In the age of cloud computing, does the number of supercomputers even indicate anything except the ability to run simulations on climate and nuclear fallout?
Personally, I wish someone created a more intelligent, less cronyist, less wasteful, but as willing to experiment alternative to the US tech industry. But it's definitely not China today that is even more reliant on meaningless KPIs than the corporate America. Of course, when the dear leader has an ambition to make the country a superpower, it makes sense to order more supercomputers.
China has had a huge population and economy for decades. Almost by definition they will play an important role in the future of the internet. Anyone who said otherwise was wrong then and is wrong now.
That was not my intention. Instead, my implication was that the dismissal of China's progress that you see in HN was entirely motivated by nationalism, not objective analysis of the facts. If you were trying to objectively analyze of the facts the rational conclusion should be "this is really complex, who knows how it's going to turn out."
China spent almost all of the last 30 years copying developed nations to try to catch up. They're still aggressively doing it across every field, from reverse engineering Russian jet engines, to stealing IP & copying US fighter jets, to using CRISPR knowledge & technology developed in the West to try to leap frog, to the Landwind clone of the Land Rover. Their phones remain copies of what Apple and Samsung are doing; nearly all of their domestic phones run versions of Android, because they can't build their own OS yet. Copying permeates their entire economy.
That isn't in fact a criticism or a negative. It makes sense for any poor or undeveloped nation - which China absolutely was until recently - to do that to attempt to rapidly improve.
That "therefore" is a negative and in my opinion more than anything shows that American has been leading the world for so long that they can't even conceive that might not be the case at some point in the future. Even people in tech who should be paying attention dismiss it by saying "nah, they can't really innovate, they're just copying, and therefore will never surpass us".
I guess time will tell.
In general, I think we're still in the denial/anger phase, with a trend towards the latter. You can literally feel the seething anger just reading some of the comments here.
This is what happens the best "copier" copies from the best.