The US does have a great innovation-oriented culture but much of it stems from continual immigration of brilliant people from all over the world as well as being the largest single market with largely uniform culture and language, which greatly helps with the scaling of large enterprises.

China's domestic market is coming close to the US size and arguably larger in PPP terms which matters more than in dollars since the costs for R&D are often dominated by domestic salary. Anyone knowledgeable about Chinese domestic market will attest to its vitality and bustling competitive spirits, not to mention intense work ethics that results in rapid experimentation and iteration.

The US continues to lead in breakthroughs but rollouts of innovation happen faster in the Chinese market. With more funding and resources, China also starts to lead in fields they focus on including quantum communications, some areas in AI, and a few other engineering fields.

What is clearly lacking for the US is solid education in mathematics. This deficiency leaves the majority of population behind most peers in the developed world. The gap behind East Asian nations including China is especially acute as shown by the PISA result.

The gap in math between US and participating Chinese provinces (200+ million population) in PISA 2015 is about 0.6 SD, or roughly comparable to students with 2.7 vs 3.3 GPA.

The US needs to expend more effort to attract the best people in the world while pushing ahead with education reforms. The latter takes over a decade to bear fruits, however, so attracting and retaining global innovators should be a key current priority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_...

> The US needs to expend more effort to attract the best people in the world

US did that for the last 50 years, and it did not work out as much as it was imagined it would.

You do not only need a world class academicians, but their second-in-command people, regular full time researchers, junior assistants for them, and qualified blue collar workers to help run universities they will be working in.

People have been saying China haven't a hope in succeeding since the 80s yet here we are. Smashing everyone out of the water with ease. Doing the unthinkable as a matter of fact. They play to win and they're good at it.

The thing is back in the 80's, China was starting from a low point. It's easy to catch up which is what they've done but like the original poster said, it's much tougher to take the lead position. I agree with him that the Chinese culture makes it harder to innovate.

While I can see the logic in the argument I think it doesn't reflect in reality. For example they are miles ahead in stem cell research because they pursue technological advancement with much less concern about morals and regulation at the research phase.

Are they miles ahead? My impression of Chinese biology isn't that it's super advanced - I mean, it's another subject, but consider the recent headlines about the CRISPR baby. Ask any biologist about that experiment, and they'll tell you it's not only the ethics that are seriously bizarre, but just the idea that you should use something like CRISPR on a baby at this stage in the technology's development. It's mad science, but it's not likely good science.

Other than Japanese fishing vessels, who has China been "smashing out of the water with ease?"

World's expectations!

Yes, it's that attitude that's the problem. Not all problems can be solved with tanks. And they are getting worse, not better, no matter what their propaganda shills claim.

> China's recent successes can be attributed to intellectual theft from innovative cultures, and brutal oppression of their own people. This does not scale.

It scales pretty well. Reason? Facts. Anyone saying China can't innovate is self-denial.

Theft doesn't scale. Like a parasite that kills its own host, after you drive your victim out of business, who will you steal from then?

Using fear and brutal dominance causes people to take less risks and focus on appearing to succeed instead of committing to the unpopular, long-term effort and delayed results that innovation requires. China's appearance of recent success is exactly that - an appearance. A thin facade created by a PR campaign. We all know from being ripped off on Amazon the real quality of Chinese products. It's exactly what one would expect from a country of prisoners.

If China is such a great power, why not compete on a even field? Get rid of the mail subsidies and use a fair currency exchange rate. You won't, because you know your backwater has no hope of competing with civilized nations. Arrogance and corruption are not a replacement for responsible and effective.

Oh, well, your faith is strong with this one.

But praying for the downfall of your enemy due to their own weaknesses isn't very good strategy leads towards victory, as we all understand it.

Praying? More like waiting.

Go examine how common private debt is in China. How common corruption is, which leads to bad products and failing infrastructure.

"civilized nations"?

Pride goeth before the fall..

Yeah, this kind of blind racism and ignorance of what's actually happening in China is always a bit shocking. A lot of people are going to look back on the US from 2001 to 2030 and ask themselves how people be so totally blind and stupid. It's going to be one of those monumental historical blunders that will never really be lived down.

They're innovative enough to implement off of stolen documents and whatever they already know which is a pretty hard skill.

I can't tell you how many projects I've been on where everything is spelled out to spec and nothing gets implemented right.

Political change in China is more plausible than the US suddenly increasing its population by 800 million or so.

Are you talking about free non-military funded thinking outside of Microsoft, Alphabet, Oracle, IBM and other corporations?

If you really think it's Americans with the pioneer spirit these days you should spend a month driving around the US observing people then do the same for the cities in China.

Could you elaborate? What differences would you expect your driver to see?

Information wants to be a keystone of the US economy?