As always the revolution starts from the competing elites. The culture revolution happened because CCP couldn't allow any form of alternative power centers.

It's a bit more complicated than that though.

One needs to disaggregate data to get a full picture of what happens in China due to the rapid evolution of things. Forty years ago very few people went to college. It's a big bulge of population that are not going to upgrade their skills (mostly retired but things like learning to drive or using the popular apps are still difficult for most who have not already learned). They are also very used to hardship and will consume little even if they come into unexpected wealth (say from housing). The demographic shift will not play out as everywhere else.

Western pop consensus on PRC is reliably frequently (almost deliberately) wrong that that the consensus _is_ the extraordinary proof, because these narratives are designed to be cope propaganda.

But the TLDR is it's the quality of workforce not the demographics that drives productivity and growth. JP TFR went below 2 in mid 70s, their economy has grown by 2000% relative to Yen. Same with SKR, TFR went below 2 in mid 80s, economy grew by 2500% relative to KRW... the sauce? Skilling up relative % of workforce to compete on higher end / higher value / higher paid industries. The current limitation with both these countries is they're small, relative to PRC, they've maximized human potential, reaching around 80% skilled workforce, basically the ceiling, they can no longer generate surplus enough talent to compete past limit.

PRC went >2 TFR in 90s, but they have so much people that they're still at 20% skilled workforce, the academic reforms to churn out tertiary only put in place ~10-15 years ago, their headroom is still very high. As in generating OECD+ in skilled talent combined per year. They're on track to add more STEM in the next 25 years (birth cohorts already predetermined) than US will add people (birth and immigration inclusive) - they're on track to have 2-3x more STEM than US total. Meanwhile their catchup in last 10-15 yeras was basically going from fraction of skilled talent to ~parity with US. The TLDR is PRC is in process of undergoing the GREATEST "productive" demographic divident in recorded history, and competitors are not remotely close. Will PRC reach ceiling like JP/SKR with >2 TFR, of course, but not until way past 2050s when they reach 80% highskilled workforce and can't replace at parity. And realisitally that's also a PRC who is multiple times larger than it is now (not 2000% but substantial).

If the full demographic argument is PRC will eventually demographically collapse, likely after most of us are dead, and growing multiple times current size because they generated a workforce larger than west can compete with... then that's going to make people shit bricks.

For reference entire PRC lol demographics narrative was popularized by Zeihan... who keeps forgetting the politics in geopolitics, i.e. US has most deep coasts for ports... except PRC dredges and builds the most productive ports; US has most naturally navigatable waterways, except PRC builds out / maintain their internal waterways with signifiantly more utilitzation. US has immigration... except at PRC scale, even shit TFR properly directed is more talent than US can realistically compete with. 4:2:1 pyrmaid? Yeah kind of PIA... except highest household savings rate in the world, and large regional CoL disparity means you can dump a lot of retirees in nice inland retirement cities one day where they cost fraction to upkeep but still maintain relative good QoL, better than what they grew up with. There's a lot of arbitraging opportunities. And in cases of upper quantiles, that 4:2:1 turns into wealth transfers to the 1 gen to start families.

> There's a type of Western mind that gets distracted by their scale, and getting to build things we built a century ago

Where in the US can one find the secret, cross-country high-speed rail built in the roaring twenties?!

There's also a type of western mind that automatically dismisses the odds of a different country succeeding, based on nothing but the fact that they are using a different approach (on the surface). It's a kind if circular reasoning: our system is the best because we're the best, because of the system we have. To subvert the Simpsons - "the best so far"

Edit: I'm far from a Sinophile, but there's a certain willful blindness, concerning an almost religious belief that the west will prevail because it's the west, regardless of all the systemic weaknesses that show up again and again. It would suck for a dictator-for-life leading the biggest economy in the world, but healthy minds would introspect to see how we can do better, like we should, right? I have no doubt out leaders will pick the wrong lessons, like social credit scores and pervasive surveillance

> There's a type of Western mind that gets distracted by their scale, and getting to build things we built a century ago.

The thing is, overcapacity combined with the 996 week and labor exploitation can be used to outcompete any Western company - especially the old ones, who are spread around the country. Look at the supply chain of the established (i.e. everyone but Tesla) companies... dozens of manufacturing plants, thousands of suppliers, almost zero vertical integration because "manufacturing batteries, ECUs or windshield wipers is not our core competency, let Bosch do that".

The only car manufacturer in the Western world not following that is Tesla. They have only very few, but very large factories that vertically integrate as much as possible on site, which not only gives them the advantage of cutting out the middlemen and their profit margin but also allows for much, much faster iteration cycles when everything is done in-house with no bureaucratic bullshit associated with change requests.

Typically, a car model, its design and parts are fixed for around 2-5 years after the prototype manufacturing run, no changes are possible at all outside of maybe the software, unless the design change is necessary to meet regulatory compliance or if it's something horribly defective. Then the model gets a "rebrush" integrating a few changes, which lives on for another 2-3 years, and then a fully new iteration crops up. Tesla (and SpaceX) in contrast, they do iteration times of weeks.

The disadvantage of that model is of course spare parts logistics and repair training, because holding stock for hundreds of subvariants and iterations is all but impossible, and that shows in every statistic for Tesla's average body shop waiting time.

And to come back to China's automotive sector - they're copying that model of iterative speed just as well. We've seen them come from piles of junk barely roadworthy (or not road-legal in Europe at all) a few years ago to be able to fight heads-on with the European car giants.

while this is true, they also have to do a lot more management of capital than most and it's a very delicate balancing act. Already, you have issues with bank confidence and normal people getting fleeced by fradulent or overly risky financial products because of the government's interventions in banking.

Japan used to be activist towards in its banks too, and it was very good until it was catastrophic one day.

There's a mandate for the government to support the development of the EV industry, and there are targets, but this factory is being built because BYD decided it makes economic sense for them, based on anticipated demand.

The Chinese government is doing many things that increase demand, make it easy to scale up production, etc. For example, many Chinese cities are making it difficult to register new internal-combustion-engine vehicles. I'm also sure the local government has rolled out the red carpet for BYD in terms of permits, tax incentives, and so on.

That's different from the government issuing a command, "Build us the largest EV factory in the world, regardless of economic viability!" That's how the previous comment came across.

not just that, but the fact that the US gov't does hold elections means that what they do generally is in line with the people.

At this moment, what the chinese gov't is doing is _also_ (presumably) in line with their people's wishes - after all, factories and exports means jobs and economic growth. It remains to be seen if this continues to be in the face of a potential war, tariffs, or some other external shock.

Details matter. Chinese have more in some areas, less in others. China also sometimes does things just for a show, so maybe that villager was allowed to now sell so they could off how progressive they were - while they take lots of other property. China also has a corruption problem (as does all countries!), maybe that villager belonged to the CCP and so had extra rights.

Until we get down to details it is hard to say who as more rights. And even when we have to weigh rights, if you don't care about a right does it matter that you don't have it?

It's relative. Relative to the rest of the world (and China), you can still live comfortably on minimum wage.

Comfortable enough to not be worth undergoing extreme pressure to succeed like people do in China and India. Even a skilled tradesman is a highly paid career in America but it's poverty in China.

> Ask your local waiter with a college degree if they would have studied something else if they got the chance. My experience is that many would.

The problem of bad choices is orthogonal to the problem you are describing.

Probably because the average Chinese is far more skilled than your average illegal immigrant.

It's not just raw labor force. It's capable engineers, designers, architects, etc. How is illegal immigration going to solve this?

To be clear, I think that there is an existing, legal migrant worker programme. They do most of the non-automated farm work in Central Valley California. Also, the Singapore system is a bit ugly if you look closely. I hope the US can do better.