Slashdot Mirror
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."
. . .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
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.
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
There isn't a dillema in China. China was given open access to the WTO by President Clinton who called them a "strategic ally".
China is having a field day, and we should be very concerned that their form of government can reap the benefits of a free society without adhering to its rules.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Without getting into politics, China is only walking the well trodden path of other emerging super powers in their time. America pulled pretty much exactly the same tricks with everything from science (hell what kind of global standard is CDMA anyway?) to sport.
China walks all over global standards because China is big enough to get away with it. Same as America, same as Russia, same as Britain (in its time) probably too.
Are you delusional? China is not and never has been Communist. And for your information no other country in modern history has either. Now before you start spouting crap again, each country claimed to be moving TOWARDS communism. That is they weren't (and still aren't) communist but given time they would become communist. This approach has since be shown not to work and China is now moving towards capitalism.
Communism is defined as a classless (and stateless) society. If you look at China, it has classes. The people at the top are in one class and the people on the bottom in another. Just because they call themselves communist doesn't mean they are. And if you think that they are I'm the most intelligent person on the planet (and I have this bridge to sell you).
On the matter at hand, I think that it is important for China to develop their own technologies, however, I don't like the idea of them ignoring international standards. If it is just a matter of patents, why they should just ignore them. Oh wait, they're capitalist, they can't do that...
...Chinese firms growing tired of paying foreign patent fees.
Are they even _paying_ patent fees now?
... 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
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.
It should be no suprise that the Chinese want to develop their own standards
No it shouldn't. But not for the motives you give.
The USA has for decades played hardball in international trade. They have been good at getting their own way. The Chinese realise that if they want to become a world ecomonic superpower, they've got to start playing as hard as the USA traditionally has. Europe is also now getting it's act together - the EU is a powerful force in international trade negociations, much more that the individual countries of Europe can be.
You say "Communism itself can't tolerate any kinds of rivals whatsoever". I don't think this has got anything to do with Communism, it's about global trade and China's desire to become a global economic superpower.
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
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
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.
You have it partially right, but your drawing too many comparisons between them being "communist" as the reason this is being done.
"...Chinese firms growing tired of paying foreign patent fees."
This is the part that holds the most significance as the reason it is being done. The western world dominates when it comes to patents. What patents mean in a legal sense is control. The Chinese business interests obviously want control over their own businesses. They have two choices, pay the patent fees and allow U.S. interests control over certain aspects of their technology and business, or ignore patents and/or develop your own so that the control and knowledge is held within your own businesses and country.
Here is the major problem. We are seperating. The U.S., business interests, investors, and even the citizens are unwilling to give up/change the patent system. It is about control and losing it is not what most want. So China is pushing away. This will create tensions between the western world and China, which is not a good thing. Tensions will exist between programmers, politicians, business persons, and many others. Why will they exist? Because now there is a whole new level of understanding and translation. Between China and the west, standards would not match and so translation is required. Understanding would include Chinese attempting to understand our system and the west understanding the Chinese system. Patents are deeply integrated in the technological and business world. All the way from the few existing lone inventors that have a patent of a few to the large conglomerates and even the military.
The ignorance of the Chinese towards patents is not a bad thing. We are led to believe that patents are the answer to progress (and I will argue that with anyone if they wish), but after the introduction of a patent system within our entire legal, social, and economical structure the opposite becomes true and progress is then defined within the limits of the remaining freedoms of thought within our corporate economic system. By ignoring patents and allowing a more natural kind of competition that prevents the tieing up of progress by the legal system which corporations in the U.S. and western countries use as control mechanisms. If is plain to see that the Chinese benefit from such a move and could easily overtake the western world in progress. They have the resources and the people.
Maybe I should consider learning Chinese.
Btw, if anyone isn't sure what I meant by this entire post, please ask. I have a way with words that causes confusion for many.
Question everything.
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.
Have to question your assertion that, we should be very concerned that their form of government can reap the benefits of a free society without adhering to its rules.
That smacks of 'our-system-is-better-than-yours' elitism which I don't believe is justified. I'm not deliberately going off on an anti-US tirade here but how is the US government adhering to the rules of a free society when it allows the RIAA to haul up hundreds of people in the name of the draconian DMCA? The refusal to be kept in check by the Geneva convention is another example. Of course the Chinese government are draconian, but it's another variation of the draconian governance practiced elsewhere, even in the sanctity of the 'free world'.