This doesn't say anything about how much good science is underneath all this.
Scientific fraud means only one thing: R&D are getting excessively funded there.
I doubt that, as do the times higher education rankings on all but perceived reputation - i.e. US universities are more "famous" in that when scholars were asked to name 15 good universities, they often included US ones.
Although some US universities are highly rated, and mostly in the top 10 for certain metrics and subject matter, they certainly are not "undoubtedly the best".
Thats not to say they are bad, but clearly your judgement is clouded.
The rankings are literally perceived reputation. All you need to do is look at where people want to go to university. And that is overwhelmingly in the US.
The education space is full of scams using perceived reputation to prey on students who don't know better. The US even set up a fake university without classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington and people still signed up because they couldn't tell the difference.
If you want to evaluate education quality, look at people who've gone through the system and how they're doing afterwards.
Thats not what they are doing. They are asking people that have already been to university to name 15 universities that they consider good universities. They dont have to have attended them, they dont even rank them 1-15, they just name 15. Im assuming you can see the flaw with that model - a university that EVERYONE considers 15th would rank higher than one that 99% thought was the best and 1% didnt mention.
They also have rankings based on other metrics. And even in those where the metrics are still weighted 50% with the reputation survey the US is often not even in the top 10. I think you can draw your own conclusions there.
Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can?
> where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US
To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding, which even the EU doesn't hand out, let alone see India and China match not only enough money to catch up with the US, but also to overtake it. Returning Indian and Chinese engineers and scientists means nothing if there isn't tens of billions waiting for them in funding when they get home.
US is still much more attractive for ambitious people from Asian countries than India, China and even the EU.
I'd assumed, perhaps wrongly, things were more unified by now given the age.
As like most things in life, to each their own. But, I was surprised to learn of this shift in balance.
I've spent 6 months backpacking all over india, seeing all the dirty underbelly some decade and half ago, interacting mostly with poor and poorer. Life-changing, extremely intense, beautiful and harsh experience. Those indians getting to the west are mostly from those top layers like brahmins, not your usual poor hard working common indians - 'american dream' is hard to achieve anywhere, but is nigh impossible there, regardless of talents and hard work put in. Everybody knows it, and profit from it as much as they can. Young brahmin couple telling me its fine that 5 year old kids work in fireworks factories instead of going to school, at least they bring some money home. Small kids with various medical situations begging on streets. Some sights and their utter unfairness still haunt me to this day.
I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core, for millenias. Upper castes dont give a nanofraction of a fuck about poorer people, their suffering. Yes, you can live there like a king on IT salary, maybe not in central Bangalore or Pune, but India is bigger than Europe in more than 1 way.
Yet once you stop being poor, money is of little concern. Things like clean air, water and nature, safety, not having 50 C during summer, free good healthcare if not in US, free good education or social services are things we often take for granted, so do the immigrants over time. Life with some poor immitation of that is not that great, and it doesnt matter how high are the walls you build around yourself to shield yourself from the crap behind them, it simply ain't a great life.
So, comparing how much one earns, or saves is largely meaningless in longer scale. You decide which system overall you want to live in and often raise your kids, the rest are details.
My colleagues from Israel also said they missed having cheap Arab maid back home that would take care of the house chores.
>I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core
Both India and China have a pretty nasty caste system.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/29/884989263/the-uncounted-workf...
>13th is a 2016 American documentary film by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the "intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States";[3] it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime. DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings, and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weighs more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration affecting communities of color, especially American descendants of slavery, in the United States. She examines the prison-industrial complex and the emerging detention-industrial complex, discussing how much money is being made by corporations from such incarcerations.
The distinction between this and implicit systems of caste found in Western countries (like US racial inequality), in my mind, is that it is a caste system that's embedded into and enforced by their legal system.
It's disappointing to me, too. If there's one noteworthy plus-side to any communist system, it should be an unyielding commitment by the communist party NOT to allow a legal system that enforces a class system. It's like the one thing they should be good at, even if nothing else.
AFAIK, the urban/rural differentiating part (农业户口; "agricultural hukou" vs urban hukou) is no longer relevant. The "you can't have social welfare where you want to live/work; you can only have social welfare where your hukou is at" part is still relevant and unlikely to be changed in the near future.
Thanks to capitalism, what type of hukou you have no longer limits what kind of work you can do. Most of the mingong-s do low-paid migrant labor work because on the market that's the best they can do with their skills. I have talked with a software engineer at Tencent who was claiming to have rural hukou. This is generally true, to the point that rural hukou holders no longer want to convert their hukou to the urban one, from [1]:
> A recent study [2] finds that only one-fifth migrant workers are interested in converting their rural hukou to urban hukou, as they are unwilling to give up their rural land – valuations having increased sharply in recent years.
It is still unfair to them because of the welfare thing mentioned above, though. But it is not because of the urban/rural difference: for example, if someone has a urban hukou in, say, Zhengzhou (a city with 12mln people), they still can't have welfare in Beijing even if they lived in Beijing for 10+ years. Which is also why they don't convert to urban hukou unless it's Beijing/Shanghai one - benefits of poorer cities are meh, and it is not possible to convert back so they lose their lands permanently.
[1] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-hukou-system/
[2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Rural-Chinese-in-no-hurry-to...
I'm not going to disagree with the inequality, bad air quality, or the gap in development between the classes of people in India.
But, as someone with one foot on either sides of the world, I'd like to caution against a closed-off narrative that sounds like "Look, this, this, and this are bad, so overall it is conclusively bad!". We humans all over the world develop as a society and are posed with different challenges that we solve very differently. I certainly have made my personal choice and moved around (US, Denmark, and now Netherlands), but that doesn't entitle me to say any particular world view _must_ be the good one. I for one, certainly miss the cultural openness, family bonds imposed on one by the typical South Indian society. I miss the attitude of "how do we get by and do this? no point in complaining that the government is failing to do blah, or relying on the safety net of a social system" - weird, I know. But, it gives you a certain mindset to look at things differently. I see this in my daily life with my Austrian wife and my son born in Denmark and being raised in The Netherlands - we(including myself) expect things to be in certain place, and feel entitled to them that we almost do not care. Look up the energy use and water use per capita in any western country versus that of India's and you'll see the eye-opening difference. India simply cannot afford to be as wasteful as the Americans or Europeans when the world is already lit on fire.
Sure, western societies do not have underpaid home maids and servants, but the society here has been developing for a long time, and haven't had the misfortune of another country colonising them right during the industrial age and loot all of the resources and treating people like underpaid home maids and servants. Neither did they have the constraints of a warming climate dictating what or how much fossil fuel to burn to build out their infrastructure.
India is huge, it has a different set of problems than the ones encountered by the western countries while they were developing. Over time, things will rationalise and I'm optimistic that the society will move towards the same priorities that the West has. But, I already cherish the secular credentials, diversity, innovation, and hard working populace of India. The scale of elections that occur that lead up to the election of the prime minister is a marvel to observe. I was only surprised to see the creme of the labour force(IT, one I happen to know) is already on par with the West that already seem to have it all. The rest will follow.
IIRC As long as you work in tech (OK, there's some more subtle rules but let's assume parent gets it), Shenzhen caps your income tax at 15%. Still nowhere near 5%.
I also believe the Chinese government is throwing crazy money at this sector at the moment, I heard they were giving money out to anyone with a PhD that mentioned RISC-V or semiconductors. This was a couple of years back so not sure if this is still the case.
China has a huge trade surplus and they are starting to trade in the BRICS currency. Why shouldn't there be billions? Once the investments pay off, why shouldn't there be even billions more?
They don't have to do anything. The US visa system already excludes most of the Chinese and India people eager to immigrate to the US. The brain drain is bounded above by the US policy.
India and China tolerate more inequality than continental EU. Software engineers probably only make 2 to 3 times as much as teachers or nurses here, rather than maybe 4 to 10 times as in the US (and probably also India and China).
2 to 3 times more than nurses or teachers is huge by socialist western EU standards. Morel like 25%.
Some of the EU countries I talked about are social democracies, and are ruled by socialist parties and have socialist policies who's consequences are a healthy lower class at the expense of a hot sw engineering market due to high taxes on businesses.
Maybe do some reading before talking fud.
You're confusing socialism with communism.
> socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. "we want a real democratic and pluralist left party—one which unites all those who believe in socialism"
Or, if you want the Marxist definition:
> a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism. "socialism is the first stage of the worldwide transition to communism
And therefore:
> Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).
Reading further into communist societies:
> A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.
How ironic that you tell others to read when you yourself don't know the definitions of words you use.
Especially with things like medical workers, who aren't even state employees in most of Europe.
In countries where teachers are well paid (such as Germany), it's not rare for developers to earn less than teachers. Otherwise it varies by the developer seniority, but 0%-50% more would be a realistic range.
1. Because EU isn't a centralized nation. Maybe one day.
2. It is a vassal of the US.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/us-pushin...
> what makes you think India and China can?
Because they have to.
> To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding
I don't think china is desperate for funding. And china has already created such companies. That's why china is being sanctioned.
Wages aren't the only point though. Life is not all about money. I had to take a pay cut to move to Spain but quality of life is so much better here.
Have they looked inside a tech company office before? Have they seen how many Chinese immigrants/second generation Chinese Americans power high-tech US tech companies? Do they think that only the Chinese people in the US can innovate? And that once they're in China, they lose that ability?
Or have they read a science paper recently? China's universities dominate the Nature Index for high quality science output: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2023/insti...
Heck, just read any science paper from top US universities. There's a good chance that one or more Chinese names are on it.
But this is the whole point. They might be Chinese immigrants but they are adding value to US companies.
Your later point on top US university papers - same thing. The US has been doing this for 200 years. So many ambitious and talented people migrate there, because their home countries don’t allow them to succeed for all kinds of reasons.
In the broad scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if they are immigrants or not, they are boosting the US economy.
Just like how almost no scientists working on the atomic bomb with oppenheimer were from the US, and they didn’t build nuclear bombs for European countries…
They partially do. The communism power structure is always a debuff. Loyality > Skills.
Most of them are undereducated with highly censored access to real life in China.
They were never offered the choice to study the Chinese language when they were young, while Chinese have to learn English to get into any Chinese university. As a result, they don't get the freedom to read Chinese online discussions & reports through first hand channels, they have to rely on some "free" media to feed them fake news.
Please be nice to them, they are the victims here.
It's terrible for the US but at least in terms of fairness to the societies who trained, and exported these minds it's pretty damn good.
The US companies extract the value they need/want from these individuals, after their tenure they go back and help to develop their societies which paid for their education/training. It's fair enough, the US is a place for business, that's just business.
Will China be devastated by sanctions? Clearly not. Affected? Yes. Are they able to develop a competitive industry? Surely yes. Easily surpass US? Surely not.
And in fact, as many a strategy game buff knows, it is rarely a single move or "feature". Even chip industry doesn't exist in a vacuum, it needs trained employees, good management, good regulation... It is all about who can build and maintain a more productive ecosystem, at the end of which is the output of high quality chips.
Didn't China just do that in the last few decades?
1000 years is just too long in this age. I'd be looking for the next 10 years.
Right...Famously non-jingoistic China isn't a problem..
1) The US just challenged the world's leading manufacturing power to manufacture new things. That plan is not going to work. They're up against a culture that builds, builds smart and builds quickly.
2) There is actual racism in the US that is tipping the research scales towards China [0]. Between that and the concerning trends in political destabilisation the states are relying on China making a lot of mistakes as a nation if they intend to keep ahead. The whole US model was importing the bright sparks from other cultures and supporting them with freedom and strong property rights.
[0] https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/18/stanford-community-memb... - just one in a disturbing number of articles I've been seeing.
China is not a safe place to own things. Compare Elon Musk to Jack Ma. Both annoy the powers that be. One gets the call-him-a-nazi treatment from time to time and the other disappeared for a bit then fled to Japan.
If Ma had built up his asset base in the US, he'd have been a lot better off.
We also play fast and loose with eminent domain, allowing government to take away property and hand it to another private developer to produce pretty much anything; the development doesn't even have to be something like public infrastructure. (Kelo v. City of New London SCOTUS case)
Municipalities are free to extort a variety of silly easements out of folks seeking permits. In my own town, the planning commission routinely extracts enormous conservation easements or public pathway easements (often larger than an acre in the SF Bay Area, where that much land is handily worth north of $1M) from anyone trying to build or remodel a house. In what universe is that not a taking, as defined by the Constitution? This universe, of course.
So yes, our property rights protections are incredibly weak. You have more freedom to do what you will with your property in formerly Communist countries in Eastern Europe than you do in the United States.
Chinese education system also has the advantage of being far more accessible, and China has a much bigger population than US. There is absolutely no way for US to compete against a bigger and better educated population in China in terms of R&D.
https://physicsworld.com/a/china-overtakes-the-us-in-terms-o...
https://english.news.cn/20220920/38d7b612ced14c5a9aa37216c72...
https://www.cato.org/blog/abandoning-us-more-scientists-go-c...
Obviously this is anecdotal so take from that what you will. The computer graphics and machine learning communities in academia and industry are small (even with the ML/AI explosion), if this was happening in any significant amount it would be difficult to miss it.
As for research output, I think there are definitely more top-tier papers from Chinese universities than in the past. It still seems like there are more Chinese surnames from Europe and NORAM universities than from Chinese ones. The big names in the field are still in European and NORAM universities.
I wonder how these are articles you linked are counting numbers. It's hard to understand how something like this could be happening completely under the radar.
At the end of the day, a single individual can educate many thousands of people or produce high quality research that will advance the country. There's a pretty famous case of this Qian Xuesen who is the father of Chinese space program. He got his education in US, and then left to China during the red scare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen
Many thousands of people like him are doing the same today.
And finally, researches are leaving Europe for China nowadays as well https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-07-19/china-...
However, all that aside, the most important point is that China has a very good education system that's accessible to everyone, and they have a large population. This is coupled with government having a lot of direction over the industry and actively funding the types of research and technology development that's strategic for China. This is a recipe for success.
Quality of life is important and being monitored 24/7 is not my idea of a good life.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/08/future-tech-dominance-...
1. this speaks nothing to China's R&D.
2. SMIC's 7nm was developed in 2020, largely made possible by former TSMC engineers, like Mong Sang Liang, former head of TSMC's R&D, and now co-CEO of SMIC. China already had all the tools and lithos required for 7/5nm at this point.
3. main challenge was not of "if," but how fast they would improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness and yield rates at scale without ASML's EUVs.
4. most key executives at TSMC hold advanced graduate degrees from US universities and were trained at various US tech companies before returning to Taiwan (eg, Morris Chang, C. C. Wei). And they still send their kids to US universities.
5. US sanction was too little, too late. the most cutting edge 3nm would be difficult without EUV's, but Mong Sang Liang stated that 5nm was almost complete back in 2020.
China's most advanced litho maker is SMEE. It was reported that their most cutting-edge node 28nm would be mass-produced this year, but don't hold your breath -- they've been saying it for at least a couple of years now.
I don't think many people care if education focused migrants to the US decreased, so long as that need for workers is still met some other way.
The fact is, there are some extremely talented researchers in China, and cutting them off from a specific technology is frankly too little too late. Either the US needs to cool their jingoistic jets a bit or they need to seriously consider whether direct competition is sustainable.
Yes, the US has undoubtedly the best higher education system in the world now, but this is largely driven by immigration from China and India. Will this still be the case in 30 years when India and China’s economies have matured and high paying tech jobs can be found elsewhere?
Right now the immigration system for technically minded immigrants makes no sense. Rather than providing a path to citizenship, the US is sending some of the most talented individuals back to their old countries, where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US. It’s a terrible strategy that any country not hindered by two year election cycle myopia would rectify.