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Has Hong Kong Technology Transformed China?
nbruinooge asks: "I just reread Neal Stephenson's profile In the Kingdom of Mao Bell in Wired, Feb. 1994. In it Stephenson speculates about what will become of Hong Kong in '97, and predicts a Chinese backlash against Western technology in the next couple of decades. Hong Kong shifting hands is old news now, and it occurs to me that other Slashdot readers must know more than I do about how things have been going there, from a technological perspective. Is Hong Kong transforming China, or is it the other way around? Was Stephenson his good ol' prescient self when he wrote this article, or have things taken unexpected turns? And how does that China-Linux announcement from a while back play into it?"
I have never seen a backlash against technology in any country; I would find it strange for china to be any different. A friend of mine recently visited China, where she grew up, and says that it hasn't changed much in the last few years. I guess because China is just some damn big that it would take A LOT to make any significant change.
China is a mind-set. You can't change a mind-set that has been ingrained for thousands of years with the addition of a few bells and whistles.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Sure, but all I care about is if I can get plastic trinkets and stereos still.
How Can americans live without Bart Simpson Dolls that are (made in china).
Having just been there last week, I can say that technologically speaking they are eons ahead of Canada if not North America. I see WAP phones everywhere (eg Motorola Accompli A6188), their bank machines scan money without the need for envelopes, incredibly dense population yet the cellular networks work great, even in the MTR tunnels. If anything, China is learning from them, in cities such as Shenzheng just outside of Hong Kong. Definately, not the other way around.
I don't think there is much chance of Hong Kong seriously affecting China as a whole for a LONG time. China is large geographically, and has a huge population, the greater part of which is rural. Hong Kong is relatively tiny, and it is ridiculous to think that Hong Kong will greatly influence China in the short term.
So far, China has largely left Hong Kong alone. This is mainly because China knows the world is watching and it doesn't want any more bad publicity. However, if it decided to, China could do pretty much whatever it wanted to with Hong Kong.
I'll tell you what I like about Chinese people... They're hanging in there with those chopsticks. Still using chopsticks. You know they've seen the fork? Oh they're well aware that we have the fork. And the spoon. I don't know how they missed it. Chinese farmer getting up working in the field with a shovel all day. Hello? Shovel there it is. You're not plowing forty acres with a couple of pool cues.
Being from Hong Kong, I can probably offer a different perspective as to what he situation is - and that is that Hong Kong and China are developing both technologically and economically independent of each other. Remember that Hong Kong is for all purposes separate from China, and what happens in one place does not necessarily affect the other.
I cannot think of one example of how Hong Kong is shaping China technologially, or vice versa. But one thing that I can tell you all is that China is advancing amazingly quickly technologially. They may be communist, but that does not at all mean that they are slow at adopting new technology - cable modem is now slowly sifting into big cities, mobile phones are becoming more common, and so on - its an irreversible trend.
Hong Kong on the other hand is just about as technologically advanced as you get. Internet technology wise, cool widgets wise and all. 6.7 million people, 4 million mobile phones, 2.5 million land line phones - that says it all.
But, what percentage of China's population lives in Shenzheng, or cities like it. I can tell you the percentage isn't very high. Most of the Chinese are still peasants. They farm for a And it's not likely that modern technology will become accessible to the Chinese as a whole in our lifetime. So, I don't think Hong Kong is influencing China as a whole that much.
Actually, Hong Kong is having the same effect today as it did in 90'. The biggest change happened some 20 years ago when China began shifting to a more Liberalized economic model. This happened indepenedant of Hong Kong possession. (you can thank the same President that brought us the Tiamen Massacre) I work in a Scientific Institute, with a LOT of Chinese nationals. I get the impression that the United States influence of China brings change, while Hong Kong is merely the port (literally) that it flows in and out of. Before China had control this was true.
Burn Hollywood Burn
May I suggest that anyone interested in this read Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon. It's fiction, of course, but it deals in some detail with the effect of technology on Chinese politics.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
China is big, both geographically and population-wise. If the general assumption that the benefits of technology accrue most rapidly after 50% penetration, then it will be quite a while yet before significant investment in IT infrastructure will pay off. Also you have to keep in mind that once you travel inland away from the prosperous coastal regions, you'd realise that the interior is still an agrilcultural based economy (donkeys, adobe houses, etc). Now IT may improve logistics and supply chains but first you need a decent transport network and information to calculate prices/cost (ie free market). Personally I would expect advanced countries like Japan to gain the most as IT will improve their not-so-hot service economy whereas the developing countries still need basic investments first in literacy, health and social institutions (rule of law rather than gun/nepotism). It may make it easier to absorb new tech but I'd like to point out that if you don't have the education system to create sysadmins to fix things when (not if) computers break down then you'd basically pissing money away. There's also some rather interesting research from places like "Centre for Appropriate Technology" which studies the role of tech outside big cities. For example, what is the point of a ceramic toilet (as compared with outdoor dunny) in outback Australia when you don't have the supermarkets to supply toilet paper? Rather than encourage a cargo cult mentality, perhaps it's best to let each country have access to the source and adapt it to their cultural and industrial needs as necessary.
LL
Just a few years ago, Mainland China was very isolated from itself. Outside the cities, people didn't get around much. The isolation was so great that dialects diverged enough that a 30km hike from your home could easily put you in territory where you couldn't be understood.
TV and cultrual revolutions have added a new second dialect that everybody pretty much now understands. --Kind of ironic that the boob tube is largely responsible for the unification of the PRC--
As technologically advanced as Hong Kong is, it will supply the dream fodder for the mainland. The kids see all the beautiful techno gadgets on TV and see them in the hands of kids just like themselves.
THAT will drive change in Mainland China more than anything else.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
While at the university hospital, I had a chance to talk with the students, and the staff.
In China, the wages are low (head of a networking department at a university gets about $250 USD/month). It makes it hard to penetrate a market when a computer costs more two months salary. The people there are eager to learn and bright.
The issue of not allowing the people from the mainland into Hong Kong was to prevent a rush of people from going into Hong Kong for the higher pay and overtaxing the infrastructure of HK.
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> Typically, Asian people are a lot more self-sacrificing and willing to work for a group; they don't have the "looking out for number one" attitudes that most Western geeks do (not
------
this is a stereotype that quite simply doesnt work when talking about people from mainland china. china has one of the most powerful, stable, and yet systematically corrupt governments in the world. almost EVERY person from mainland china ALWAYS looks out for number one...if they didnt, they wouldnt survive. if youve been to china or even hk you know what im talking about.
there is no such thing as fairness in modern china. it is all about influence, money, and power. everyone who does business in china learns this, when they have to pay off every local magistrate to get work permits. there is no official who cannot be bought, in one way or another.
try to think of what it would be like in a society where there is no such thing as justice. remember that it has been like this for 25+ years (under mao, it was complete chaos and was even worse...) do you really think that people would be that self-sacrificing?
as for **buying** windows ME... it is DAMN HARD to even find a legal copy to purchase of ANY software or DVD in china. pretty much all you can buy is pirated copies... and that is no joke...
unc_
If the government inforced its laws on piracy, the people would have no choice but to go to linux.
Their are linux compaines in China that are making it more Chinese friendly, i forget the names of the companies, and I have know idea on how well they are doing.
it is a world of difference between the rural countrysides and any of the cities. while the urban areas will catch up quickly (or, in the case of hk, occasionally lead the way) it will take at least a decade for much of the tech to filter throughout the country.
also, stephenson was both right and wrong about games...multiplayer games are very popular in the cities...there is a booming (and frequently illegal) industry in net cafes, where the majority of people are playing starcraft, ut and counterstrike. the chinese gov't recently cracked down on a lot of them, but they continue nonetheless...
unc_
it should be more like what impart has AMERICAN and EUROPEAN technology had on China. Hong Kong produces virtually no original technology and from a technology commercial standpoint is more or less just a coven of American and European tech. company sales offices.......which have subsequently have opened offices and tech parks in Shanghai and Beijing.
My mother's Korean, but I'm pretty much culturally US, so take my observations with a big grain of salt :)
From what I can tell by observation of my relatives & their associates (many Asian non-Koreans), it isn't so much that Asians are self-sacrificing & willing to work for a group.
Asian individuals are just as willing to jockey for power & stab each other in the back as their Western counterparts. There's a couple things that make Westerners feel uncomfortable though. First, there's definitely a touch of xenophobia in native Asians - even my mother, who has lived in the US for 30 years, feels more comfortable working with a complete Asian stranger than she does working with a Westerner that she might know a little better.
Second, there's the all-important concept of "face". It is a highly undesirable thing for one's self to "lose face" (look bad). One's "face" is often attached to the actions of family members as well, esp. if you are a family member of some importance. Also, by corollary, it is EXTREMELY bad manners to make someone else lose face.
So, what ends up happening, is you have a whole bunch of people being polite to each other so that they don't cause offense by causing the other to look like they're being disrespected. Most of the time, they won't even flat-out disagree with you, even if they think you're being an idiot, because that would imply that they are questioning your judgement (trying to make you look bad).
This drives most Westerners I know nuts, because they're getting signals that everything they say is being agreed to, then later on they'll get some kind of impersonal, vague message politely suggesting that the matter be looked at more closely.
Amusingly enough, from the viewpoint of many of my older Asian relatives, many Westerners are considered charmingly "naive", unable to control their emotional responses during a simple conversation or discussion. (Unfortunately, from their viewpoint, this includes me :( - I'm just glad I'm family.)
First of all, Hong Kong is not about technology, its about real estate, money, financial knowhow, and services. So Hong Kong can help China move up the technology curve by providing venture capital, access to capital markets, etc. On the technology side, China is making rapid progress in a number of sectors, but it is very uneven. For example, after 20 years of intense government backing and inputs, the semiconductor sector is way behind the global curve. However, for telecom equipment, China is much farther along, with competitive companies across the border from Hong Kong in Shenzhen such as Huawei and Zhongxing leading the pack, producing switches, access equipment, mobile base stations, etc that are roughly on par with western producers. However, at the cutting edge, ie., highend routers, optical networking equipment, DWDM, etc. Chinese firms cant really compete yet with the likes of CISCO and Lucent. However, by converting research institutes into companies, they will be able to get closer, for example, Wuhan Research Institute is actually quite advanced on the DWDM and optical networking front, they just lack marketing. in the end, China currently lacks a whole range of piece of the high tech innovation puzzle: 1) Legal system 2) capital markets, IPOS, etc. 3) venture capital 4) government that promotes the industry, rather than hinders 5) entreprenuerial managers 6) financial system plugged into global systems (i.e., covertable currency) 7) professional and industry organizations 8) tradition of business university cooperation etc. etc. progress is being made on all these fronts, some of which Hong Kong can help with, but China must find where it fits into the globalization of IT production, like Taiwan and India, an open question right now...
The open source concept actually works very well with communism, but I'm not sure how much power the government wants people to possess. The gov't of China is a very power-hungry bunch of geriatrics, they can't really think out of the box. The one surprising thing is that your theory about them buying Windows ME is very wrong. If anything, Chinese don't really like to buy software. The asian front is well-known for piracy on corporate levels, even. The other contradiction to buying Windows is that the Chinese gov't (I believe) has adopted a Distro of Linux called "Yellow Star Linux" (or something like that. Maybe they're making it themselves). As a country, on a whole, China is making progress on a philosophical technological level. If only we can get rid of their gov't (someone please bomb the old-people's home they call parliament), life will be so much better. Then again, China has spent the last 100 years digging themselves into a hole, one can't expect them to dig themselves out in 5. Oh yeah, anyone heard about the "Great Wall of China"? The NEW one? Yeah, the firewall they're trying to build around all the Chinese ISP's so that nothing the gov't doesn't like will get to the people of China via the internet. It used to be that Americans can host off-shore anti-China-gov't sites and Chinese can read it. Well, they don't want that to happen anymore, since they can't prosecute the owner of the page if he doesn't live in China. Life sucks, eh?
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
> people will go right on happily
:-D
> buying Windows ME.
..."happily buying" WinME?
All with legitimate (with the hologram and everything) licenses?
I born and live in HK, Hong Kong doesn't have technology.
HK has definitely transformed China, particularly Southern China (Guangzhou). It's no coincidence that one of the first parts of China to develop economically was the border town (Shenzhen) located right next to HK. There are also cultural influences that flow from HK to mainland China and less the other way round.
Still, it's hard to speak of economic and technological development apart from the worldwide trend towards globalization and the advent of the Internet. Basically, China has jumped dramatically as it began economic liberalization and the areas most changed are the coastal areas, esp. those near HK and Taiwan.
I'm a Hong Kong resident.
:)
:) They are proud of being a RG before. Don't be alarmed when a China business tells you that he's a RG before, he's actually talking about his proud history! :)
:)
It's amazed to read an article about China and Hong Kong written in 1994. Thinks are so different nowaday.
With the economic growth, very few people has related their topic with political issue. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech, but simply people have their mind preempted by $$$.
Something hasn't been changing, is that they still love to use Hong Kong currency, which is Int. currency in compare with Renman currency. They still love to watch Hong Kong TV. They rely heavily on Hong Kong goods, e.g. most mobile phones are imported(legally and illegially) from Hong Kong.
It's true that M$ has been running office in China for quite sometime, but I've been told last year they've been liquidated many of the office and transfer the staffs to Hong Kong. Though M$ stil wants to do business with China, but the unsuccessful story telling them that they've charge too much for their product regardless of the living standard of China people. A suite of Office would cost an annual salary of a teacher there.
You may be interested to know how well Linux is used there. Well, just so-so. The hype of Linux really catch China people's attention, but since they didn't pay for M$ software(go figure why ^_^), free software momentum would not impress them too much.
However, it would make a big different with China Government. China Government has long been aware of the undocument features inside US closed-source software. The early release of Chinese (GB) Windows 95 has Easter Eggs that would play jokes on communists party and their learders. Why? Because the early relase are written by humorous Taiwanese.
China goverment was not amazed. Rumor has said that they imposed pressure on M$, which limited M$'s business growth; and on the other hand develop an OS Red-Flag Linux in view of the inflitration possibilities in closed-source software. Some government officers even took the liberty to ban their sectors from using M$ products, but this policy is not nation-wide. I'm working closely with China businessmen, these are _not_ rumors.
What is the role Hong Kong after World Trade? In fact, Hong Kong's role in China business hasn't been changed since 1994, and it'd never been changing in the future. Even after open trade, it's still _extremely_ difficult for foreign businessmen to do direct business with China, they must still rely on Hong Kong as a middleman. I could go on 10 pages of explanation, but I'll stop here because everybody doing business with China know the problems and uncertainty in China.
However, i've to clear the common misunderstanding in the article:
1) Slave labour - they don't have slave labour, really, none of us has seen slaves in China. They've prisoners making export goods, though. If you consider political prisoners are slaves, then there are.
2) Mainland China people are afraid of Red Guards and Culture Rev?... - They don't!
3) Corruption - well....you wouldn't feel hard if you considered it as the rules of game....
4) China government always influence business? - well, if you know how game is playing (see 3), they you wouldn't have the problem. Hong Kong people know how the game system is implemented, that's why I said Hong Kong's role as a middleman will not be changed in near future, or long future. However, if you are running a media, or news/news website, then you should be very careful on the 'law' issue. E.g. posting the news of taiwan must be handled very carefully, there's law in this issue.
Sorry for the long article. Please comment(on the grammer ^_^).
Hong Kong will eventually help China become a more technologically advanced country with a higher standard of living - just don't expect instant miracles. As we speak, hundreds of people from Hong Kong are flooding into China with their cell-phones, switching their SIM-cards so that their phone will use the Chinese network (and thus the owner's cell-phone number in China). Chinese cellular comms could not be affordable without the rush of Hong Kong businessmen trying to exploit China's vast consumer base (and thus each buying a sim-card and subscribing to a cell-service in China). And in turn, because cellular-comms is affordable, lots of Chinamen can use it (ok, not a LOT by ratio, but think about it - 1 in 1000 Chinese people owning a cell is STILL a lot of people). As well, WAP will soon invade China, since the HK businessmen who work with China will also want to keep themselves up to date with their stock prices. :)
Also, HK people moving to China (god forbid) also create a demand in the high-tech market. And of course, with those people leading the prices down, consumer-level technology will become affordable to everyone (and thus, you've tapped into a large consumer-base, yet again). Now, if we can only make the Chinese Razor-Imitations not so cheaply made, life would be better (but then again, if the brakes on the imitation-razor didn't burn the rubber off of cheaply made Chinese shoes, sales of imitation-nike shoes would go way down... I wonder when they'll make imitation-FUBU
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Get a life you fucking wanker. Can't take a little joke?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What has disappointed me is that there don't seem to be any rumblings in favour of Linux trickling over from relatives of the founders. :-(
Keeping the rumoured big adoption of Linux in China in mind with the hope it's worth some leverage later...
Amazes me that we can discuss the differences between communist China and practically libertarian Hong Kong without acknowledging the fact that Hong Kong has had so much economic growth because of it's free market economy.
It's refreshing to see how wealthy a society can be without interference from the government.
-Snoot
Academics in Hong Kong are resigning right and left after it's been learned that the government has been pressuring and threatening political scientists and others not to conduct polls which show that the government has become very unpopular since the Chinese takeover. In China, meanwhile, in some cities there's a big crackdown on videogame arcades as well as on the ongoing assault on web sites that offer anything but the private line (this is a country where people were fired when a newsbroadcast ran historical footage of an old news event without realizing that in the distant background you could see the Tiananmen Square massacre going on.).
The first year when I was in North America, when I read western-centered comments from westerners on Hongkong and China based on their casual observations, I would feel very angry, upset, mad, etc.
Now, I would just laugh and forget it.
Look, is it necessary to have a geek culture to develop good technology? Let's not forget China was advance in technology for a long time in history. There were no geek culture, yet there're ways to develop technology.
If you ask, is there any hacker's mind in China? Yes, there is. Do hackers in China really hack? They do. Do they try to distinguish themselves from others? No, they don't, because that will troubled them and block them from their hacking activities. That's the way Chinese prefer, express implicitly and practical. They also fight for the freedom.
It's the COST of communication that you can't find a network of hackers as you found in western world. I know, it has been rather affordable in the western world for a long time. But the same communication system is expensive in China for the last 50 years even the price is the same as in America: consider the living standard!!!
One more thing: I don't know why western people are so against communist countries, after all, communism is a western product!!! The bad things you saw in communist countries are not because the people in power are communists, it is because they are human! From the beginning how the communists get the power is by killing each other, and the system preserves this mechanism. I know this is offensive, but I do think, if you put any great western leader in a communist country's government, he would have been either 1. got rid of by others or 2. be as "bad" as other people in a communist government.
A sig is redundant.
Jokes made out of ignorance is stupidity.
For example. Seinfield has a joke that talks about how he thinks laudry detergent advertisement are stupid because these ads talk about how effectively the detergent can wash away blood. He went on and on about "if you have blood all over your chest, you should be worried about something else!" and on and on...
What he doesn't realise is, half of the world population must wash bloody UNDERWEAR every month.
...Maybe the guy never got to have a relationship strong enough to learn these things. Maybe no women of self-respect will go out with a man who makes fun of/humiliates everyone else.
Humor out of ignorance is no class; and only idiots would use other people's joke.
Do I think China will get better? Of course, but first they need to solve their hunger problems fixed. Eventually the government will get its priorities straight and put their people before their need to posture for the rest of the world.
OK, now for a list of pointless computer observations: ;)
Some games were REALLY popular, esp. Delta Force 2 and Age of Empires were the hot tickets when I was there, and the 3D card of choice was the Riva TNT (but the TNT2 Ultra was for sale). The most popular Intel motherboards were ASUS brand, the popular Athlon motherboard was the GA-17X (?), the most popular gamepad was a Sony Playstation counterfeit pad attached to the parallel port (I bought one called "HONY", hah!), the most popular clock speed was 600MHz (as of April), flat panels were just coming into vogue and therefore on the display of every computer I saw, and there was an entire FLOOR about 10,000 square feet PER MALL full of pirated software vendors (every one taking about 12 square feet per booth, each with well over a few thousand cds per vendor... I tried to take a picture but the guards wouldn't let me, because everybody knows it's bad, it's just nobody cares.) But despite all the computer shopping, the bicycle rides were the fun part of being there.
(ok ok ok i'm done rambling)
"molon labe"
how does that China-Linux announcement from a while back play into it?
I'm reading said book. It sort of answers the above question. Don't want to spoil it, but I can't see why China won't do what they do in the book given half a chance.
Does anyone one know Sterling's position on using quotes from his books for sigs?
Things in China in the SEZ areas are pretty modern now, we wide boulevards and parks in the urban areas. They also have pretty modern highways (toll mostly) that span over to a neighboring large city. This is in Guangzou province of course, I'm sure its a whole lot different in other provinces.
Having toured through the industrial areas and checked out how they dealt business and manufactured the different things that we buy in the US and take for granted, the Chinese still have a long way to go to become proper businessmen. I witnessed something that appeared to me like lawnessnes, bartering, etc. I have also seen PLA soldiers watch some pretty crazy stuff happen and ignore it/don't care. I think they only start caring when you kill or rob someone on plain sight.
I had a discussion with a Hong Kong businessman who worked at a Shenzen factory as a manager, and he seems to agree that the Chinese have a lot to learn to become businessmen and know how to properly attract business, make deals, etc.
Anyway, a lot of other parts of China are still pretty backwards as we remember it from 25 years ago, and one can see things less technologically developed as you move further away from a SEZ. It will take at least another 15-20 years before we see technology trickle down to the rest of the Chinese population. There isn't much Hong Kong influence in China, except their model city Shenzen. "Sole proprietorship" businesses, restraunts and malls in Shenzen try to follow the Hong Kong model but are still playing catchup. An average Chinese person who lived in the Shenzen area is restricted in what he can possibly buy too; things that are made to be exported will not be found in the local market. Nice, high tech stuff is probably a 5 year old model. They are also restricted in how many imported cars they can buy in a time period, so most have to contend with the poorly built local makes. Their banking system is also another limiter; most people there do not keep their money in the banks because when they do need a large sum of money, they can't get it in that day (they can only get a small amount out each day). This contributes partly to a high petty crime rate.
The atmosphere of Hong Kong is still pretty much the same as it was 15 years ago, still free, laizefare business, businesses that follow the latest trends, etc. Hong Kong has all the latest technology, embraces it, but they did not develop them. Hong Kong uses technology from Europe, America, and Japan. One can see a very good example of how Hong Kong embraces technology very easily; practically everyone there has a cellular phone (from children to seniors). Cellular coverage is excellent too, little or no interference, you can be anywhere (underground to deep inside a building) except the mountains and still get reception. I borrowed a cheap Nokia phone from a friend and used it underground on the MTR subway, as well as on the train while it was moving and had zero problems with reception. IMO, Hong Kong does not get its influence from China, but Japan instead. They blend the influence into their way of managing business and other administrative things. They also get the latest gadgetry and TV shows from Japan only a few months after it comes out usually. It will be a while before Hong Kong and China influence each other, at the moment, nothing much has changed and its definately too soon to know.
Look at the huge economic build-up in Guangdong and mainland hinterlands of Hong Kong. This is a direct result of dollars and expertise flowing out of Hong Kong and into neighbouring Chinese towns and cities.
The other "Special Economic Zones" set up along the coast were in direct response (and a counterbalance) to the success of Guangdong. And with economic success has come political power as well. The governors of Guangdong, Shenzen, Shanghai and the other SEZs have become a considerable moderating influence on the central government in Beihing.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
-deane
Yeah, Yellow Star Linux or Yellow Peril Linux, something like that. Interesting Freudian slip, it's actually _Red_ Star.
Disclaimer : I can't be arsed reading Jon Katz anymore.
This is how Jon Katz should be writing, and what he should be writing about. Global implications of technology, the internet and privacy, and not just American libertarian concerns. Writing about the real-world, instead of trying to force himself into the graces of a given subculture he doesnt really understand. Writing about real issues, not trying to mangle the back-story for a fifteen-year-old role-playing game into some kind of metaphor about the alienation of geeks.
Real writing, about real issues.
Suggested sig, use it now, get the campaign rolling...
Fire Jon Katz. Hire Neal Stephenson
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There's one other factor on top of what was mentioned -- conformity. If you're lower on the 'totem pole' so to speak, you follow the directions and the orders of the person above you. It ties in with 'face' -> it's bad if you show disrepect for somebody, but it's really bad if that somebody is your boss, manager, teacher, supervisor, anybody who has higher status than you. Thus, they're more likely to follow team orders, at least openly. But they feel all the same feeling as everybody else -- it's just hidden more, and usually controlled better.
"The competent programmer...approaches the programming task in full humility. -- Edsger Dijkstra
> If we dont succeed we run the risk of failure
Whats this about? what a stupid comment. if you dont succeed, you FAIL. no maybe.
sorry pal. you're out 180 degrees when you say that Asians co-operate more generally than Westerners. Not true. I spent 15 years in Asia and It's dog eat dog. Used to watch folks like you get off the plane with your spiffy tropical suit, laptop, pocket full of money, preconceptions in place, and climb back on a month later picked clean. About the only time they co-operate is when they're gonna skin you. Then they're gonna fight over the pickings. Family gtoups are tighter than here, and extended family groups, but most of what you claim is a dream. A delusion.
i currently live in hong kong,... heres a couple of things for you to think on. hong kong and china are both developing independently, and are governed independently, however they of course would have certain links. when hong kong was handed back over to china in 1997, the chinese government decided the success of hong kong was due to its unique nature, and governing it like the rest of china would cause it to lose its international flair--so therefore decided it should be governed independently. this is why hong kong is now known as the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region). mr. tung chee hwa was selected as the chief designate (the big guy), and decided hong kong should be run very similiar to the way it previously was--not a single law (that i know of) was added, removed, or changed. fireworks werent allowed in hong kong while they were common in china, the one child policy wasn't implemented into hong kong, etc. certain things did, however, change. white people (excuse the language, i'm not chinese either) basically got freaked out and left. there are now way less white people in hong kong. bleh. well it isn't british owned anymore,... a very reliable source has given the information as follows (maybe a /. on this? i can provide info):
50% of the MS software in hong kong is pirated. sound bad? get this.
95% of the MS software in china is pirated. this isnt an estimate.
before the handover, 80% of MS software was pirated, and pirated software was most readily publically available in late 1998/early 1999.
here are things on a new perspective for you. the population of hong kong is approx 7million. 2 million of these are triads on some level. the night of the handover, triads higher up in the 14k and WSW hierarchy found a perfect opportunity to move to macau, as the handover ceremony involved english police stepping down and chinese police taking over. with china in power, the triads were much worse off--they wouldn't be cut any slack, the govt wouldn't be scared of triads--why exactly i dont know, but apparantly there were plenty of reasons.
it would be interesting to compare the development in hong kong and macau. you'd be astounded how much triads can stop a country from developing.
hong kong is just about as high tech as i've seen. it would be awkward for a 6th grader not to have a mobile phone with them at school, and even more awkward for a student even in primary school not to have a computer at home with internet access, running MS software. hong kong is very enthiuastic about holding the asian games in 2006, and have launched various strong campaigns.
china, on the other hand, is also developing steadily. it is of course more rural, and much less developed than hong kong, but is still developing steadily. the olympics in 2008 will only boost hong kong's tourism, as will the disneyland amusement park being constructed in hong kong right next to their new airport.
its hard for two countries right next to each other, from the same colony not to effect each others development, but you're almost comparing the development of nigeria and downtown NYC.
well im tired, if you want more, ill write more. okahbah.
I don't know if it is related to the article :) but Larry Feign is doing Lily Wong comics again.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The aquisition of Hong Kong is transforming China in a way that no amount of Western diplomacy could ever hope to do. The capitalistic "virtues" so acutely instilled in Hong Kong over it's 100 years under the British crown is so addictive and persuasive that we are witness a change in China as a whole. China is becoming more open to traditionally Western ideals and policies. It is readily ramping up it's military-industrial-technological infrastructure and is builing upon Hong Kong as the face of the "new" China. Still, there are many places in China, as in the United States and most Western countries where these changes are not being felt. China is still, by and large, an agrarian state with pockets of industrial and military strength. But, they are a rapidly rising sun and their military and economic build-up is the first harbinger that the American Sun really is setting after nearly a century of dominance.
Sadly, I feel that China will be a land of the have and the have nots and the gap between them will be larger than any other country.
Uhhh, I don't think so.
Here in SF, I literally trip over have-nots every block. And these are only the visible ones....
Just look around you: in this country 1% of the population owns 90% of the wealth. The average CEO makes upwards of 30 times the poor slob on the frontline makes.
The gross disparity between rich and poor is right here, right now, and China's gap may *mirror* that of the US, but it seems statistically improbable that it would be larger than here.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Quite; indeed, in Western civilizations, people are identified by their personal name, then their family name, whereas in Oriental civilizations, the family name comes first.
could you please analyze the economic collapse of the Soviet Union into the Russian Republic? Or perhaps a comparative analysis of the economic development over the past 30 years of communist Cuba (despite American embargo) with the other 'free market' economies of central and south America?
that Hong Kong is not actually too much a major factor in playing the transformation. I say this, because Hong Kong izn't fit for technology. Hong Kong can't even handle Technology. I want to quote a case of the stocks of Tom.com, an internet startup here. I didn't have much on their page (even though I know they run RedHat Linux) and it already went on the stock exchange. It is ridiculous. A lot of people were fooled into buying htem, well no not actually since they don't even realy know what the stock is bout and they just think that hte high tech stock can earn money. It skyrocketed to HKD $40 and then dropped rock bottom now. Here, teachers like to use excessive powerpoijnt presentation which I believe is against their wishes but this is called "Technology". Setting up and waiting for Windoze to boot already take 5 minutes ...
wasting valuable lesson time.
I am a student coordinator in several IT projects at school and I find it frustrating since no one knows what
I am talking about. :(
I appreciate the praise for Hong Kong, but I want to remind everyone here that they should not be fooled
by the fact that HK is a world class city so it must have world class techonlogy.
In sincerely hope that China can learn from Hong Kong's mistakes and not implement soemthing without
thinking about revolutionizing people's lives by pushing technoology into our daily lives.
OK. There's a reason the HK is ahead of the US:
Until 1997, they were a British colony. And since Britannia wanted, in part, to sour the taste of Chinese rule, they gave HK citizens stuff similar to those of Anglia subjects of the Crown.
For example, until the changeover there was democratically elected officials. One person, one vote. The Chinese reverted to 'corporate voting' where a group of persons only had one vote. (Correct me if I am wrong.)
Now, the EU, of which the UK is a non-Euro member, adopted GSM as the Continental Standard for Digital Cellular Service. This made the cell markets of the EU much, much cleaner, as manufacturers only needed to produce one type of phone for the entirety of the EU market. And because your subscriber information in a GSM phone is based off a chipcard, and not the phone itself! (Meaning, if I travel from the EU to New York, LA, or most any other major metro area in the US (except Chicago) with a GSM provider, I just remove my chip, insert into a new phone, and voila! That phone has all my information!
The really good thing for the EU denizens is G3 will be out in full force within two years.
Repeat: By 2002, the European continent will be fully G3. ISDN speeds on wireless phones.
The US is behind because of several reasons:
1. The FCC, in its infinite wisdom, did not mandate a single, national digital cellular protocol. We have GSM, CDMA, and TDMA. Which means the manufacturers have to brew up three different phone types for the US market. (Also, this is why the wizzer phones are in the EU first: Only one network protocol means everyone can use any phone designed for that protocol.
2. In the EU, there is 'caller pays.' Simple translation: I call you from a hardline to your cell, I pay the air fees. (This is true no matter where in the world you're calling from, as long as the recipient is a cell user in a nation which has the 'caller pays' philosophy.) This also cheapens the cost of cell use; if you have a phone merely to recieve calls, it costs you nothing (besides the monthly subscriber fees.) That's one reason why cell phone penetration is over 50% in most of the EU, and over 75% in several.
3. The US has a LARGE number of analog cell users. All that bandwidth in the 800 Mhz range for cell users is mainly for analog cellular phones. In the EU, all cells are digital. Analogs were mandated out. The FCC should take the same stand on analog cell as it did with analog TV: Out in so many years.
PS: Catching cell signals in the tube isn't that hard to do: All the cellco needs to do is install a few antenna banks at several stations along the line. The catch is the cost-to-use ratio. If people don't use the Metro's cell 'towers,' they are a waste of money.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
RedHat with Chinese Language Extensions seems to be the most popular here in Taiwan, though other distros use CLE as well. Personally, I run Mandrake 7 with CLE 0.8. And yes, Chinese language support is excellent throughout the OS (with the exception of documentation, which is still largely available only in English).
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
Thanks for explaining things to everybody else.
willis/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
but in mongolia, they don't have last names, so they must be really individual, right?
I think you're constructing a quirk into something that it isn't.
it's like logic : F=>T is T. yeah, more group spirit, but the last name thing is not causing it, nor a sign of it.
willis/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Mainland Chinese and Honkees already have raoming GSM chips i.e. cell phone chips that work from Beijing to Singapore. they do not CHANGE chips when they cross the border. HK has 6 million people who mostly DO NOT want to move to mainland China, pop 1.3 billion and growing. Their consumer spending impacts have little to no impact on pricing strategies of any company
Mainland Chinese and Honkees already have raoming GSM chips i.e. cell phone chips that work from Beijing to Singapore First of all, I'm HK Chinese (and I'm assuming you are as well), so I'd like to remind you that Hong Kong people are also very price conscious. If you don't know by now that HK people like to carry around 2 cell-phones or 2 sim cards, then you're the one who has it all wrong. Each company offers an incredible "base-plan." But once you go over your base-minutes you get charged up the ass. Oh yeah, why do HK people change sim cards at the border? It's cheaper to use a local mainland sim-card than to roam from Hong Kong. Nothing to it. Oh yeah, by the way, there are now lots of houses built in Chinese and advertised on Hong Kong television. Hopefully to attract people from Hong Kong. Now, if the marketing chiefs at the respective companies which built the damned homes happened to want to advertise in Hong Kong, are you saying that they're simply throwing their money away? If Hong Kong people didn't want to move to China, they wouldn't advertise on Hong Kong television. Nowadays, people don't want to move to China, but because of the cheap and beautiful homes, it's an easier sacrifice to make. Not EVERYONE is rich, and I guess the poor people will have to move. And another thing - "Honky" is actually the slang term for white-folk, not Hong Kong people. Before you say that someone else is wrong, check your own facts out.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...