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China Developing own Standards
J ROC writes "Encouraged by their government Chinese electronics firms are shunning technological protocols invented abroad and developing their own, according to this article. The Chinese have developed several standards including EVD to replace DVD standards, and TD-SCDMA to replace the CDMA cell phone standard found elsewhere. The reasons seem to be partly based on "techno-nationalism", and Chinese firms growing tired of paying foreign patent fees. While this may force foreign firms to lower their patent fees, some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world."
China is currently facing the dilemma of joining the world community yet somehow maintaining it's authoritarian (yes they are still communist) government. Communism itself can't tolerate any kinds of rivals whatsoever. This extends to churches like the inability of Tibetans to display pictures of the Dalai Lama to the fact that Chinese Catholics cannot be loyal to the Pope (he is not a Chinese National and therefore verboten). Other Chinese intolerances include banning Falun Gong which commands hearts and minds of a huge number of Chinese and is therefore an enemy of communist ideology even though it's a relatively benign movement.
It should be no suprise that the Chinese want to develop their own standards: using Microsoft for everything would basically put China in a position of having their tech infrastructure being run by a foreign power. This is merely an example and of course it's easy to pick on Microsoft but this idea extends to all ideas that have their standard determined and dictated somewhere else other than by the <SARCASM>glorious Chinese communists.</SARCASM>
Under communism there is no such thing as intellectual property rights unless you are the State. Communism cannot afford any kinds of rivals whatsoever, such is the nature of authoritarian regimes be them communist or otherwise.
Wonder how this will effect all the rampant pirating of our wares?
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
. . .and China will come up with an incompatible email protocol, and rid us of much of our spam problem ;)
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Creating national standards is an eventual dead-end. Eventually, when the Next Big Thing overtakes the world, these national standards will only serve as an impediment to technical progress in China. Remember Minitel vs the global internet in France? If it's this kind of backwards progress they're after, they might as well invent their own alternative to the metric system.
China has a market that is far far FAR too large to care what the rest of the world thinks or does. As the middle class grows, companies from the rest of the world are going to come crawling to China in order to participate in the market.
They won't isolate themselves, they'll re-write the books on standardization.
20% of the world's population.
:)
I reckon that's a pretty good base on which to design standards.
Jackie Chan was asked once in an interview if he regretted not breaking into the US market. He replied that with 2 billion people in asia, why should he care about the States?
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world.
I'm more concerned that someday the rest of the world may need to bend over [backward] to support China's standards. They are, after all, manufacturing a great many of the electronic items that we buy.
...some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world. As opposed to their lack of isolation now?
I love standards. There are just so many to choose from. And now China is going to give us more.
This sig no verb.
some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world
Why not? It works for the United States...
On a serious note, China is big enough to throw its own weight around if it wants to, though.
I don't know about that isolation warning. China is pretty big and has access to cheap labor. Microsoft isolated itself right into a market monopoly by ignoring standards.
" some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world."
And that's particularly different from the U.S. how? PCS vs. GSM...
While that is true, China could also benefit from setting their own standards, letting other corporations or other countries use it for free or much lower cost than the more costly, patent protected counterparts. That will likely turn the table around and isolate the more expensive alternatives of what we have now, and will be using their cheaper and possibly superior standards for our future needs.
Please direct all bug reports to
Compatible with the 'rest of the world'? China IS the rest of the world. America occupies about 5% of the world population. Instead of worrying about China technologically cutting itself off, how about we worry about being compatible with their standards? I'm more worried that one day there will be 3 billion EVD players that won't read DVDs.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
The current Chinese population is around 1.3 billion. It does not include everyone on Earth.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't think they'd be isolating themseleves (anymore so than they are now, willingly). There's no reason that they couldn't develop gateways to interface with foriegn technology. It's not like compatable technologies won't be available, they'll still be made over there to be shipped to first world countries, and I'm sure they'd be happy to sell to the chinese people as well. If this brings lower cost technology to the people, I'm all for it. If it's intended as a means of information isolation, then of course they can make that happen, but I don't think that's the case here. It seems like they genuinely want to get out of patent costs, which is why they have a national Linux distribution. Truly Open standards aren't patent encumbered, and maybe they'll open up some of their tech to us, and we end up being the ones who adopt it, as an open and perhaps better standard.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
With an estimated population of 1.3 to 1.4 BILLION by 2010, I can really see China's techno nationalism hurting itself.
:-)
If (for example) the US with a population of ONLY 300 Million, and Japan (130 million) and a few other countries can dominate the worlds technology, I can easily imagine that in 50 years time we could be all following Chinas leads with regards to technology (assuming of course they haven't outsourced it all to India by then
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Experts warn that China risks isolating itself
China's history is all about isolation (erm, the great wall and stuff), not to mention what communism did to them. Their modern history is rife with isolationism. To quote Spock, "Only Nixon could go to China." This says nothing of the centuries before that. So isolated were they that they didn't even realize they were the ones who invented the clock!
China, isolating itself?... It took experts to realize this?...
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
After RTFA, I thought of a decent question. Are there Chinese developed formats better then the current US/Japanese formats out there right now? They mentioned the Chinese WIFI encryption; WAPI. Is it better then WAP? Worse?
To be honest, I could see why they would want thier own formats. They have a country of over a billion people, and even if only a fraction of them buy eqiupment based on foreign patents; that's a lot of money.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
...Chinese firms growing tired of paying foreign patent fees.
Are they even _paying_ patent fees now?
Next they'll be doing something crazy like building a wall round their country.
... as a sovereign state. Not so good for those who dream of a one world integrated system. I don't concieve of any reason interchanges couldn't be develop to allow the chinese standards to coexist with the rest of the world, sure it will be bothersome to some, but maybe this will give China an opportunity to innovate in new and interesting ways. What some may regard as fractioning I would say could potentially spurr innovation and competition. But you know, why look for a bright side to this when it gives us ample opportunity to pull a chicken little or to belittle somebody else...
:-)
Woot for the chinese! Dirty commies!
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Bullhockey, the rest of the world will cater easily to a market of possibly 1.3 billion consumers, let us not forget the system of capitalism which does not really care who is buying it as long as someone is buying it. If the cost of licensing and fees are so high in a market where the foothold was not that strong to begin with then it would only follow reason that people/corporations/governments will adapt to the fabrication of their own systems...which is the same argument we use in the OSS community.
Additionally, China does not like to follow foreign arrangements, they tangle with democracy and touches of capitalism too much as it is (their opinion), having them rely on those same foreign arrangements undermines the authority of the governing powers.
It's about time that China started doing these things, hopefully the push in the technology direction wont spark another arms race, but rather easier and open stream technology and systems for the lower end users.
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
i hope they come up with their own SMTP protocol standard so they can keep their F(*&%ing spam to themselves!
i can wish, can't i?
It has been promoting as more secure the homegrown Red Flag Linux, based on an open-code operating system.
First Linux was invented by the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, and now Linus is Chinese. Methinks the article author doesn't get it with respect to linux.
As far as the other technolgies, I think the EVD standard is doomed to failure. People are going to want DVDs from abroad, and a player that only does EVD isn't going to sell. The mobile phone standard doesn't matter. The US has gone its own way with cell phone standards and the sky hasn't fallen yet. There's not a lot of compelling reasons why mobile phone standards have to be compatible with the rest of the world, and China is definately big enough to set their own standard.
As far as this cry of "nationalism", that just sounds like posturing to justify this to a certain communist segment of the Chinese populace. Setting your own standards and avoiding patent fees sounds like capitalism to me.
AccountKiller
Personally, if the Chinese standards don't include restrictive concepts such as CSS and region-encoding, I'd rather have my movies on EVD than DVD.
That said, if EVD has some other kind of restrictions (such as detecting anti-government remarks, and then emailling the details of the viewer to the Ministry of Truth, so that they might be 're-educated' - then perhaps CSS is the lesser of two evils.
This is all much commotion over nothing. People use different standards all the time, and it's not always a big problem.
You say they're developing their own kind of DVDs, yet (thanks to region codes) DVDs aren't internationally compatiable anyway.
About cell phones... are you kidding me? Look at how many networks we already have in the world... GSM, TDMA, CDMA, and yet we still manage to call each other.
You don't even have to be a country to make your own standards. Look at Sony and their spectacularly incompatible products.
Someone mentioned that this is like creating their own versions of the metric system. Guess what? America has just that, and is it an isolationist country?
At most, all this will probably mean that we'll just be required to convert things from one standard to another, just like we've always done. Yes, it can be annoying, but it won't dramatically isolate China. What's the big deal?
experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world
Yes.. Perhaps the US should also take note. Using your own standards for mobile phones and digital radio is not a good idea.
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats - approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
China is a real threat to the potential for world democracy. And don't forget it. They may trade with the west, but their political structure and long term planning make them political and economic adversaries long term. Compared to them, Iraq is a "[...]side show of a side show" (See Lawrence of Arabia for the quote).
--Maynard
I wouldn't really expect an open standard from the government that brought us Tiananmen Square.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Secondly, China remains a totalitarian country which has only adopted capitalistic market as a stepping stone on its way back to pure communism. That remains the ultimate goal and doctrine of the CCP. Isolation from foreign "control" allows them to better insulate their own population, selectively, from expected evil foreign manipulation and "interference in China's internal affairs". Becoming a "standards-setter" might also give the CCP more leverage over Taiwan's extremely powerful business lobby in preparation of the "re-unification" of that island with communist China.
On a related note, all this foreign investment feeding the growth of totalitarian China is somewhat akin to helping Hitler build up the Nazi German industry, after Hitler had already begun invading its neighbours. China's nationalist propaganda aside, they are holding Tibet under very harsh foreign occupation, and the turkic Uighur people of East Turkestan (which the Chinese call Xinjiang, or "New Frontier") are not too happy under Chinese control and massive influx of ethnic Chinese on their lands either. But yet China is a great business buddy while the fully contained and de facto harmless Iraq had to be invaded... Maybe I just don't get the true meaning of this "liberation of people" stuff.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
No, they'll just get the foreign corporations, like Sun, to bootstrap them with subsidized projects. While Sun's marketers and bizdev suits salivate over the Chinese market, their mafia government will just announce new API standards and cut out every company that's not Chinese. Sun will cut its losses, sell its useless stakes in their Chinese operations to Chinese "partners", and the Chinese companies will proceed to revise the open source OS and apps.
It's called judo: leverage your larger opponent against himself, as he clumsily grasps at you. Chinese people invented it, and it still works, at all scales, in all arenas.
--
make install -not war
While this may force foreign firms to lower their patent fees, some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world.
Seems that the US and Canada have done okay despite their standardization on Imperial measurement units as opposed to metric. The Chinese populations is now something like 1.2 billion people if I recall correctly, which is 4 times larger than the US. Once they get going economically they'll be dictating a lot of standards, I'm afraid.
If you post it, they will read.
You underestimate the interest in escaping outrageous patents, patent fees and monopolies. China can set its own standards because it has enough consumers to force foreign companies to listen. Pundits saying China will isolate itself (e.g. suffer) are blowing industry smoke. What, are American corporations pulling themselves from Uncle Sam's tit long enough to cry that capitalism is unfair? Boo hoo.
"Hey! Look Dave! Two Anonymous Cowards playing games with semantics! How absolutely fascin..... zzzzzzzzzzzz
"some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world."
Ummm...shouldn't that read, "China may successfully isolate itself through these measures"? Isn't that what they seem to perpetually want, with their policies in most other areas?
I dissagree that they will isolate themselves from the world. More likely the rest of the world will have to adopt their standards and learn to interact. They have 25% of the world population and growing rapidly. It is a very western view to look at it the other way.
Just as an example, EVD has been something of a flop.
The Chinese didn't actually invent most of the technology in EVD; they seem to have just taken the existing DVD medium and licensed On2's VP6 video codec (On2 is US-based). They've shipped so little actual EVD units that On2 is suing the Chinese companies involved for not fulfilling their minimum units obligations. As a bit of anecdotal evidence, my Chinese friend claims that he can't even find EVDs any more (there were more several months ago).
TD-SCDMA was also developed in large part by outsiders (Siemen's IIRC), and hasn't completely taken off, though this may change if/when the government decides to require operators to use it. Point is, I believe many of these new "Chinese standards" are really just a way to encourage real competition in the new Chinese economy, and it's actually working extremely well. EVD, for example, might actually be a really great way to stop the HD-DVD mafia from imposing discriminatory patent fees against Chinese electronics manufacturers.
different standards track than rest-of-world. And survived
thus far.
Eventually, the best standard will win. GSM is being adopted
here for a reason.
And what's wrong with letting the market decide who will win.
If U.S. and other firms priced themselves out of the market
because ofexcessive license fees... well, that's why it's a
market and the market will address those notions in its own way
as it always done.
No need for panic, or "fears of isolation". Stop the trolls.
Poof.
I certainly don't disagree that western democracies are slowly moving toward plutocratic corporate feudalism. It's happening. However, it's a pendulum swing, just like in the Gilded age of the 1880s - 1900. So there's precedent for it happening before, and precedent for change in the other direction back. I'm much less worried about Democracy in the US and Europe collapsing than the potential for economic and military threats from those with orthogonal ideologies of totalitarian political control like China. They may trade with us, but they are not our friend - they have a well thought out long term plan for the benefit of China (as any nation ought), and they will maximize their economic and military advantage to the best of their ability. To forget or ignore this is an extreme folly. --M
In Socialist China, Standards adopt YOU!!
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Lowers the cost of technology in China.
Reduces revenue to American and Japanese technology firms.
Allows for a new technical-design boom for Chinese workers, increasing knowledge and affluence.
Creates a cheaper alternative for worldwide consumers, including Americans. (Can you say WAL-MART?)
Increases the brain drain already in full swing from the major outsourcing of programmers and other tech positions to India.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
China has the larges population, but not the largest economy. The economic potential you refer to is only potential, and the current reality is that China is not poised to overtake the US and the EU for decades, even if current rates of growth continue. Maybe in some future economy where China does indeed dominate it will have the clout to make the world adopt its standards. The vast majority of technical progress takes place outside of China, and this nationalistic hubris with regards to standards threatens China's ability to take advantage of others' advances. Closed systems retard growth.
Hmmm... sounds like these "experts" are a bit suspect. If the Chinese develop their own standards, but make them freely available to everyone, then this just simply indicates that China is new competition. After all, wouldn't this be all about "free market"? ;P The idea of a global set of standards for technology is nice, but has been so far unattainable outside of the computer industry. With video we have NTSC, SECAM and PAL. Why should the computer industry be any different? I think the warnings given by these "experts" is nothing more than either chicken little thinking, or American neocons who are afraid of real competition.
Un-news
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Then, I decided to actually check my facts. Boy, what a suprise. I was right about the population issue: India 1.03 billion, China 1.28 Billion. But what really shocked me was the figures on literacy. I would have bet a week's pay that India had a much better educated population. I assumed that most Chineese couldn't read or write, but a little googling showed that China has about 80% literacy while India has around 60% literacy. So much for assumptions.
I still think China is in for a tough time when more of their population gets access to outside information. It's difficult to excercise dictatorial control over a population that has ready access to contrary views and information. We'll have to see. Maybe this can be a "peaceful" revolution... Either way, China will be a force to be reconned with, but I seriously think creating their own standards will slow the growth process.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
This reminds me of something I watched on an old WWII documentry.
One of the factors that slowed the Nazis down in trying to invaded the Soviet Union was that the Soviet Union used non-standard train tracks that Nazi troop and supply trains could not run on.
Steve
Forking out millions of US$ in licences would ruin any chinese company. Hell, do you know what 500$ US means for a chinese person? ONE THENTH of the per-capita GDP! and it won't even buy a single PC with Windows on it.
To those of you paranoiacs who still think Communism Is The Red Menace: communism has nothing to do with this issue. In fact, the Chinese are applying by-the-book capitalism to IP: get the cheapest source avaliable, and use it.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
The article has one mistake I can see so far.
3G does not specify the radio technology to be used. As such who cares what radio they are using. 3G is about flexibiity as you can use whatever radio tech u want (including 802.11 if it pleases u) and you can use either circuit switched or packet switched core networks. So in that aspect unless they are going to come up with the whole of their own 3rd generation specs they'll not be preventing use of 3G just making their own radio.
"To inisist on the pristine meaning of the word Communism it to take the attitude of Humpty Dumpty - words mean what I want them to mean. Unfortunately, the world has changed the meaning of the word Communism, as many other words."
Nope. It's just that most people have not been educated correctly.
Just because someone calls themselves something is not a reason for anyone else to call them that.
I'm still recommending "The Tyranny of Words" by Stuart Chase. Words define how you think. When you start confusing the definitions of words, you lose the ability to understand the issues. Which is what many politicians want.
China is not "Communist Country".
China is a "Totalitarian Socialist State".
This is a good start.
China certainly has reaped some of the rewards of the global economy. Their low standard of living means labor is cheap. Multinational companies are employing many Chinese people to manufacture their products. However these companies get to keep all the profits, leaving the Chinese with nothing more than wages earned.
If China continues to enforce domestic standards at the expense of international ones then it will stunt the growth of some of their industries. There will be no demand for their products outside of China. This will limit the market for Chinese products.
Anyone who thinks that the domestic market is sufficient should take a look at the average income of the Chinese. The US, with only a quarter of the population, has much more purchasing power.
This is also an issue of control. If all Chinese electronics follow Chinese standards. Then they won't be able to utilize foreign media. Additionally the Chinese will only authorize those parties they deem usefull to use their standards. They can now control entirely the flow of information in their country, lock, stock, and barrel. Imagine if they develop a highly advanced operating system that becomes the defacto standard in the country, that also happens to have huge gaping back doors to allow the government to monitor everything. Or a DVD standard that prohibits foreign DVD's from functioning. I think this is their ultimate goal.
Sir, there is a dragon outside with an armful of armor. He's inquiring if we offer free refills.
The recount had already happened. Twice. The redundant recount he stopped? For one thing, it was illegal under Florida law.
This is factually incorrect. In fact total manual recounts were mandated by Florida law when election results reached a threshold margin of error. That recount was never completed due to Bush V. Gore.
For another, it was an attempt by Gore to "roll the dice" again and again in a close election in order to try to have it come out his way.
Gore made a tactical mistake. He should have requested a manual recount of all the precincts, which would have met both the Florida recount statute and nullified an Equal Protection argument. However, (if you believe Gore's people) Gore wanted to finish the recount before the electoral college met to cast their votes, so he "conceded" the total recount and selected certain precincts he thought would best serve his case. According to the manual recount done by a consortium of newspapers after Bush's inauguration, Bush would have certainly lost a total recount of the entire state. However, he may have won had the state only recounted the specific precincts Gore requested, depending on which counting methodology was used (specific to rules for overvotes and undervotes). Another point to make is that manual recounts are by far the most accurate method of counting votes, regardless of GOP assertions to the contrary. In fact, Bush signed into Texas law a statute demanding manual recounts long before the Florida election. And Florida had done numerous manual recounts prior to the 2000 election going back for several decades.
And let's not discuss the numerous examples of election gaming and disenfranchisement by manipulating the Florida Felon list to the tune of over a hundred thousand innocent (mostly black) people. Or that almost all ballots tossed were primarily in black counties. Or that the Secretary of State (Kathryn Harris) was both the election supervisor for the state and the head of the Florida for Bush election committee, showing an obvious conflict of interest in her duties. Any fair person who looked into the specifics of that election would have to assume that the outcome was manipulated for political purposes both at the state executive level and by a partisan Supreme Court. SCOTUS has damaged their reputation for decades to come because of this. --M
I live in Shanghai. You know the town? It has the fastest pasenger train in the world, the "maglev". The whole place feels more modern in many ways than 80% of US cities.
Now China is growing up quickly. I lived in Taiwan for a decade, that country grew up fast. But China is like a weed on steroids, growing rapidly, developing complex domestic markets for everything and anything, and, like Japan in its early stages China is setting its own standards.
Ever wonder why in Japan you can get 3G phones and 3G service? 1.3 megapixel phone with video? Why can't the US consumer buy that? Oh yeah, the US uses its own standards for cell phones. They would never use some "foreign" standard, especially one that is from the Japanese, that would mean royalties. Why not develop your own, hence CDMA.
Heck, I was using my single GSM cell phone number in 1996 in Taiwan, I could roam in Europe, Middle East, Asia using the same number and SIM card, but NOT the USA. GSM only became available in the USA recently.
China is doing the right thing by encouraging local standards and locally developed technology that is not dependent on the rest of the world. It is in the best interest of its people.
Now is it in the best interest of US Citizens that we obliterate sovereign countries and the US go bust doing it? Guess that is OK, China is financing the whole thing anyway buying T-bills! It is a mad world indeed.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
The article has several good points but got a little silly calling the Chinese government "secretive". sublim/Echelon/sublim Market confusion, ha, that is competition. Communist, well maybe, but its one of the most capitalistic countries on Earth. The conclusion the article drew, that China would isolate itself, is a laugher. China is a huge chunk of the human population and is self-sufficient in every way. Immagine if every device in China was incompatible with the rest of the world, then only the bigwigs in China would be making all the money and controlling all the content, and therefore the populace. You have to understand that if it meant going back to the stone age, China would do it, just to keep the ruling class in power. The dirty politics of monopolist big communications business is on the same level as in the United States. If you follow the history of Qualcomm you will see that China has basically, ass-raped them. If China didn't have a brutal population control in place, half the world would be Chinese and we all would be outsiders. To the average Chinese, we are but a tiny part of _their_ world.
Other countries/companies create competing standards, too. If Sony doesn't want to pay royalties, they come out with a competing standard, get market share, and cross-license. Don't believe it? Next time you buy your CD+R/-R/+RW/-RW/DVD+R/-R/+RW/-RW/RAM drive you may have have to choose between Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, or now, the Chinese EVD. Remember that only about 45% of US households have a DVD player, even though they cost $39. The MPAA would love to replace this DVD standard with a more secure medium anyway.
Instead of abandoning the patent system, China is using it in a competitive way. My grandpa invented things and patented them just to have US corporations work around his patents as soon as he filed them. If you file a patent, you are screwed, if you don't file, you are screwed. I hope this TD-SCDMA is not a work around for S-CDMA, as S-CDMA was invented by someone I happen know. (I hope they pay him.)
China is its own world; kinda like a whole other planet. A lot of Chinese have never even heard of other races, let alone, seen another person from one. I have lived in China for short periods of time. While there, I felt like a Martian walking down the street, because of the excitement it would cause. When I step out to the curb, people would lock onto me with their eyes, and stare until they crashed their bike or motorcycle, two blocks away. The police would shoo me away, so then I would step into a store and the sales girls would all run away laughing. In this area, they had seen Caucasians on TV, but not in RL. Everywhere I went, they would gasp "Gwy-Lo!". Once, while passing a restaurant at night, one patron stood, pointed and yelled; it was like being Godzilla. After a few weeks, it gets old. But, I digress... Basically, the only control other countries have is to control the flow of Chinese products and hope they don't move into your major industries.