DeepSeek's official API, which has 10x cheaper cached input cost isn't even on OpenRouter as a provider, so just like Google, most volume is not going through OpenRouter. (Gemini's official hosted api is on OpenRouter BTW)

Also you're comparing an API with Google's internal corporate and consumer app use. Bytedance announced they were using 63T tokens/day (441T / week) at the end of 2025, so they are probably even higher than Google now. We don't know how much weekly tokens the DeepSeek chatapp uses, but it would also be a very high number much higher than OpenRouter tokens.

For the real reason of the recent price drops, go ask your AI about how much it would cost to run DeepSeek V4 or MiMo 2.5 after Ascend 950 PR have started to be mass delivered in 2026 Apr at $10k / card.

* https://rekt.news/compound-rekt/

* HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28716979

This is for actually building things. On the tertiary side, housing service GDP (ex. rent and inputed rent) has the US report 2-3x more than China despite having 25% the population.

Keep being arrogant and think the world revolves around Silicon Valley tech companies. When EVs completely replaces ICE, people like you will think Musk did by himself against dumb incumbents while completely ignoring the much much greater contributions of everyone else.

I'll just leave with this statistic [1]:

> China’s demand for electric bus batteries is almost equal to that of demand for all electric vehicle batteries

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-08/china-goe...

2) As with Ford for ICE vehicles, affordable EVs selling higher volumes are much more important to than the premium EVs offered by Tesla in terms bringing the tech mainstream. In this way, BYD and Nissan should be credited much more than Tesla. In terms of contribution, I would put BYD much higher than Tesla: BYD manufacturers their own batteries, sell more vehicles, drive industry competition in the much more relevant CN market, and their success influnced the Chinese government to phase out ICE cars.

3) My post was specifically replying the the person above who was worshipping Musk on a pedestal and giving all the credit to Tesla.

You can see this in the Tesla Semi or the Tesla battery pack announcement. Companies have been mass producing them 4 years before and are already being used in production today. However, being B2B, these products were largely low key. But somehow Tesla gets all the credit these and "moving the industry forward". Chinese and Korean battery manufactures have also been expanding production like crazy and account for the vast majority of production but only the GigaFactory gets any mention which cause some people think Tesla alone is responsible for the decreasing price of batteries.

Major auto manufactures are working on EV mainly due to government policy. I agree private companies seeing traction selling EVs is a large impetus for the new government policies, but to only credit Tesla is over-exagerating it's contributions. How much does Tesla influence Chinese policy when 95% of Chinese EVs are made by domestic brands?

The real reason is EU and China have announced their intention of banning ICE vehicles around 2030 with China having very aggressive EV marketshare goals starting next year. Companies that do not meet EV sale goals will have to buy credits from others that do just like a carbon emission market. This is causing all major automakers to not be complacent and invest heavily in EVs.

The conclusion would be different if the author analyzed Chinese smartphone brands instead. Five years ago, even the domestic market was dominated by foreign brands like HTC and Samsung; now the domestic market is the complete opposite. Looking at the supply chain, back then all China provided was low-paid final assembly. Now, Chinese companies are very competitive in supplying most of the parts: displays, camera modules, fingerprint scanners, enclosures, sound components, RF components, batteries, SOC, etc. Only high-end semiconductor components (RAM, NAND, application processors) are lacking but Chinese industrial policy will rapidly help this area catch up.

Chinese smartphones (phones with a Chinese brand not just manufactured there) have seen massive success internationally in the past couple of years and now make up HALF of global marketshare. In India, OnePlus has higher customer loyalty and sales than Apple in the high-end and Xiaomi is neck in neck with Samsung as the marketshare leader starting from zero two years ago.

Now remember, all of this happened in just the last five years. What other industries will break out in the next 5 years?

This is like an Chinese international student coming to the US, reading about the opioid epidemic, obesity epidemic, the rust belt, black gang violence, out-of-wedlock birth rates, the world's highest incarceration rates, Hurricane Maria destroying Peruto Rico, mass shootings in Vegas, Flint water crisis, healthcare bankruptcy, the rise of alt-right Trump voters, 11M illegal immigrants, high P/E in the stock market, unsustainable pension obligations, social security crisis etc. and coming to the conclusion that the US is doomed. Obviously, the US has many problems but to only focus on the negatives but not the strengths is not an objective analysis.

===

Regarding your anecdotes:

1) I a cousin who grew up in rural Shandong, who moved to Shanghai with nothing and live in one these neighborhoods "a few subway stops away" and drives an electric scooter. While the living standards is not as good as the city center or rich western cities, his apartment is small but clean with running water and functional toilets. His standard of living is not any worse than when my family first immigrated to Canada. To say 90% of Chinese people in Shanghai lives in squalor is absurd and shows how biased you are.

2) These anecdotes of some your rich friends are pretty meaningless. I'm sure you can find vain people in any western city including the bay area as well. I know rich Chinese families who "half" immigrated to Canada who still have plenty of assets and business in China and want their children to go back after graduating from a Canadian university.

3) Making bets like this has cost hedge funds billions of dollars: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/down-240-...

4) Make similar comments like this about African American achievement and you'll quickly realize how racist it is and stop. But it's suddenly okay to say the same thing about Chinese since westerners aren't socialized to understand the racism and do not feel the same amount of shame.

Go on Amazon.com and Chinese brands are bestsellers in many electronic categories: Anker/Sunvalleytek in phone accessories, Yi in action cameras and dash cams and security cameras, TCL in televisions, etc.

Also the rest of the world isn't just US. Chinese smartphone brands have 50% marketshare world wide. Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO are growing fast in South Asia, South East Asian and MENA. Transsion (you've probably never even heard of this company) owns phone brands that dominate Africa and is the marketshare leader there. Chinese home appliance and consumer electronic brands are also big in non-western countries.

From the article, Pettis assumes the following is true:

  1) China has overinvested in infrastructure and manufacturing capacity to such an extent 
  that in the aggregate the cost of additional 
  public sector investment exceeds the present 
  value of future increases in productivity generated by 
  the investment

  2) China's long-term sustainable growth rate is substantially below the economy's current GDP growth target

However, on first level principles, money is simply an abstraction; it's a medium for trading your services for other people's services. And if you become more efficient, you can buy more services with the same amount of effort and vice versa. The root cause of this increase in efficiency is technology.

As a developing country, China has lots of easy productivity growth just by adopting current technologies on the technological frontier. Therefore, I think an analysis on how fast China is advancing in various technological areas and their industrial policy would be much more useful than one just at a financial level. Are Chinese companies as a whole becoming more productive and creating new technology?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304736

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

I think self-assembling DIY house would be a huge game changer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina,_Washington

You can kinda see both of their mansions (covered by privacy hedges) when driving across the SR-520.

It's easy to assume and take for granted that the US will create all the automation technology. However, I think it's more probable that China will move up the value chain and be the ones to own and develop these technologies, especially in manufacturing as China already has a super strong manufacturing ecosystem and talent (think Silicon Valley and Software).

If China owns the technology, the wealth would be in China so less will be available to spread around for basic income in developed countries like the US.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12616314

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12301775

Points: 2

# Comments: 0