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I'm curious how China makes it work. No doubt they also have dedicated, smart and educated people - I guess no massive shortage of that in Europe either. Central government is often considered to be somewhat corrupt and incompetent, so in any case not hugely better than in Europe. I'm sure there's more know-how, but that came from somewhere too.

What is the difference then? Willingness to work for lower wages? Greater determination? State subsidies? It's not like Chinese universities have a great reputation en masse. It's also clearly not IP theft (alone) since they are the leader - who would they steal from?

If it's subsidies, then China must be taking the subsidy money from somewhere. It's not, as I understand, a non-social, cutthroat capitalist country. Retirement age is something like 55. Is Chinese hegemony in battery production effectively subsidised by underpaid peasants? But surely the image of guys in sloping hats rolling rice paddies desperately outdated; I don't expect Chinese farming to be behind European in terms of technology.

So if it's subsidies, then where is the money coming from, that European governments clearly don't have?

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tim333 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

China had a big push to promote engineering a few decades ago. A recent quote "China is the world's top producer of engineering graduates, producing around 1.4–1.5 million graduates annually, which is about one-third of the world's total." They also took over as the world's workshop making a lot of our stuff.

There was a lot of competition making things like batteries and if you look at the CEOs of the biggest battery producers there, CATL and BYD they are both very technical and near genius level. Making good batteries is probably quite hard.

	▲	rich_sasha 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's a very good point. Germany was always brilliant at mechanical engineering, their universities are decent in general, but very good at all forms of mechanical/chemical engineering. US is mad keen on software and entrepreneurship and its top universities churn out software startup founders like nowhere else. It's just a pity software ain't what it was 10 years ago. Perhaps the deep cadres of really well educated engineers, and thus available work force, is the determining factor here.

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wkat4242 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In China people might retire at 55 but there's no government pensions. People's children are their pension. Social welfare is not very great there.

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abc123abc123 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep. Europe is socialist, which makes it extremelt difficult to start successful tech-companies. Europes unicorns is far fewer than what are created in the US and China.

As long as europe continues to heavily regulate and tax its citizens in the best socialist tradition, it will continue its decline, to become a tourist playground in a generation or two, for the rest of the world.

I always advice young entrepreneurs to move outside europe to start their companies.

In its current form, europe is dead.

	▲	wkat4242 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's a lot better place to live than the US though. And we don't need as much. Quality of life is not measured in terms of the amount of stuff you can buy. We don't have to be afraid of getting shot at school or being bankrupted because of an illness. We don't have to pay off our student loans for decades. Income equality is much higher (leading to more public safety and fairness). To many of us this matters more than money. The US has different goals than we do. Europe has never been about maximum profit. Capitalism is a tool to support society, not the end goal.
	▲	larme 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		entrepreneurs suck anyway.