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China is living in 2100. That’s what everyone says when they get back from their first trip to China. After returning from my first China trip, I can see what they’re getting at. China’s trains are faster, its buildings newer, and its EV industry bigger than anyone else’s. In almost every tech sub-sector, China is already #1 or #2. This “top 2 positioning” is a key part of what made CEO Jack Welch decide whether an industry was worth investing in. China passes that test, not in one industry, but in hundreds! But after exploring Shenzhen, I found 2,100 too far into the future to accurately describe China’s current reality. It’s not that China’s not living in the future, it’s that 2,100 is too ambitious a claim. It’s more accurate to say that China is living in 2,036. This estimate accounts for China being ahead of most other countries, while also reflecting the limits imposed by current reality. First, let’s look at why China is living in the future. China is ahead of most countries technologically. It is ahead of everyone else in high speed rail, solar panels, nuclear energy, batteries and EVs. In AI, China is behind only the United States. In semiconductors, it’s behind only a few Asian countries. This positioning in the world’s most important high tech sectors places China squarely in the “futuristic” category. Also, China is the world’s undisputed manufacturing powerhouse. In all industries combined, high tech and not, China produces 30% of the world’s manufacturing output. That’s impressive. Finally, there’s the on-the-ground reality in cities like Shenzhen—which I saw first hand. The streets are clean, the buildings and roads are new, the trains run on time—usually arriving the very second they’re scheduled to! The technological and civic progress in China is real and impressive. It puts the country decades ahead of the rest of the world. But there are real limits to China’s progress that put it a little closer to today than 2,100. First, China’s internet ecosystem is optimized for the local market. It isn’t built in such a way that would lead to the global dominance the U.S. now enjoys. For example, apart from TikTok and Temu, most Chinese-made apps have information-dense interfaces that come across “cluttered” to global users. This isn’t a bad thing—the Chinese perceive info-density as value—but it does limit China’s internet giants on the global stage. Second, China’s high tech advances are not unavailable to other countries—they’re just less widely disseminated. Other countries have AI, humanoid robots, EVs and high speed rail—they just have less of these things than China does. The median American has less access to the full buffet of cutting edge technologies than the median urban Chinese does, not because China is the only country with the buffet, but because the buffet is so expensive in the U.S. What makes China futuristic is the wide dissemination of advanced technologies to all segments of society, from rich to poor. This is definitely futuristic, and a call to all nations to do better in giving everyone a chance to get ahead. But it’s not centuries ahead of everyone else. With enough effort, other countries could have access to all the best tech in a decade or two.

.@grok is the clip below real?

🚨 BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY SETS NEW ALL-TIME HIGH Greg Abel era off to a great start! $BRK.B

🚨 GIGACLOUD TOPS $60! The little monopoly that could. $GCT

Crazy how Marco Polo was literally Chinamaxxing centuries ago. LONG before it became cool. Before it was even a known thing, in fact.

Investing update: I’m selling a chunk of my $UNH stock, possibly all of it. Basically I didn’t like the earnings release but the stock ripped so now looks like a good time to lock in profit.

“Codex basically wrote a warning letter explaining to Claude that I’m retarded.” LOL!

Can confirm that coming to Shenzhen really ups one’s QR code scanning game.

Many in the comment section are pointing out that Chinese KFC and McDonald’s are now run by Chinese companies. This is indeed true! However, 1. The U.S. brand owners still collect trademark licensing and other IP-related royalties. 2. U.S. McDonald’s has substantial equity (~20%) in Chinese McDonald’s.

I’m in China right now. One of the things about China that would likely surprise most people is how prevalent Western (esp U.S.) companies are here. On every street corner, there’s a McDonald’s, a KFC, a Nike store or an Apple Store. Often more than one of these brands on the SAME street corner! Many people think that Western companies have poor access to the Chinese market, but apart from internet that’s really not the case. Western companies simply make money in China in a different way than how Chinese companies make money in the West (i.e. brands and licensing vs exports).

In Estonia, there is a small bank that goes by the name BIGBANK. Who do they think they’re fooling?

HIGH TRUST SOCIETY: In China, they sell beer from OUTDOOR display coolers! No locks, no guards, no warning signs. Employee indoors can’t see anything. System operates on nothing but pure TRUST (OK and maybe an occasional CCTV camera).

Anyone else dislike phrasing of the form: “Stock X is trading at X times 2030 earnings?” It should be: “… ESTIMATED 2030 earnings.” You should always clarify when a claim of yours is an estimate. If you don’t, then you might start fooling yourself into thinking it’s a fact.

Berkshire Hathaway has a noted tendency to outperform when bubbles burst. $BRK.B

It’s really crazy the bifurcation happening in the world of AI. On the one hand, you have NVIDIA still growing at 100% with $432B/yr revenue run rate. On the other hand, OpenAI & Anthropic are coming out saying “yeah bro our revenue is like half what we said before” while lesser startups are literally going broke.

I tried the legendary CHINESE KFC! (It tasted pretty much like KFC anywhere else TBH, though there was a flying Colonel Sanders on the wall, a unique art choice).