| China Keeps Pushing Ahead The truth is that rich hippies, resentful at the success of new generations, anxious over their own wealth, are in the process of enthroning Xi Jinping and his followers as the rulers of the world economy. During a rousing trip to China — where for what it's worth I was named one of the world's "50 leading tech thinkers" — I visited a new Chinese "free zone" emerging on Hainan Island in the south. Hainan has been promised "free-flows of people" [no visas], "data" [free internet, perhaps even Google!], and trade [no tariffs]. During a six-mile run around part of the huge Island, I discovered many empty buildings and aborted projects that suggested to me the motivation for the free zone was to revive growth on the well-tested pattern of the special economic zones of the north. Free zones mimicking Hong Kong, had made Shenzhen and Shanghai the world's leading cities. Unlike most American and European politicians, who want to smother high tech in McNamee's new regulations, the Chinese communists amazingly are smart enough to know that the best way to attract immigration and growth is to cut back on government. Unlike American university students, the Chinese Communists know socialism doesn't work. When I returned to the United States, my colleague Habi Zhang alerted me to a further symptom of American decline, a massive PBS Frontline documentary on the "threat" of artificial intelligence (AI). Although the show made gestural references to the promise of the technology, it was too gullible and sentimental to see through the Luddite fears of lost jobs, state surveillance, and trans-human singularities. AI is simply the next generation of computer technology. People are not employed because they are unproductive. By making people more productive, AI both renders them more employable and generates the capital to endow new work. Repeatedly quoting stupid observations about 50% of all jobs being in jeopardy, the film mostly ignores the fact that 80-90% of jobs are always in jeopardy. To treat technology chiefly as a threat to employment shows a degree of economic obtuseness that would embarrass a Chinese communist. Yet, these much-laureled American documentary journalists, resourceful in using web technology themselves, choose this moment in our history to produce a down-beat screed full of images of dolorous unionists and bleak midwestern factory sites. And people wonder why the US economy is on the verge of being massively outperformed by China at the same time that we connive with Communists closing off Chinese markets to our technology. I discuss this idea in great depth in my flagship newsletter, The George Gilder Report. I'm running a special deal that ends tonight for my Daily Prophecy readers. Click here to sign up. Regards, 
George Gilder
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