№ 813. Waking Up to Quantum Dreams: China

 

 

Inside the China fitness club

How? Jörg Wuttke, a former longtime president of the E.U. Chamber of Commerce in China, calls it “the China fitness club,” and it works like this:

China starts with an emphasis on STEM education — science, technology, engineering and math. Each year, the country produces some 3.5 million STEM graduates, about equal the number of graduates from associate, bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. programs in all disciplines in the United States.

When you have that many STEM graduates, you can throw more talent at any problem than anyone else. As the Times Beijing bureau chief, Keith Bradsher, reported last year: “China has 39 universities with programs to train engineers and researchers for the rare earths industry. Universities in the United States and Europe have mostly offered only occasional courses.”

And while many Chinese engineers may not graduate with M.I.T.-level skills, the best are world class, and there are a lot of them. There are 1.4 billion people there. That means that in China, when you are a one-in-a-million talent, there are 1,400 other people just like you.

As important, Chinese vocational schools graduate tens of thousands of electricians, welders, carpenters, mechanics and plumbers every year, so when someone has an idea for a new product and wants to throw up a factory, it can get built really fast. You need a pink polka dot button that can sing the Chinese national anthem backward? Someone here will have it for you by tomorrow. It will also get delivered fast. Over 550 Chinese cities are connected by high-speed rail that makes our Amtrak Acela look like the Pony Express.

And when you relentlessly digitize and connect everything to everything, you can get in and out of your hotel room fast with just facial recognition. Tech-savvy beggars who carry printouts of QR codes can accept donations fast by the scan of a cellphone. The whole system is set up for speed — including if you challenge the rule of the Communist Party, in which case, you will be arrested fast, given the security cameras everywhere, and disappear fast.

If we don’t build a similar fitness club behind any tariff wall, we’ll get just inflation and stagnation. You cannot tariff your way to prosperity, especially at the dawn of A.I.

I was also in China four months ago. Between then and now, China’s A.I. innovators demonstrated their ability to grow their own open-source A.I. engine, DeepSeek, with far fewer specialized U.S. chips. I could feel the mojo in the tech community. It was palpable. Last month Premier Li Qiang said at the opening ceremony of the National People’s Congress that the Chinese government is supporting “the extensive application of large-scale A.I. models.”

A young Chinese auto engineer who once worked for Tesla here told me: “Now everyone is competing over how much A.I. is being inserted. Now you brag about how much A.I. you insert. Everyone is committed. ‘I will use A.I., even if I don’t know how right now.’ You are preparing for that, even if you are on a simple production line for manufacturing refrigerators. ‘I have to use A.I., because my boss told me to.’”

Attention, Kmart shoppers: When you already have a manufacturing engine as powerful and digitally connected as China’s and then you infuse it with A.I. at every level, it’s like injecting a stimulant that can optimize and accelerate every aspect of manufacturing, from design to testing to production.

Not a good time for U.S. lawmakers to be shunning visits to China for fear of being called panda huggers.

As Han Shen Lin, an American who works as the China country director for the Asia Group, put it to me over breakfast at Shanghai’s Peace Hotel, “DeepSeek should not have been a surprise.” But, he continued, with all the new U.S. “overseas investment restrictions and disincentives to collaborate, we are now blind to China tech developments. China is defining the tech standards of the future without U.S. input. This will put us at a serious competitive disadvantage in the future.”

 

 

№ 781. Geopolitics and Exit Strategies 3

Geographic Guide - Greenland

№ 738. Manila Extract 4 (West Philippine Sea)

Manila Times

You are tense.
A Gordian knot
kneaded by diplomacy.

You are pawn.
Cross hairs
of myths and murmurs.

You are Manila.
Unspooled lances
stirring tempest in the sea.

№ 668. War Games: The Lethal Dance of Three Lovers

What was once unthinkable—direct conflict between the United States and China—has now become a commonplace discussion in the national security community. Although Chinese plans are unclear, a military invasion is not out of the question and would constitute China’s most dangerous solution to its “Taiwan problem.”

№ 649. Hong Kong

Exploring the bustling Central business district of Hong Kong on foot can be quite the challenge.
The area's hilly landscape, combined with subtropical heat and smothering humidity, would test the stamina of a mountaineer.

Luckily, there's the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator -- an 800-meter-long chain of moving stairs and walkways that's been dubbed the world's longest outdoor escalator system.

Opened to the public in 1993 and built at a cost of $30 million, it's a series of 16 reversible escalators and three travelators -- all covered to protect against sudden downpours.
Building a system of people movers that intersects 13 busy streets on a slope was as challenging a task as one would expect.
 

The escalators were designed to follow the natural inclination of the hill slope. As most of the slopes' gradients don't fall within the normal standards for escalators, a dedicated production line was set up by the escalator manufacturer.
 

With limited spaces between Hong Kong's old buildings and new skyscrapers, most of the escalators on the link only have one reversible track that changes direction "following the prevailing direction of pedestrian flow during the day."
 

Running at around 0.65 meters per second, the network of escalators has its own CCTV system with 75 cameras, a PA system with 200 speakers, four LED displays and a control room to monitor the system.
But most importantly, it's a congestion-free means of commuting between Central and Conduit Road in Mid-Levels, serving 78,000 pedestrian trips daily. And there's no charge.
 

Snaking through narrow streets in the busiest neighborhood in town, it's actually a great way to tour Hong Kong's dramatic cityscape -- from dai pai dong food stalls in small alleys to the trendiest bars in Mid-Levels, from colorful old walk-ups to sleek modern skyscrapers.
 

Here are some highlights that can be found by hopping on and off the escalator system.

№ 624. The Tale of Two Cities: Moscow and Beijing

South China Morning Post

 

The term “dictator” comes from ancient Rome — a man whom the republic would temporarily give absolute authority during crises. The advantages of untrammeled power in a crisis are obvious. A dictator can act quickly — no need to spend months negotiating legislation or fighting legal challenges. And he can impose necessary but unpopular policies. So there are times when autocratic rule can look more effective than the messiness of democracies bound by rule of law.

Dictatorship, however, starts to look a lot less attractive if it continues for any length of time.

The most important argument against autocracy is, of course, moral: Very few people can hold unrestrained power for years on end without turning into brutal tyrants.

Beyond that, however, in the long run autocracy is less effective than an open society that allows dissent and debate. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the advantages of having a strongman who can tell everyone what to do are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought.

I was writing at the time about Vladimir Putin, whose decision to invade a neighboring country looks more disastrous with each passing day. Evidently nobody dared to tell him that Russia’s military might was overrated, that Ukrainians were more patriotic and the West less decadent than he assumed and that Russia remained highly vulnerable to economic sanctions.

But while we’re all justifiably obsessed with the Ukraine war — I’m trying to limit my reading of Ukraine news to 13 hours a day — it’s important to note that there’s a superficially very different yet in a deep sense related debacle unfolding in the world’s other big autocracy: China, which is now experiencing a disastrous failure of its Covid policy.

 

№ 587. The Coming Conflict

Japan Times

 

China’s military might has, for the first time, made a conquest of Taiwan conceivable, perhaps even tempting. The United States wants to thwart any invasion but has watched its military dominance in Asia steadily erode. Taiwan’s own military preparedness has withered, even as its people become increasingly resistant to unification.

All three have sought to show resolve in hopes of averting war, only to provoke countermoves that compound distrust and increase the risk of miscalculation.

№ 375. The Justice of Returning the Loot

Spoils of War

№ 277. The New Silk Road

New Silk Road

№ 242. Manila, a Final Frontier

From the 1500s to the 1800s, the Philippines had been a frontier at the western edge of the Spanish Empire.

Because we were so far away from the throne --- two oceans away to be sure--- we were governed remotely and indirectly through the viceroy in Mexico. 

Global Map

Mexico, almost midpoint from Spain, was an accessible foothold to the New Worlds because it sits in the middle of the two maritime expanses of the Pacific and Atlantic. More importantly, it's geography was strategic. It served as a land bridge that facilitated the transshipment of people, information, culture and goods between the two oceans (Panama Canal was completed only in the early 20th century). Mexico's relative proximity to the Philippines not only cut down administrative challenges to the overextended Iberian royal power. It also trimmed down the time and costs of projecting the delegated power to the subjects in the Asian colony.