I listened to Dan Wang on this podcast [1] and found his talking points around industrial policies interesting. His take around how China managed to do capitalism better than US when it comes to EV & Solar panels (if he's not wrong):
massively fund the industry as a political / social objective, set (artificial) demand and create a local market by restricting import / competition for a while, then cut funding gradually when there's a sprawling eco system of startups, letting them brutally cannibalize each other leading to consolidation (such as BYD) to create global leaders.
Is not uniquely Chinese but are just tactics out of Japan, Korea and even Germany (historically).
I can kinda understand the point that this process works better when there are some technical people in power, such as engineers. They can probably reason timing and industry a little better: Solar was pioneered by US but industrialized by Germany but then out competed by China.
Yesterday at a conference I came to know the history of bipedal/quadrupedal robot development by a MIT professor, claiming most of the Chinese robots are just descendant of that technological choices made by MIT research.
Humanoid robotics seems to just be in that process of "massively fund the industry" in industrial policies (I saw so many humanoid robot companies at the conference, Chinese, that I haven't even heard of). To me I guess the "why now?" is the question, and I guess some technical person must've been in the process of making that decision.
We can't really emulate the political system of China, but that mindset of having technical/expertise close to power is probably something we shouldn't forget. Especially in a era where political positions seems to be handed out based on loyalty than merit
I watched the same podcast/interview. Dan Wang expresses his views in a very neutral tone, only on the things he knows. There are some subjective statements, but they seem balanced to me and didn't find anything that was hard to believe.
massively fund the industry as a political / social objective, set (artificial) demand and create a local market by restricting import / competition for a while, then cut funding gradually when there's a sprawling eco system of startups, letting them brutally cannibalize each other leading to consolidation (such as BYD) to create global leaders.
Is not uniquely Chinese but are just tactics out of Japan, Korea and even Germany (historically).
I can kinda understand the point that this process works better when there are some technical people in power, such as engineers. They can probably reason timing and industry a little better: Solar was pioneered by US but industrialized by Germany but then out competed by China.
Yesterday at a conference I came to know the history of bipedal/quadrupedal robot development by a MIT professor, claiming most of the Chinese robots are just descendant of that technological choices made by MIT research.
Humanoid robotics seems to just be in that process of "massively fund the industry" in industrial policies (I saw so many humanoid robot companies at the conference, Chinese, that I haven't even heard of). To me I guess the "why now?" is the question, and I guess some technical person must've been in the process of making that decision.
We can't really emulate the political system of China, but that mindset of having technical/expertise close to power is probably something we shouldn't forget. Especially in a era where political positions seems to be handed out based on loyalty than merit
[1] https://youtu.be/ZNK3vNg13XA?feature=shared