12:12 AM (of Friday, November 15th, 2024)
Today is Thursday, November 14th 2024 and it was another mostly normal day. I got less than 5 hours of sleep last night and felt pretty tired and low energy throughout most of the day, so I ended up not doing much. I was in my office for pretty much the whole day, I did a little bit of work, but not a lot, and I basically just rested the whole day.
I watched some anime, and some random videos on many different topics. I watched a few videos on China and Asia too, and one of the videos really caught my attention.
I saw this clip of the current Ford CEO, Jim Farley, state publicly on a podcast, that he drives a Xiaomi car from China and it's better than any Ford. Xiaomi is a consumer electronics brand, they make general electronics like phones, smart watches, tablets, and many others. They are likened as the Apple of China. What's interesting about this, is Xiaomi now also makes cars. They released their first car this year, the SU7, in a batch of 100,000 only, and I think it sold out within the first day before they even shipped out the first car.
The Xiaomi SU7 is a relatively affordable $30,000 EV car can't be sold in the U.S. because Chinese cars are banned in the United States. Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, somehow got one and had it shipped to the U.S., and he says he drives it every day and that it is better than any Ford. Keep in mind he is the CEO of Ford, and he doesn't even drive a Ford, saying that the first car this Chinese general electronics company makes, is better than any car Ford makes. Ford is a brand that specializes in making only cars, and it's been around for over 100 years making cars. Yet, its CEO admits that this car is better than any Ford makes, and he drives one every day. That's insane.
So, Apple recently spent billions of dollars and several years trying to make their own car. Keep in mind Apple is the top company in the U.S. Apple is the top company in the world in terms of market valuation. And they failed. This Chinese company, valued much lower than Apple, keep in mind Apple is the most valued company in the world, Steve Jobs made it so, and Tim Cook with Apple has kept its 1st place ranking ever since. Yet, Apple couldn't make its own car. Xiaomi, which makes I don't know, toasters, blenders, drones, webcams, lots of different random electronics products, was able to make their own car, which Apple could not do.
What's interesting is that in the 1990s, I think Apple had over 2000 products it was selling, before Steve Jobs, regarded as the most lauded and innovative, ingenious CEO of all time (he was vegan too) came back and removed all of them but a handful. He states that Apple's success was due to narrowing its product line and selling only a few great products instead of a hundred average ones. Yet, Xiaomi is doing just that, selling hundreds of average products, and is profitable and is making a killing.
So if the most valued U.S. company is unable to do what Xiaomi does... what does this spell out for the U.S. later on?
I think even right now, China is already far ahead of the U.S. in basically every area. The U.S. really can't compete, despite having lots of sanctions and tariffs against China. In 2016, Trump blacklisted Xiaomi, and probably a bunch of other Chinese companies, so that they can't even sell or do business in the U.S. Biden has repealed this, but Xiaomi still isn't selling anything in the U.S. Biden himself blacklisted a bunch of Chinese companies too.
It's weird why China is uniquely getting these blacklists, sanctions, trade restrictions, tariffs, etc. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, don't have these restrictions. Japanese cars, electronics, video games and consoles, computers, are sold everywhere in the U.S. and there's no ban on them. Same with South Korean cars and electronics, and Taiwan chips.
China is already very independent from the rest of the world, while the U.S. has to rely on China for goods and manufacturing. The U.S. can't even manufacturer a lot of their own things anymore, like even bullets (which were invented in China too, along with guns, rockets, missiles, bombs, cannons, which most people probably think are Western inventions but they were actually all Chinese inventions) are made in China and the U.S. doesn't make their own anymore. Even Apple, most of the parts in an Apple product are made in China. I think only the design and software are made in the U.S. while the rest are made in Asia (not specifically just China).
Another weakness people don't think about is that China has their own Internet that Americans can't access. They have this "Great Firewall of China" where their Internet is separate from the rest of the world. I only realized this when I was looking at the list of YouTube users by country, that ranked which country had the most YouTube users, and China wasn't on there. It wasn't even ranked. I think I just realized then, without even looking it up, that China's Internet wasn't connected with the rest of the world, and then I looked it up, and it was true. They have their own Internet and a Chinese version for every popular website the West has.
There is a way for them to access our Internet using VPN, but I don't think there is a way we can access theirs, plus we wouldn't be able to understand any of it anyway. We don't understand any Chinese, while they basically all know English. I don't even know a single Chinese character. Well, I can draw one, two, three, they are just 1 horizontal line, 2 horizontal lines, and 3 horizontal lines respectively, but I don't know how to say 1, 2, or 3 in Chinese. Anyone can write down these characters though because they're basic lines.
Anyway, I'd keep writing, but I'm getting sleepy. I can go on forever about other ways in which China has a huge advantage over the U.S. right now, but I am getting really tired. So I'm just going to sleep now.
You must be signed in to post a comment!