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China's Superior Technologies
paRcat writes "Still think China is a land too far away from everything? This article compares some of China's common uses of technology to what we're accustomed to in the West. With the genius traffic lights and the cell phone coverage... I'm kinda jealous."
A lot of these items were not technology related. Slipcovers for coats and purses @ resturants? Nice, but I'm not counting that as points to superior technology. Gotta admit that stoplight timer technology sounds good.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
That and the Chinese have a certain mindset that isn't present here in the US. It has something to do with getting the job done well, quickly. The trend here seems cheaper and faster. The last point in the article points this out well by mentioning how well the customer was served at a clothing store.
So much room for sigs, so few sigs worthy of it.
I've known of one traffic death from a yellow before green in Europe way back. Giving someone a accurate way of determining when they can be moving the microsecond the light turns green is bad given that people have incoporated not just the delayed green but the delayed start after green in their calculations of how late they can run a red light.
You know, this is really what we should be trying to do. Better living through technology. If the Chinese can do it, there's no reason why we can't too.
...of the Yellow Dragon when it awakens" -Napoleon
:-)
I'd think it's time to say: "Good Morning, Yellow Dragon"
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
so, we just need bin ladan and friends to bomb us to the stone age so we can get to upgrading everything.
i'm guessing in about 10-20 years we will be reading how advanced Iraq's tech is and be wondering why i still can't get [next great thing after DSL] in my area.
China's innovation relies mostly upon remaking things already patented in the West, just doing it cheaper by not paying the patent rights on it. This could be huge problem in the future, as many nations will require that they start honoring these agreements. I once worked with a client who did some of his manufacturing in China (toys, mostly) - he was stunned how quickly their products would turn up as black market ripoffs once they manufactured there - the plant managers typically run a shift a day making your stuff for you, then a shift at night making your stuff for them. They pulled their manufacturing from China after that. Also, I don't see China being much of a leader in alternative fuels - they are cutting deals with the Iranian mullahs now to become their primary oil supplier, and have much looser pollution standards that the U.S. or Europe (in fact, they use the U.S. pollution standards from the 1980's for their cars now). China will probably start making more alt fuel cars when the west demands it - meaning for export, not for domestic use. If you want to talk Asian innovators, Japan is still way, way ahead of China.
The GDP per capita was $5,000 in China (2003). This does not mean that all of China is poor but it does mean that in general China is not as rich as western countries. I would therefore contend the image that the author of the article paints of a throughout modern chinese society. In fact large parts of China are poor and underdeveloped.
Of course this statement might not be true in 10 years time or so due to the quick rate of economic growth in China - and of course this does not mean that the chinese are not doing stuff that we can learn from. But it does mean that the impression conveyed by the author of the article is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
we are free to make mistakes and that is more important that having all the technology in the world. I would rather have Freedom of speech than a fancy parking monitor.
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China is a huge threat in the region. China is best understood as a society with deadly, ultra-modern weapons coupled with a barbaric, medieval mindset. It is an ogre in the 21st century.
Actually the same could be said of the US, a lot of our foriegn policies of late have been decidely midieval, notably the "you're with us or you're against us" black and white take on things. Not to say China's not a potential problem, but this is not sound reasoning as to why it's a problem.-
The Chinese routinely rape and kill Tibetan nuns and children. The Chinese routinely abort female fetuses, producing a skewed ratio of male babies to female babies. There is currently a deficit of about 15% (!) in the female baby population.
I'll decline to comment on the Tibetian bit except to point out the link you provide is decidely not an impartial one. They may be 100% accurate, but they have a vested interest in taking the Tibetian's side so it's hard to tell.As far as the female babies being aborted, yes it happens, but it's not a government policy. It's a side-effect of the one child, one family policy and traditions. Many Chinese feel they must have a male child to support them when they're elderly so they will have female babies aborted. Actually I'm not entirely sure the process is legal. Given the government's nationalistic leanings, I suspect that something will be done about this, they won't want to rely on Chinese marrying women of other ancestries in order to reproduce.
They used too, ask your Parents and Grandparents. It was stopped, like many other services. Remember when you didn't have to get out of your car to get the tank filled (*I'm assuming you don't live in a state where it's illegal to fill your own tank, such as New Jersey*), a nice attendant did it for you. In the better petrol stations he washed your windows and checked your oil as well. This still happened when I was a kid, and I'm only 26. I'd happily pay extra for this convenience. [1]
:-)
These excellent services stopped being provided in the name of cutting costs. It's far cheaper to have you hem your own pants or charge you $10 (which I think is quite cheap) than to pay 3 people to do it for you.
[1] Get out of car, get toddler out of car seat, take irritated toddler, who I just woke up, into petrol station. Apologise to other customers about the screaming child. Pre-pay for petrol (since my local station is pre-pay only now). Put toddler back in car seat, this pisses him off even more. Fill car. Get back in car. Spend next 30 minutes with a screaming child in the back seat because he had his sleep interrupted.
Our North American infrastructure is very outdated and we are constatly running into problems with it... this article is probably writen from a skewed perspective, but anyone who has payed any attention to the technological advances that China has been doing could say this was a long time comming and will only continue to happen at an ever quickening pace. It might turn out good for us over here.... or it might cause a sort of hyperinflation in our dollars as the yuan is worth 6.87 to 1 Canadian (8.28 to 1 American) and the Hong Kong buck is 7.78 to 1 USD or 6.45 to one Loonie (www.xe.com.)
The only current setback I see for China, Beijing in particular, is air pollution. Although I'm sure they'll have a way to clean it all figured out and implemented well before the Olympics in 4 years if they want the athletes to be able to breathe normally when they are competing. And I'm sure the 20 new Candu reactors that we (Canada) are supplying them will help to combat that instead of burning coal like the places they are replacing.
Now, dont get me wrong, I'm not saying that their current political system is good... its not. Its horrid in the fact corruption is running un-checked through it (ever heard of Payola? Government officials expect it). Its just, with an ever modernizing infrastructure they are going to quickly become a world super power with the ability to use national economies as a weapon against whomever they want (go check and see what you have thats made in china lol). Although, all this assuming and all the articles out could be pre-emptive and their economy and infrastructure could fall flat on its face.... but its intersting nonetheless.
This is one of the tradeoffs between free markets and command economies. Although free markets are great from the point of view of moving quickly to a local optimum in resource utilization, their coverage and consistency are spotty. Command economies tend to pick winners too early and their implementations can be inefficient and hang around too long, but they usually achieve complete coverage and relative consistency.
The best of both worlds is when you "let a thousand flowers bloom" in the early stages, pick a winner for full implementation, and revisit the infrastructure choices on a regular basis to reopen debate. Of course, ideologues of either stripe would usually disavow this solution, as that might force them to widen their narrow models of the world - far too painful to comptemplate!
That is all.
Ahem. United states has almost six times the proportion of people in prison as China. Now, it is possible that China is simply not reporting many of the imprisoned people, or that the simply use alternative methods which we may find less savory than imprisonment, but...
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I have been to Chain. Shanghai to be specific. What awe inspiring technology I saw. A sewage system that was obviously not functioning great. Water that you could not drink. Traffic which was...unbeleivably bad. People living on sidewalks. Oh yeah. nice technology. I've seen far superior technology in both Canada and the US. Its easy to find 10 things better - but honestly this guy had to reach.
This is highly unlikely. We are far too reliant on their manufacturing capabilities to make unreasonable demands like this. This is especially true of American pressure. We are far too dependent on foreign currency holdings to prop up the value of the USD.
Far more likely are the scenarios that either companies who own patents will negotiate very nominal payments for use of their patents or that the First World will simply learn to use the Developing World's lack of IP respect as a way of "routing around" the damage in the free market.
That is all.
i'm kinda jealous
Reminds me of people who say they would have liked to live in the dark ages with the famous artists and musicians, great castles and famous writers.
My response was always that you'd most likely be a peasant or slave considering there wasn't much, if any middle class.
Shit better not happen!
Last time I checked, hundreds of of povery-stricken Chinese people arrived at our Vancouver port looking for a better life.
A government for the people? Think again!
And when was the last time the Chinese got to vote for their government and future? It's dictatorship over there, with maximum cencorship and rampant violation of human rights.
Get real!
You gotta be kidding right? Who do you think owns a good chunk of the US debt? China is fast becomming the next world military superpower, Little articles like this show they have the inclination. In fact they may well be already. We are just to stupid to see it.
Look at the big picture. Large country, large population, technical savy, individually not wealthy but as a country very wealthy, and most importantly very secretive. Not much news gets in our out that they that the gov. doesn't control. Even internet access is managed.
They could kick a little US ass without blinking an eye. They could lose an entire US population worth of soldiers and still come out smiling.
Look at the N. Korea issue. US didn't have to deal with it, just nicely asked China to speak with them. After some humming and hawing China sends over a low level Gov. official and N. Korea goes quiet. Like the freakin mofia.
Scares the crap outa me when I think about it to hard. I have to stop now.
lalala.....flowers and trees....lalala.....
I don't give a warning, because I find that no matter what I say and how far in advance I say it (or ring my bell) there is a 50% chance that the pedestrian will react at the last minute by jumping into my path, thereby dramatically increasing the chance of an accident.
I have commuted by bicycle in large and small cities in north America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, pretty much daily for the past 30 years, and I've never hit a pedestrian yet. But I have a whole lot fewer close calls when I sneak up on them. So I'm going to keep doing it, for their own safety. Better surprised than smacked into the pavement.
Yes, but the signs in Europe and Asia tell you, before you enter a neighborhood, which lots are full and how many spots are left in the others. This saves driving around looking at all those "lot full" signs.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
In the 1960s and 1970s Japan was growing leaps and bounds from a completely destroyed country at the end of the world war to nearly the level of US economy. The label "Made in Japan" changed from a denigration to a status symbol. But Japan was unable to go past the US economy. Perhaps capitalism can only so far at a given time. Or else Japan's local characteristics of capitalism- more cronyism, more conglomeration, face-saving hiding of problems, etc.- keeps it at its level.
It will be interesting to see if China also stagnates when it approaches the US per-capita level, or can exceed the US. China may have its own intrinsic issues. But China will rapidly close gap. And will be an interesting sight to watch.
I agree with your comments completely, however something intriguing and a bit frightening occurred to me while reading this article.
Imagine a society with wonderfully advanced and ubiquitously implemented technology that makes life easy, entertaining, and enjoyable. Now imagine that there are severe restrictions on personal liberty and privacy and that the society is kept viable by extreme taxation.
Would that society be haing too much fun to decry the unfair treatment?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Forget that.
To end the Cold War, the US didn't duke it out with the USSR using weapons - we spent them into the ground. Even at that, with the deficits involved, we darned near spent ourselves into the ground, at the same time.
Right now China is heavily dependent on exporting the US, and it's helping to fuel their growth. I would expect that within 10-20 years their own economy and consumer base will be sufficiently developed that they won't need us, any more. I've already heard (unsubstantiated) that China could absorb *every* job in the US, and still have unemployment.
IMHO, by the year 2050, China will be able to spend the US into the ground, just like we did in the 1980's with the USSR.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
They built a maglev train to Shanghai airport. Nuff said.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I've been there, and not just to the big tourist-friendly places like Beijing, but to the interior as well. Everywhere you look you see forward progress, even in the rural areas. Many of the things the article mentions aren't just for the party elite, they're widespread. Sure, it's a centralized Communist government, but in reality it has a lot in common with the type of government China has known for the past 2000 years--central authority, distribution of authority to outlying cities and provinces, and a system of reporting back to HQ how things are going in the rest of the country. Add to that the Chinese cultural emphasis on unity and harmony, and you have a system that works relatively well (at least nowadays) for them. The Chinese government wants to modernize, and they know that they must modernize to be a player on the world stage, but they want to do so in a way that will not result in discord in their culture.
But, politics aside, to make the claim that "the vast majority" of the country doesn't have access to this "technology" is ludicrous. Almost all of the examples mentioned were public technologies. Everyone can benefit from smart traffic lights, and it's true that cellphones are almost everywhere (I once saw a fellow sitting on his ancient motorized tricycle thing with a huge stack of what looked like sticks, talking on his cellphone way out in the countryside). China is awash in cybercafes, television is ubiquitous, and even the bus system actually works like a bus system is supposed to--for everyone.
The statement about per capita income is also specious, at best, since everything in China costs less than here in the US. You can (and I have) hired a car with a driver for something like $30US a day, and we wandered all over the place. Food is cheaper, rent is way cheaper, utilities are cheaper. So to try and say that because the per capita incoming is below $5000US a year is an indicator of major poverty just demonstrates some major ignorance. In China, you can definately get by on $5000US a year, and even less depending on location.
If they hold their present course it's just a matter of time (and not that long) until the Chinese will be trully able to stand with the US and Europe as an economic and political power to be reckoned with. The real question is how we're going to deal with that--as ideological adversaries, or friendly competitors.
Living under a benevolent dictatorship is not freedom.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
I am an American student, fluent enough in Swedish, working on a degree in Sweden. I can tell you as an insider that they are neither hot nor blonde--anymore. Those women went extinct in the Eighties. Right now, they are my professors and bosses--not my peers. A list of grievences:
100% dead-serious: At our student union building, we have an annual Bad Taste Party, where one dresses in bad taste, naturally. I could not tell--I honesty sat through a half-hour of our pre-party without noticing that was the theme.
In conclusion, if you are coming to Sweden to have good-looking lovers, only do so if you are a gay man--you'll save yourself a lot of disappointment.
No, it's a republic and republics arn't all they're cracked up to be. Just look at the US, for example. Bush should have been booted but the fact that American politcs has been turned into a sporting event means that the electorate collective IQ has dropped exponentially. People forget that human lives are at stake when they elect somebody who cannot own up to the fact they have really screwed up. Americans seem to have decided that the truth doesn't matter either with respect to Iraq.
As an American I see in this society a low level hatred of Muslims and general xenophobia. I see a significant group of people who believe that what makes a great civilization is people screaming "God Bless America" and running around with a flag. When the citizens of a country take their government seriously, hold it accountable, and refuse to allow themselves to be herded in to two rival camps then a Republic is a good idea. When people treat it like a game of baseball, these people no longer have any business voting. That is the point at which their government should be taken away from them.
In many ways I think China is better of then the so called "free world". The Chinese civil service, a large part of the government, is very efficient and relatively impartial. For example, I know people who have adopted children from China. In that case the trouble wasn't getting the children out of China, it was getting the children into the US. The Chinese agency handling adoption was very efficient and the path to adoption and removing the children from the country clearly laid out. The US INS does not have a clear cut set of rules on how to get an adopted child into the country. The job of aproving the children is left up to the assigned case worker and that person is under no obligation to follow any seblence of a proceedure in a given period of time. Put simply they were at the mercy of the whims of the INS, not an established legal proceeding. They are not alone in that regard as many other couples attempting the same thing have run afoul of the US INS, an institution of a so called "democracy".
Another good example comes from my own experiances in China. Visas are very easy to get and aproval can be obtained for a nominal fee in 24hrs. The reverse for Chinese can take months because of the ineptitude of the US government.
China may not have a so called "democracy" politically, but I believe this is an advantage. By not holding popular elections, nut cases like Bush are not elected. Instead stable and moderate people are put into power. Change is controlled and radical political factions are subdued. I also recognize China has had its share of nut case leaders, however these were largely reactionary due to western interference (and yes the US is partly to blame for this).
The Chinese may not have a TV in every room or a three car garage, but they are more focused than the US and have a much larger and more diverse intelligencia. You should not be so quick to treat world governments like a sporting event.
Very few Americans know much at all about China.
People THINK they do but to someone like me (i.e. a white guy who spends months at a time each year in China, is married to a Chinese woman, is well versed in China's history both recent and ancient and speaks Mandarin), listening to American folks discuss China is almost always very frustrating.
The country is not nearly as oppressive as some of you seem to think. Communism is really just a WORD over there... not an ideology... not anymore. Yes the government has it's problems and for the most part are not too well liked but daily life in China (well, for city dwelling, college educated people anyway) is little different from life here. People own pets, they don't eat them, they have cars, cell phones, high speed internet, live (and thus, not so controlled by the government) news on TV, they go shopping, walk in the park, meet friends for coffee, hit the clubs on Friday and Saturday night or go see a soccer match, whatever.
Many places in China would strike the most ardent neo-conservative as the very height of capitalism. Contrary to what one person posted you CAN talk about/criticise/make fun of the government. I have talked with so very many Chinese about their government and they are usually quite frank. No one is hiding behind their hand whispering, no one is "disappeared". Last time I was there (May-August 2004) there were even some fairly large labor protests in a nortern city. Protests that were not crushed, put down, blocked. We just don't hear about this sort of stuff in the states. Viewed objectively (my wife, a professor of communications, has done much research in the area of media coverage between China and the USA), our government's opinions regarding China, the average citizens beliefs on China and the stories we get about China from our media leave us with a general impression that is, quite simply, wrong and negatively biased.Statistically about equal to the bias you would find in the Chinese press about the USA.
Technologically, China IS rapidly pulling ahead of the U.S.A. in many areas (cell phone technology and IT in particular) and China has it's "Microsofts" waiting in the wings eyeing the world market (the Lenovo Group (formerly known as Legend Group) in particular). Bottom line is, most Americans don't know enough about China to make any sort of accurate commentary regarding it. Yes there are many problems in China and with it's government but it is much closer to life here (once again, in the cities, not the countryside) than you probably think.
Sorry. With paragraphing:
I love how someone can write an article like this, and everyone in the States who's never been to China takes it all as gospel. I'm not really criticizing it, since the article is mostly accurate in my experience, but there're some things that have to be seen in context. (Once again, let me preface by saying I'm an American living in Shanghai, and have been living in China for over 3 years now.)
1. Cellphones - No annoying contracts, that's true. But cell phones are EXPENSIVE. In America, we're used to paying between $0 and $150 for a cell phone. The cheapest, oldest, black-and-white cell phone here is $100 because of that freedom from contracts. I've always been amazed that the Chinese, despite their much lower income, probably outspend Americans on cell phones by 3:1.
3. Transit debit cards - I love these things, and I don't understand why it hasn't rated an article in itself on slashdot. Here's an example of one city that is slowly moving away from cash, and no one even notices. The transportation cards are incredibly convenient, work on almost all public transportation, all taxis, and even quite a lot of convenience stores and McDonalds. I wish they had a set monthly 'unlimited' transit option, but... They are quite cool.
5. Anti-theft slipcovers - Only in nice restaurants, where you're probably not that worried about thieves, anyway. Also points to how much petty theft there is in this country. My girlfriend's purse was stolen from the chair next to her last week.
6. Daily Banking - Yeah. I love being able to visit the bank and post offices on any day of the week. You don't appreciate it until you have it.
7. Wireless service bells - I've never seen these before in my life. Maybe only in Beijing? Service in restaurants here is far worse than in America. The waitresses all use a patented method of surveying a room while carefully ignoring anyone who wants their attention. It takes forever to get something you need, and no waitress EVER asks you if you're okay, or if you need anything.
The writer mentioned flat-screen video on buses. This is slowly killing me, I swear. Every time you take a bus, it's a constant barrage of advertising from the moment you step on to the moment you step off. Forget about listening to your own music - whatever comes through your headphones is drowned out by the bus's speaker. Forget about reading a book - it's pretty tough to concentrate while someone's shouting at you to buy beef jerky. This would, I hope, be considered unacceptable in America, and I wish it were the same here.
One last thing, that the article didn't mention - I don't understand why the air conditioner technology here in China is so much better than in America. While Americans still fill one window with an air conditioner, they mount the machine on the wall outside, with a tube that comes in, leading to an electronically-controlled vent mounted near the ceiling. Everyone's air conditioner has a remote control, and it leaves the window open.
The article also didn't mention the complete lack of indoor central heating in most of China. They've got it in the north, where it snows every year, but not here in Shanghai, even though it's frequently below 0C in the winter. I'd give up expensive cell phones, daily banking, chair slipcovers, parking guides, traffic lights with timers, and everything else mentioned here for WARM HOMES in the winter.
tek.