It's not just AI. China's medicines are surprising the world, too

https://www.economist.com/business/2025/02/16/its-not-just-ai-chinas-medicines-are-surprising-the-world-too

by helsinkiandrew • 1 year ago

38 62 1 year ago

economist.com

helsinkiandrew• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/xjGqd

butterlettuce• 1 year ago

/Chat, are we cooked?

aurareturn2• 1 year ago

Why? Who the heck cares where the drugs came from if it works better?

thecleaner• 1 year ago

Valid question. Its quite possible there's a future where only "favoured pharmaceutical company" can distribute these drugs in the US to protect against woke left liberals who might contaminate these meds with drugs that might turn your son gay. :)

randcraw• 1 year ago

Multiply that one product by all the others and you're out of work, unless you move to China. That's why you should care.

bdcravens• 1 year ago

I remembered reading an article in Wired about 20 years ago, about counterfeit cloth. A premier fabric maker in France said that Chinese cloth wasn't just a counterfeit of theirs, but was actually a superior product.

BYD would easily blow away Tesla as the leading EV maker if they were allowed in the US.

TikTok has proven that not only can China create a world-leading social platform, that users care so little about where it's from that when it was blocked, they flocked to another Chinese social-media option rather than retreat to the "safe" options.

China is even winning in American capitalism, there 70-80% of the goods sold by Walmart and Amazon are from China.

Companies like BambuLab, DJI, and Roborock are proven world-leaders in their categories.

Sticking our head in the sand and pretending that American and Western products are inherently superior is absolutely foolish.

Ekaros• 1 year ago

I have been thinking for a while that lot of people need to understand that China is making the cheapest possible crap because lot of us keep buying it. Why not make cheap stuff when customers want and pay for it.

Being able and willing to make cheap stuff, does not prevent on from making expensive and good quality stuff as well. And you can in many parts make that quality stuff cheaper as you have supply chain from raw materials.

RunOutOfMemory• 1 year ago

China's vertically-integrated manufacturing ecosystem strategically creates value at all tiers - while cost-efficient production democratizes access to smartphones, solar equipment and IoT devices for billions globally, the same supply chains empower premium innovations like Huawei's satellite phones or CATL's solid-state batteries. This dual-capacity bridges the digital divide: African farmers now access agritech tools at 1/5 the 2010 prices, and South Asian households install solar systems cheaper than kerosene alternatives. Ultimately, industrial clusters aren't just making things affordable, but redefining what's possible for human development at every income level.

slavik81• 1 year ago

Go back to the early 1970s and "Made in Japan" was an indicator of a low quality product. This sort of thing has happened before a few times. China is just bigger than the others that did it.

blackoil• 1 year ago

China is better at free market capitalism. While in US markets quickly gravitate towards monopoly or duopoly, China has multiple companies in each sector.

dartos5• 1 year ago

China is better at free market capitalism

Aren’t they not a free market?

That’s partly why

China has multiple companies in each sector.

Free markets lead to monopolies when unchecked… like in the us.

lm284693• 1 year ago

The next best thing after a president who has a long term vision for its country is a dictator who has a long term vision for his country. Sadly in the west we don't really have any of the former, and the wannabe dictators we get are even more self absorbed and only interested in the next election cycle

ossobuco7• 1 year ago

A dictator who serves the people's interests is more democratic than an elected official who harms them.

dartos5• 1 year ago

Democratic != good for the people, just who the people wanted.

Dictators don’t give people the choice.

You’re just using the word “democratic” wrong.

nine_k2• 1 year ago

There's no such thing as a country, if we remove the population from the country.

Dictators' long-term visions for their countries rarely include population's prosperity as a key goal. Benevolent (near-)absolute monarchs existed, but they were even more rare than democratically elected great leaders.

Say, Mr. Putin looked like a benevolent not-even-a-dictator for a decade or so, and his rule coincided with the rather obviously rising prosperity of most Russian citizens. But there is a catch. Always has been, but it became overt in 2022 when the kinda-benevolent leader turned a complete dictator and started a major war.

Xi is already much more of a dictator than Putin can ever dream of. To hope that his benevolence will extend indefinitely, and will match your idea of benevolence, if to be delusional, sorry.

xandrius4• 1 year ago

So, for you, Putin was a kinda-benevolent dictator until 2022? Did you miss a bunch of news?

Gud4• 1 year ago

Sorry no. The best thing for a country is a decentralized, direct democracy.

dragonwriter• 1 year ago

The best thing for a country is a decentralized, direct democracy.

Best by what criteria, and, examples and/or argument supporting this claim?

Havoc• 1 year ago

They seem to be hitting all their long term goals pretty well. Makes me wonder whether it is time to learn Mandarin

architango• 1 year ago

Technology is quickly approaching the point where you don't need to speak Mandarin if you want to speak Mandarin.

xandrius4• 1 year ago

I'm sure you'll know when the time comes. And if you were not interested to learn it beforehand it won't serve you for a long while.

blitzar2• 1 year ago

The belief in the myth that "the Chinese" are poor, stupid, backward, inferior etc. is what causes such suprise.

aurareturn2• 1 year ago

Why would anyone believe that? In particular this forum. Everyone here has worked with a Chinese colleague smarter than them.

China has 1.4 billion of them.

arpyzo• 1 year ago

I was under the impression that the surprise is that their authoritarian political system doesn't stifle the conditions required for this level of innovation.

tim3332• 1 year ago

It's authoritarian in some ways - don't criticize the government etc - but I think they are fairly laissez faire in terms of most businesses doing their thing.

fspeech• 1 year ago

China proves that you don't need 100 times return on capital to get potential innovators to take risk. 100% may be enough. People say China couldn't innovate due to its weak IPR protection, but it is turning out that you don't need to be an absolutist. Sure outright theft is bad, but imitation can be good for competition. You want to give the innovators a head start so they can profit from their efforts, but you don't want to make the protection so tight that they can sit on their initial efforts and profit for years to come without further innovation.

xandrius4• 1 year ago

Not really, it's about the general understanding that while China produces a lot of stuff for other countries, its own products are very often obvious knock-offs or subpar versions.

Nothing to do with any myth, it's just how it is for a huge variety of reasons.

And if you ever went to a university, you'd instantly lose that notion, since you'd be probably be interacting with both rich (or at least very well off) and intelligent Chinese people.

SideburnsOfDoom• 1 year ago

China's own products are very often obvious knock-offs or subpar versions

This view is increasingly outdated. Chinese EVs are well ahead of the rest. Solar power systems too.

I am anticipating more "surprises" like DeepSeek where something ground-breaking comes from China as well as from Silicon Valley, Japan or elsewhere. Or like EVs where the Chinese firms are leaders in an advanced engineering industry.

InDubioProRubio• 1 year ago

The funny thing though is that china can extort obviously corrupt external markets. Just synthesize wegovy, sell it a gestation price, shake down a cartel or industry for the price difference. If your oligarchy can not compete and the corruption prevents it form keeping up, it has to take over to prevent extinction by the external competition.

blackeyeblitzar2• 1 year ago

I wonder how much of this is a result of past outsourcing, IP theft, and all that. But it doesn’t matter now - China is competitive and is a much more dangerous adversary for free societies than the Soviet Union ever was. I wonder when western countries will have a better plan for this new reality.

pjc50• 1 year ago

China is not much of an adversary. They have basically one overseas territory claim, and it's Taiwan. Other than that they're still less of a threat than Russia.

tuan• 1 year ago

Don't forget their claims in the East Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line

michtzik• 1 year ago

How many overseas territory claims do you think Russia has?

blackeyeblitzar2• 1 year ago

There’s also the claims to Tibet and Xinjiang…

tim3332• 1 year ago

I think it's a good thing. Not only are new medicines in general a good thing, the US system is so slow, partly due to bureaucracy, that if you do find a cure for anything it seems to take fifteen years to get to patients.

It's not just AI. China's medicines are surprising the world, too

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