>China applied protectionist policies to its own Internet companies, and it’s hard to argue that this has been economically devastating for them.
China has 1.4 billion people in one country while the combined population of Europe is around half of that, so that's one difference.
But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritarianism. To the Chinese state, protecting Chinese citizens from harmful things (like knowing full details about atrocities perpetrated by their government, or organizing to criticize the government) outweighs other concerns.
Define "better off". Companies like Meta and Google are enormous behemoths that make their money through advertising. One advantage of their size is that they have lower costs, but a greater advantage is that they have much larger market power: they can purchase competitors and demand higher rents for advertising space. Is society genuinely better off from this kind of concentrated market advantage? One might argue that there are different kinds of 'efficiency' at play here, and not all of them are in society's interest.
This would allow direct, constant competition between companies like Meta/Google and their Chinese counterparts. Americans could choose to use Chinese providers when they're outcompeting the American behemoths, and vice versa. We see that China's companies are very competitive and innovative. Both American and Chinese citizens might be better off if they all could freely choose from different global options.
But that's not at all how things have worked out, even here within the US. Waze does not compete with Google Maps. WhatsApp and Instagram do compete with Facebook, each of these companies were simply acquired. We've learned that new social media companies have a very hard time spinning up the network effects required to make them prominent, and in the rare cases they do, they quickly get bought out or their products cloned by incumbents. There's an excellent chance this would have happened in China without state intervention.
The most prominent recent exception to this rule is TikTok, which spun out of an already-successful Chinese tech company. Its owners resisted acquisition until legislation forced their hand.
But the US could have benefitted from China's social media and commerce platforms and China could have benefitted from the US's. That's my point.
I am no economist or even that economics-knowledgeable and maybe I'm wrong and maybe China's protectionism is better somehow, but from everything I know or at least from every trope and meme I've ingested, free global commerce eventually leads to better outcomes for all parties.
China is a decade ahead of the rest of the world in different kind of use cases (think their super apps or payments).
TikTok is the most popular social media app out there, and it's chinese.
They are also tremendously competitive in AI despite all the limitations they encounter.
Honestly I think that the last century should be a clear statement that protectionism, sanctions and closeness is a failure whose bills are paid by tax payers.
We've been bailing out and protecting non competitive industries (which have further incentives *not* to invest due to protectionism they benefit from) for decades.
When Trump 1 put high taxes on dishwashers and house appliances it hasn't really pushed US companies to do better, it just allowed them to raise the prices and do very little.
But the fact that some countries play dirty (see China and their industrial espionage and lack of respect of patents and intellectual property), while others are obsessed with being #1 even if it means pursuing that via bullying methods have pushed us in this very negative scenario I don't see how can we leave us behind unless we get a new generation of brighter leaders.
Sadly, that's not how you win consensus and elections today.
> But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritarianism.
How would china be better off? All their tech companies would have been bought out by larger foreign tech companies. Kinda like what happened to many european tech companies.
> To the Chinese state, protecting Chinese citizens from harmful things (like knowing full details about atrocities perpetrated by their government, or organizing to criticize the government) outweighs other concerns.
Yeah that's what the chinese state is worried about /s. Not the neverending misinformation, disinformation and propaganda directed against it.. When china does it, it's "authoritarianism". When "the west" does it, it's fighting against misinformation.
Yes it is. Why wouldn't larger foreign tech companies gobble up smaller companies if they were allowed to.
> What's the "it", here?
"Protecting" the population against disinformation. "It" was fairly obvious.
> Talk to any pro-democracy Chinese citizen and I think they will probably agree with me.
You mean the "pro-democracy" plants funded by the US, europe, etc. Good one. The ones that always seem to flee to germany, britain, us, etc after each crackdown? You talking about those ones.
Imagine if china was funding "pro-communism 'citizens'" trying to undermine political systems all over europe and the US.
China has 1.4 billion people in one country while the combined population of Europe is around half of that, so that's one difference.
But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritarianism. To the Chinese state, protecting Chinese citizens from harmful things (like knowing full details about atrocities perpetrated by their government, or organizing to criticize the government) outweighs other concerns.