Sure A Not

Writing about the chaos of Trump’s evening is exhausting. I’ll get back to it later, but now I’d like to get a short break to read about a civilization that&nbsp, isn’t &nbsp, now tearing itself apart and accelerating its own drop: China.

A number of rising powers all reached their heights during the 20th century in terms of not only relative military may and economic power but also technological and cultural development.

These included the United States, Japan, Germany and Russia. Thus far, the 21st century is a little different, because just one big society is&nbsp, hitting its peak&nbsp, right today: China. India is only beginning to take off against the ancient power, and all of them are fading.

China’s top is&nbsp, really spectacular&nbsp, — a masterpiece of state capability and resource recruitment never seen before on this planet. China built more high-speed bridge in just a few years than the total number of different nations in the world. Its engine manufacturers are leapfrogging the developed earth, seizing authority in the EV market of the future.

China has produced so many solar panels and batteries that it has driven down the price to remain competitive with fossil fuels — a great blow against climate change, despite all of China’s huge fuel emissions, and a win for global electricity abundance.

China’s towns are scale-unmatched: dense forests of towering buildings adorned with LED lights, dense stores with wonderful restaurants and shops selling every modern convenience for a reasonable price, large highways and enormous train stations.

Yet China’s policy missteps and totalitarian misuses inspire awe and dread — Zero Covid failed in the end, but it demonstrated an ability to control world lower to the detailed stage that the Soviets would have envied.

However, it’s also up for debate whether China will be as inventive and cultural as the great empires of the 20th century. Many people ( including&nbsp, myself ) compare early 21st century China to&nbsp, early 20th century America. But by the start of World War 1, Americans had already invented the aircraft, the light bulb, the phone, the report person, air conditioning, the automatic transmission, the system weapons and the ball pen.

And the nation now had spawned a large number of well-known authors, Hollywood films, and jazz music. Japan’s social explosion&nbsp, came a little after, but was every bit as spectacular.

It is clear that a state that is authoritarian and oppressive inhibits creativity. I also expect China’s cultural export and control to improve as time goes on, due to increased individual wealth and leisure moment that make Taiwanese people feel more free to pursue artistic interests. But everything in the country is&nbsp, heavily censored, which means that the&nbsp, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ne-zha-2-chinese-animated-film-shatters-box-office-records-heads-overs-rcna191619″>movies&nbsp, and music and&nbsp, video games&nbsp, and TV and art that come out of China will usually tend to be bland, anodyne stuff. 1.

It’s much less clear whether&nbsp, scientific and technological&nbsp, creativity suffers from autocracy, though. To strengthen their nations, autocrats want to advance science and technology. They sometimes squelch private entrepreneurs out of fear that an alternative center of power would threaten their rule, but at the same time they tend to direct large amounts of resources toward research and development.

The USSR beat the US to space ( twice ), and Germany was pretty autocratic for most of its run as the world’s leading scientific and technological powerhouse.

Modern China is undoubtedly a very creative nation. Chinese scientists now publish the majority of high-impact papers in fields like chemistry, physics, computer science, materials science, and engineering:

The country’s true dominance is probably less than depicted in this chart, due to&nbsp, “home bias” in the citations&nbsp, used to measure papers ‘ impact. But even correcting for that bias, China is undeniably a scientific superpower.

China’s innovation outside of the lab is just as impressive. A vast number of&nbsp, incremental improvements&nbsp, and&nbsp, process innovations&nbsp, allow many Chinese businesses to improve product quality and decrease manufacturing cost much more effectively than their foreign rivals. Most of the manufactured goods we buy today would be either lower-quality, more expensive, or both without Chinese innovation.

In fact, Chinese companies are responsible for&nbsp, most of the nation’s research spending. As a result, Chinese companies dominate the global market for a number of high-tech products:

China is now ahead of most or all of the rest of the world in terms of&nbsp, deploying&nbsp, and utilizing those technologies so that people can use them. It has the world’s biggest high-speed rail system, one of the world’s best&nbsp, 5G cell phone networks, the world’s best mobile payments system, the world’s best&nbsp, delivery robots, some of the world ‘s&nbsp, most automated factories, and the world ‘s&nbsp, most futuristic cars.

What, however, has China produced in its golden age so far in terms of actual big scientific and technological breakthroughs and breakthroughs? The answer to this question might not be&nbsp, economically&nbsp, important — it’s hard to name an invention that came out of Singapore, and yet it’s among the richest countries on Earth. But it’s kind of an interesting question nonetheless.

Some people now contend that significant breakthroughs are no longer as prevalent as they once were. Some believe the low-hanging fruit of science has &nbsp, already been picked. It’s also possible that it’s harder for a single inventor or discoverer to stay ahead of the pack due to the much greater competitiveness of today’s global scientific enterprise and the global economy.

Nevertheless, we&nbsp, have &nbsp, seen a bunch of big breakthroughs and game-changing inventions in the last two decades — AI, generative AI, mRNA vaccines, Crispr, smartphones, reusable rockets, lab-grown meat, self-driving cars and so on. And it’s usually not too hard to identify a few researchers or a single company that made the big breakthrough for each one of these.

What significant ones have also emerged from China over the past ten and a half? First of all, I think it’s helpful to differentiate three different types of breakthrough innovation:

Scientific discovery: This occurs when someone develops a new useful theory or discovers some significant empirical result.
1. Prototype invention: This is when someone demonstrates some technological functionality in a lab setting.
2. Commercial invention: This is when a company creates a version of a technology that has sufficient functionality to achieve mass commercialization.

The distinction between 2 and 3 is the source of many debates about who invented what, though the line between 1 and 2 isn’t particularly important in my opinion. James Watt didn’t build the first working&nbsp, steam engine, nor Apple the first working&nbsp, smartphone, but they made critical improvements that made those technologies mass-marketable in forms that would be recognizable many years later.

Some people believe Watt and Apple don’t deserve credit for these inventions because of this, but I believe they’re mistaken. Successful commercial invention requires bringing together a set of features, functional improvements, cost reductions, design, marketing/branding, and a business model for selling the thing, and so it involves a different set of skills than making a prototype in a lab.

On the other hand, prototype invention is clearly important as well, because it demonstrates that something is possible to build. Even though the Wright Brothers didn’t create the type of plane that a lot of people wanted to buy and use, everyone agrees that they were the ones who invented the airplane.

So anyway, I tried to look up the answer to this question. My sources include a report from ChatGPT’s” Deep Research” AI, Google searches, and lists of Chinese&nbsp, inventions&nbsp, and&nbsp, discoveries, Google searches, and a conversation with&nbsp, Glenn Luk&nbsp ( who is very bullish on Chinese innovation ). 2

In terms of&nbsp, commercial inventions&nbsp, like the smartphone or the steam engine, there are some big things that have come out of China since the turn of the century. Among these are:

1. The quadcopter drone

When people say “drone” these days, they usually don’t mean things like America’s Reaper or Iran’s Shahed — things that run on fossil fuels. They mean battery-powered quadcopters. This kind of drone has significantly altered our physical world over the past few years, surpassing all other technological innovations since the smartphone, and has seen a lot more widespread commercial adoption.

The first electronic remote-controlled&nbsp, quadcopter drones&nbsp, were built by a Canadian company called Draganfly in the 1990s. The first commercially successful quadcopter was released by a French company called Parrot in 2010.

But it wasn’t until China’s DJI released their Phantom in 2013 that drones attained the baseline level of functionality we expect from them today, and took off as a popular global product. DJI’s drones had better control, more stability, and longer flight time than Parrot’s, as well as a number of additional features that we now see as crucial.

In the same way that Steve Jobs is generally regarded as the inventor of the iPhone, I think it’s probably acceptable to refer to DJI’s founder andnbsp, Frank Wang&nbsp, as the inventor of the contemporary quadcopter drone. 3

2.5G wireless communications

5G isn’t one thing — it’s a product standard, meaning it’s a suite of various wireless technologies and capabilities. But Chinese companies, especially Huawei and ZTE, led the world in terms of the integration of those various technologies.

They developed and expanded upon these technologies, combined them with technologies like Massive MIMO ( a technique for using multiple antennas ), beam forming ( a method for more directly and effectively transmitting wireless data ), and polar codes ( a noise reduction technique ). They then successfully distributed them to consumers.

So I think it’s fair to say that Chinese companies “invented 5G” in the same sense that Japanese companies invented 3G, or American companies invented 4G.

3. The personal air taxi

Lots of companies have been working on these, but most people agree that the Chinese company Ehang was &nbsp, the first to commercialize these. They appear pretty inventive:

4. The semi-solid state battery car and the sodium-ion battery car

Chinese car companies were the first to release vehicles powered by&nbsp, semi-solid state batteries&nbsp, and&nbsp, sodium-ion batteries, two alternatives to the typical lithium-ion batteries we use in EVs.

In contrast to the typical kind of electric car, sodium-ion batteries are slightly safer and charge more quickly, while semi-solid batteries have faster charging, better safety, higher energy density, and longer lifespans.

5. Sharing of bikes without docks

Bike sharing itself was invented elsewhere, but a Chinese company is generally believed to be the first to commercialize&nbsp, dockless bike sharing, which has now&nbsp, become widespread&nbsp, in the country.

6. The smartphone that folds is

The Royole FlexPai is generally acknowledged as the world’s first commercialized foldable smartphone. It’s pretty neat!

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7. Payments made using a Face-scan

China’s Alipay was the first to implement” smile to pay” systems, back in 2017.

8. The vape (e-cigarette )

This was actually&nbsp, invented back in 2003, by a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik.

9. The skyscraper building machine ( and various other construction machinery )

This is really awesome. A Chinese company &nbsp, created a machine&nbsp, that moves up a skyscraper as it’s constructed, building each floor as it goes:

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There are also some pretty cool original machines for&nbsp, laying high speed rail track.

10. Electromagnetic car suspension

Bose long ago invented this, but BYD seems to finally be able to do so:

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Those are the main commercial inventions I could find. I’m sure this isn’t a complete list, because A) there are a few things that are probably known inside of China but not well-known in English-language media yet ( I’ve heard rumors that Chinese chip companies are already mass-producing&nbsp, 3D DRAM, for instance ), and B) there are some inventions that will end up being important but whose importance people haven’t generally realized yet ( like the air conditioner in 1902 ).

Additionally, this list may soon grow. Chinese companies might soon come out with the world’s first marketable&nbsp, humanoid robots, &nbsp, solid-state car batteries, &nbsp, vacuum maglev trains&nbsp, ( “hyperloop” ), &nbsp, thorium nuclear reactors, &nbsp, perovskite solar cells, &nbsp, lab-grown organs, etc. Any one of these technologies would change the game, but it’s never been clear how far these technologies have come from widespread use. They have been in development for a while.

So if you can think of anything else that should go on this list, please let me know.

But even allowing for the incompleteness of this list, I feel like I expected it to be…a little more impressive? Although some of the other items in this list seem a little unimportant, drones are amazing and are already having an impact. Dockless bike-sharing is neat, but I’m not sure how big of a difference it makes in terms of transportation convenience relative to the docked variety.

Although folding smartphones are cool, will you actually buy one? Sodium-ion and semi-solid-state battery cars have some advantages, but seem likely to end up as niche products. Facial recognition payment doesn’t really save you much time versus swiping a phone, and it’s a little creepy. A few frequently mentioned items, like BYD’s “blade battery,” sounded so incremental that I didn’t even list them on this list.

Anyway, &nbsp, prototype inventions&nbsp, are a bit harder to identify, because unless they’re done in an academic lab, it’s hard to tell how well the prototype really works. Companies are typically secretive about what they create, especially in China, where other businesses are constantly attempting to steal their intellectual property.

And what you do see&nbsp, publicly released&nbsp, is often a marketing stunt that doesn’t really reveal how well the thing works. Then there are military inventions, which are kept under&nbsp, even tighter wraps. It’s unclear whether a Chinese company actually entered the field of humanoid robots, solid-state battery cars, vacuum vacuums, or even when you know that they do.

The Wright Brothers were sort of a special case here — everyone could see for themselves that the thing flew.

Here I’m having a&nbsp, lot&nbsp, of trouble constructing a list. As for&nbsp, scientific discoveries. The top ones I could find include:

1. The development of space-based quantum communications (useful for determining when your communications have been compromised )

2. The first&nbsp, cloned primates

3. The first&nbsp, photonic quantum computer&nbsp, to demonstrate “quantum supremacy”

4. The first human babies whose&nbsp, genes were edited&nbsp, using Crispr ( though the scientist was jailed for doing this )

Really, there isn’t much else there. Not being a scientist, I’m not really able to judge how groundbreaking a discovery in chemistry or materials science or biology is.

But AI, Wikipedia, and the lists I find online are having real trouble listing Chinese achievements in science that aren’t of the form “world’s biggest radio telescope” or “fastest supercomputer on Earth for six months” .&nbsp, Wikipedia’s list&nbsp, of modern Chinese discoveries is almost all math theorems from the mid 20th century (usually work done outside China ).

This is a little strange, don’t you think? Chinese scientists are publishing 80 % of the world’s high-impact papers in materials science, 75 % in chemistry, and almost 60 % in physics, and neither I nor the entire English-speaking internet can find more than one or two breakthrough advances coming out of China in these fields?

Chinese science cannot be the answer, so let’s say that. I mean, &nbsp, a bit of it is fake, because of citation rings and perverse incentives at Chinese universities, but most of it is very real. It’s just all incremental stuff. Although all those incremental discoveries are unquestionably significant, there haven’t been many significant breakthroughs in recent years.

The seeming paucity of Chinese invention and discovery is even stranger when we consider how much human capital the country has. The nation should be producing more Nobel-caliber scientists with 1.4 billion people, one of the best educational systems in the world ( at least in the richer regions ), and incredibly well-funded universities. The talent is there. Except when you hear about Chinese scientists making world-changing discoveries, they all seem to have &nbsp, done their work outside China, often in the US.

Now, I’m always very skeptical of the myth that Asian nations are uncreative. This stereotype got lobbed at Japan for a long time, but it was never true, &nbsp, a list of Japanese inventions and discoveries&nbsp, will run for many pages. 4&nbsp,

Yes, there were cases in which Japanese companies adopted and improved technology from the US and Europe — CNC machine tools, shipbuilding, and fuel-efficient cars come to mind — but at the same time, Japanese scientists and inventors made breakthroughs at about the same rate as their counterparts in the West.

The” Japan is uncreative” trope partly came from Japan’s slightly later industrialization, but was also a defensive coping reaction by American businesses in the 70s and 80s who were afraid of Japanese competition.

However, some smaller Asian nations do seem to fit the stereotype a little better. Singapore, especially, is notorious for having some of the world’s best scientists and engineers, but&nbsp, very few breakthrough discoveries. The same holds true for Taiwan, too.

South Korea is somewhere in between — there are &nbsp, a few standout Korean inventions, but so far no science Nobels and few game-changing products. Together, those three countries have 80 million people, or about 2/3 of Japan’s population, but they have produced far fewer breakthroughs than Japan combined.

The good news here is that a country doesn’t actually have to produce a bunch of standout inventions and Nobel-winning scientific discoveries in order to get rich. Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan all have GDPs that are higher than Japan’s. So the question of” Where are all the Chinese breakthroughs”? might ultimately not matter to China’s leaders. Being “giant Korea” or “giant Taiwan” doesn’t sound like a particularly bad fate.

Still, I do wonder why China, with its vast talent pool, its avalanche of research funding, and its huge consumer markets, hasn’t produced more game-changing inventions and discoveries yet.

I genuinely don’t believe it’s a result of autocracy; the CCP would surely reward  a Chinese researcher for developing mRNA vaccines or the transformer model or Crispr. And Frank Wang wasn’t punished for inventing the modern quadcopter drone— in fact, he’s a billionaire, and seems to be escaping the negative attention that peers like Jack Ma have received.

One possibility is that China’s economic institutions reward fast-following and intense competition over breakthrough innovation. It might be economically useless to create something truly new because there isn’t enough strong intellectual property protection; it will just be copied by someone else who will get the all the credit.

That seems like it would encourage more incremental advances. In science, incentives for  and the quantity of papers over quality  may be to blame. These incentives, along with various industrial policies, might produce intensive overcompetition, which I believe Chinese people call “neijuan“.

Whether China can tweak its system to produce more breakthrough discoveries and inventions is an open question. Given the success of nations like Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea, whether it should even care about doing so is another open question. The country certainly does tons of innovation, and maybe the incremental kind is all you really need.

However, if the lack of breakthroughs persists, I believe there is a chance that the 21st century great powers may turn out to be a little bit more boring than their 20th century foes.

Notes:

1 There are exceptions, of course. Check out&nbsp, this list of interesting new music&nbsp, from China. The band Carsick Cars is my favorite of the bunch.

2 Deep Research is a very good product — the first AI I’ve found that’s really useful for my writing. The key is that it lists sources that you can independently verify, so you can’t put your trust in it to prevent hallucinate. One prompt is basically like getting a smart undergrad to spend a day or two writing you a research report.

3 On the other hand, most people wouldn’t call Henry Ford the inventor of the car, so there will always be arguments here.

The digital SLR camera, the hand calculator, the laptop, flash memory, the DVD, the LCD TV, quartz wristwatches, color plasma TVs, CDs, VHS, the semiconductor laser, the microprocessor, the hybrid car, the lithium-ion batteries, carbon nanotubes, pluripotent stem cells, quantum electrodynamics, the blue LED, mesons, CP violation, spontaneous symmetry breaking, neutrino detection, neutrino oscillations, MSG, high-fructo This very partial list includes all three types of breakthroughs — scientific discoveries, prototypes, and commercial inventions.

This article, Noah Smith’s Noahpinion, was originally published on Noah Smith’s Substack, and it is now republished with kind permission. Become a Noahopinion&nbsp, subscriber&nbsp, here.

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