00:00That laugh of Elon Musk's has aged extremely badly, look.
00:08That's Elon Musk in 2011, making a huge mistake by mocking BYD, a company of
00:14Chinese cars.
00:14But Musk made a mistake, almost all of us have made it: believing that China could never
00:19innovate.
00:19However, while "Made in China" products were of poor quality in the 2000s,
00:22It's not because the Chinese were incapable of doing better,
00:25This is because our companies needed China to produce enormous quantities, and at the lowest possible cost.
00:29But we ended up believing that it was a characteristic of the country.
00:32As if China could only mass-produce, and could not invent.
00:35We have confused China's place in the global economy at a given time,
00:39with what the Chinese people were naturally capable of doing.
00:42Except that when China started to innovate, and even began to do better than
00:45We,
00:45We remained stuck in our prejudices.
00:47Essentializing prejudices, and therefore by definition racist.
00:50And meanwhile, here's what happened to the company that Elon Musk used to mock.
00:53By 2025, BYD was selling 3 times more electrified cars than Tesla.
00:57BYD is the fastest production car in the world.
00:59It's a technological marvel, inexpensive and available in large quantities.
01:02And our prejudices continue to blind us.
01:04Because China is replicating the BYD miracle.
01:07In nuclear energy, robotics, housing, and healthcare.
01:10But we refuse to see it, and we continue to think that our development model is necessarily superior in
01:15every point.
01:16So yes, there are huge criticisms to be made of China.
01:18Don't worry, we agree.
01:19And I don't idealize it at all.
01:20But if we don't want to look as stupid as Elon Musk in 20 years,
01:23We need to stop with our Eurocentrism that blinds us.
01:26If you're interested, read Samir Amin, who explains how to transform historical domination
01:30in a supposed natural superiority.
01:33In short, subscribe.
