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China: the New Global High-Tech Power
Andy Tai writes "This three-part news.com special report shows how mainland China has become the focus of high tech business opportunities during the global recession. The article compares today's China to 19th Century America as "a booming nation starved for products and driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs", points out China's "sheer numbers and ambitious work ethic are producing thousands of engineers--and U.S. companies are recruiting the best of them," and concludes "that this may eventually be known as China's high-tech century. " Another good article looking at China's rise as a global power can be found here."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't their culture spend several thousands of years as the most advanced on Earth?
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
If cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans would never have built and sustained their empire. Ditto for the Venicians, French, English, and Americans.
China is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Falung Gong. Just ask anyone who gives a fuck about freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, due process, or basic fucking human rights of any kind in China.
And from a business perspective, lack of these things, particularly in a world economy dominated by post-industrial persuits that require human creativity and unfettered access to information, is the kiss of death.
Sure, China is booming. But recall the USSR. Right up to 1989/90, many experienced Sovietologists were still predicting that the Soviet Union would allow only moderate reforms, and would certainly be around for another 50 years. That's the problem with a government with limited transparency - you never really know with any certainty what's really going on with the economy (or anything else for that matter).
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I cannot believe that the parent to this post was modded up. Some of the above points are valid concerns, but others are problems of the past.
Of course, every time there is talk about China, someone has to bring up something about Human Rights. But give me a break, clean water? food? China has gotten past that stage a long time ago. Right now overnutrition and obesity troubles much of the population. As for the judicial system, fairness is a matter of opinion. In China, criminals are punished more severely than in the US. Corruption in the governance is a problem in China, but the same problem exists in every country. The USA, for example, is a prime source of governmental scandals. China is working on a more efficient education system as we speak. The problem with education lies in overpopulation. Think about it, China has more than four times the population of America, andd merely building more schools will not be able to solve the problem overnight. The curriculum in Chinese primary and secondary schools includes a much more in depth understanding of subjects such as math and science than that of American schools.
I guess my point is that although China's fundations are not yet perfect, it is getting better at a faster rate than any other country.
The same reason hi-tech went to South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia. A minimum of infrastructure, enough education and cheap wages enforced by a repressive state. Boeing and Motorola love it.
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
Envision this scenario:
China, over the next 40 or 50 years, becomes an enormous economic juggernaut. With cheap labor, high tech industry, and a huge population, China begins to develop most of the world's goods for dirt cheap prices. World consumer choice is at an all time high.
Because of the political system in place within the country, the average standard of living doesn't increase significantly.
People are not stupid. The Chinese people will see how the majority are not benefiting from the economic prosperity and attempt to change the political system. The government in place will put down initial unrest, but a civil war could occur the likes of which we have never seen in the world. The world economy that has come to depend on the Chinese government for goods.
With the ensuing economic collapse of China during the civil war, the world is plunged into a depression comparable to the late 1920's and early 1930's. The US Federal Reserve could not handle the removal of a huge portion of the world economy from the picture.
Following the civil war, a democratic government is created in China, and the economy becomes similar to many western countries, with a higher standard of living and increased wages. The economic playing field is now leveled.
Either that, or everybody nukes everybody. Whatever happens, I'll be dead by then. Oh well.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
There is no reason to believe that this is inevitably a long-term state. The US is a mid-size country (by population), and food, geographic isolation, and natural resources are becoming less and less important. And other countries are becoming as attractive as the US for skilled international workers.
If the US continues to have a leadership role, it will be because it earns it. But that means that US politicians have to give up on their assumption that US predominance is a right that Americans are born with. Isolationist policies like those we have seen over the last few years will likely simply make the US less and less relevant to international affairs.
They are C-O-M-M-U-N-I-S-T-S
China now allows entrepreneurs in the "communist party". They are moving employees and businesses from the state sector to the private sector as quickly as possible. They are experimenting with village elections. In other words, they are trying to shed communism without imploding as the USSR did.
They want us D-E-A-D
Oh really? I've met hundreds of Chinese people and none of them seem to want us dead. I guess they hide their hatred well.
Why the HOLY FUCKING HELL are we selling them shit?
Mostly we are buying stuff from them, not selling to them. After all, we have money, they make cheap stuff.
ht after the USSR went down the tube and the nuke threat was gone we should have bombed the living hell out of them.
I'm just going to quit now. You're obviously not worth talking to.
China is the principal threat to US hegemony in
several ways. By 2010 pentagon force projections
estimate that they will have more nuclear warheads
targetted in the US than will Russia. The US is
legally bound to the defense of Taiwan against
attack. Because they abort their female fetuses
in large numbers (and female infanticide is endemic)
they have a large surplus male population at
cannon-fodder age. Their economy is growing at 9%
annually while the US economy is shrinking. They
have the benefit of the balance of trade, which
gives them increasing cash reserves, and a consequent
ability to manipulate capital markets.
Calling the CCP "Communist" is like calling
scientology a religion -- it's a gross abuse of
the denotative meaning of the term. The CCP
is a collection of warlord factions not unlike
the KMT in 1910, or any of a hundred other
examples from Chinese history.
The CCP may well be the most powerful organized
entity on the face of the earth today, and it
is utterly ruthless. It has imposed an hereditary
caste system on the Chinese people, utterly
crushes any sort of labor organization, in fact
maintains a gulag system of millions of literal
slave laborers, forces hundreds of thousands of
abortions on unwilling women every year, and has
a history of wild oscillations in policy that
result in mass starvation, brutalization, and
dehumanization.
Really, it's not very unlike the U.S. government,
except that it's violence is directed inward,
against the peasants and workers and intelligentsia,
instead of outward, against swarthy people who
have oil. Both systems represent an intense
concentration of power under the domination of
one autocratic ruler. Both systems use political
parties to exclude meaningful dissent. Both
systems manipulate law to funnel funds into the
hands of crony feudal barons. Both systems
exercise strangling control over the mass media
to preclude meaningful democracy.
But the Chinese nukes are pointed at *me*, while
the U.S. nukes are pointed *away*, so I prefer
to see the U.S. hang on to its global empire
for a few more decades, please.
Oh, and we are selling them shit. Such as VSAT
technology (Hughes/Loral) and missile technology
(McDonnel and TRW), thanks to the millions funnelled
by the "People's Liberation Army" into the
Clinton/Gore campaigns.
The chinese people are wonderful, and the
chinese culture is amazingly deep and beautiful,
as is the language. But the chinese state is
perhaps the single greatest source of human
evil on the face of this planet, and as such
it should be given all the respect one gives
a rabid predator. That dragon is not a mascot
or a pet. It breathes fire, and it is waking
up from a long sleep.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
A "high-tech economy" is just a nebulous thing out there in the world, and we're not supposed to think about how it comes about. The capitalist class only knows how to make stuff, to sell stuff, to keep all the proceeds, and to slough off all the expenses of the enterprise upon the public. When you spend your time privatizing profits while socializing your expenses, you are waaaaaay too busy to deal with irrelevant items like: "Gee, who will buy our stuff, the guys we laid off in America, or the guys we underpay in China?"
Having so stated my assumption, now I just gotta respond to your points under its perverse and wicked influence:
access to energy
Yes, this is pretty essential -- to production, of course (who cares what the customer does with the damned thing after the sale is made?). I wonder if local generation in China is being explored? -- it's an idea being toyed with in America.
fair judicial system
What the hell does that matter? Your factory is setup with Chinese "partners" who will inevitably be a part of whatever local government and "law enforcement" that exists. If shoes and clothing can be produced by a class of people with no recourse to "fair" judgment, then so can many other things that are produced by assembly line.
clean water
What the hell does that matter? People filter water in America; just filter in what you need in China. Whatever the workers drink is their own problem.
enough food for its people
What the hell does that matter? There will be plenty more Chinese coming in from the rural areas to get the chance to work in your factory for money, which they imagine will help lift them out of poverty and possible starvation. It won't, of course, but people have always shown hope in that regard since the Industrial Revolution.
uncorrupt governance
This is probably a factor, but a minor one at that. Bribery is just another line item in your budget. After all, this the standard way that the oil business is conducted.
educated people
What the hell does that matter? Your cheap labor is ideal for Taylorist work arrangements. And any cheap labor that you feel the need to educate for specific reasons (hey we need an electrical engineer for this factory), simply can be educated and returned to China at a cheaper cost than hiring a First World skilled person. Education is highly overrated; craftsman skills themselves have been long obsoleted by factories.
freedom of expression
Ju-das Priest, where do you get these silly ideas anyway? The shoes and clothes you are now wearing have in all probability been produced by people who do without hope, disposable income, fresh air, nourishing food, and job security. Freedom of expression is just another opportunity for the workers to make trouble for the capitalist class that owns the methods of manufacture. Since it is not only unnecessary but harmful to the process of maximizing profits, it must be absent.
(Thank you for your attention. I had as good a time responding to your posting as I can ever have with my clothes on.)
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
Not even close, although the US has a lead in GDP it certainly isn't the sole superpower. The EU zone as a whole actually has a larger GDP. Japan has a comparable GDP even in prolonged recession.
The US superpower status is military. The EU could match the US in military power if they were prepared to devote the same insane proportion of their budgets to military hardware. However doing that would cost the courtries their welfare state services which seems a lot to give up just to build weapons for the sake of it.
The bellyaching of the US right about China has nothing to do with human rights. The US right never gave a hang about human rights abuses by Pinochet, Marcos or the House of Saud. What they are really upset about is demographics and economics. It is a lot easier for a backward country to grow at 15% as it catches up than it is for a developed country to sustain 4% growth. The only way that China can fail to overtake the US in terms of economic power is to have a civil war and be broken into pieces. Same goes for India.
Bush and the cronies who control him could not give a damn about human rights or the Falun Gong. Their speeches about human rights and democracy are as hypocritical as their speeches on corporate responsibility - one of the chief Enron scam artist who bilked his division out of $15 million in bonuses while reporting $500 million is phony profits is still secretary for the army. If you think that fine speeches about democracy are worth anything I have a lorry load of Florida chads to sell you.
Military power follows economic power. China with a population four or five times that of the US could if it chose sustain a military the same size should it choose to do so. The militarist faction of the right can only understand prestige and power and cannot imagine that any country that has the option of building a superpower status military would give up the opportunity.
Fortunately most nations don't have the same inferiority complex that drives the US right. China, Germany, France, Britain have all done the empire bit and don't need to do it again.
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No, thats true, a lot of them went to Canada as well. Its been fairly well established that the North American free trade pact has benefitted Canada and Mexico moreso than the US.
If cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans would never have built
WHAT? Are you not familiar with the concept of slavery? The Romans didn't pay their workforce, they whipped them. The same can be said for the south in the US prior to the Civil War. Wow, you are demonstrating an astoundingly bad grasp of history here.
China is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Falung Gong.
The US is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Branch Davidians.
And from a business perspective, lack of these things, particularly in a world economy dominated by post-industrial persuits that require human creativity and unfettered access to information, is the kiss of death.
How do you presume to state that Chinese citizens cannot be creative? Microsoft does much of its research (some of which lead to MP4) in China. You're just in denial now, offering up ridiculous reasons why everywhere but the US must fail.
I disagree. Big Business wants tight governmental control over the people so their toes aren't stepped on, and loose control over themselves, so they can do what they please. This means that with the money they're making, they can afford to set governmental policy through bribery (even more easily than in North America) and the people, who are unable to assemble or speak out about the businesses fucking them over are going to be put to work.
You don't need people with freedom to have a strong economy. If you chain research scientists to their desks and demand that they work, you can squeeze enough work out of them to make it worth your while.
And don't forget the lesson of Hitler's Germany. He turned a broken state into a real world power, and he did it without the whole 'freedom' thing. Nazi Fascism isn't any prettier than Communism.
In the university where work as a research assistant, the majority of PhD students are from China and India. Chinese students invariably tend to be the best ones. It seems like by the time they come here they have already done A LOT of practical hitech research in their universities.
Because of this, (and because most of them don't mind being paid 2k$/month or less) a lot of departments actually prefer to hire Chinese students for tech projects.
Many of them will go back to China once their studies are over.
It is also worth considering that for each student that makes it to the US, maybe 100 will stay in China.
And, as the article says: "Hundreds of universities with strong tech departments have been created."
Is this enough to say that China is headed towards becoming the place where hi tech is conceived and grown ?
I think that, IF these government-funded policies will go on, it will be just a matter of time (maybe a couple of generations, maybe less
And btw, it seems to me that they are very inclined toward the sharing of knowledge and information,
giampy
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano