makes them look good.
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Their words
And what’s more, you use your leverage once, and that leverage has a half-life. It becomes a lot less effective the second time around because other countries, other companies are going to try to substitute away. If China uses the rare earth leverage, which I think it is now a little bit, there will be alternatives and substitutes.
+ 2 more
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Their words
Maybe on the good side, it’s actually a golden age for Chinese women because the Chinese girls never had as much education investment apportioned to them as they’ve had after being the only child in the family. And you raised a daughter like a son. And if we look at all the skill gaps and the education gaps and the returns to education, actually girls fared better.
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Their words
I’ve rarely seen a more capitalist society than China, from the pure economic side. I’ve rarely seen companies that are as competitive as Chinese companies. People as ambitious and obsessed with making money as Chinese people. Kind of ruthless actually. And look, consumers shop, firms invest. If you invest well financially, you’ll get great returns. What is not capitalistic about the Chinese economy? At the same time, the social fabric is highly socialist.
4 August 2025
31 July 2025
From one piece Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Well, they raised the status of merchants very high. This was particularly a problem in the Chinese world. It wasn't so much in the Christian or the Muslim world, but certainly in the Chinese world, where merchants were considered extremely low. And all of a sudden he raises them up above scholars.
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korrents.com
Genghis Khan's army was the greatest military force in history, and no power will ever repeat what it did.Their words
No other power in the history of the world has conquered Russia and China and Persia and Central Asia and Turkey and Korea. No power in the world has done that. Not Alexander, not the Romans. Nobody will ever do it again.
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Their words
But this great system that united, it's called the Yam or Ortogh, that had united everything, people could move back and forth quickly that it could also take the plague out of Southern China into all parts of the world. And I do think that's what happened. And the plague destroyed the Mongol system.
+ 2 more
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Their words
Mongols produced nothing. They could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere, and it was through raiding.
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Their words
But there actually, I think there's a very, very good reason for invading Japan. Several. The main one was to cut off the supply of sulfur. They needed it for gunpowder in the South Song. They lost their sources in northern China when they were driven out. They got it from Japan. It was a great source.
25 July 2025
30 June 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
China TalkTheir words
When this is good and on point, it is very, very good, and provides essential perspective I couldn’t have found elsewhere, especially when doing key interviews.
23 June 2025
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
DeepSeek r1Their words
r1, a Chinese model, is very capable and free to use, but is missing a few features from the other companies and it is not clear that they will keep up in the long term.
18 June 2025
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Their words
the current situation in Iran shows that even if an "IAEA for AI" is necessary for some purposes, it won't be sufficient for resolving the tricky geopolitical issues raised by AI.
30 May 2025
From one piece Israel and Iran 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
I pray for the day when Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis - all proxies of the Ayatollahs-will become mere footnotes to history.
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Their words
This shared past between Persians and Jews is etched into my consciousness and that of many Israelis and Iranians. It will outlast the predations of the Ayatollahs and their Islamic Revolution of 1979.
15 May 2025
From one piece Why are solar panels and batteries from China so cheap? 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
A country cannot fund its own industrial strategy and call the same policy cheating when China does it.Their words
But you cannot support these programs while calling out China for “cheating” for doing the same.
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korrents.com
Forced labour in Chinese clean-energy supply chains is real, and it is not why the goods are cheap.Their words
But my point is that this is still not the reason (or is only a very small reason) why these goods from China are cheaper than elsewhere. The main driver of lower labour costs has been automation; not having a human worker at all.
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Their words
That’s because most clean energy jobs are in deployment and maintenance rather than manufacturing, and since higher costs slow down the rollout of renewables, increasing prices reduces the total number of people working in clean energy (even if the number working in manufacturing increases).
+ 1 more
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Their words
But, China mainly dominates these markets because it has produced a long-term industrial strategy for these technologies and has honed an optimised, modern supply chain as a result.
12 May 2025
29 April 2025
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korrents.com
The US-China trade imbalance is driven mainly by capital flows, not tariffs or trade deficits.Their words
Tariffs and trade deficits are a distraction from the deeper source of the US-China current account imbalance, namely capital flows.
14 April 2025
From one piece Tariffs, saving, and investment 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The binding constraint on building anything in America is permitting and litigation, not money.Their words
Endless lawsuits, cost-exploding contracting requirements, decades to get permits, and more bedevil any attempt to invest here.
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korrents.com
The American trade deficit is foreigners choosing to invest in America, not America being cheated.Their words
this story tells us how an increase in foreign demand to save in the US rather than at home will push up the dollar, and cause the trade deficit, which is in effect how foreigners send us factories which they would rather build here than in their own countries.
7 April 2025
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Their words
Persistent U.S. trade deficits are an epiphenomenal mirror to our persistent capital account surpluses, which are in turn downstream of the beggar-thy-neighbor industrial policies of countries like China and Germany.
6 April 2025
From one piece America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
When the United States applied tariffs to China, it shifted huge amounts of manufacturing to Vietnam, which did not have tariffs applied to it.
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Their words
Since the year 2000, US electricity generation per person has been flat.
7 March 2025
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Their words
In a vibe coding future, companies will hopefully invest more in understanding user needs, refining the interface, and polishing details that delight users, because those are harder for AI to get right without guidance.
3 February 2025
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Their words
There's not many worlds where China cannot train AI models. I think export controls are decapping the amount of compute or the density of compute that China can have.
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Their words
China, if they wanted to build the largest data center in the world, if they had access to the chips, could. So it's just a question of when, not if.
2 February 2025
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Their words
AI competition needs to be tempered with a recognition that China isn’t going away as a player in AI, and that coexistence must also be a part of America’s strategy.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
When Money DiesTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Seeing Like a StateTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
China's Political ModelTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
+ 2 more
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet UnionTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
A New Idea of IndiaTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
26 January 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
DeepSeekTheir words
if you want a very good all-around model with excellent reasoning. As an open model, you can either use it hosted on the original Chinese DeepSeek site or from a number of local providers.
20 December 2024
From one piece Will all our drugs come from China? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
China now starts about a quarter of the world's new clinical trials, more than Europe does.Their words
Chinese companies are now responsible for about a quarter of new trial starts — more than Europe.
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Their words
I don’t think many in the West have yet fully internalized a mental model of China as a source of genuine innovation.
30 September 2024
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korrents.com
Maya hieroglyphs must have been readable across several spoken languages, the way Chinese characters or Latin were.Their words
There must have been a way that multiple languages understood the same writing system. Or maybe there was something like Latin. You know how there was a period in Europe where most people were illiterate and there was this priesthood who all understood Latin and they wrote in Latin? Maybe the hieroglyphs represent a kind of Latin in the ancient Maya world.
5 September 2024
From one piece Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own.
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Their words
Shipbuilding is labor intensive, and we see a repeated pattern of it moving to countries with low-cost labor: from Britain to Japan, then to Korea, then to China.
3 July 2024
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
The Broken IceTheir words
The Broken Ice (China) 3.2 A few decades ago, I would have been more impressed by this film, which is roughly in the style of Jia Zhangke. Now it seems a bit derivative.
25 April 2024
From one piece Speech on Europe, Sorbonne, 25 April 2024 (Elysee English transcript) 2 beliefs · elysee.fr
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Their words
And so yes, the era when Europe bought its energy and fertilizers from Russia, had its goods manufactured in China, and delegated its security to the United States of America, is over.
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Their words
We cannot sustain the most stringent environmental and social norms, invest less than our competitors, have a more naive trade policy than them and think that we will continue to generate jobs. This no longer holds together.
25 March 2024
From one piece Preventing a “Space Pearl Harbor”: Rep. Turner leads the charge 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
If a Chinese spacecraft can dock with a friendly satellite to refuel, repair, or transport it, the same robotic arm can also disable a US satellite’s solar panels and antennas. Alternatively, China can use these spacecraft to tow satellites into locations where they can, at best, only sub-optimally perform intended duties such as early warning, surveillance, or geolocation.
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Their words
Based on public commercial data that tells a lot about the military potential of these dual-use robotic spacecraft, we have shown that China can manufacture and deploy 200 such spacecraft as early as 2026, enough to cripple critical US satellites in geosynchronous, highly elliptical, and other orbits, and thus severely degrading space support to wartime operations.
20 March 2024
10 March 2024
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Likedrcmnd.app
China’s World ViewTheir words
Senior academic advisor to the Chinese Communist Party feels most political tensions come from a misunderstanding of China’s world view, hence the subtitle “demystifying to prevent global conflict”, and his intrinsic desire to explain. I love its insights and historical context, especially around “Respect-centered diplomacy” and how the CCP is structured.
20 February 2024
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korrents.com
About a dozen holdings captures nearly all the benefit of diversification; going to fifty adds almost nothing.Their words
I even recommend for individual investors to invest in a dozen companies, you don't get that much more benefit of diversification going from a dozen to 25 or even 50.
23 January 2024
From one piece 2023 letter 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
While 50 percent of China’s economy might be dysfunctional, the 5 percent that’s going spectacularly well is pretty dangerous to American interests.
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Their words
And Xi Jinping has formally de-prioritized economic growth as China’s top task.
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korrents.com
China will not fade away, so America has to reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.Their words
It is that China will not fade away, meaning that America must reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.
+ 2 more
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Their words
As I’ve written in each of my previous letters, the party’s strangling of free expression has rendered China into a pitiful underperformer relative to Japan and South Korea in the creation of cultural products.
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Their words
Though companies are relocating production to India and Vietnam, China is going to remain the world’s largest manufacturer for many more years to come.
3 January 2024
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Readrcmnd.app
The Opium WarTheir words
I’ve started to do a China history deep dive and this was on the list
-
Likedrcmnd.app
Black WaveTheir words
This reframes a lot of the conflict over the past decades as a rivalry between Iran/KSA
27 November 2023
17 November 2023
From one piece John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 | Lex Fridman Podcast #401 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
A lot of people think that to make deterrence work, you have to be able to beat the Chinese and therefore, you need a much bigger military. And I don't think over time that's possible. I think it's probably not even possible now to beat the Chinese in a war over Taiwan or in a war in the South China Sea.
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korrents.com
China's leaders think in realist terms and America's do not, which is the more dangerous half of the pairing.Their words
The Chinese are my kind of people. They're realists, right? They speak my language. It's the United States that is not very realist. American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms.
12 November 2023
9 November 2023
From one piece Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Politics, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #400 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
China will incorporate Taiwan, peacefully or militarily, and from its own standpoint that outcome is not in doubt.Their words
Yes, China has been very clear that they’ll incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily, but that they will incorporate it from their standpoint is 100% likely.
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korrents.com
China's history says it is not an acquisitive power: it is not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.Their words
The good news, the history of China suggests that China is not inquisitive, meaning they’re not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.
18 July 2023
6 June 2023
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Their words
The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.
22 March 2023
4 March 2023
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Their words, before
My view is that it’s going to take more than this regulatory campaign to defeat dynamism in China.
Their words now
What I did not sufficiently appreciate is that a state that would so casually decapitate a sector like online tutoring would also have the will to visit catastrophe upon whole cities.
31 December 2022
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Their words
As the forest grows darker, noisier, and less human, I expect to invest more time in in-person relationships and communities. And while I love meatspace, this still feels like a loss.
1 July 2022
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Early Chinese Empires: Han and QinTheir words
Mark Edward Lewis' The Early Chinese Empires: Han and Qin is probably the best companion piece to your Sima Qian readings
-
Mixed onrcmnd.app
Early China: A Social and Cultural HistoryTheir words
Feng Li's Early China: A Social and Cultural History is a staid yet serviceable overview of the pre-imperial period.
-
Recommendsrcmnd.app
Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900Their words
David Graff's Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900 is actually a political-institutional history of China from 200 AD-1000 AD, and is probably the best political narrative history we have for the time period.
1 January 2022
17 August 2021
16 September 2019
-
Recommendsrcmnd.app
Do Dice Play God?: The Mathematics of UncertaintyTheir words
The thing I'd say about Do Dice Play God? is that it is very rewarding, but you do have to invest in it.
20 August 2019
-
Mixed onrcmnd.app
REAPERTheir words
It's basically the Vim of audio editing software, so I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have the time and energy to heavily invest in customizing it for your workflow, but I can move like lightning in this thing.
28 May 2019
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Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Silk Roads: A New History of the WorldTheir words
Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World: The trade routes which connected the East and the West also led to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. In the midst of our budding trade war, perhaps some history on trade between China and the world might shed some light on current affairs.
28 October 2018
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Invest Like the BestTheir words
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’ Shaughnessy. This is the best business podcast out there.
30 June 2018
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Thirsty Dragon: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best WinesTheir words
This a journalistic book, a very sound bit of journalism by Suzanne Mustacich. She is based in Bordeaux, but she clearly travelled to China an awful lot and unravelled a most amusing commercial battle that went on in the early years of this decade between the Bordeaux chateau owners and merchants on the one side and Chinese business people on the other.
1 January 2018
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Readrcmnd.app
Age of AmbitionTheir words
If you don’t really understand or know a lot about China today, this is one perspective. Good book.
29 November 2017
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Food in Chinese CultureTheir words
It was probably the first book in English to bring serious academic scrutiny to Chinese food culture, and to use the scholarly techniques applied to other subjects to food, offering the views of different experts on different periods of Chinese history.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Classic Food of ChinaTheir words
Classic Food of China was really her great work, though. I think it was the last book she produced before she died, some years ago. It's one of the few really well-researched historical and cultural Chinese cookery books.
-
Recommendsrcmnd.app
China to ChinatownTheir words
He has drawn together all kinds of different sources that would be a lot of work to find on your own.
+ 1 more
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Food of ChinaTheir words
It offers a good counterpart to the KC Chang. It's very well researched and comprehensive, covering all aspects of Chinese cooking – ingredients, cooking techniques, history, agricultural system and so on.
15 November 2017
Nothing matches.
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