Will our engineering resources become dominated by Chinese design?

[Boscoe]

First let me clarify what I mean in the title:

The Chinese economy has grown almost 10 times in the past twenty years. The west has it used as a resource for low cost manufacturing for even longer than that and so a general sense of low quality has been developed around Chinese made and / or designed products. Up until recently we saw China stick to the very low end in engineering develop aka, low cost MCUs or silicon etc. However, nowadays we are seeing the leading edge coming out of China at very high quality - they have the economic scale to support these kind of developments now.

For me, in my daily life, there's a few anecdotal bits that really make me question where the future of engineering is going. This is worrying as it could be very easy for the Chinese to become the dominant designers of our core technologies as well as being their manufacturers. The language is a key issue here, documentation could very easily be not translated to create barriers to access.

Tooling and reliability standards are becoming very good from China.

I know a lot of people feel differently but I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework around an MCU that exists on the market today. It's clearly been very well thought out and architected, the documentation is fantastic, there are a huge range of examples, modern technologies like python have been utilised etc. I read some docs, look at an example, type the code and it just works. I would go as far as saying the ESP32 MCU and general offering is one of the best conceived products in the market today.

Efinix, another Chinese company, has really modernised FPGA development in my opinion. Again by using modern technologies, embracing software engineering approaches to HW and architecting their products well. Sure, these two examples have the advantage of small scale of products but still it's mighty impressive how good their tooling is - I feel so unimpeded and productive with them.

On the other hand, I'm trying to complete a project where the core of the work is based around a Zynq SoC - this has been nothing but a nightmare. Vivado and Vitis constantly crash, have errors, installation errors, bugs, fail to compile for no reason etc. I'm constantly having to 'clean' projects, restart the program to get things to work. It's extremely hard and frustrating to product good work with these tools, I've spent so much more time trying to get the tooling to be reliable than developing the design. If I had a penny for every time I've had to search google for another Vivado or Vitis issue, well... I've tried with three different versions of the suite on Windows and Linux. 2023.2 took 3 attempts and over 100GB of downloading to finally get it to install on Linux. The new version of Vitis (based on Visual Studio Code) is unable to generate device platform projects (errors out), it's also not possible to import an old design making it useless. Updating Vivado from 2023.1 to 2023.2 broke my HDL project forcing me to have to reimplement it from scratch.

Anyway, you get the idea. Along with these little experiences we are starting to see significant technology come out of China and I think the west's engineering history will follow a similar one to Britain's - it gets too expensive. Britain still has engineering but it's basically nothing compared to what it was and what is there is okay and / or owned by American or Asian conglomerates.

I know this post might be all doom and gloom but I don't think any take over will happen overnight however in 50 years I think there'll be a huge shift in balance to where the technologies we use are developed.

[Bicurico]

I visited China 6 years ago (Hong Kong and Shenzhen).
My perception, as a European, was as if I was in the future.
Engineering wise they are on par or beyond Europeans. As an example: I collect TV field meter and have a respectable collection with devices from most manufacturers like Kathrein, Sefram, Televes, Rover Instruments and Promax.
All are European.
But the best field meter I own is the Deviser S7200. It features a full spectrum analyser and has all measurements you can think of, together with the best TS analyser implementation. It is fully developed and manufactured in China.
Now think of Rigol and Siglent. And the upcoming automotive revolution.
What happend is that Europe got lazy and busy with stuff like Gender, socialism and what not, while China was investing in infrastructure and planning ahead 10-20 years. We Europeans are planning ahead in 2 year cycles, to match the 4 year election cycle (2 years to steal all money and 2 years to do campaign for the nex election).
Another reason for our technical failure is the total disinvestment in military forces. As is known, the military application is a driving motor for R&D. We Europeans got lazy thinking that the US, under NATO, will take care of everything.
Europe either changes to a right wing governance and thrives for independence of China, or we are indeed doomed.

[magic]

He's talking about Europe west of Odra - you know, half of the continent or thereabouts

[jfiresto]

... Another reason for our technical failure is the total disinvestment in military forces. As is known, the military application is a driving motor for R&D. We Europeans got lazy thinking that the US, under NATO, will take care of everything....

Curiously enough, one could argue the problem for the U.S. is the opposite: as things are trending, the total investment in the military complex and the loss of competition and civilian influence.

[MT]

I visited China 6 years ago (Hong Kong and Shenzhen).
My perception, as a European, was as if I was in the future.
Engineering wise they are on par or beyond Europeans. As an example: I collect TV field meter and have a respectable collection with devices from most manufacturers like Kathrein, Sefram, Televes, Rover Instruments and Promax.
All are European.
But the best field meter I own is the Deviser S7200. It features a full spectrum analyser and has all measurements you can think of, together with the best TS analyser implementation. It is fully developed and manufactured in China.
Now think of Rigol and Siglent. And the upcoming automotive revolution.
What happend is that Europe got lazy and busy with stuff like Gender, socialism and what not, while China was investing in infrastructure and planning ahead 10-20 years. We Europeans are planning ahead in 2 year cycles, to match the 4 year election cycle (2 years to steal all money and 2 years to do campaign for the nex election).
Another reason for our technical failure is the total disinvestment in military forces. As is known, the military application is a driving motor for R&D. We Europeans got lazy thinking that the US, under NATO, will take care of everything.
Europe either changes to a right wing governance and thrives for independence of China, or we are indeed doomed.

China is in deep financial troubles, so much civil war might occur so better to have a war with USA Xi thinks while USA prints its 10th trillion debt dollar while glorious old Europe fills it self with
Van der Lyings and WEF Schwab nazis. Chinese engineering domination is part of belt and road, so better stop that and let Chinese do the supplying of components perhaps, perhaps not.

[schmitt trigger]

Empires come and empires go. Reading a little history shows the cyclical patterns of the rise and fall of nations.
Europe had four solid centuries of global supremacy, the first two led by Spain and Portugal, the latter two by France and most notably the UK.
Then it was, and still is, the USA. Some countries seriously challenged them, like the good old USSR, but ultimately failed.
Now it is China’s turn. Not there yet, but I am sure that my granddaughters will have to learn Chinese. 

[Karel]

I visited China 6 years ago (Hong Kong and Shenzhen).
My perception, as a European, was as if I was in the future.
Engineering wise they are on par or beyond Europeans. As an example: I collect TV field meter and have a respectable collection with devices from most manufacturers like Kathrein, Sefram, Televes, Rover Instruments and Promax.
All are European.
But the best field meter I own is the Deviser S7200. It features a full spectrum analyser and has all measurements you can think of, together with the best TS analyser implementation. It is fully developed and manufactured in China.
Now think of Rigol and Siglent. And the upcoming automotive revolution.
What happend is that Europe got lazy and busy with stuff like Gender, socialism and what not, while China was investing in infrastructure and planning ahead 10-20 years. We Europeans are planning ahead in 2 year cycles, to match the 4 year election cycle (2 years to steal all money and 2 years to do campaign for the nex election).
Another reason for our technical failure is the total disinvestment in military forces. As is known, the military application is a driving motor for R&D. We Europeans got lazy thinking that the US, under NATO, will take care of everything.
Europe either changes to a right wing governance and thrives for independence of China, or we are indeed doomed.

This.

[dobsonr741]

I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework

To set the admiration of the software stack: it’s open source. When I contributed to it a few good years ago it was in shambles and buggy. So give credit to open source, not China.

[coppice]

I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework

To set the admiration of the software stack: it’s open source. When I contributed to it a few good years ago it was in shambles and buggy. So give credit to open source, not China.

If a vendor has allowed an open source infrastructure to flourish around their products that is a reason for high praise. Most vendors end up derailing open source efforts, either through active suppression or endlessly changing their policies.

[tautech]

Empires come and empires go. Reading a little history shows the cyclical patterns of the rise and fall of nations.
Europe had four solid centuries of global supremacy, the first two led by Spain and Portugal, the latter two by France and most notably the UK.
Then it was, and still is, the USA. Some countries seriously challenged them, like the good old USSR, but ultimately failed.
Now it is China’s turn. Not there yet, but I am sure that my granddaughters will have to learn Chinese.

Yet, learning English in China has be compulsory for at least a decade.

[coppice]

Empires come and empires go. Reading a little history shows the cyclical patterns of the rise and fall of nations.
Europe had four solid centuries of global supremacy, the first two led by Spain and Portugal, the latter two by France and most notably the UK.
Then it was, and still is, the USA. Some countries seriously challenged them, like the good old USSR, but ultimately failed.
Now it is China’s turn. Not there yet, but I am sure that my granddaughters will have to learn Chinese.

Yet, learning English in China has be compulsory for at least a decade.

It has been almost universal in China for decades, and the results have been brilliant.... in that it has created a huge market for English teachers. Pity they have had so few teachers that could actually speak English well. If they could fix that, maybe more than a handful of the people in China could be conversational in English. I've met multiple people that struggled to tell me in English that they have a degree in English.

[tszaboo]

China has it's problems, for example the real estate bubble bursting can put it into decades of financial crisis. Or we have to realize that the growth numbers are often times fake, with somewhat made up statistics.
That being said, more and more often I have to tell suppliers that they lost market to Chinese components. Either because they don't make the parts at all, and if they make it it's 10x more expensive. We order injection moulds from there, because locally they don't even use the right type of steel for the parts, and the people working on it are not knowledgeable and experienced enough. Meanwhile a factory in China will spill out 50 moulds a week. What the collective West must learn to do better is not taking the extra profit. For example, why can I buy the same ST MCU 1/5th the cost from China? Why am I punished with higher margins, and my design competitiveness less just because im in Europe?

[coppice]

We order injection moulds from there, because locally they don't even use the right type of steel for the parts, and the people working on it are not knowledgeable and experienced enough. Meanwhile a factory in China will spill out 50 moulds a week.

In the 80s, when work started moving from the EU and US to Asia in volume, we used to hear politicians say it was the low end simple work that was moving. This was true, but move on 30 years and all the highly skilled and experienced people are those people in Asia who got their start doing those simpler jobs when they were young.

[SiliconWizard]

We order injection moulds from there, because locally they don't even use the right type of steel for the parts, and the people working on it are not knowledgeable and experienced enough. Meanwhile a factory in China will spill out 50 moulds a week.

In the 80s, when work started moving from the EU and US to Asia in volume, we used to hear politicians say it was the low end simple work that was moving. This was true, but move on 30 years and all the highly skilled and experienced people are those people in Asia who got their start doing those simpler jobs when they were young.

Yes, just like when they now say the same thing with "AI".

[SiliconWizard]

He's talking about Europe west of Odra - you know, half of the continent or thereabouts

Ah, Right. I forgot about Oder–Neisse line which separates civilisation from barbarian states.

Which side though?

[abeyer]

He's talking about Europe west of Odra - you know, half of the continent or thereabouts

Ah, Right. I forgot about Oder–Neisse line which separates civilisation from barbarian states.

Which side though?

Everyone knows those dirty big-endians are the barbarians.

[magic]

In the 80s, when work started moving from the EU and US to Asia in volume, we used to hear politicians say it was the low end simple work that was moving. This was true, but move on 30 years and all the highly skilled and experienced people are those people in Asia who got their start doing those simpler jobs when they were young.

Yes, just like when they now say the same thing with "AI".

Or used to say about slaves. Some things never change, some people just love trouble.

[Smokey]

I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework

To set the admiration of the software stack: it’s open source. When I contributed to it a few good years ago it was in shambles and buggy. So give credit to open source, not China.

If a vendor has allowed an open source infrastructure to flourish around their products that is a reason for high praise. Most vendors end up derailing open source efforts, either through active suppression or endlessly changing their policies.

I'm sorry but outsourcing your core development tools to "the community" is lazy, not honorable.  Same goes for "official community forum support".

[SiliconWizard]

I'm not sure what the point of this thread exactly is in the end. China has been on an economic growth that we haven't experienced in decades, so obviously they have a major edge currently in terms of development and investments, while we are in a downwards spiral. Cycles. Does that mean that it's all rosy over there? I don't think so. It's a totalitarian regime, so of course that helps "focusing", but the price to pay for that is very high.
Historically speaking, no totalitarian regime has ever lasted forever, so China's current regime won't either. Meanwhile they'll reap all they can while it lasts.

And, we are on some level acting as though we were committing suicide in the western world. Maybe that's just part of the cycle too. While China (and others outside of the western world) invests pragmatically, we have cut down investments a lot on similar things, while focusing on investments that will "save the planet" (mostly dead-end projects), except maybe the arms industry. And then we whine. Kind of pathetic.

As to China vs. open source, that's a pretty odd relationship actually. Open source could only have started in a world where IP was a core value, if you really think about it. This is not the case in China for the most part, and they do not care much about neither IP nor open source. They use open source as they see fit, while often reluctantly sharing back, if at all. When they do it properly, that's often the exception rather than the norm.

[coppice]

I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework

To set the admiration of the software stack: it’s open source. When I contributed to it a few good years ago it was in shambles and buggy. So give credit to open source, not China.

If a vendor has allowed an open source infrastructure to flourish around their products that is a reason for high praise. Most vendors end up derailing open source efforts, either through active suppression or endlessly changing their policies.

I'm sorry but outsourcing your core development tools to "the community" is lazy, not honorable.  Same goes for "official community forum support".

I think engineers are plenty evenly split between the "vendors should do all the software' camp, and the "vendors are so hopeless they should facilitate us making the tools function well" camp.

[Smokey]

I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework

To set the admiration of the software stack: it’s open source. When I contributed to it a few good years ago it was in shambles and buggy. So give credit to open source, not China.

If a vendor has allowed an open source infrastructure to flourish around their products that is a reason for high praise. Most vendors end up derailing open source efforts, either through active suppression or endlessly changing their policies.

I'm sorry but outsourcing your core development tools to "the community" is lazy, not honorable.  Same goes for "official community forum support".

I think engineers are plenty evenly split between the "vendors should do all the software' camp, and the "vendors are so hopeless they should facilitate us making the tools function well" camp.

I don't think that holds though.  It's one of those situations where they have amazing hardware designed and fabricated by amazing ee and production engineers that can consistently and reliably perform to spec...  But....  I guess there are no good software engineers to be found???  Who could have possibly predicted that after all that hardware effort we would need software guys too!!

Hardware is only half the job.  If I release a circuit board with no firmware I can't expect my customers to write it themselves.

[Simon]

I'm not sure what the point of this thread exactly is in the end. China has been on an economic growth that we haven't experienced in decades, so obviously they have a major edge currently in terms of development and investments, while we are in a downwards spiral. Cycles. Does that mean that it's all rosy over there? I don't think so. It's a totalitarian regime, so of course that helps "focusing", but the price to pay for that is very high.
Historically speaking, no totalitarian regime has ever lasted forever, so China's current regime won't either. Meanwhile they'll reap all they can while it lasts.

And, we are on some level acting as though we were committing suicide in the western world. Maybe that's just part of the cycle too. While China (and others outside of the western world) invests pragmatically, we have cut down investments a lot on similar things, while focusing on investments that will "save the planet" (mostly dead-end projects), except maybe the arms industry. And then we whine. Kind of pathetic.

As to China vs. open source, that's a pretty odd relationship actually. Open source could only have started in a world where IP was a core value, if you really think about it. This is not the case in China for the most part, and they do not care much about neither IP nor open source. They use open source as they see fit, while often reluctantly sharing back, if at all. When they do it properly, that's often the exception rather than the norm.

Basically it's all about the economics and the output in the west. We are paid more and do less for it, economics has rules for that. Obviously once you have cornered the market of unskilled labor the only avenue for growth is to take on the more skilled stuff .

[coppercone2]

I visited China 6 years ago (Hong Kong and Shenzhen).
My perception, as a European, was as if I was in the future.
Engineering wise they are on par or beyond Europeans. As an example: I collect TV field meter and have a respectable collection with devices from most manufacturers like Kathrein, Sefram, Televes, Rover Instruments and Promax.
All are European.
But the best field meter I own is the Deviser S7200. It features a full spectrum analyser and has all measurements you can think of, together with the best TS analyser implementation. It is fully developed and manufactured in China.
Now think of Rigol and Siglent. And the upcoming automotive revolution.
What happend is that Europe got lazy and busy with stuff like Gender, socialism and what not, while China was investing in infrastructure and planning ahead 10-20 years. We Europeans are planning ahead in 2 year cycles, to match the 4 year election cycle (2 years to steal all money and 2 years to do campaign for the nex election).
Another reason for our technical failure is the total disinvestment in military forces. As is known, the military application is a driving motor for R&D. We Europeans got lazy thinking that the US, under NATO, will take care of everything.
Europe either changes to a right wing governance and thrives for independence of China, or we are indeed doomed.

What technologies do you see being developed by the military that warrents throwing money at them to see economic growth? The trend is not to do general research since the Mansfield amendment in 1970.

Materials they develop stay super classified. Alloys, plastics, etc. Anything made for hypersonic and stealth related projects (big spending) is going to be highly classified for a long time because of national security.

I am not sure what you think the military is on the verge of discovering that's going to improve general industry.

Air logistics is something that is big spending, but its a nightmare to get benefits from this because of laws, ordinances, noise, danger, etc. Amazon is having shit luck at developing it. And it goes with robotics, its so easy to weaponize, they won't be doing anything really cool and available till they have good counter measures. Its probobly treated like having air superiority, or bot superiority. probobly means most of the developments are hush hush and restricted.

Cyber capabilities is god knows what, military unix admins. again cutting edge national security, the source code, algorithms, etc... highly classified and compartmentalized. Walmart aint gonna get the developments in database sorting and shit from them unless its some kinda encrypted service. On the plus side it means that infrastructure will be modern and maintained, which is important. Kind of like how the highway system (eisenhower) had some crazy original plot that was 'landing strips everywhere in ww3'. 

hypersonics - yeah right, the materials are likely treated like stealth bomber skin (terribly classified)

directed energy weapons - maybe some bulked up degraded performance transmitters can be used for space RF beam down power one day. That is a super delayed return. I bet the first phase is gonna be about as successful as Indium internet sats (now its taking off with musk, but the first attempt was a really grievous financial failure)

3d printing - seems like the most useful development for general industry.

robotics - it seems the enemies of the USA are apt at using robotics. the military learned in ukraine that giving people robots means robots will be used against you. Not much barriers to it. Probably gonna be stunted. AI was supposed to be awesome or whatever but it turns out right off the bat their paranoid as hell about it being used against them.

I feel like the military has a poor return on investment due to lack of general research, which seems most useful. All the stuff they want needs to be largely classified to retain a operational advantage in war..... too many people are ready to implement it globally.


I think its wise to maintain reasonable spending here, but IMO its definitely not a way out of financial crisis.


if you increase their budget too much, then press them for returns after massive tech development, their gonna end up giving away some really dangerous stuff thats hard to use and causes instability. the technology won't be useless but  that is not an efficient or wise use of money. if non military uses that extra money to make.. normal ? basic? technology, then you just have a general improvement. its kind of like getting weird ass food instead of more normal food. and the food is ghost pepper chocolate bars that give you a massive stomach ache

[Boscoe]

I believe the ESP-IDF is perhaps the best SW framework

To set the admiration of the software stack: it’s open source. When I contributed to it a few good years ago it was in shambles and buggy. So give credit to open source, not China.

If a vendor has allowed an open source infrastructure to flourish around their products that is a reason for high praise. Most vendors end up derailing open source efforts, either through active suppression or endlessly changing their policies.

I'm sorry but outsourcing your core development tools to "the community" is lazy, not honorable.  Same goes for "official community forum support".

I think engineers are plenty evenly split between the "vendors should do all the software' camp, and the "vendors are so hopeless they should facilitate us making the tools function well" camp.

I don't think that holds though.  It's one of those situations where they have amazing hardware designed and fabricated by amazing ee and production engineers that can consistently and reliably perform to spec...  But....  I guess there are no good software engineers to be found???  Who could have possibly predicted that after all that hardware effort we would need software guys too!!

Hardware is only half the job.  If I release a circuit board with no firmware I can't expect my customers to write it themselves.

I couldn't agree more, you need both for an effective product.

I guess a manufacturer could get away with not suppling any SW in the past when an MCU had jus ta few k of memory and odd comms peripheral however these days microcontrollers are now performing at levels personal computers were 40 years ago.

[Simon]

My go to is a SAMC micro controller with an M0+ ARM processor running at 48MHz, the ROM memory access speed is limited to 24MHz and I believe the RAM will run at 48MHz, it costs £1.50 The original ARM CPU in the Archimedes PC that it was originally designed for was running at a few MHz