You listed some very generic things that are "wrong" with China, but have nothing to do with the point NYTimes was trying to make.
The article was talking about how China is ahead of the west in regards to mobile payment methods, and you try to refute that by saying they have an army of spies and are communist, and also have less women and limited access to websites outside china? I don't get it.
If you said: "From living in China for X years I can tell you that it isn't really the case that almost any fruit vendor accepts payment via mobile phone, and it isn't really a common payment method." - That would've been valid criticism addressing the core points of the NYTimes article.
As it stands though your comment fits perfectly in the stream of comments trying to downplay the articles credibility without actually addressing it, which is somehow common of any article mentioning "China" and things like "cutting edge" and "innovation" and is making me increasingly suspicious of who is actually spreading propaganda.
Edit: And honestly the things you listed are common knowledge by now, and have no place in an article about mobile tech in China. That would be like including a paragraph about Guantanamo bay in every article about Silicon Valley.
They shown the world how to land a rocket stage intact? Perhaps they developed a bunch of new medical treatments that are not actually snake oil? They invented social networks that the rest of the world copied in envy? Introduced touchscreen tech that's actually usable?
Honestly I must have missed all the "big" news in soft and hard tech, 'cause another eBay clone is sure as hell ain't big. It feels like rerun of Japan craze from 3 decades back, only without ninjas and shurikens this time.
If you want to think that there's no difference between PayPal, eBay and modern Chinese versions you are free to do so. But until you've used these things in China (or at least had sufficient imagination), you won't actually know if there is something there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZsvJUa9FpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/
Wechat is great but here (Norway) payments have been a solved problem for years. I'm not even sure I used cash this year at all other than to unlock a luggage trolley at the airport and it's been like that for over a decade. Even the bank card transaction is so smooth, fast (seconds) and ubiquitous that mobile payment services like Vipps struggled to get a foothold.
Regarding gender imbalance, this wasa cultural issue. It's a problemin many cultures where male heirs are preferred over female heirs.
I'd also lile to point out the Bay Area also has an infamous gender imbalance issue.
Chinese culture still has many elements that are absolutely barbaric and primitive. The concept of "face" is one of them too.
In 40 years, the Soviet Union went from a medieval-like society with 95% of the people being peasants working their lords' lands, to inventing LEDs, grid-scale nuclear power, orbital launches, artificial satellites, manned space flight, commercial supersonic flight, seminal work in transplantation and artificial organs, etc. It became the second world superpower in science and innovation, which by the way, it no longer isn't after the fall of communism.
It was pretty much an economic miracle, like the so-called "German miracle" and "Japanese miracle", although of course most current thinkers won't recognize it because Communism is Bad(tm) and it seems we can only think in black and white (as the Soviet Union had an autochratic and murderous regime, apparently we can't say what they did right).
So I don't think the statement that communism is bad for innovation holds water historically. It's bad for other things, but not necessarily for innovation.
China even more so. For much of history, China has been the richest country on earth! Not just total, but even per capita! Ya, the late Qing and republic eras were a mess, but that China would prosper after a period of decline has happened before and isn't surprising. Mao's Great Leap Forward and cultural revolution probably hurt more than helped, and China is mostly where it is today inspite of the communists. It's all about the people.
Germany and Japan were both developed before they were devestated, and knew collectively how to develop again; it wasn't a miracle in any case. Leading countries tend to lead even when knocked back with setbacks. What is perhaps a miracle was Germany breaking away from its Holy Roman Empire roots in the first place, or Japan modernizing in the mid 19th century (incidentally, this happened at the same time). Once you make that "step", you are likely not to fall backwards.
Communism is bad for innovation for two major, connected, reasons. First, there is very little, if any, competition. Most innovation comes from trying to beat the other guy and there just isn't any competition in a system that wants the state to run everything. Second, entrepreneur's are non-existent because there is no way for them to make money off of their inventions outside of cozying up with the State.
Also, your point about them moving from a medieval society to a modern one is ironic considering the USSR's pathetic technology. Outside of military applications they were failing in almost every single way. Just read some stories about the East Germans trying to flee to West Germany or the USSR's Olympic team visiting the US and thinking that our grocery stores were fake because of all of the food.
If they didn't then they wouldn't have been able to keep up for such a long time and Russia today couldn't be such a big geopolitical adversary to this day.
If they had not implemented Communism after WWI I believe they could have been a second US.
Soviet Union: Yes they industrialised at an astonishing rate, but they did this only for a single purpose: war. Even after the second world war the only area in which they could keep up with the West consistently was the military complex. And in the end the system failed although Soviet leaders were smart enough to let it implode in a way that didn't create civil war at a grand scale.
Yugoslavia: Socialism failed, ended in a nasty civil war.
Cuba: Technologically backwards, people live there like we did a 100 years ago.
North Korea: They have such a poor and malnourished population that today a North Korean is on average significantly smaller than a South Korean. Yet they maintain a massive military.
Venezuela: A oil rich (one of the largest oil reserves in the world!) country with internal and external peace and fertile lands was turned by Socialism into a starving country. Venezuelans today literally hunt animals like dogs and cats on the streets so they don't starve. Absolute madness.
China: Communist policies under Mao led to 30-40 Millions of Chinese starving to death when he collectivised the land. Later the Chinese turned their internal system around to something that resembles more a wild west capitalism with a sprinkle of Meritocracy and only then Chinese saw significant improvements in their lives.
Nazi Germany: This is controversial today as many claim that they weren't really Socialist. My opinion is that it was although it had a private sector. Still all economic activity was under 100% control of the government and all they produced went either to their massive social system or towards war. A rough translation of the Nazi parties name is "National Socialist German Workers Party". I believe that Socialist reject the Socialist nature of the Nazis because it embarrasses them.
To my knowledge there is not a single example of a Communist society that worked. But besides the economy there is a disturbing similarity between all societies that tried Socialism: Concentration Camps and Authoritarianism.
They needed this because there's always too much resistance to the Socialist System in every society that tried it. (people want to be free) In Socialist societies you need to police the thought of everyone and send them to correction camps if they resist because otherwise it would implode.
Can't understand this, why they refuse the girl out?
To put in in to perspective, there are 1.06 males per female in China [0] which though high, isn't materially different to other large developing countries such as India and Pakistan.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
On another note, the ratio for Arabic countries in the peninsula are quite fucked up. If you see the TV show "Generation Kill" from HBO, the character played by James Ranson has a theory, which is quite interesting watching the numbers : there would not be a single war if there was enough women in the Arabic Peninsula.
Anything above 1.07 at birth is proof of selectively aborting girls.
Downvoting because almost-entirely off-topic, and TBH slightly racist.
> There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
There is no possible benefit imaginable for any government to encourage the killing of girls. This just doesn't make sense from a Collectivist perspective.
I believe that China actually had strong laws that forbid doctors from telling pregnant women which sex their child would have because many Chinese in rural areas would abort female children on their own accord.
This was basically because of the one child policy and the fact that Chinese men are supposed to take care of their parents when they get old. So it was more of a result of really bad government policy and self interest of families.
But from what I know the one child policy has officially ended in China, so I don't think this will be a big issue in the future.
Everything you read on those newspapers is about propaganda, propaganda to influence most small investors(what they call dumb money)on one of the financial centers of the world New York, or propaganda to influence politicians on the US political center of US, Washington.
The elite financial industry that rules USA really admires China authoritarianism.
China is an enormous country with lots of great things, but innovation is not one of their "fortes". There is a big bubble there that is going to do bang and is not going to be pretty.
Not so good important things about China( that of course the propaganda omits):
-Their internet is shit, capped by Government and closed to the outside world.
-There is an army of spies(more than a million) working for the State, everything you do is controlled.
- There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
-They are communist, the interest of the individual is always subordinated to the community. If you have a girl with a Chinese woman outside China when you visit China they can refuse to let the girl go out. China needs girls.