this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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I'm not really sure what critical areas China needs to catch up in at this point. The chips they produce are already good enough for any practical applications. It's also worth keeping in mind that improving software is much easier than hardware. Western software stacks are incredibly bloated. For example, Huawei starting fresh with their HarmonyOS can make a much leander stack by cutting all the cruft and backwards compatibility out.
I also don't see China being decades behind in chips. They can already make 7nm, they're prototyping EUV machines, it's not going to be long at this point. On top of that, China is investing into research of alternative substrates like graphene, spintronics, etc. Any one of these could make silicon look like vacuum tubes overnight if they can scale them up to mass production. There's no new fundamental physics that need to be discovered here, we know these these things work in a lab. It's just a matter of scaling up production. And that's precisely where state driven development comes in.
Can you explain what this tide of reversal you're talking about with BRI? Last I looked, the investment is record high https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3340442/china-signs-record-us213-billion-new-belt-and-road-deals-2025-report
The Epstein files are the biggest scandal the western system has faced to date in my opinion. This is bigger than stuff like Watergate because it spans multiple administrations in the US, as well as other western regimes. It's a total indictment of the idea that there's any sort of a democracy in the west. It's now plain for everyone to see that the west is ruled by diabolical monsters who are accountable to no one. And this comes at a time of a rapid decline in the living standards which makes people angry and politically engaged. Things that might've been ignored before cannot be ignored any longer.
Finally, it seems to me that the west is headed for a massive financial crash. While people keep playing games with the numbers, it's pretty clear that all the tangible metrics like job numbers and cost of living are doing very poorly. The only question in my mind is what the catalyst will be. It could be the coming war with Iran which might drive oil prices through the roof.