“The high-risk high-gain culture has been key to US supremacy”. And “Few big tech firms in China seem willing to pursue highly risky long-term science and technology opportunities”.
The balance between “exploration” and “exploitation”. Both being part of US culture according to Yanto Chandra, the latter only in China. Largely… Not that there aren’t big risk takers in China. There are. I can think of Jack Ma of Alibaba, He Xiaopeng the founder of X-Peng EVs, Ren Zhengfei of Huawei Technology. Then again many are extreme risk takers in the property market (to wit, not real “exploring”).
But they are fewer in China than the U.S., and likely to bump up against an over-sensitive Beijing, as Jack Ma did a while back.
Look at the new technologies invented in the US, vs those in China. I can think of dozens in America via “exploration”, but not a one in China, at least in the last half century, which has instead exploited the ones explored by the US. Think space, internet, social media, search, AI, EVs, robotics.
But they are fewer in China than the U.S., and likely to bump up against an over-sensitive Beijing, as Jack Ma did a while back.
Look at the new technologies invented in the US, vs those in China. I can think of dozens in America via “exploration”, but not a one in China, at least in the last half century, which has instead exploited the ones explored by the US. Think space, internet, social media, search, AI, EVs, robotics.
This is unlikely to improve as China instead tightens grip on the economy.
ADDED: To be clear, in its long and glorious history China has invented lots. There’s a whole library of China’s achievements in science, the most famous in the West being Joseph Needham’s magisterial “Science and Civilisation in China”.
It’s only over the last century or so, since the decrepitude of the Qing Dynasty and of Maoism, that exploration gave way to exploitation.
