The degree to which an economy is "advanced" has more to do with institutional systems and processes, not whether they're using the latest tech. Often times the latest tech papers over institutional deficiencies, but only superficially. Mobile payment platforms have been ubiquitous in Africa for many years, but nobody would say that Africa's banking system is "advanced" or that it's capable of supporting the needs of an advanced financial sector. They became ubiquitous in Africa first precisely because of institutional deficiencies. Mobile payments solved some of the most visible consequences, but by itself it didn't go very far in addressing the underlying problems. Sure, it's easy to pay a vendor for lunch or a pair of sneakers using your phone, but what matters infinitely more is how safe and reliable it is to secure a $2,000,000 LoC to help bring your factory online.

Old systems in older economies persist because they work, or at least work well enough.

If China overtakes the U.S. in technology dominance, it's because they've spent 30 years studying, copying, and improving upon American legal, financial, and business management systems. Notwithstanding the fact that they are serving the interests and demands of the Communist Party, which often puts them in a lose-lose scenario, China's economists and policy advisers understand the systems of modern capitalism better than most of their Western counterparts.

I'm not a fan of mobile payments myself but I would say that compared to the US most of Africa's mobile payments are indeed more advanced, yes.

If I understand correctly many poor people in Africa are de facto banked (as long as they have a mobile phone, which has become pretty achievable right now), while a very large proportion of the US poor population is de-facto non-banked, with all the extra financial hardships that that situation entails.

My goodness. American exceptionalism at its very finest. You honestly think that Eurorpean, Asian, and other countries have nothing to offer? Not everything great is from American. We need to get over ourselves and realize that we're not at all that exceptional. Do we do certain things better? Absolutely. Do we do certain things worse and have a lot to learn from others? You can bet your last dollar.

You’re probably correct though, this could never happen in the US because of regulatory capture (by the banks, mostly, but not only).

Comparing consumer payment infrastructure in the US and China, there is really no comparison. For me, in cost, convenience, and security (against the threat models I'm concerned with), China wins on every factor, by significant margins. Except opening a bank account.

A month after I moved to China, I got a fraud notification. From what? It turned out a gas station in Oakland had a skimmer. I'm told stuff like that simply can't happen in China (which I take with a grain of salt, but I have a hard time imagining what fraud vectors there are).

Until the next bubble bursts...what works then is YOU, because YOU pay for too big to fail.

Define "Africa".

Not sure what you mean by this. The quality of life of people in China improved in the past 30 years much more than Americans quality of life did (some would argue that the latter even decreased). The CCP has really worked exceptionally well for the people. It might change, the fact that they don't have a democracy and Xi Jinping removed its own term limits exposes them to the risk of getting stuck with a bad or even terrible leadership. But so far it has worked remarkably well.

Anecdotally, I remember competing against Chinese robotics teams as a college student. It's a myth that the Chinese are not innovative - their engineering is top notch and they routed the competition with hardware tech that had never been seen before in an academic setting. More surprisingly, they freely share their designs with other Chinese teams, cultivating a culture of open hardware.

Here's a video of a Chinese robot throwing balls through a hoop and landing them on a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUZgMrl7qQ

I think that the self-told Western media narrative (of the Chinese not being innovative and only being copy-cats) has cut at least 5 to 10 years of the advantage that the West used to have in front of China.

Had the decisions makers in the West been more aware of the real innovative minds/processes active in China maybe those decision makers would have taken more pro-active steps earlier on, instead they chose to sleep on their laurels. I think a similar thing happened to the US car industry in relation to the Japanese car industry in the '70s and early '80s, with known devastating results for the US car industry.

If one team does dramatically better than another team, I would look at training and resources. If there's a big gap in that preparation, then it's not a good comparison. If I'm going to college and I'm putting all my time into something other than a conventional pursuit of a college degree, then I'm going to question why I'm there and if I would be better off elsewhere.

This assumes an undergrad experience. I know nothing about college beyond that point. All I wanted to do was get my degree and move on.

I should have mentioned that I didn't go to college in the States. This could be true, a lot of the technical college experience in some parts of Asia involves doing practical stuff. In my part of the world, the theory is often lags practice because the curriculum rarely keeps up with state of the art in academia or industry.

> If one team does dramatically better than another team, I would look at training and resources.

They were definitely better funded than other teams. They also had unrestricted access to the biggest hardware markets in the world, and perhaps some bleeding edge automation technology from the industry.

> If I'm going to college and I'm putting all my time into something other than a conventional pursuit of a college degree, then I'm going to question why I'm there and if I would be better off elsewhere.

Yeah I guess the average US undergrad experience in Computer Science/Engineering is more focused on preparing you for a job and/or grad school. The coursework is rigorous enough that it prevents you from going for more hobbyist pursuits. America's path-breaking innovation comes from its Science funding and Graduate Programs, and that's where China and other emerging powers have a lot of catching up to do.

The chinese military is way, way behind in pretty much all regards and even going for "disruptive tech" won't do them much good when they can't even manage to design/produce a working jet engine for their fighter jets that isn't complete garbage. They basically resorted to copying 1980s russian designed engines, but couldn't get the metallurgy right so they just imported them. You can't start to compare with the US military capability if even Russia can be much better than you at producing something as basic (in terms of military needs) as a jet engine

There's also nuclear weapons as a concern. I'm not sure we're quite talking mutually assured destruction, but we wouldn't want to go there. So far, nuclear deterrence has held up.

There's a lot of ways to fight a war. Conventional military technology likely wouldn't be involved on any battleground we would find ourselves on with China.

For a hot war, China seems underequipped, but this doesn't seem the most relevant anyways.

Cyber and proxy war-like capabilities seem more important in this day and age. From what I can tell China leads in cyber capabilities versus the US. And they've been able to expand in the South China Sea without much retaliation so far, so maybe they're even doing alright on the other.

That's like saying a car is the fastest car except it's engine.

I feel like China sometimes looks more advanced, but in actuality is far behind. It's easy to look advanced when your technology ecosystem is highly centralized and on display for the purpose of bolstering national pride. In the US the ecosystem is fractured and exists solely to provide value. The tech isn't there for show, it's there for competition and profit.

SPLAT!

Boston Dynamics is far ahead of anyone in robotics, and I can't really see an argument for being more advanced in computing while being behind in semiconductors/chips since that's all that really matters.

Also in other areas of tech such as aerospace companies like SpaceX are only further increasing the technological gap.

Edit: While I'm at it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG , ah yes, there was something else ...lemme' ssink...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

I could go on and on...

Edit: Die Gedanken sind frei! The mind is free... Is it, anymore?

Now if you mean the lowest overall classes, I've been to rural areas in China where the entire community shits in a hole dug in the ground, it gets filled, a new one is dug. They also all share a single water source. We're talking a few hundred people here. On the opposite end of the spectrum I've met someone in Shenzen who owns two houses in London, one in Toronto, and one in Hawaii. Each house is nicely furnished and has a few luxury sports cars to choose from.

To dovetail, this system still exist in the west in the form of agricultural migrant workers, their work is outside of populated areas so it's more palatable.

When I was in China this year there were places where you paid just by scanning your face (this was for street food....)

It really has nothing about technological advance. If you can get the living cost and wages low enough you could make deliver works, profitable and sustainable. If the average POS system does not charge 10 to 100x of those in China there no reason why restaurant cant have them in US.

I see it as economic difference. Not so much about technology in itself.

It is profitable because labor is cheaper, a quality associated with less advanced economies.

"in technology, the US are ten years ahead of Europe; China is ten years ahead of the US"