Watching the real-time industrialization of their nation, piloted by companies like Xiaomi and BYD, from a nation of dirt floors and bicycles to Roombas and electric cars within two decades gives a different perspective from the West, where potable water is expected and Flint, Michigan, is ridiculed. There was a recent news article with Chinese scientists featured as national heroes, contrasted with America, where our heroes are the products of the entertainment industry.
Within Chinese youth, the sentiment may be different, but there must be some sort of understanding within older Chinese millennials that engineers, scientists, and business leaders who emphasize technological growth (which is inherently anti-labor in the immediate short term) lead to products that better the lives of ordinary people. I don’t think that understanding is as prevalent in the current era amongst Western cultures that have taken things such as roads, running water, and household products for granted.
There is some sort of societal memory that producing things is still Good, and that a better way to produce Things with less Labor is to be celebrated. Because it is a nation where Things were, until recently, and still are for some non-insignificant portion of the population, not available compared to the West. The job loss is not as significant as the existence and affordability of a vacuum cleaner instead of a broom.
But I think we have largely forgotten about that here aside from a few industries. Household products required to survive comfortably are largely a solved problem. Most people in the US have access to a fridge, reliable transportation, running potable water, showers, a toilet, vacuum cleaners, and other things that we take for granted.
Thus, what’s the incentive for producing?
We now espouse the meaning of our work, of our jobs, of our personal satisfaction with what we do. We do things because we want to, or we need the money, or we think it makes the world a better place. We place the needs of the workers first and foremost without thinking of the product. Of course, this is a generalization, as the CEOs and the leaders of firms think about the product first and foremost, but the general worker does not. The salary system represents the intentional detachment between the worker and the product, amortizing the risk amongst the employees. Sure, we may have layoffs and stock options and tips and other performance-based incentives, but largely the individual employee’s incentives do not match.
Thus, when AI comes along and threatens those things, we as individual employees of the firm are concerned. Technology has always been, economically, a way to produce more given the constraints of labor and capital, and for white-collar workers, AI looks to be a way to accelerate that graph asymptotically whilst demand remains constrained. Not a great place for the labor side of the equation, to be quite fair.
In the West - and within younger Chinese who were born with cell phones in their hands - I’m sure that this production seems to be at the expense of the Worker. However, to older folks across the pond, it can only be seen as something extraordinary.
You grow up sweeping dirt floors and now your Xiaomi automatically maps out your room and cleans it. You grow up not having access to knowledge and now you can ask your phone anything and it can give you the answer. It’s nothing but a miracle. No wonder you embrace AI. Of course you would want agents; work is an act of suffering. Yet you ask your American friend and he or she loves his work and is afraid AI will replace him. You are afraid that your job may be in danger too, but you order your bowl of noodles for 14 yuan, it arrives in 20 minutes from a self-driving, AI-powered delivery robot, and you remember how you no longer need to boil your water and knead your dough from scratch.
I think we in the West need to remember that the product of our work is important too. Societies that still have vivid cultural memories of material scarcity are more likely to view automation as an opportunity for abundance rather than job preservation.
We are competing on a global level. If BYD makes better cars than Ford, they will eat our lunch no matter how many barriers we put up. And those barriers are Not Good for us. If BYD makes a better car, why should we put up with an inferior Ford?
I personally believe there are opportunities to innovate. There are always more features you can put in a car, and we should accelerate our production at the expense of labor. There are things that we can do in 2026 that would’ve been unthinkable in 2025, and reaping the fruits of that progress will be beneficial for our nation in the long run. A decade ago, coal miners were told to learn to code, but now, in the abundance of both cheap solar and cheap code, there must be something greater that coders, designers, engineers, artists, bean counters, and other people who work their minds can do that would lead to a society with more abundance.