It also flies in the face of China's currently accelerating pace of research and breakthroughs by producing insane numbers of STEM majors and PhDs

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ixtli 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes.

I think well meaning people in the west are looking for a silver lining and in the process overcomplicating a rather simple issue: the US government is cutting spending everywhere while its electorate demands even deeper cuts. The money has dried up and people are leaving.

(One of my best friends was a nuclear medicine phd who left his cancer research lab after covid to work at a VoiP company, so i too have anecdotes)

	▲	sheikhnbake 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sigh. The US is in a weird spot. The electorate does not generally want education and research cut. Republicans here have convinced their base that education and the educated are bad, which has fed their desire to cut academic funding and research at all levels. That is to say, the federal government doesn't have a popular mandate to do any of this. They simply hold all levers of power through a slim majority of the voting populace.

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JuniperMesos 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

China is famous for low-quality research and bad papers, which is exactly what you'd expect from a system that grants an expanded number of formal credentials to people who aren't actually doing good scientific research.

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roughly 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

China was famous for low-quality products as well.

	▲	layer8 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		While there have been substantial improvements, it still deserves its fame.

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bigyabai 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Be that as it may, China also has persistent threat actors outfoxing American cybersecurity in the form of Salt Typhoon. The cards are on the table, and the US is already undoubtedly losing several fronts of asymmetrical warfare.

	▲	ixtli 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I have a friend who, to explain it simply, worked medium high up in the CIA for 8-12 years during Bush and Obama. The only time he gets serious about talking about his time there is on this topic. Chinas cyber security is, according to him, light years ahead of the US to the point where its embarrassing.
	▲	Zigurd 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If I understand Salt Typhoon correctly it's a masterpiece. The descriptions I've seen indicate that they penetrated lawful intercept. Lawful intercept operates outside network operators network management systems because it was designed not to trust the network operators. I am skeptical of claims that Salt Typhoon has been eliminated from US networks. Any such implicitly claim to detect lawful intercept traffic and ensure it isn't nefarious, which traffic that system is designed to hide.

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krona 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which breakthroughs, specifically? There are no Chinese institutions pumping out nobel prizes. Zero.

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triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

10 years ago were no Chinese companies pumping out world-class cars either. But here we are.

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krona 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to.

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dragontamer 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Geely owns Volvo and IIRC a significant portion of Volvos are Chinese made now.

There's a number of companies or brands that are now Chinese owned. China knows that home grown brands (like Geely) don't work on an international stage, so they buy well known brands like Volvo.

It's a bit of a silent behind the scenes takeover but I'd say that China is now seriously making competitive cars. If you can follow the brands and notice.

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kelipso 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Lol, the fully homegrown BYD is destroying Tesla everywhere outside the US where it’s basically banned and you’re taking about Geely and Volvo and behind the scenes. It’s all out there on the stage.

	▲	dragontamer 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't really give a shit about Tesla though. Or BYD for that matter. By my eye, Volvo / Geely cars are the most impressive.

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sheikhnbake an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Idk man, i dont keep a list of China's breakthroughs handy. You can find the same results on google that I can.

And I wasn't aware that breakthroughs needed to be nobel laureate worthy at a minimum to still be considered breakthroughs.

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ForHackernews 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/nature-index-resear...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Oh, that's old. In 2024 Chinese institutions only made up 7 of the top 10 most productive research centers but in 2025 they are account for 8/10: https://www.natureasia.com/en/info/press-releases/detail/911...

	▲	krona 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's a volume based index, not impact, thus reinforcing my point.