Comment by qcnguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qcnguy | Hacker News Reader

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It’s only a matter of time, but time matters, as they say.

You should know that what China is doing was tried in the past. It is an old story. When the microchip was brand new (invented in the USA) the Soviets realized they needed the tech for military purposes. So they built a closed city devoted to silicon research called Zelenograd. It was staffed with very bright physicists and engineers.

But Zelenograd didn't make the Soviets a computing superpower. In fact they were always behind and fell further and further as time went on. The reason is that the Zelenograd scientists were given copies of US chips and told to clone them. By the time they finished cloning one chip the US had already invented several that were much more advanced. Unable or unwilling to forge their own path, even though they were smart enough to do so, they could not truly develop the in-house expertise needed to match the ever accelerating pace of innovation.

The Soviets never did catch up. Americans tightened security and they just fell ever further behind. By the 1980s they did not even have any attempt to develop an internal internet.

That China is running secret projects to try and clone ASML's machines isn't surprising because for all it has changed, it's still a communist state and its leaders still think in communist ways. They don't understand or appreciate distributed wisdom, so are mentally unable to truly understand how innovation works. Government projects like that are destined to fail - they will clone yesterday's machines tomorrow, and just like the Soviets, will fall further and further behind.

The thing that saves China is that its private sector actually does exist and is much more developed, so the Chinese government projects aren't the only way it can make progress.

The history of Soviet electronics manufacturing is fascinating, but there are some huge differences and I actually don't think the private sector is the largest. One is the pace and type of innovation. In the 70s and 80s the landscape was incredibly dynamic and technology went through several huge changes. If you wanted to run a clone of the US tech industry then, you would need a distributed, dynamic effort across many fields and not a top-down directed Manhattan Project. In 2025 we do have rapid technological change, but things are much more consolidated. In terms of strategically important recent innovations I can only think of EUV and AI. That's much more Manhattan-Project-able.

The other difference - which is even more significant - is that China is already far ahead in advanced manufacturing. The US was lightyears ahead of the Soviets in advanced manufacturing, which is what allowed us to win in the 70s and 80s. Now, we're so far behind it's not even funny. Sure, the West still makes some ultra-precise machines for EUV, but look where most of the components in those machines are made...

At the start of the microchip age, the US wasn't that far ahead. The techniques for manufacturing microchips weren't anything special and the Soviets could do so easily. The problem was the top-down mandate to clone, not lack of internal capability.

I don't know when you want to define as the start of the microchip age (50s? 60s?) but the Soviets were always behind the Americans in advanced manufacturing. In 1931 Stalin said "We are 50–100 years behind the advanced countries" [1.] In WW2 the Soviets relied on the US for advanced machine tools and in 1943 Stalin said: "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." Khrushchev echoed this in his 1964 memoirs and there is a 1963 recording of Zhukov concurring. Now onto the 50s; the US invents NC machines, transistor manufacturing, chemical processing, miniaturization. The Soviets really only have the lead here in a few metal-related subjects: titanium production and rocket engine metallurgy. This is probably the closest the Soviets came; at this point they did indeed mass produce more tonnage of simple heavy machinery, but cannot mass-produce almost _anything_ cutting edge; look at their cars or consumer electronics of this time period. Onto the sixties; now the gap widens once more, the US pulls far ahead with ICs, microelectronics, CNC manufacturing, advanced alloys and composites, extreme precision manufacturing and precision manufacturing on a large scale. Look at the Saturn V vs the N1 or anything else in the aerospace/space industry at the time; the US was lightyears ahead. They could do things the Soviets could not even dream about. By the 70s the game was lost entirely; the US had advanced electronics manufacturing on a massive scale, laser cutting, even wider deployment of CAD/CAM, and was building the Space Shuttle. The Soviets essentially stagnated and were relegated to making cheap copies years later that looked similar but didn't work well in practice; see the Buran, TU-144, etc.

The reality is that the Soviets never really managed cutting-edge mass manufacturing. There are only a few countries that have: first Britain from the screw-cutting lathe in 1800, then the US, then later Japan, Germany, China, Taiwan and South Korea. In 225 years it's a fairly short list of countries, and most only made the list for a few decades!

The closest the Soviets ever came, of course, was aerospace, but to use that as an example of advanced manufacturing leadership would be a stretch. Sputnik was impressive, but advanced manufacturing it was certainly not; it was a simple sphere with a simple radio transmitter. Look at the tolerances, finishes, materials, manufacturing methods, etc of N1 vs Saturn V, Buran vs the Space Shuttle, TU-144 vs the Concorde.

[1] https://www.hrono.info/libris/stalin/13-18.php - fascinating speech by Stalin on industrialization in 1931

Thanks for the excellent comment.

You're welcome! Thank you for the interesting discussion :)

The analogy with Russia is too obtuse to be useful. Russia never was an economic exporting powerhouse with tons of manufacturing know-how and willing engagement in the larger international capitalist economies. I am no fan of the PRC, but there is plenty of intellectual, innovation, and economic competition within China to make your analogy unlikely to be helpful.

That said, the U.S., if it wants to stay ahead, also needs to fight trends toward reducing competition via de facto monopolistic behaviors by mega corporations with co-opted governmental protections.

Soviet Russia at that time was a global superpower that had developed nuclear weapons and was winning the space race. It only exported heavily to other communist states, but it definitely could do advanced tech and manufacturing.

Modern PRC and USSR aren't exact analogues, but the approach of their governments is clearly similar in this case.

Soviets winning space race during microchip era? I think you have mildly mixed up decades. Soviets were leaders till US put people on the moon, that was so far beyond what soviets were capable of this race stopped, and they just focused on ICBMs.

Soviet tech was sturdy and more primitive (thus more sturdy), much cheaper and they were willing to deliver it to anybody.

I wasn't attempting to be extremely precise with dates. My point was only that the Soviets and the US were technologically comparable in that era. Yes, the US put in huge efforts and were able to overtake them in the space race, largely due to a stronger economy rather than some unique technological skill.

I agree a lot.

China is very good at industrialising stuff because they are very obedient and efficient on matters that are already known. Once the west has identified a worthwhile endeavor, they are quite quick at reproducing and churning out copies efficiently. Sometimes they improve on it slightly but their game is mostly about making it cheaper.

This can readily be seen in the smartphone market. They have all the industrial base, large supply of engineers and large amount of cash. Yet they are unable to make a truly defining product once you remove the price out of the equation. The first reason to buy a Chinese smartphone is lower price otherwise people still prefer to go with Apple, Google or Samsung. There are small details that make those devices generally just better; even when the Chinese manage to do better in a particular dimension, overall the western designed devices are just better. They have tried increasing price (at least MSRP, to make their devices look more expensive) but there is no way one would pay Apple/Samsung prices for their smartphone. I actually think this is why smartphone haven't trended down on price much lately, the Chinese are trying to capture the design/engineering part of the pie but with limited success. Meanwhile, since competiton has reduced, the major western player can feel content selling the same stuff without reducing price.

And yes the private sector is quite developed but to me it seems like it is largely devoted to fulfill western needs because that's were the real money is. When they manage to do something special, there is always an enormous western influence, either through education (chinese who studied abroad) or via direct involvement of western people inside their business.

For the big projects, they are relying a lot on technology transfer from the west, buying the IP with consulting from western companies and then copying what they learned at scale.

I think a lot of people still don't understand what a profond influence having a communist mindset has. It looks successfull to them because they manage to afford a good lifestyle thanks to their massive industries but that is downstream of all their copying/mimicking the western inventions.

Western societies should think about what they are doing when they transfer their knowledge to this country on the cheap, because it strenghten them and China isn't a nice player in general.

The argument that never fails to appear: China’s failures are blamed on communism, while China’s successes are attributed to capitalism.

What do you think would have happened if 1989 had went a different way, China today is already united with Taiwan and basically a billion+ person version of Taiwan.

They would be less successful?

It never fails to appear because it's correct and obviously so. Look at when China started to become rich and what they changed around that time.

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