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Discussion (178 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Another example: massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens up national parks for drilling and cancels solar/wind projects. You occasionally see a heartwarming post: “California adds solar panels over a canal” and it just looks cute and kind of sad compared to the massive, ambitious, and technologically superior build out of Chinese renewables.
This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights and free expression. But anyone paying attention can quite clearly see that China is winning and the US is sacrificing their global superiority at the altar of fear, ignorance, and religious nationalism.
They say they're worried when the building stops. Even more people will be out of jobs. And when the nation ages all they built will be used and maintained by fewer people
I've never been to china so it's interesting perspective from people with family there and go back 2-3 times a year
China was a growing country that clearly knew how to build infrastructure. In Wuhan, they built an entire development intended to employ 100,000 engineers (Huawei + our US company's 50). They built a subway system in a decade that's bigger than New York City's. I took the high-speed rail to Beijing and it was superb. They replaced an old, shabby international airport terminal with a new one with the widest concourse I've ever seen. They subsidized regular flights between Wuhan and San Francisco on China Southern airlines. The Hyatt Regency there was one of my favorite hotels I've ever stayed in (cheap and high quality). In a big commerical district, they had the largest screen I've ever seen that had a Blue Screen of Death :-)
Dazzling yet I'm not bullish on China due to its demographics, among many other reasons.
This was at UCLA which is in LA which is the second biggest city in the US.
To arbitrarily repress this most basic impulse, the one to go after a dream to make better ways to do things, is severely anti-human.
Most businesses are in this category.
If you have ambitions that are contrary to that of the Party, well, they're going to get what they want, one way or another. It doesn't matter if you don't want to deal your AI to the military or if you'd rather not sell your home so that a highway can be built over the lot.
Seeing the way tech companies behave makes me think they fear Trump the same way. for example, Tim Apple certainly crawls up Trumps arse.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
[2]: https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-e...
> BYD has to me become an icon of US decline vs Chinese expansion
Is this supposed to help virality or something? "US decline"?
This is literally using fossil fuels to create renewable energy, which is the ultimate sane and responsible way to use the energy from fossil fuels.
But it's still not at the point where it's cleaner per capital than the US and it's still quite far from that. Let's talk about reality here. The US shouldn't rest on its laurels, but we need to be real about where we are not how we feel
A lot can change. This administration has 2.5 years left. I'm tired of Reddit and Twitter doom-based virality hacks subsuming every net forum.
Not just on dumping or price, actual product quality, innovation and value. It's impossible to visit a Huawei store in Beijing and not feel it in your bones
How do we have a productive discussion about our feelings on a tech site?
That's how China was able to compete: banning America from contesting the market.
Renewables generally aren't capable of a black start, wind turbines in particular use induction generators that require external power.
Doesn't hydropower count for like half of our black start capability?
> Renewables generally aren't capable of a black start, wind turbines in particular use induction generators that require external power.
Wind farms and PV both can use batteries to support black start capability.
My view.
I was looking at a new car. Went into several car shops, VW, Skoda, Toyota and BYD.
And all of them were basically empty and BYD was FULL! Like really really full.
And the sales guy confirmed it, they are selling cars like crazy.
It's depressing that we can't buy BYD in the USA. It's feeling more and more like being stuck with a Lada in the 1980s.
> massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens up national parks for drilling and cancels solar/wind projects
The protectees in this case are fossil fuel interests.
It's quite unfortunate, but I can't say I blame them. From their perspective the tiger is finally showing its stripes.
1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. You protect your interests by enhancing your strengths and building on them.
2. Protecting your interests by playing “defense” against your decline.
We all know which country chose which path.
Chinese party leadership is stacked with literal engineers. They’ve prioritized development of industries crucial to their success. For example, they know they’re never going to be a big oil producer and that fighting wars over oil is expensive and futile, so they have developed their path to energy independence with their solar and wind industry along with electrified transit of all types.
Meanwhile, in America, our leadership is stacked with grifters who only have experience in shifting money around. We are all stuck with oil and car dependence that nobody’s willing to address with long-term infrastructure development reforms.
We are trapped fighting wars over oil because $6-7/gallon gasoline in middle America would trigger a major recession. Our government actively incentivizes wasting oil via automotive regulations written by industry lobbyists. That big F-150 parked at the Old Navy that doesn’t need to follow CAFE regulations is totally a “work truck.”
We don’t strive to build the most competitive industries, instead we use sanctions and tariffs to prevent foreign competition from reaching our shores.
And before you talk about China disallowing foreign competition, I’ll note that Chinese citizens can go to the mall in China and buy a Tesla, an iPhone, an Audi, Levi’s jeans, Coach bags, do a web search on Bing, deploy applications on AWS servers in Beijing, etc.
Right down to the shaky real estate markets.
Japan never surpassed the US in power or industrial output. China is different. They’ve clearly surpassed the US in some key areas.
No US born child in the last 30 years aspired to working a factory job. The US is an advanced economy with advanced jobs. We get degrees, we sit at desks, maybe even sit at home, work on computers, and generate an order of magnitude more wealth than our screw turning counterpart overseas.
I can tell you with first hand experience, that this problem is much deeper than "the US needs to catch up" because in reality what is happening is that China is the one playing catch up. The US is already 30 years into the endgame of economic development. China is where the US was 75 years ago, and on paper, the US has only progressed from that point.
Quite a wild claim
Just curious-- if you did say something about this, what would it be?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e...
- US: ~$144B vehicle exports / ~$3.23T total exports → ~4.5% - Germany: ~$280B / ~$1.99T → ~14% - Japan: ~$151B / ~$922B → ~16%
Even if you treat US states as separate 'countries' and balloon the US export denominator further, the ratio doesn't move into the same league. Autos are roughly 3x more important to Germany and ~3.5x more important to Japan as a share of foreign-earned revenue than they are to the US.
BYD taking the US auto export share is an inconvenience for a few states. BYD taking Germany's or Japan's is regime-altering for the whole national economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports
That said, it is indeed disappointing that we can't get their affordable EVs over here. Western legacy automakers really need a kick in the ass (especially since Tesla seems to just be phoning it in now).
I don't count Rivian or Lucid until they actually have even somewhat affordable EVs.
But pretty much everyone else in the US is doing a piss poor job with EVs and just don't seem to care at all. Ford seemed to have lost interest in the F-150 lightning.
I agree that trade needs to be a two way street. But I'm not convinced yet on "affordable" since these might be severely subsidized by the Chinese Gov to undermine domestic car makers across different nations. I say might only because I'm not 100% sure.
Here's to hoping their EV Maverick is still on track:
Ford Teases New Details About Its $30K EV Truck Coming Next Year https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a71204448/ford-ev-truck-fu...
Obviously Rivian and Lucid don't have affordable cars yet, but they seem to be moving in that direction, and they're clearly still trying.
I'm hopeful about Slate, though obviously they haven't sold anything yet so it's just hope.
It’s cancelled.
So is the Chev Silverado EV.
China picked manufacturing.
US picked datacenters.
If 90% of the factories in the world were hit by a nuclear bomb, you'd find that your standard of living would immediately, and quite observably plummet.
You tell me which is more important.
The amount of internet technocrap we actually need to live comfortably is a tiny fraction of what actually gets built. Most of it is in service of adtech, the surveillance state, or shaving 0.5% off some rentseeker's fat margins (on his side, the savings aren't passed on to us).
China picked manufacturing, infrastructure, consumable exports
All the compromises here were pointed out by critics on the left many decades ago. Letting capital flee to where labour was cheapest eviscerated the entire US and Canadian northeast/midwest manufacturing sector and was policy driven from the right.
That and we decided that only the private sector should be responsible for building infrastructure and housing, and then wondered why the cost of building either skyrocketed in cost...
And yet now it's the (far) right freaking out and trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
The other part of the story that gets ignore is the administrative state exploding in the US/Canada post 1970s, where making new industry and development became very difficult making other countries more attractive while the cost of living exploded.
So instead of becoming competitive all we’re left with is these ideas of the government forcing domestic industry by using national security as an excuse to justify the backwards economics of it all.
> This is to say nothing of the CCP and their record on human rights and free expression.
To be very practical here… the lack of rights and freedoms as they exist in China typically has no consequence to the lives of individual people. For example you have no right to protest. But how many of us have exercised that right in the US? Personally I never did. And honestly those protests end up being just parties and parades
You should too.
In 2008 China had 1,300km of high speed rail. In 2025 they had over 45,000km.
Meanwhile America has zero…. But is bringing back the V8! Ye-haw!
Surely with the cost of fuel skyrocketing we'll pivot to public transit and non-fossil-fuel transport, right? Right?
Right.
Refining already invented things is 'innovation'.
Respondants:
Please, stop lying on the internet. It's not healthy. Stop making things up.
Source:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
Making cars faster or cheaper isn't an "innovation". Making a flying car is innovation. Inventing the car is invention.
Systematic government-aided intellectual property theft, lax labor laws, low wages and low standards of living aren't innovative.
https://www.educationnext.org/san-franciscos-detracking-expe...
Fear? Oh I know, you are talking about how in blue states they can't even build simple housing never mind mega projects like high speed rail and that's why red states are acquiring population and capital at accelerating speeds.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/why-nothin...
I’ve been largely happy with my 2018 Honda Fit and briefly researched a hybrid Fit.
In ZAR, the hybrid Fit is listed as ~530K, while the BYD is 570, however the BYD is way bigger, has much nicer interior and insanely more features, including: adaptive cruise control, lane assist (it can basically drive itself for simple traffic), 360 view camera, comparatively huge screen for my Apple CarPlay, sun roof, V2L (allows 2-3kw load off the battery or engine if the battery is low).
I largely liked my Honda Fit and my Ballade (that might be a South African model name), but have been annoyed for a long time at them being laggards on things like CarPlay (at least in South Africa, apparently the Fit in other markets had offered it for much longer).
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/chinese-cars-byd-geely-u-...
China was more than happy to welcome him in, and have him teach them how to build an EV. They simply copied what they could and improved on it.
"The communists will happily sell the capitalists the rope the capitalists hang themselves with"
Why? Because US Mercedez-Benz dealers were selling their cars at too high a price and a lot of Americans were importing them directly from Germany. So the dealers associations lobbied Congress for a ban.
Country of free markets, by the way.
is there even a screen?
China-owned brands are now often better and more premium than their Western counterparts across the entire spectrum. Give me Anker over Belkin any day. There are a few areas where the West still leads - Chinese software tends to be buggier and less polished, luxury apparel isn't at the same standard - but that lead is diminishing rapidly. Customer service could still do with some improvement: it's usually much slower and less professional, but the trade-off is it's not uncommon to end up talking to an actual engineer who can investigate and solve the problem rather than just follow a script, even at a huge company.
The worst products are now formerly high quality Western brands with PE overlords that forced them to outsource manufacturing to the lowest bidder.
BYD UK import tariff is 10%
BYD US import tariff is 100%
Tesla is doing poorly here. That's almost entirely down to Musk's public image, not because BYD make better cars.
[1] https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/
I'm not in the market for a new car, but anyone who has looked recently what is the draw to BYD? Is it strictly value/price?
*except Elon’s
For those not paying attention to geopolitics, Taiwan is the real concern here. China wants to control them, and is building a strong military. How the future will play out I don't know, but this should be your concern.
But worldwide it has been for a while, no? I think total EV cars sold in 2025 BYD was top, if I remember correctly.
For all the China lovers here it's not a clear sign of Chinese superiority. I saw a video on youtube recently exploring BYD. It's success is due to the fact that the Chinese government as part of their plan to dominate the global car industry gives them massive amounts of money. Which manufacturer can compete with that? European tariffs in the near future looks likely.
Among other things the video explores some of BYD's shadier practices including artificially inflating domestic sales and not paying suppliers for up to 9 months.
I have my doubts whether their success is sustainable.
NAFTA and its successor keeps a lot of automotive production and assembly in North America.
The chicken tax protects American manufacturers from foreign competition on trucks and vans.
Tesla was started on the foundations of inexpensive loans and a “free” factory courtesy of government economic stimulus.
GM was bailed out and briefly owned by the federal government, saved by below-market rate loans.
Stellantis is also an organization that owes its existence on a bankruptcy bail-out package.
The US financially incentivizes car usage, period. They underfund transit projects, allow the gas tax rate to lag inflation, make zoning laws that require car ownership, and more. One great way to subsidize car companies is to make car ownership mandatory.
State and local governments frequently give tax incentives to major assembly plants in the name of preserving jobs for their constituents. For example, GM had a $60 million tax break to keep the Lordstown, OH plant open. Some of this was clawed back after the plant closed anyway.
CAFE standards incentivize manufacturers to build SUVs that aren’t practical or popular in many other markets, essentially enshrining America-specific car design, further separating the American market from global car designs. Companies like BYD can’t compete with American cars if they don’t sell models that resemble popular choices like the Ford F-150, which are designs which would be completely insane if sold in the Chinese, Japanese, and European markets.
A bit like wearing Adiboss or Gacci clothes. Nothing wrong with that.
Hopefully BYD will make something original and with style on its own.
But counter example is e.g. new Audi look like Kia.
Funny.
Or at least if you do make sure it isn't your transportation. Drive something else most of the time that you don't care about so your identity car isn't scratched. Bring the identity car to a parade with the "pork queen" or whatever.
USA boomer car companies run a competition on who can build the biggest crappy SUVs around sold to other boomers who now look aghast at pump prices
Europe boomer car companies can't overrun their nit-pickiness and analysis paralysis and wonder why consumers are picking the car with screens that actually work like a modern device and don't have subscription horns or some other BS like that
you can't buy BYD in the USA (thanks to Biden actually, not current admin)
BUT
there's a loophole to have a car from Canada in the USA for a year
so lease them from Canada to USA buyers for a year at a time