DeepSeek has changed how the world sees China. Worries over the country’s “3D” problem — that deflation, debt and demographics are structurally hampering growth — have melted away. Instead, investors are talking about how the world’s second-largest economy can take on the US and challenge its technological dominance.
There is the prevailing sense that China’s “engineer dividend” is finally paying off. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of engineers has ballooned from 5.2 million to 17.7 million, according to the State Council. That reservoir can help the nation move up the production possibility frontier, the thinking goes.
In a way, DeepSeek shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Size matters. A bigger talent pool alone gives China a better chance to disrupt. In 2022, 47% of the world’s top 20th percentile AI researchers finished their undergraduate studies in China, well above the 18% share from the US, according to data from the Paulson Institute’s in-house think tank, MacroPolo. Last year, the Asian nation ranked third in the number of innovation indicators compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization, after Singapore and the US.
What Trump is achieving is making China great again. It’s certainly a leap forward. This is all so idiotic … we’re actively ceding leadership in industry to other countries, discouraging the best and brightest from coming here to study in the first place – and don’t even get me started on Intel.
We’re seeing an engineered collapse. To what end is unclear.
And don’t come at me with “christofascist”; that’s a problem, but tanking the economy and our standing as the premier country to study and do advanced R&D isn’t that. I don’t know what it is and have a few thoughts, but I’m unqualified to try to untangle why Trump’s handlers are doing this, and I generally don’t like to spout off without evidence.
I’m unqualified to try to untangle why Trump’s handlers are doing this, and I generally don’t like to spout off without evidence.
Trump’s handler is Putin, and there’s plenty of evidence.
