Author of The Network State.
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China is #1 in concrete and #1 in new cities.

I agree with the 3 takes except with China. In what metrics is China going up📈?

China's working population is declining. Their GDP per capita is also not growing as fast. Taiwan, for example, has 3 to 4 times faster grow compared to China.

CHINA SAVES IN FACTORIES, NOT EQUITIES

Point: China is #1 in the physical world.
I agree their financials are often mediocre.
And over ~20 years, US stocks are up while Chinese stocks are flat.
But, over the same period...
US cities and manufacturing are clearly in decline.
While Chinese cities and manufacturing are visibly in ascent.

So: ultimately I think China's physical numbers are more real.
Visit Shanghai and then San Francisco, and see for yourself.
Their physical strength is easy to confirm.
Meanwhile, the financial numbers are manipulated on both sides.
Recall that China devalues their currency to keep exports up.
While the US prints to prop its stock market up.

CHINA SAVES IN FACTORIES, NOT EQUITIES

Point: China is #1 in the physical world.
I agree their financials are often mediocre.
And over ~20 years, US stocks are up while Chinese stocks are flat.
But, over the same period...
US cities and manufacturing are clearly in decline.
While Chinese cities and manufacturing are visibly in ascent.

So: ultimately I think China's physical numbers are more real.
Visit Shanghai and then San Francisco, and see for yourself.
Their physical strength is easy to confirm.
Meanwhile, the financial numbers are manipulated on both sides.
Recall that China devalues their currency to keep exports up.
While the US prints to prop its stock market up.
https://warpcast.com/giu/0x28fc7f39

And what industry of the future is China leading? 

Crypto is banned. There is no crypto project that I can recall that is based in China.

AI is mostly led by Western companies: Mistral, OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic...

Space is done by the west: SpaceX, Varda, RocketLab

Autonomous and Robotics is based in the US: Tesla, Rivian and Waymo. The only player that they have here is Baidu.

They sell commoditized electric cars. But they also sell commoditized smartphones. Most of the profits still go to either Apple or Samsung. 

So in what way is China the future?

What industries is China leading in?

1) First, everything in the physical world. Everything low-tech and medium-tech that people think is "easy" is made in China. Screws, nuts, bolts. Chairs, desks, tables. Drills, engines, power tools. All of that is made in China, at global scale and low margins.

2) And in any kinetic conflict, sheer scale of low and medium-tech wins. You can't fight your factory.

3) Now, on high-tech, I love it, but it can be overestimated. The West in many ways acts as Xerox Parc, inventing stuff which is then scaled out and optimized by China.

Let's go through each:

a) Crypto: of course I'm pro crypto. What China has is WeChat, Alipay, and their CBDC. They've optimized for total control.

b) AI: China is second mover on LLMs, but Alibaba's Qwen (https://twitter.com/ClementDelangue/status/1805989925080219927) and other Chinese models rank highly on HuggingFace's leaderboard.

[continued]
https://warpcast.com/giu/0x7fa0d17f

c) Robotics and drones: Here China is by far the world leader. DJI in drones, Unitree in robots (scaling what Boston Dynamics pioneered), and the general scale of China's robotic factory buildout. They can deploy self-driving cars without crazy people burning them in cities, like in SF.

d) Space — SpaceX is great but China is neck and neck with SpaceX in launches (see graph in next tweet).

e) Phones/Cars — Chinese-made phones have just displaced Apple domestically and Chinese-made self-driving electric cars have just flipped Japan and Germany. I wouldn't count them out as commodity, because cost really matters in an inflationary environment.

c) Robotics and drones: Here China is by far the world leader. DJI in drones, Unitree in robots (scaling what Boston Dynamics pioneered), and the general scale of China's robotic factory buildout. They can deploy self-driving cars without crazy people burning them in cities, like in SF.

d) Space — SpaceX is great but China is neck and neck with SpaceX in launches (see graph in next tweet).

e) Phones/Cars — Chinese-made phones have just displaced Apple domestically and Chinese-made self-driving electric cars have just flipped Japan and Germany. I wouldn't count them out as commodity, because cost really matters in an inflationary environment.

https://warpcast.com/giu/0x7fa0d17f

Regarding space, as you can see below, without Elon's SpaceX, China would be ahead. And the US government is fighting Elon tooth and nail, while China is backing its space program to the hilt (both public and private).

We haven't even gotten to the societal comparison. China doesn't have drug overdoses, violent crime, fatherless homes, homeless encampments, illegal aliens, or all the other social ills that bedevil the West.

It's a stark reversal of decades ago when it was the Chinese under the spell of opium (and yes, they might be allowing fentanyl to come to the US, but in general Democrats are much more responsible for the state of drug policy in blue cities than Communists).

So — when you take in the full picture, China is quite strong. They are #1 physically, #1/#2 in tech, and #1 in terms of social unity/family stability [very underrated in the modern West].

That's my view of why China is strong and not to be underestimated. Note: strong doesn't mean "good".  @giu