China Aims To Move Up the Food Chain

krou notes reporting in the Christian Science Monitor that the current economic crisis is helping China's push into higher-end manufacturing by shaking out low-profit companies. The hope is that, instead of just assembling iPods, Chinese companies will be able to invent the next big thing instead. In this move China is following the well-worn path taken by Japan and the Asian tigers before it. "Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission announced revised plans to transform Guangdong and neighboring Hong Kong and Macau into a 'significant innovation center' by 2020. One hundred R&D labs will be set up over the next three years. By 2012, per-capita output in the region should jump 50 percent from 2007, to 80,000 yuan ($11,700). And by 2020, the study predicts, 30 percent of all industrial output should come from high-tech manufacturing."

Comments

great

[tritonman]

this makes me happy that I'm learning mandarin. å好ä

Re:great

[mikael]

From the font I am using, it looks you are learning Swedish shorthand...

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, slashdot isn't so good at accepting unicode I guess.

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all greek to me!

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

From the font I am using, it looks you are learning Swedish shorthand...

That doesn't look like Swedish shorthand, this does:

Bork Bork Bork Bork, Bork Bork Bork Bork!

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Bakom brÃdbutiken bodde Baskerbosses bÃ¥da brÃder, brÃderna Basker. BrÃdernas bÃ¥da brÃdade beundrarinnor brukade besviket begagna brÃdbutikens bullar. Bullarna bakade Baskerbosses bas, Bagarbasse. Baskerbosse bodde bredvid brÃdbutikens blÃ¥ byggnad. Baskerbosses brÃders brÃdade beundrarinnor bodde bÃ¥da bortom bergen, besynnerligt billigt bredvid Biffbertils bastanta baconbod.

ByxbeklÃdd blott baktill beslÃt Baskerbosse besÃka Biffbertils baconbod. Bilen brummade bort bredvid belgiska bananbolagets blÃ¥ byggnad. Bort bortom B-lagets bisarra basarer, bort bortom brottarnas bÃkiga bryggor. Betongen brusade bredvid bilen. BehÃrskat bromsade Baskerbosse bakom bankbudets beigea buss. Bankbudet betraktade Baskerbosse blygt. Baskerbosse besvarade Bankbudets blick. Bakom balkongbrokaden beskÃ¥dade bÃ¥da beundrarinnorna besÃket. Baskerbosse bar buttert bort bilen bakom Biffbertils baconbod.

Bland bilvraken bakom baconboden brukade Biffbertil bygga billiga bidéer. Braket blev bedÃvande, "BÃnd bort Bentleyn, bÃnd bort Bentleyn", brÃlade Baskerbosse besatt. Bankbudet bajsade baken brun. BÃ¥da beundrarinnorna bantade bort brÃsten. Bagarbasse bakade bredare bullar. Baskerbosse brottade bort bilvraken, bÃjde bak bidéerna, bankade Biffbertils brevlÃ¥da bucklig, bromsade bestÃrt. Beskedet blottades bakom brevlÃ¥dan: Biffbertil bortrest. Bankbudet blev buddhist.

BÃ¥da beundrarinnorna bÃrjade betala besynnerliga bankgiroblanketter betrÃffande betal-TV:s bredare basutbud. Baskerbosses beklagliga belÃgenhet bekymrade blott bredvidboende Becks bortskÃmda, bleka boxer.

bara ben

youtube video

Re:great

[cyberon22]

Stick with it. The fact that you've already started puts you seriously ahead of the game.

At risk of sounding spammish, I'm running a company from Beijing that specializes in online Chinese learning at http://popupchinese.com. We are pretty exposed to conditions in the local market and are still seeing a lot of growth in small and mid-sized businesses in northern China. These are the smart innovative companies. In contrast, it's the export-oriented manufacturing sector down south that are having a really hard time.

The job market is definitely a lot softer in Beijing than it used to be, but the problems are mostly hitting people who are monolingual and unskilled. Chinese university graduates are having an especially really rough time these days (you can get a fulltime hire for about $500 a month). People who are genuinely fluent are doing pretty well. We're certainly hiring (on the off chance anyone reading is fluent in mandarin or cantonese and a native english speaker and is looking for work in Beijing please get in touch).

Re:great

[endikos]

A møøse bit my sister once...

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Was she ok?

Re:great

[geekoid]

Don't waste your time.

Hell, there are so many dialect that chines from different Providences can not communicate to each other using 'mandarin'. Care to guess what language they use? yep English.

English is the easiest language to communicate it.
You can share ideas, exchange information with an high degree of accuracy and you don't have to conform t all the rules to do so.

It's a bitch if you are trying to implement all the rules and be grammatically perfect. I argue that it's not possible to be grammatically perfect, on perfect enough to get by the most proficient reader at that time. A bit like Dragon Poker.

Re:great

[Theoboley]

Thinks you should take Michael Phelps' advice and smoke do..err.... buy rosetta stone.

Re:great

[LilGuy]

Then how do you explain the terrible english speaking skills of all my math teachers and co-workers in university? If they all communicate with each other in English, you would think they'd have at least a decent grasp of the language before they made it to the US... no?

Re:great

[Mikkeles]

Moving up the food chain; hmmm, what's next above melamine? polyvinyl chloride?

Re:great

[M. Baranczak]

I argue that it's not possible to be grammatically perfect

You don't say.

Re:great

[MrCrassic]

Mod this up.

Just today, I had my Data Structures teacher, who speaks passable English, replaced with some random guy that could not, for the life of him, hack out an English sentence clearly or coherently. First time I had to leave a core class like that early; I had other important things to try and take care of.

One thing is for certain; most of them have GREAT writing skills.

Re:great

[Spleen]

I often said my Calc teacher in college spoke 7 languages, but not a damn one of them was english.

Re:great

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The beginning of your video on your page reminds me of a Chinese version of that Cold Play hit. You know the one, "Crocks" I think it's called.

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Question is: Was the mÃÃse ok, after that?

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Then those manufacturing jobs can come back to United States.

Re:Good

[lgw]

Then those manufacturing jobs can come back to United States.

China has for decades been losing manufacturing jobs to robots faster than the US hase been losing manufacturing jobs to China. Any job that can be easily automated, from manufacturing to paper-pushing, will be. Those jobs are toast. There's no point in whining when they move to someone who's willing to work cheaper than a robot (or shell script) - those simply aren't jobs for humans in the long run.

This is *not* a zero sum game, nor a race to the bottom. If every human in the world were working efficiently (ie.e, not do work robots can do) we would be producing such an amazing amount of goods and services that everyone could have a comfortable lifestyle, despite uneven distribution of wealth. Forcing goods that could be made by robots to be made by humans, or otherwise lowering the efficiency of the total human economic output, only means less stuff to go around.

Re:Good

[genner]

Then those manufacturing jobs can come back to United States.

China has for decades been losing manufacturing jobs to robots faster than the US hase been losing manufacturing jobs to China. Any job that can be easily automated, from manufacturing to paper-pushing, will be. Those jobs are toast. There's no point in whining when they move to someone who's willing to work cheaper than a robot (or shell script) - those simply aren't jobs for humans in the long run.

This is *not* a zero sum game, nor a race to the bottom. If every human in the world were working efficiently (ie.e, not do work robots can do) we would be producing such an amazing amount of goods and services that everyone could have a comfortable lifestyle, despite uneven distribution of wealth. Forcing goods that could be made by robots to be made by humans, or otherwise lowering the efficiency of the total human economic output, only means less stuff to go around.

It doesn't matter if you have an amazing amount of goods if large percentage of the population is unemployed.

Re:Good

[Pervaricator General]

Presumably, the cost of living would decrease and people who, historically, had to work to help society reach that point would then be relieved of that need by lack of economic pressure: a parent could stay home with children in more families, for example.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're overlooking the issue of changing careers.

Re:Good

[lgw]

If only one person per family is employed, but that wage pays for everything a family needs to live and a number of luxuries, then the system works. Or, better, if you can earn what you need working 10 hours a week, there will be *far* more jobs.

The point of an economic system isn't to provide eveyone with a job, or with money, but to produce and distribute the goods and services that people want and need. Forcing people to work at some job to earn their keep works better than any alternative we've tried thus far, for social and psychological more than economic reasons, but that doesn't mean everyone working 60+ hours a week. Short work weeks are a *good* thing. One parent raising the kids full time is a *good* thing.

Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity. Pointless make-work jobs are a bug, not a feature.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

China has for decades been losing manufacturing jobs to robots faster than the US has been losing manufacturing jobs to China

You are correct. Headcounts in manufacturing have been declining for decades. If anything, moving manufacturing to China has stalled that trend (they are not as keen to automate, since the labor differential is so great).

This is *not* a zero sum game, nor a race to the bottom. If every human in the world were working efficiently (ie.e, not do work robots can do) we would be producing such an amazing amount of goods and services that everyone could have a comfortable lifestyle, despite uneven distribution of wealth.

Uh, no. If only for the fact that the entire basis of capitalism is scarcity. Money, food, energy, water...All of these are scarce. Capitalism is a means of determining who gets what by setting a price on those commodities and then making sure that those who are willing to cough up that price get them. So, it is, in fact, a zero sum game.

Forcing goods that could be made by robots to be made by humans, or otherwise lowering the efficiency of the total human economic output, only means less stuff to go around.

Wrong again. It doesn't matter who (or what makes it) there will always be less stuff than required to go around -- it's the whole point of the economic system we live in.

If you miss the point about scarcity, you end up sounding like a socialist.

Re:Good

[LilGuy]

I believe you're correct. It's inevitable that companies will automate as much as possible. It's the only way to make a profit once someone else does it.

The way to go for jobs will be dealing with information and manipulating it, from the near future onward.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity. Pointless make-work jobs are a bug, not a feature.

What the f--k are you smoking and where can I get some?

If you eliminate scarcity, then why should anyone work? For the benefit of society? If you eliminate scarcity, the entire economic system collapses. I mean, really, good luck, but someone else already tried that.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

GP talked about eliminating scarcity not being in denial about it. If robots do (almost) everything, then no one needs to work.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you eliminate scarcity, the entire economic system collapses.

Good! If no one is in want, and no one is overworked, who cares which economic system is running things? A system that successful could not be totalitarian anyway, because people with that much leisure time would demand political freedoms -- and get them.

mean, really, good luck, but someone else already tried that.

The Soviet Union did not eliminate scarcity. If it did, it would still exist -- and in fact, the whole world would be emulating it.

Re:Good

[HornWumpus]

Scarcity is an interesting word.

Is it better to have a scarcity of HDTVs or scarcity of food 'driving' you to work? (Need: a want that your neighbor already has.) I've got a scarcity of Ariel Atom 500s myself.

You are correct about the implausibility of completely eliminating scarcity.

That said we have in the developed world effectively eliminated scarcity of staple foods. If you are not eating in America it is not because there is no food you can afford (you can get free food at the bottom). We have done this by producing mass quantities of basic food. We spend billions on obesity related free health care for 'poor' people. Hint: In Africa you can be poor or fat, not both. If you starve in America it's because you are batshit nuts and won't take free food.

You are incorrect about capitalism only setting price. High prices produce increased supply and decreased demand.

If you don't get the point about high prices producing more of a commodity you end up sounding like a Malthusian.

Capitalism's great strength is in automatically allocating resources efficiently threw the mechanism of price/supply/demand.

Capitalism doesn't fall flat when a supply curve is very flat (lots of stuff available for cheep). It just uses a lot of the stuff, but you can only eat so many potatoes.

No matter what level we bring 'standard of living' there will always be scarcity of things like land, quality artistic objects etc. Capitalism has no expiration date. It is wired into human nature, it was not invented it was discovered, just like physics.

Re:Good

[Dreadneck]

It doesn't matter if you have an amazing amount of goods if large percentage of the population is unemployed.

No worries. Excess population is dealt with easily enough with the time honored, tried and tested tools of war, famine, pestilence and death.

Our dear leaders have always known how to deal with excess population, just as they have long known that an unavoidable side effect of industrialization and the replacement of human labor with machine labor is a permanent underclass of the unemployed.

Fancy another world war, anyone?

Re:Good

[khallow]

Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity.

That isn't a useful "ultimate" goal for two reasons: 1) scarcity cannot be eliminated, 2) it's not that interesting to need less. I know some people particularly transhumanists and singularitarians often believe in the possibility of some "post-scarcity" world. Even resources that are "too cheap to meter" are still scarce. It still is a finite resource and demand can still consume the resource.

Even a vast reduction in the cost of resources doesn't sufficiently cover the needs of intelligent beings. Having every resource available for free doesn't mean I live forever or that I'm happy or satisfied with my life.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

t is impossible to eliminate scarcity. The more stuff that is produced, the more humans will breed.

Re:Good

[Captain Nitpick]

Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity. Pointless make-work jobs are a bug, not a feature.

What the f--k are you smoking and where can I get some?

If you eliminate scarcity, then why should anyone work? For the benefit of society? If you eliminate scarcity, the entire economic system collapses. I mean, really, good luck, but someone else already tried that.

You're kidding, right? Shortages and rationing are the manifestation of scarcity, not its absence.

I get the impression that you're not really grasping the idea of a world with no scarcity. It doesn't exist, but maybe it could.

If you successfully eliminate scarcity the economic system becomes largely irrelevant. If there is no scarcity in food production, there is no reason to stop every man, woman, and child from walking home with as much steak as they can carry. If there is no scarcity in automobile production, everyone can drive a Maserati. In a post-scarcity world, supply is essentially infinite, thus the price is zero.

Re:Good

[lgw]

If you eliminate scarcity, then why should anyone work? For the benefit of society?

Scarcity in manufactured goods is one thing (this thread sarted about manufacturing jobs). There's stil the logistics of distribution (people still starve, even though the world grows plenty of food for all, mostly for political reasons). Plus, there's only so much beachfront property - some "wants" will always be scarce, so you need some sort of economy to sort that out.

Re:Good

[drsquare]

If only one person per family is employed, but that wage pays for everything a family needs to live and a number of luxuries, then the system works. Or, better, if you can earn what you need working 10 hours a week, there will be *far* more jobs.

Until people realise that if they work 40 hours a week, then they can buy four times as much stuff. And with four times the salaries, the prices of goods and property inflate, so people working 10 hours a week can't afford it.

Such a system only works if everyone is forced to only work 10 hours a week.

Re:Good

[lgw]

Scarcity of manufactured goods can be eliminated (this started as a thread about manufacturing jobs - I think an economy with 0 of those still works). No matter how much money you have, you can only drink so many beers a day. Other things are inherently scarce - attractive women who want to sleep with me particularly so.

Re:Good

[lgw]

How many cars can you drive? How many houses do you need (if you can't affford servents). How many TVs? How much beer can you drink?

Eventually, enough is enough. "Stuff" has no value as a status symbol when it's free (the upper class in most cultures demonstrate taste, not purchasing power, in their possesions). There's no point in hoarding when there's no prospect of scarcity.

Sure, poeple wil work 40 hours a week, or more, to get that which *is* scarce, but that won't necessarily lead to inflation in the price of beer, just in the price of beachfront property.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

GP talked about eliminating scarcity not being in denial about it. If robots do (almost) everything, then no one needs to work.

"imagine there's no money its easy if you try, no greenbacks below us above us only pie" John Lennon and Captain James T KIrk

Re:Good

[lgw]

Many jobs "dealing with information and manipulating it" are also in a race to the bottom, as they can *also* be automated, but outsourcing is cheaper right now, such as processing medical records. I think "creating content others want" will always be the way to go for jobs, whether telling new stories, writing new software, or doing things so that others can vicariously do them through you (sports star, porn star, adventurer, etc).

Re:Good

[patro]

Any job that can be easily automated, from manufacturing to paper-pushing, will be. Those jobs are toast.

The problem is there are lots of uneducated people on the planet. What will they do? Begging on the streets?

You can't have someone doing simple work to invent iPhones in a short time, so we have a mass of people who won't have a job, because of robots.

What will happen to them?

Re:Good

[lgw]

They will hold service jobs? Every software job that moves to India creates a half dozen service jobs along with it. There's very little manufacturing in India, but a great many people now have jobs. Manufacturing jobs were the right answer for the 19th century. Today, not so much.

Re:Good

[vrai]

How much beer can you brew? Beer requires hops, which requires arable land in the correct climate; these are finite resources and beer producers will be in competition with innumerable producers of other goods for the same resources.

If beer consumption dramatically increased with the reduction in working hours (which is a pretty safe bet in many countries) then:

• The supply of beer remains the same, but the rise in demand means that prices will rise. You could cap the price by law, but that would simply result in massive beer shortage which in Britain, Ireland, Holland and Germany at least would lead to bloody revolution in about a day. You could subsidise the beer prices, but that would either force up inflation, making everyone poorer (if the Government simply printed money); or reduce overall incomes, making everyone poorer (if tax were increased).
• The supply of beer increases, but this requires more land be purchased by the beer manufacturers (which costs money) and will leave less land for the producers of other goods (reducing their supply and forcing up prices).

Everything of value is scarce. There is a finite amount of any given natural resource available to us and everything uses natural resources to some extent. You could try to ameliorate the issue by having some central authority distribute the resources available, but the vast complexity of even a small economy means that it's a wildly inefficient process. The alternative is to allow a market to determine the values and accept that people who like stuff will work longer hours, increase demand and drive up prices.

Either that or we can just wait until Earth is Contacted.

Re:Good

[teh kurisu]

Such a system only works if everyone is forced to only work 10 hours a week.

Along the lines of the European Working Time Directive?

Whether or not it causes more problems than it solves is debatable. The problems that it causes certainly get a lot of publicity.

Re:Good

[powerlord]

There's stil the logistics of distribution (people still starve, even though the world grows plenty of food for all, mostly for political reasons). Plus, there's only so much beachfront property - some "wants" will always be scarce, so you need some sort of economy to sort that out.

As long as we're discussing "what if":

Logistics distribution could also (theoretically) be automated, and as for "there's only so much beachfront property" only works if the population is so large that it can't fit into the available "scarce" resource. We could also reduce the population back to a couple of hundred thousand populating the planet, with all their wants cared for through automated technology.

Of course at that point we're closer to Isaac Asimov's Solaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria) or the way the Earth is at the opening of John RIngo's The Council Wars series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Council_Wars#Background).

Re:Good

[porcorosso]

Such a system only works if everyone is forced to only work 10 hours a week.

Perhaps altering the social norms so that this type of behavior (collecting) is unacceptable. We do the opposite now and that seems to be effective for producing a country of people who only want more.

Perhaps create an environment where mastery of an art or skill (something that takes time, not stuff) is highly desired and respected.

I'd live there ...

Re:Good

[Reservoir Penguin]

Do you know what capitalism is? (before you attempt to answer make sure you understand that trade and even money is not nearly the same as capitalism) Do you really believe that people 50 thousand years ago lived in a capitalist society? Then how can our brains be wired for capitalism? In you opinion is it a recent evolutionary development?

Re:Good

[ultranova]

If you eliminate scarcity, then why should anyone work? For the benefit of society? If you eliminate scarcity, the entire economic system collapses. I mean, really, good luck, but someone else already tried that.

If you eliminate scarcity, why should anyone work? Economy is about managing resources; if resources are infinite, why would they need to be managed? If something is as ubiquitous as the air you breath, why would there be economy around it? The purpose of work is to produce those resources in the first place, after all.

That said, even in a world with no material scarcity, people would still work, judging by the existence of websites like http://rule34.paheal.net/, http://www.fanfiction.net/ or http://www.wikipedia.org/. They'd simply do that for fun and prestige, rather than as a necessity of survival as currently.

In any case, I personally find the whole post-scarcity world a very unlikely prospect. It would remove the elite's power over those less rich than themselves, after all, so if someone comes up with a universal replicator, they'll stop it... because it can be used to make bombs! Yes! That's it! It must be stopped to fight the terrorists!

Re:Good

[drsquare]

That legislation is toothless.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You are incorrect about capitalism only setting price. High prices produce increased supply and decreased demand.

Something about the laws of physics here...Like, say, when there's no more oil (though presumably people were smart enough to shift money into the development of something that won't run out) or the plants just won't grow (much more of a problem).

If you don't get the point about high prices producing more of a commodity you end up sounding like a Malthusian.

You know, the money is not the resource. If there is none to be had, because people won't sell it to you, because they can't afford to allow you to have it, all the money in the world won't change that. The model is not the economy. I suppose, in mathematical terms, reducing the demand is equivalent to increasing the supply but it doesn't do anything to increase the distribution of that resource.

And congratulations. You are just as much of an ideologue as a Pol Pot cadre. Enjoy your fantasy land.

Re:Good

[lgw]

There's *plenty* of land to produce all the hops needed for all the beer that 10 billion people could drink.

Sure, with an infinite population everything is scarce, but that's not reality. The Earth is plenty big for the likely peak population. Of course, there will always be "local" scarcity as fashions change faster than manufacturing can keep up, and always be a few tings which remain scarce, but I never poprosed a society with no economy - just a society with no manufacturing jobs.

Marx thought that the vast majority of people would always be manufacturing workers, farmers, or soldiers, while few would ever be owners. Today that majority of Americas own stock in companies, and the total set of manufacturing workers, farmers, and soldiers is a dwindling minority. Technology changes societies.

Re:Good

[khallow]

Scarcity of manufactured goods can be eliminated.

As long as the underlying resources are scarce, the manufactured good will be as well. Otherwise, I could always order a zillion widgets for free and recycle them for the nonfree resources they contain.

No matter how much money you have, you can only drink so many beers a day.

I can recycle beer for fertilizer and water. Both are scarce resources.

Good Going, America!

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonalds made your bread.
The Chinese factories build your circuses.

You've lost everything and don't even see it. Enjoy American Idol!

innovation starts now

[wardk]

I look forward to the new and inventive ways to hide toxins in consumer products.

Re:innovation starts now

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. They can't even get over the "no lead in the toys" hump and now they think they're going to innovate.

Hint: they're not the Japanese. Aside from residing in Asia and have a trade surplus with us they have few other similarities.

I'll be impressed when they quit screwing up their environment and rendering entire cities uninhabitable.

Re:innovation starts now

[tritonman]

how about ipods made of lead?

Re:innovation starts now

[tchiwam]

how about ipods made of lead?

Improvement to bricked ipods used as door stop ?

Re:innovation starts now

[electrosoccertux]

how about ipods made of lead?

Depends, can I change the battery?

Re:innovation starts now

[grub]

how about ipods made of lead?

That's called the "Zune".

Re:innovation starts now

[cjb658]

Bullshit, every toy made in the 50s to, what, the 70s had lead in it. Our parents somehow survived.

Re:innovation starts now

[gnick]

I'll be impressed when they quit screwing up their environment and rendering entire cities uninhabitable.

Why would they stop rendering cities inhabitable when it's profitable (at least short-term) and there are so many other cities that they can grab with impunity? You just have to think outside the box a little.

Re:innovation starts now

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, every toy made in the 50s to, what, the 70s had lead in it. Our parents somehow survived.

"The U.S. incurs $43.4 billion annually in the costs of all pediatric environmental disease, with childhood lead poisoning alone accounting for the vast majority of it." http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/lead/pbwhere_found2.html

Re:innovation starts now

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, every toy made in the 50s to, what, the 70s had lead in it. Our parents somehow survived.

Of course lead poisoning can mess you up in a lot of ways without killing you, and most of them were known long before the 1950's.

Re:innovation starts now

[Patch86]

You know that lead poisoning makes people go crazy, right?

That might explain an awful lot. When was Bush born again?

Re:innovation starts now

[LordNimon]

What a ridiculous argument. Obviously, not all people survived, and so those people didn't become parents.

Re:innovation starts now

[EggyToast]

Lead affects cognitive ability, which perfectly explains why our parents have such a hard time with computers.

Re:innovation starts now

[Anonymous Coward]

Your parents grew up in the '50s? Damn whippersnapper!

Re:innovation starts now

[davester666]

Yes. But their parents were willing to tell them "No, don't do that".

Today's parents aren't into doing that so much.

Re:innovation starts now

[couchslug]

"Our parents somehow survived."

I didn't survive, you insensitive clod!

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Culture

[B5_geek]

How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")?

I understand it's a nurture vs nature argument, HUMAN nature demands creative thinking. Eastern culture/nurture expects more a more 'repressed' behaviour.

How many generations of Chinese have been born into that way of thinking? Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not all Chinese are born into that way of thinking.

Their parents are probably Party members, though.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan is also a culture on conformity. Look at where they are now.

In fact, the same could be said about us and our "religious culture." Take off your myopic generalizations on different cultures.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

What about China's total (apparently) lack of the concept of intellectual property? Why use resources to invent when someone down the street will just start copying your product tomorrow?

Re:Culture

[nobodylocalhost]

This is nonsense. Answer me this, How did China invent paper, compass, press printing, and gunpowder then? How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then? Just because China repressed individuality doesn't equate to repressing innovation. In fact there are many many innovations in China most of us probably never even heard of. The only problem is China hasn't been applying its innovative power toward the right path. People innovate to copy the look and feel of others product, they also innovate to break any sort of protection and drm schemes that we have in our products. This is really a legal policy issue. People are not properly motivated to innovate and create new products, better products. Many local Chinese business operate on the idea where they just have to copy what is popular. This in term cuts down their operating cost because the basis of the idea already exist and the marketing has already been done. The government should give more incentive for entirely novel innovations, and that is how China can reinvent itself and become a real top-tier player in the world.

Re:Culture

[Gat0r30y]

I get what you are saying, but the Chinese society has had a duality in their thought for quite a while. Yes there is the Confucian style of thought, primarily of use in government and procedure where you shouldn't think for yourself but merely follow the rules all the time. And there is the more Taoist style of thought where you can be free to think for yourself and innovate as you see fit.
As for this:
Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?
I would be a little more concerned about when they killed everyone with a college education (or sent them for "re-education through labor") than them having been "bred-out" of the population.

Re:Culture

[jbeaupre]

I doubt it has been bred out. But your point that China does have some cultural issues may be relevant. Oversimplifying and stereotyping, America did well by cultivating a culture of challenging the status quo (i.e. we're a bit wacky, and have made good use of it). Germany and Japan have done well by building on a culture of craftsmanship / perfectionism (e.g. beer purity laws and the tea ceremony). China still has a Confucian bent which instills deference to authority and tradition. Good in some situations, but poor at fostering innovation.

Re:Culture

[mako1138]

No, I think that's a stereotype. For instance, look at the Amazon reviews for Richard Nisbett's The Geography of Thought, a book that purports to show different ways of thinking between East and West.
http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Thought-Asians-Westerners-Differently/dp/0743255356/

Frankly, I'm worried that I'm going to be upstaged by all the smart people in China who are working a lot harder than I am.

Re:Culture

[superpulpsicle]

US agrees with China's desire to innovate for that reason alone. That China never respected people's copyrights. Whatever China makes, US will just steal. And there ain't nothin to be done about it.

Re:Culture

[sesshomaru]

How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")?

Yes, much like those repressed, authoritarian Germans, I don't think we'll ever have to worry about innovation coming from such societies.

Re:Culture

[_Sprocket_]

Didn't all these things happen before the Cultural Revolution?

Re:Culture

[coastwalker]

I'm not sure that western culture can argue from a position of strength at the moment, seeing as most of our advertising revenue is spent on persuading people to take up lifestyle brands. I'm not sure that we have many individuals left under the age of 40. I'm throwing this out as a challenge of course, but I'm seeing huge pressure for rather drone like conformity being expressed in politics as well as the commercial sphere.

It doesn't take very many creative types to grab hold of the rudder and steer the ship - just look at the impact of the iPhone - or the Walkman cassette player for that matter from another society formerly regarded as too conformist to change the world. The creatives in China have had access to a western lifestyle for more than a decade now and I predict that its not going to be long before interesting new things start flooding out in a very visible way.

Re:Culture

[RoFLKOPTr]

How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")?

By constructing government-mandated R&D centers and forcing people to start innovating.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

The Japanese at least respect their own kind; the Chinese are happy to exploit everyone. That makes then too American for America to like it.

Re:Culture

[sesshomaru]

Yes, but after we've stolen the innovations, and we send them back to Chinese factories to build our stolen Chinese designs, won't there be a problem?

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you go and tell the japanese, koreans and taiwanese that they aren't bred for innovation because they all had confucian societies.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

How can one achieve innovation without free thinking?
This is the difference between Japan, Taiwan, Korea vs China.

Re:Culture

[nobodylocalhost]

Wait, what?! You are not making sense. Culture revolution alone doesn't qualify crowning "historically repressing individualism" to China in GP's statements. And since when did people copied products in Culture revolution?

Re:Culture

[HungWeiLo]

Here's an interesting anecdote - Buick.

There are many interesting articles and image galleries about the models that Buick designs, manufactures, and sells exclusively in China and other parts of east Asia. These Buick models have received endless praise from the auto industry, and might have saved GM from their predicaments in the U.S. if perhaps they had decided to sell some of these models in the U.S.

According to my artist friend, China is the emerging market in modern expressionist art - the sort of stuff that doesn't flourish that much in a restrictive, conformist society.

Re:Culture

[kabocox]

How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")? ...
How many generations of Chinese have been born into that way of thinking? Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?

Oh, you were referring to China. I thought that you were referring to the US and for what passes for our entire public education system. It seems that we've been leaning heavily on the primary schooling of other countries for some of our best new immigrates. If we were so great, why does it seem like every other educational system in the world is better than ours except for maybe our R&D university system. (Heck, that's where we make the biggest use of foreign educated folks!)

Saying that we are free thinking is silly. The US has historically repressed individuality. The Pilgrims and Quakers didn't come over here because they wanted their children to be free thinking individuals. Our system has encouraged farm workers and factory workers, but discouraged anyone of being an inventor. Those are the weird folks.

China if anything has a history of valuing the types of folks that we routinely dislike. O.k. they have a stricter general system, but they do ID certain types and pool them all together sooner than we do. You can be creative as much as you want within your field, but every where else you need to conform. That's the same general rules as the US. If you don't conform to the surrounding rules, the general population will arrange the rules, laws, mores, and police to where you'll be arrested and jailed sooner or later.

Re:Culture

[Octavian20]

Until some official interprets your "modern expressionist art" as a criticism of the government . . . then you are in for some education until you see the error of your ways and learn to color inside the lines.

Re:Culture

[nurb432]

WHen you are ordered to think outside the box or risk having your entire family wiped off the planet, you think outside the box.

Re:Culture

[Kelbear]

The dominant culture has not been around so long that creativity could have been bred out of the population, and despite attempts to force out foreign influence, they cannot claim the level of success necessary to have eliminated creativity from all individuals. Further, this is assuming that the culture itself is capable of repressing innovation in an individual.

China is big, really @#%^ing big. Among that immense population you can find a chinese person to fit virtually any description. There is too much diversity to make such a specific claim about them. Americans aren't all packing a gun in one pocket and a bible in the other.

I think one of the biggest problems they will face is not a lack of creative talent, but the "braindrain" drawing these individuals to the west instead of staying and developing their ventures in China.

Re:Culture

[Comatose51]

Conversely, you can say that in Western culture, jocks and athletes are favored over nerds in courtship and mating that by now all the intelligence have been bred out...

It's a silly, unsubstantiated, and stereotypical way of characterizing something as complex as a society or country. Your conclusion needs something more substantial than stereotypes.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nonsense. Answer me this, How did China invent paper, compass, press printing, and gunpowder then? How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then?

That was like, what, a thousand years ago?

I'm not saying that the Chinese can't be innovative, but I don't think using examples from over a thousand years ago proves your point.

The Japanese are also very intelligent, but are much, much better at improving existing technology than "thinking outside the box" innovation.

Re:Culture

[julienthjamminjabber]

Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?

Thanks, Lysenko Jr. I think they are just glad they are not from Kentucky.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our dear leader requires you to innovate. NOW!!"

Re:Culture

[olddotter]

Most people will read this sentence and say it contradicts the rest of your argument. "Many local Chinese business operate on the idea where they just have to copy what is popular."

Until they develop their own new products, people will not believe in the ability to innovate. Of course Microsoft said the same of FOSS.

Re:Culture

[UnknowingFool]

How many generations of Chinese have been born into that way of thinking? Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?

China has changed a lot since Nixon. The current generation of young Chinese are more self-centered than previous generations. It is called the Little Emperor Syndrome. It comes as a byproduct of the one-child policy in urban areas. Since couples can now have one child, they tend to lavish their attention on one child. More often than not these children are spoiled and filled with self-entitlement as they are their parents only hope for prosperity in the future. Coupled with China's mixed economy of communism and capitalism, ambition is rewarded these days.

Re:Culture

[Lord Ender]

I think the point he is trying to make is that free markets and free speech tend to promote innovation, while government oppression tends to do the opposite.

He overstates his case--of course China could innovate, even under its current dictatorship. But all other things being equal, the advantage will remain with the West in the innovation department.

Re:Culture

[dtolman]

These are all wonderful inventions - and China should be proud of them. But remember that Zheng He's fleet and charts were burned after he died, and China turned its back on the world. What great inventions and innovations have come from China since the decline of the Ming?

The past 500 years have been an era of stagnation for China. Perhaps things are not as visibly bad as they were 100 years ago, but I see little proof that it is entering a new age of innovation.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

The tea ceremony is from China.

Re:Culture

[PingPongBoy]

People are not properly motivated to innovate and create new products, better products

A worldwide malaise. So many products have already been invented to cover every niche of desire that what people really need is a neighborhood warehouse to share really-not-that-much-used-but-I-really-like-it-if-it's-available-when-I-need-it stuff. Theoretically, it would be a lot greener if there were just one or two lawnmowers per cul-de-sac instead of a dozen.

Even the new stuff that I yearn to buy within 2006-2010 (I've been waiting patiently and taking advantage of sales) has been invented, and it's just a matter of improving the manufacturing to the point where it's affordable.

It's as though computing power needs to take a quantum leap in order to make must-have technology such as human-class voice recognition or natural language understanding feasible for mass consumption. The risk versus reward for innovating along such lines is difficult to justify on current platforms.

Re:Culture

[Loosifur]

I don't think that's really an accurate characterization of Chinese history, honestly. Typically, and I'm talking about ancient China right up to the present, ruling governments have had no problem with innovation and individuality so long as those traits didn't manifest themselves as rebellion. The exception that jumps to mind might be the Cultural Revolution, but that was a pretty chaotic period and not a representative example. And east Asian cultures also value individuality and innovation, provided those qualities don't trump loyalty or filial piety. After all, innovators and risk-takers who are successful achieve things that reflect favorably on their families.

Re:Culture

[GooberToo]

Why is this modded, "Flamebait"? His the parent's post is correct. The gp post is iffy at best.

I'm going to assume the moderator was ignorant of the Cultural Revolution rather than just being spiteful.

Also, saying the Chinese invented the compass is about as accurate as saying the Greeks invented the steam engine. While technically true, in both cases they were clueless as to what they had discovered or how to leverage it. In the Greek's case, the invention went completely under developed. In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted it for navigation and taught the Chinese to use it for something other than Chi lines and harmony.

Re:Culture

[TheSync]

if perhaps they had decided to sell some of these models in the U.S.

The U.S. has tight crash, exhaust, and fuel mileage standards, as well as much richer consumers.

For example, frontal airbags requirements were only enforced in new Chinese cars in 2007.

Re:Culture

[Tekfactory]

Not until they start caring about producing goods with stolen design elements in them.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cultural Revolution happened in the 1960s - that's history. As the current regime is an extension of the Cultural Revolution, and that regime is often criticized for being repressive, I am equating the "history" of Chinese repression to the start of the modern China. Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on the Cultural Revolution where the current Regime is really an extension of the political forces formed in the 1920's? Although if this is the case, what was the Cultural Revolution about?

All the discoveries you've listed are ancient Chinese inventions. That China no longer exists.

Re:Culture

[geekoid]

Yeah, they Did do that, but there hasn't been any real innovation in over a hundred years. Even in area you would logically expect it, like manufacturing.

Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with the intelligence of the common Chinese person, but to do with the culture there government has created.
What this article says is exatly what China needs to do to be come innovators.

Re:Culture

[geekoid]

China is becoming less and less oppressive.
Ironically, this is due to the Tienanmen Square incident.

Re:Culture

[HungWeiLo]

The U.S. leads the world in safety mandates for cars, which I very much appreciate.

Although fuel efficiency standards are a whole another matter. In China, it was a 38MPG requirement in 2005 and 43MPG in 2008.

Re:Culture

[sakdoctor]

Recursion and a stack overflow?

Re:Culture

[Maxo-Texas]

It is unfortunate that you got modded down-- you have a good question.

However, the answer is two fold.

1) The chinese masters are just as good as the masters from other cultures-- they acquire creativity after completely mastering a subject while other cultures use creativity and eventually acquire mastery.

2) The chinese are damn cheap and extremely motivated while other cultures are expensive (not their fault) and lazy (is their fault but partially the fact of growing up in an easier, safer society-- the chinese will get lazy too at some point- just like the japanese did).

---

There are also other differences. The west has largely lost the concept of "shame" and so now individuals are capable of doing anything for their own personal benefit. Thus the creative benefits are lost as that creativity is turned to highly profitable purposes which are extremely destructive to society. Without the "unwritten laws" of shame to keep them in check, we barely view the Bernie Maddoffs as a problem, much less the legal pirates who destroy thousands of lives while keeping hundreds of millions of dollars themselves.

Our creativity has been drawn from science and invention to laws and finance. A generation of the best and the brightest has correctly realized that becoming scientists and teachers is good for society but bad for them personally.

In the end, a smart educated chinese person can do everything a smart educated person from anywhere else can do. And they are much less expensive.

The only problem will be if social unrest breaks out and china kills all the smart people again.

Re:Culture

[Pervaricator General]

How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then?

Ummm, he didn't?

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, the Chinese civilization discovered Magnetism whereas one of the European civilizations discovered Navigation. Now all we need is Gun Powder and Steel before we can build ironclads and win!

Er... If only the world had a savegame function...

Re:Culture

[plasticsquirrel]

I'm going to go out on a limb to say that you've never actually read the Four Books of classical Confucianism mandated by the imperial examinations. Or are familiar with the exact Daoist influences on government either.

Confucius taught that the first steps to being successful were to 1.) cultivate essential goodness and humanity 2.) study one's own actions as well as history and literature.

Leaving virtue without proper cultivation; not thoroughly discussing what is learned; not being able to move towards righteousness of which a knowledge is gained; and not being able to change what is not good: these are the things that worry me.

There is nothing about conformance or dogmatism in the classical works of Confucianism. In fact, from The Great Learning, the most important Confucian book on governance, we can see that the Confucian view on governance is rooted in sincere study.

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

It's a tragedy that something so noble has been smeared so much in the West, where everyone professes to "know" that Confucianism was responsible for any and all backwardness in imperial China. Confucianism has absolutely nothing to do with controlling others, and everything to do with cultivating honesty, responsibility, and broad knowledge. The fundamental approach to Confucian governance is that people ought to regulate themselves, and a harmonious society would result from that. Confucius said nothing about people needing to maintain their positions in society, or being subservient to others. According to classical Confucianism, all laws were ultimately a reflection of failure on the part of individuals.

Unfortunately uninformed people such as yourself take Confucianism to simply be the catch-all social structure of China, responsible for all forms of rigid hierarchical control (or as the "bad" school of thought relative to Daoism). In reality, the rigid social structure of imperial China reflects a Chinese culture that pre-dates both Confucianism and Daoism, and does not belong any one philosophy or system of governance. But if one had to be assigned to it, they most accurately reflect the legalism of the Qin dynasty.

Re:Culture

[Nimey]

They certainly invented a lot of ways to deal with Jews.

Re:Culture

[M. Baranczak]

The west has largely lost the concept of "shame" and so now individuals are capable of doing anything for their own personal benefit.

Like adding poison to powdered milk?

Re:Culture

[Stephen Ma]

In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted [the compass] for navigation

No. You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.

Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!

Re:Culture

[Stephen Ma]

The past 500 years have been an era of stagnation for China.

True. But 500 years is not a long time by Chinese standards.

Re:Culture

[shutdown -p now]

These are all wonderful inventions - and China should be proud of them. But remember that Zheng He's fleet and charts were burned after he died, and China turned its back on the world. What great inventions and innovations have come from China since the decline of the Ming?

Exactly. Western civilization is so successful, effectively dominating all others, not because it was the "smartest", but because it was the most pragmatic. Inventing powder is a great invention, but using that knowledge to engineer groundbreaking powder-using weapons that change the whole balance of the battlefield is what gives real world results. Same goes for compass, steam engine, and there are plenty other examples.

Re:Culture

[Maxo-Texas]

And what happened to them?

But yea- you have a point. They are well along the path.

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Confucian cultures (specifically Japanese, Korean and Chinese cultures) thrive not because of creativity and originality but because they've become experts at copying other countries' work and methodology then improving upon it. Making a bad invention is a major loss of face and source of shame, making an improvement on a previous invention is a lot less risky.

As these countries Westernize in the modern times there is a lot of new creativity to be seen, but when these countries were modernizing historically (especially Korea) they didn't do it through creativity and originality, they did it through using other countries as a cheatsheet then improving on their designs.

You can't really argue it inferior, either. This way of thinking is the reason these countries are able to modernize at all, given they have no natural resources. Now that they've modernized they're able to take a step back and learn (as a culture) to reflect on themselves, where they came from and where they're going.

It's a different culture but by no means inferior. If you ever take the time to learn about the history of the Eastern way of thinking then you'd learn to appreciate it.

Re:Culture

[asde]

goobertoo wrote:

Why is this modded, "Flamebait"? His the parent's post is correct. The gp post is iffy at best.
I'm going to assume the moderator was ignorant of the Cultural Revolution [wikipedia.org] rather than just being spiteful.

You believe the moderator was ignorant? Do you realizes that the Cultural Revolution promoted activism, and was against the traditional thinking of listening to elders, which runs against the argument of promoting "repressed individuality." From your link to wikipedia:

People were encouraged to criticize cultural institutions and to question their parents and teachers, which had been strictly forbidden in Confucian culture. This was emphasized even more during the Anti-Lin Biao; Anti-Confucius Campaign. Slogans such as 'Parents may love me, but not as much as Chairman Mao' were common. [...] Some commentators argue that the Cultural Revolution years saw the Chinese people leave behind many uncritical habits of conformist and authoritarian thinking. This can be seen in the words of some of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989."

Even beside the fact that the Cultural Revolution was about activism, it's hardly historic and influential, as it's viewed negatively by both the Chinese Government and the Chinese public. Again from your link:

"Today, the Cultural Revolution is seen by most people inside and outside of China, including the Communist Party of China and Chinese democracy movement supporters, as an unmitigated disaster, and as an event to be avoided in the future. There are no politically significant groups within China that defend the Cultural Revolution. [...]The PRC's official version of history regards the Cultural Revolution as a serious error by Mao Zedong, whose contribution to history was 70% good and 30% bad. "

While you may be right it's not exactly flame bait, but it sure was ignorant.

goobertoo wrote:

Also, saying the Chinese invented the compass is about as accurate as saying the Greeks invented the steam engine. While technically true, in both cases they were clueless as to what they had discovered or how to leverage it. In the Greek's case, the invention went completely under developed. In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted it for navigation and taught the Chinese to use it for something other than Chi lines and harmony.

This is just hogwash. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass:

The earliest recorded actual use of a magnetized needle for navigational purposes is found in Zhu Yu's book Pingzhou Table Talks (èæåè; Pingzhou Ketan) of 1119 (written from 1111 to 1117): The navigator knows the geography, he watches the stars at night, watches the sun at day; when it is dark and cloudy, he watches the compass. [...]The first European mention of a magnetized needle and its use among sailors occurs in Alexander Neckam's De naturis rerum (On the Natures of Things), probably written in Paris in 1190.

Re:Culture

[incognito84]

There is a big rift between the desires of the Chinese government/military and the desires of the Chinese people. You shouldn't muddy that while you're making generalizations about the Chinese.

Re:Culture

[Serious Callers Only]

Western civilization is so successful

Western civilisation (a nebulous and misleading term, but let's run with it) has been successful over the same sort of period (say 3 centuries) as the Assyrian, Persian , Song, Ming or Roman empires, or possibly less in the case of the Romans - it is not the pinnacle of civilisation, it is not the final word in empire building, and it is not the apotheosis of innovation or even pragmatism. It will soon fade away like other empires before it.

That's taking 'Western civilisation' to mean the current hegemony of the West in world affairs, since perhaps the time of the colonies, culminating in the dominance of one of those colonies - The United States. There has been no even tenuous perception of unbroken world hegemony of western interests before then, so I assume that's what you mean. I suspect history will see the period in a more fragmented way, with a dominance of European powers giving way to that of the US, which lasted for perhaps a century. The centres of wealth have clearly been moving east in the last few decades, and that is not going to slow down.

Many empires before the US one have made the mistake of telling themselves that they are something new in the history of the world, something more civilised and refined than those around them, and will change everything due to unique trait 'x'.

PS It's interesting that empires often use 'the civilised world' to mean the world under their dominion, and barbarians to refer to those who live beyond the pale. The phrase Western civilisation is presumably born of that impulse.

Re:Culture

[Toandeaf]

The Cultural Revolution was not historic or influential? Are you joking? It was the catastrophic failure of the Cultural Revolution that led to the capitalist transformation of China. Few events in our recent history have had such an impact. Additionally, you emphasize the activism present in the Cultural Revolution and imply that it was mutually exclusive with repression of individuality. The Red Guard enforced their revolutionary ideals on all. Individuality was suppressed even within the Red Guard as no one was safe from their attempts to root out anyone not fully committed to the ideals.

Re:Culture

[allgoodnamesaretaken]

Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!

yeah fair enough, but what was the whole point of that bit with the fake fireworks? what did that symbolise?

Re:Culture

[jandersen]

Why is this modded, "Flamebait"?

Perhaps because it perpetuates the same, old tripe that was used as argument in favour of such things as imperialism and the superiority of the "white race"? I've seen this in many forms, trying to dusguise itself as "scientific" - like "The structure of language determines the way you think and that is why White, Germanic Speaking people are more creative and scientific". Or "The culture youlive in means that you breed out the traits that are contrary to that culture, which is why White, Germanic Speaking people are more creative and scientific". Do you see a pattern here? If not, maybe it is because self-criticism has been bred out of your culture.

Re:Culture

[jandersen]

There is so much stupid nonsense in this that I don't really know where to begin. Just an example:

... a society that historically repressed individuality...

A what? The Chinese have preserved the importance of the family in their culture, not least due to Kng Fz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius) and things like the Tang Code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Code), but nobody who has ever been close to Chinese culture can avoid noticing the immense creativity of the Chinese. The Chinese family values and principles of putting the individual lower than the family or society was the norm also in the west, at least until the beginning of the 20th century. So why wasn't that bred out of our genetic code?

What you are putting on display here isn't simply ignorance, but stupidity. Ignorance is the natural ground state of us all - it can be amended by learning; but stupidity is what you get when you are actively avoiding learning. I don't think there is any known cure for that.

Re:Culture

[redxxx]

How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")?

I don't know, but Japan does a pretty good job of innovation. Most likely it is because individuality can never be fully suppressed. Germany has one of the most oppressive cultures in Western Europe, and they invent their asses off.

I don't think it's a big of an issue as you make it out to be. If they really need it, they can just pick a reasonably wealthy area(middle classish) and let it do it's own thing for a few years.

Bohemian districts will pretty much form on their own, and then it is just a matter of taking the already educated and now free thinking residents and finding them useful work.

Re:Culture

[Oktober Sunset]

1405 was a bit late to be inventing compass navigation...

Re:Culture

[GooberToo]

Look at what you're replying to here. You're the only one being racists.

Re:Culture

[GooberToo]

You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.

I believe it is you that should have paid more attention. After the the Chinese understood they held a navigation device in their hands, they then used it as a compass. Is it really that hard to follow?

Re:Culture

[GooberToo]

Now put into proper context and you'll answer your own questions.

Re:Culture

[jbeaupre]

And beer is from the Middle East. And both have been elevated to a cultural icon their adopted home.

Re:Culture

[t0rkm3]

Small point of order... but weren't the Greeks and Romans considered Western civilizations? (The term Western vs Eastern is often used in reference to the Greek resistance to the Persians.)

If so wouldn't you call the emergence of Western civilization ~1000 BC and with it's economic pre-eminence lasting from ~50 BC (Augustus) to ~410AD (in the interim Diocletian writes about the separation of the Eastern and Western Empire {285AD}). Take a break for a while to fight the Islamic invasion... (732AD) and off to the races again with innovation and travel for all... (1002 to 1003 Leif plants feet on land discovered by Bjarni... Newfoundland.)

I'm not terribly culturally ignorant (fluent in Mandarin, conversational Japanese) but I think Western culture has a interesting arc that may actually pave the way to never-ending expansion of thoughts and ideas. However, I believe this is threatened by an increase in the break-down of foundational constructs of Western society... The importance of the individual, and pragmatic gov't. As we lose the tenets supported by those ideas when they are subjugated to their antithesis (group over individual rights, and over-reaching gov't) we risk a tumultuous period.. ie the sacking of Rome.

Re:Culture

[Stephen Ma]

I see you're agreeing with me even as you think you're disagreeing.

Re:Culture

[Stephen Ma]

1405 was a bit late to be inventing compass navigation

What makes you think 1405 was the first time China used the compass?

Re:Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

what did that symbolise?

It symbolizes your jealousy that you have to nitpick over something that wasn't even fake. You are green with envy.

Re:Culture

[GooberToo]

Banging head on desk...

That means you agree with my original position!

Banging head on desk...

Re:Culture

[manekineko2]

China actually used the knowledge to engineer groundbreaking powder-using weapons first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#China

"The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to warfare, and they produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and mines, before inventing firearms. There was once a great deal of confusion and controversy surrounding the invention of firearms, but it is now generally accepted that firearms originated in China."

However, you are right that the Europeans certainly improved on the existing design and used it to reshape the world.

Re:Culture

[manekineko2]

What of the Confucian concept of loyalty and the Mandate of Heaven?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Loyalty

"But a ruler who reigns humanely and takes care of the people is to be obeyed strictly, for the benevolence of his dominion shows that he has been mandated by heaven."

Re:Culture

[ThatsNotPudding]

Jeez, calm down! Can I interest you in some Opium?

Re:Culture

[Stephen Ma]

No. This was your original position:

In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted [the compass] for navigation and taught the Chinese to use it for something other than Chi lines and harmony.

My reponse: the Chinese knew what the compass was good for and did not need any pushy foreigners to teach them. If you think I was agreeing with you, you need lessons in remedial English. However, you did a 180 in your reply, which was agreeing with me. Go ahead, keep banging your head on the table.

Re:Culture

[asde]

I guess I should have made it more clear that the Cultural Revolution as not historic and influential in the context of changing the perspectives of the Chinese people on traditional Confucianism beliefs. As I've mentioned in my previous posts, it is argued that the Cultural Revolution increased activism activity in China with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and the current allowance of single issue protests in China, but the ideology driving the Cultural Revolution, of being critical of everyone and everything, was mainly shunned upon afterwards.

Also, Mao's death was much more of the driving cause of the economic reforms than the cultural revolution. The economic reforms were something that was advocated by Deng Xiaoping even before the cultural revolution. Deng gained prestige within the party and public for his ideas especially given the failure of the Great Leap Forward. But of course, these ideas were at odds with Mao's, especially with Deng gaining influence and popularity. As a result, he was targeted and purged twice from office during the time of the Cultrual Revolution, and his more pragmatic views on economic reform was never implement. It was only after Mao's death, with his ascension to power, Deng was able to push forward his economic reforms. I guess you can argue that the Cultural Revolution may have made the party leaders question Mao's views (but then again the CR removed more of Mao's opponents from power and his ideology was still highly supported afterwards), but for the most part, the economic reforms are the result of Mao's death and Deng's ascension.

Re:Culture

[plasticsquirrel]

What of the Confucian concept of loyalty and the Mandate of Heaven? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Loyalty

"But a ruler who reigns humanely and takes care of the people is to be obeyed strictly, for the benevolence of his dominion shows that he has been mandated by heaven."

What Confucius is saying is that when people see leaders who are acting out of goodness and humanity, they should obey them because they are doing good for the people and for their kingdom. Note that none of this departs from the person's own judgments, though. If a person sees a ruler who is not acting out of benevolence, then none of this may apply. It's always at the discretion of the person and their best judgment. After all, who decides if a ruler is benevolent and humane? Ultimately, every person does. This is why Confucians cultivate awareness and become knowledgeable, so they can make informed judgments about their own thoughts and actions.

Rulers who are acting out of benevolence and wisdom are said to have the mandate of heaven because their actions are essentially natural and good. It's an ancient expression that reflects pre-Confucian times, and is tied in with the concept of the ideal ruler, who is not just an ordinary person, but a sage. Someone who does not display this benevolence, wisdom, essential goodness and naturalness, etc. does not have the mandate of heaven, and so nothing associated with it need apply because they are nothing beyond ordinary people.

Re:Culture

[_Sprocket_]

As the OP, I find this line of thought rather offensive. At no point did I claim that the "white race" is superior. At no point did I even mention race. I don't harbor any latent ideas that this is even remotely about race. It is, however, about culture. And the environment that influences it.

If you are incapable of discussing these influences without degrading to the banal backwards beliefs of superior blood then that is your issue, not mine. Please kindly refrain from putting words in my mouth with inane quotes.

MP4 Players

[0100010001010011]

I'm quite happy with my unbranded Chinesium MP4 player that I bought from Chinavasion.. All I wanted was something that would let me watch TV shows or movies at the gym. I looked at the iPod Touch and Nokia N800 products but they were all over kill (and over priced). This fits the bill perfectly. The software is XP only and just a gui wrapper to mencoder, but the ini let me write a nice shell script to do it on Linux/OS X.

There are quite a few products on that website that seem pretty cool. I'm thinking of getting the toothbrush cam to see if it will make a cheap bore scope for engines, etc. This hard drive enclosure seems pretty cool (Although I'm sticking with my XBMC).

The BEST part about all of these products is that they can't afford a proprietary connector nor can they afford to lose market share to not being able to connect to everything. Everything is Mini-USB or USB.

The biggest problem they have right now is UI and translations. The "MP5 Player Manuals" is quite entertaining to read and full of Engrish.

Re:MP4 Players

[rickb928]

This is the same Chinese outfit that makes such great knockoffs of other stuff, like this copy of a Samsung WEP-200.

When the WEP-200 first came out, I ended up needing a new headset, and it looked cool to me. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't even buy one for two weeks. All the mall carts had were the copies. And they weren't that good.

China has a ways to go. Creative I wouldn't call them. Opportunistic. Which also works.

Re:MP4 Players

[electrosoccertux]

Ebay will likely be the leader at the forefront of this revolution. I, for one, can't wait.

As much as I don't like ebay, you have to admit they match the little guy from China DIRECTLY with the buyer (you and me). I just bought 12 screen protectors for my PDA for $3 free shipping. I bought a replacement 1200mAh same--physical-size-battery-as-the-Dell-900mAh battery for $8 free shipping. 33% extra battery capacity! I could have gotten the 2200mAh version for $10 free shipping but I didn't want it sticking out the back of the PDA. I hate to imagine how much the replacement battery would have cost from Dell.
My 4GB of Crucial DDR2-800 2.2v ram was $20 AR thanks to China.
That 1.5TB WD harddrive Frys had for $106 +$7 shipping one day last week was thanks to Chinafacturing.
My 24" 1920x1200 M-PVA (true 8-bit/color display) LCD monitor was $299 a year ago thanks to China. Now, a TN 24" panel is $220 at Costco this week, and there is a 42" Vizio 1080P LCD TV for $600, too.

In some market segments we don't benefit, but in many, we do. If I bought it the PDA battery from Dell they probably would have charged $25 for the 900mAh replacement, and maybe $40 for the extended 2200mAh battery. They would have paid maybe $6 to the China guys for being a bulk buyer, and would have pocketed the other $19/$34. But since I went through Ebay, the China guys got to charge a little bit more, I get the same product, and still came away paying 20% what I would have had to pay through Dell.

It wasn't until recently that we started seeing the benefits of this with laptops-- before the companies pocketed all the cash, but now there are so many suppliers over there it's trivial to produce yet-another-version of laptop. Now you can catch a dual core laptop with 3GB of RAM, Vista, and 160-250GB HDD for $400 if you keep your eyes open. Or you could get a netbook with 1GB of RAM and an 8GB fast SSD with 32GB slower SSD (for documents and stuff) for $300.

I, for one, welcome our new Chinese manufacturing Overlords.

Re:MP4 Players

[quanticle]

You sir, have made my day! I've been looking for a new MP3 player, but all the MP3 players I've looked for from "known" brands (Creative, iRiver, etc.) have all been, as you've stated, "overpowered". Thanks for pointing out this site to me, since the players here are far more within my price range.

Re:MP4 Players

[Aceticon]

I have a (tiny) company that imported and retailed low cost MP3 players from China. The devices were bought directly from the manufacturer. This specific player is of a design manufactured by multiple manufacturers, which makes me believe it was locally designed and sold to several manufacturers.

My experience has shown me the following:
- Quality control was all over the place. One box of devices might have a rate of failure of 10% while another had a rate of failure of less than 2%. It literally looked like the rate of failure depended on whoever was doing QA at the time a batch of devices was made.
- The final product is not the same as the samples you evaluate. For example, in my case the Firmware was different in the final version and even had one (small) feature missing.
- The user manuals are in "Chinglisih". They also don't quite match what's in the box.
- The design of the device lacks the tiny details which make for easier assembly and a more polished product. For example, in the devices we ordered the display component was manually aligned to the location of the transparent plastic window in the device's casing and glued to the circuit board. There were no grooves or notches inside the device's casing to guide the display into the proper place, which meant that often the display is tilted and/or off-center.

In my view, to have anything manufactured in China for a Western market you have to be big enough to provide in situ your own designs, your own QA and evaluate the manufacturing inputs yourself and impose some changes to some of the steps in the manufacturing process.

In other words, most Chinese manufacturers have problems in these areas (QA, design, manufacturing quality, efficiency) which have to be addressed by those companies that actually have goods made in China for sale to those markets in the West were shabby products are not acceptable.

Until this is solved, I find it highly unlikely that Chinese manufacturers will be able to move up-market on their own.

Re:MP4 Players

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a replacement 1200mAh same--physical-size-battery-as-the-Dell-900mAh battery for $8 free shipping. 33% extra battery capacity! I could have gotten the 2200mAh version for $10 free shipping but I didn't want it sticking out the back of the PDA. I hate to imagine how much the replacement battery would have cost from Dell.

There is more to a battery than just the Ah when fresh. And that's assuming you're starting with fresh batteries to begin with.

Go for it

[No2Gates]

Then we'll just have some other country in South America or India make our crap for us. Personally I'm really tired of hearing of all the crap they make that's being recalled because of melamine, lead, etc...
I would rather pay more money and know that what I'm buying is safe.

Re:Go for it

[tritonman]

you mean safe like loaded with high fructose corn syrup or aspartame?

Re:Go for it

[MightyYar]

Yes. HFCS is only "dangerous" if you over eat it, just like sugar - or for that matter organic raw vegetables. Aspartame, as far as anyone can tell, only hurts certain people who have a reaction to it.

Melamine in baby formula or pet food, on the other hand, will cause kidney failure in a very short period of time. Antifreeze in toothpaste or cough medicine will do the same. Lead in paint on childrens' toys will cause developmental problems.

Re:Go for it

[mikael]

Bulgaria seems to be the next location for call centres, so maybe they will move into manufacturing as well.

I will be missing it!

[slygrayling]

Wah, i am gonna miss the cheap copies of electronics. Damn it. :-D

Re:I will be missing it!

[shutdown -p now]

Don't worry, China will just outsource that to Africa.

Re:I will be missing it!

[incognito84]

Nah, we'll just swap out the rice with the curry!

Re:I will be missing it!

[mjwx]

Wah, i am gonna miss the cheap copies of electronics. Damn it. :-D

Cheap copies of electronics aren't going anywhere, instead of buying from Zaou, in china, we'll be buying from sundipahevelam in India.

I'm gonna miss cheap electronics with names I could pronounce.

Hong Kong

[janwedekind]

Well, I don't know about the situation regarding health care and education. But Hong Kong certainly *looks* very advanced already.

Re:Hong Kong

[Anonymous Coward]

My grandmother's apartment in Hong Kong is the size of most people's guest bedrooms here, but that's to be expected in a place that crowded.

But what you might not know is that there is no hot water, and the toilet occupies the same space as where you "shower" with a bucket of water you boiled to make it hot.

Re:Hong Kong

[HungWeiLo]

My grandmother's place is like that too. They're government housing that was mass-manufactured in the late '40s. They're being systematically torn down for updated government housing now.

Re:Hong Kong

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on where you live. Your grandparents probably live in an older building, possibly one the subsidized low income housing developments.

On the other hand, my parents' place in Hong Kong is about the same size as the apartment I have in Canada, has the same type of toilet and has an instantaneous (tankless) water heater for the shower.

Hong Kong is more advanced than North American cities in many ways: the public transit system, for example, actually works. A far cry from the likes of Toronto.

Re:Hong Kong

[Anonymous Coward]

do they have the "old person smell " problem in hong kong too?

Re:Hong Kong

[janwedekind]

I'm sorry to hear that. Is housing expensive compared to the salaries and/or pension? I stayed in H.K. for 10 days and tried to get a picture of the life there (I spend the nights in a tiny cubicle). I'd like to share some pictures with anyone who's interested: Sha Tin, Kowloon, Hong Kong. I had the impression that on average the housing situation looks strained but not impoverished.

Re:Hong Kong

[manekineko2]

I think a big difference is that in Hong Kong, the bottom of the market is much, much lower, like the GP demonstrated. This can be contrasted against the US, where we prevent any housing that fails to meet a certain standard from being on the market. On the plus side, this means everyone has running hot water. On the minus side, it means that people who can't or don't want to pay for that are simply priced out of the market. This has all sorts of collateral effects, such as wage pressure, which translates into increased costs for all goods and services.

This is hardly theoretical either. If you've ever eaten at a restaurant in Chinatown and wondered how it is they are capable of selling product for so much cheaper than American competitors, consider that the restaurants are able to employ illegal immigrants who are willing to accept below minimum wages to live in illegally converted tiny apartments (sub-divided into locked cages to protect their possessions, no joke). And most interestingly of all perhaps, the illegal immigrants are willing to pay for the privilege of coming into the country to do so.

Melamine

[Java Pimp]

Would that be a melamine laced food chain?

Good thinking! Let's regulate some innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news, worker 132847326. Your state sponsored employment is now officially to "innovate the next big thing". If you fail to complete this within the fiscal year, you will be subject to re-education. All Hail Mao!

What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[cmholm]

It doesn't surprise me that the PRC government wants to encourage adding value to it's economy, by moving up beyond manufacturing to design. Hell, it was going to happen even without becoming public policy.

US economists, particularly those on a grant to say so, have gone on about the constructive destruction of the US economy. I can't count the times I've heard the analogy about Ford and the buggy whip. But, it's a bad analogy. Does it work when Henry isn't American, or doesn't make his investment in the US?

Constructive destruction is an attempt to describe a kind of economic activity, the redirection of capital and investment. But, it's not graven in stone that it's a benefit for any particular economic player, even if that player is the USofA.

But, just as those US economists made excuses for the hollowing out of US manufacturing (we'll move into design, we'll go upmarket), they'll think up new excuses now, and they'll probably pass muster at editorial boards and newsrooms as gospel.

In the meantime, the goals the Beijing government has set have INFLATION spray painted all over them, in dayglow.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[mobby_6kl]

Why would the US economists (whoever those are supposed to be) need to come up with an excuse for helping bring millions of dirt-poor peasants into the modern era with some fure prospects? Or are you trying to turn this into a flamewar related to the current crisis?

The growth figure might be shown in real terms. I have no idea having not actually RTFA, though it won't surprise me if it isn't.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[Kelbear]

One of the issues in shifting gears to these new high tech capital intensive industries is the shift away from low-capital, labor intensive industries.

In developed countries this is counterbalanced by the suddenly unemployed workers going back to school or entering a new job that should overall pay better and produce more overall as the unemployed fall into appropriate jobs(effient allocation). Capital intensive jobs need education on how to utilize that capital(machinery, computers, development software, etc.).

However, in a country as huge and diverse as China you have sections of highly developed and wealthy people, and sections of abject poverty.

A good example is the Three Gorges Dam which displaced millions of people when they flooded the river valley and towns and villages that lived off it(Remember how Bush got slammed for how he handled Hurricane Katrina? This flood was actually man-made and much bigger!). The rationale of this huge dam was that the electricity would help catapult modern china into competition with the other first-world countries, i.e a propaganda move. Essentially, poor Chinese were pushed aside to help develop the modern areas.

In the USA, if you get kicked out of your job, you try to get another one. You've probably got a highschool diploma or GED. You can read a training manual, or maybe even take out a loan to go back to school and accumulate some knowledge capital so that you can sell yourself and your education to get a better job than the one you lost. If you're a poor fisherman who can barely read, when you lose the river your family has lived off of for generations...you're pretty screwed. You don't have the education infrastructure to enable you to fall into another line of work as easily.

It may be prudent for China to invest more heavily in its infrastructure before trying to chase after other countries which are much more thoroughly developed.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[cmholm]

Why would the US economists (whoever those are supposed to be) need to come up with an excuse for helping bring millions of dirt-poor peasants into the modern era with some fure prospects?

"Whoever": Gregory Mankiw, Tim Kane, Douglas J. Young, Brink Lindsey, just about anyone at Heritage, Cato, the Club for Growth. I can go on, but that'll get you started.

"Why": Around about the time when everyone notices that US firms, whether US or foreign based, have cleared out their engineering and design staff. Around about the time when we notice that the back of an iPod's packaging changes from "Designed in California/Made in China" to "Designed and Made in China". Around about the time when we notice just about any non-defense manufacturing firm in the US seems to consist solely of a corporate office and a distribution system.

I'm broad brushing, but I think that illustrates the idea. We won't have to *care* unless more firms that currently design anything in the US finish moving the rest of their R&D offshore. An honest evaluation would start with former Federal Reserve vice chairman and Princeton economist Alan Blinder comment: "Conditions of full employment are required to validate standard propositions in trade theory. High unemployment calls many of these propositions into question."

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be prudent for China to invest more heavily in its infrastructure before trying to chase after other countries which are much more thoroughly developed.

That only works if China is planning on modernizing the WHOLE population.

China has demonstrated it has no problem with an institutionalized caste of haves and have-nots, and with their population and land area, they can effectively contain both a "modern" industrialized area, and a "poor" low caste worker society.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be prudent for China to invest more heavily in its infrastructure before trying to chase after other countries which are much more thoroughly developed.

I think you make the common mistake of assuming that the government in that country cares whether those lower-class people have options or not.
Most of their decisions make sense once you change your viewpoint to only helping those who are already in upper government, and forgetting about the lives of those below a certain threshold.

Not that most other governments are much better; it's a common thread to most. That's where the level of belief in the culture in the sanctity of all human life acts as a protective element.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[cozziewozzie]

A good example is the Three Gorges Dam which displaced millions of people when they flooded the river valley and towns and villages that lived off it(Remember how Bush got slammed for how he handled Hurricane Katrina? This flood was actually man-made and much bigger!). The rationale of this huge dam was that the electricity would help catapult modern china into competition with the other first-world countries, i.e a propaganda move. Essentially, poor Chinese were pushed aside to help develop the modern areas.

Actually, the main reason the dam was built was to stop regular flooding of the Yangze river. Besides producing electricity, the three gorges dam also regulates the flow of the river.

The 1954 flood killed over 30,000 people and left 19 million homeless. The 1998 flood killed over 3,000 and left 14 million homeless. The last flood alone cost almost as much as the construction of the dam, which should help prevent most of such floods and minimise the effects of the remaining ones.

I do agree that the loss for the displaced people is great, and that the value of the cultural relics flooded forever cannot be measured, but this damn prevents much greater disasters than Katrina and the Sichuan earthquake.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Uninformed maybe.

Buffering the River Yangtz's flooding season was one of the main goals of the three gorges dam.

My home town, Wuhan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan), a 10 million populated provincial city in China, is a short distance downstream of the dam. Before any major dam was built on the river, the city was threaten by flooding every summer. I can still clearly remember the whole city was mobilized to monitor, inspect, and repair the river banks during some major flooding. Not only Wuhan, but also Nanjing, Shanghai, and other major industrialized cities and regions and a big portion of China's population were threaten by the same flooding season yearly. China used to allocate large amount of flood relieve plains to save the major cities from flooding, and who do you think were suffering the most? The poor farmer living close to the flood plains! Hundreds of people died from the flooding yearly!

The dam does appear to be a major relief for the flooding problem. Now during the high flood season the dam would control the water volume and flatten the peaks. As a result more people's lives are saved.

Balancing the benefits and costs of major engineering work is the responsibility of any good government. While protecting private properties is a good idea, stalling on it would create the slum like the one in Mumbai. I don;t think many Chinese would like to see that happening in China.

Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God. I was beginning to think I was the only one clued-in or clueless enough to see this. Two big issues I see never being addressed:

1) It's not the car replacing the horse-n-buggy. It's the cheaper horse-n-buggy being made for pennies on the dollar in another country undercutting a horse-n-buggy whose only shortcoming compared to the foreign-built one is cost. That's not innovation, it's exploitation on one end and willful economic suicide on the other.

2) The implied route to development in this country is that people leaving manual labor jobs can move up the ladder. But that assumes the reason these people are in the manual labor jobs has nothing to do with their intelligence. Maybe I'm being politically incorrect here (in which case, GOOD), but based on my exposure to factory workers I'd say this is a completely ignorant assumption. They are at the bottom of the labor ladder because that's what they're capable of. There will always be variations in intelligence and we will always need jobs that pay a liveable wage across the spectrum of abilities. I'm not saying that to be elitist or snobby. It's reality. To paraphrase Office Space, no one aspires to be at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Salmonella

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they wish to mimic the US's salmonella laced food chain.

None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[olddotter]

None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation. That is a game the US will lose if the government keeps favoring establish Fortune 500 companies over small nimble truly innovative start ups.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[dstarfire]

Don't forget the patent system. When any new idea is already covered by some ridiculously-broad "process" (patent-talk for "we can't do it, and anybody that tries has to pay us") patent, innovation is just something new to get sued for.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[girlintraining]

None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.

They don't have to. Our own intellectual property laws have strangled innovation in this country.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[blackfrancis75]

Don't mistake innovation for marketing and suppression of competitors.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[BlendieOfIndie]

the government keeps favoring establish Fortune 500 companies over small nimble truly innovative start ups

How do you figure? Most small startup companies are not profitable in their nascent years. This means that they DO NOT PAY INCOME TAXES! The big Fortune 500 companies pay billions in taxes.

Even if I'm wrong, do you really think that what you said IS the problem? Has the US gradually become less innovative due to favoritism of big companies? Was there ever favoritism for small "innovative companies?" I think this article is saying that China is becoming a power house, rather than the US's innovation is weakening.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[electrosoccertux]

None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.

They don't have to. Our own intellectual property laws have strangled innovation in this country.

At least we have some. In China, forget about R&D unless you're willing to pay the police to go raid the counterfeiters for you. In Hong Kong, Shenzhen, etc. you can buy real North Face and -insert-favorite-brand-here- clothing. The manufacturers are told to produce a certain number of goods, but it's _so cheap_ to make stuff over there they still produce more of it, and sell it to street vendors, who then sell it to you for 90% less what you'd pay over here, and the street guys STILL make a profit on it.

North Face, for example, pays this fee to keep the street vendors at bay. Friend was telling me about his trip there a few months ago-- "Do you have any NorthFace" "No, no no, no NorthFace. Here look at these instead, see this nice backpack? $5." "No but we want NorthFace" "No NorthFace, I don't have it" "Surely you've got something NorthFace." The guy looks at my friend, decides he's legit and not an undercover cop, looks left and right up and down the street, and the proceeds to climb up his shelves into a compartment above his shop and begins throwing down North Face sweatshirts, fleeces, backpacks, etc.

They won't be able to move up the food chain until they get _some form_ of copyright/trademark/IP protection. There is no "code of law" there, anything they can replicate is fair game. Better make sure anything you produce can't be replicated or they'll undercut you fast.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[girlintraining]

In China, forget about R&D unless you're willing to pay the police to go raid the counterfeiters for you.

As opposed to here in the United States, where taxpayers pay for the police to raid grandma who downloaded a "ZZ Top" song. I'm not seeing the Western Civilization Advantage Program(tm) working here.

They won't be able to move up the food chain until they get _some form_ of copyright/trademark/IP protection. There is no "code of law" there, anything they can replicate is fair game. Better make sure anything you produce can't be replicated or they'll undercut you fast.

That sounds like capitalism to me, and they seem to be raking in quite a bit of money for being at the "bottom" of the food chain. As to "some form of IP"; I disagree. They seem to be proving that the entire model of intellectual property is a fraud.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

That only shows how stupid it is to pay 10x the price for clothes with the right tag on them.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[amilo100]

Hmm.... I would not really argue that. There are a lot of innovation happening in Asian countries.

The USA has a lead in innovation of consumer products - but that is simply because they have a large English audience and target market.

There are numerous Tiger Asian companies that are fairly innovative. A good example - HTC. First with some of the best smart phones.

LG and Samsung are also pretty innovative. Wii (although in Japan) rivals innovation to that of the iPhone).

Hyundia is a company based on innovation - from crane construction to boat construction it was one series of innovations.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.

Yeah, no one in the world wants to buy a car that isn't US-designed! Same for TVs and stereos!

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[MrSnivvel]

Luckily there are libertarians who are not in support of the bullshit concept of Imanginary Property.

The Mercantilism of Our Time

There's also the story of how Watts sat on the patent for the steam engine, keeping innovation hindered until the patent ran out. Only then did he begin producing steam engines on a large scale.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[mjwx]

one of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a centre of innovation.

When did Japan and Korea move out of Asia? They've been continually out innovating us in recent years as worsening education levels and stupid US IP laws strangled our abilities to keep up.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[dbIII]

Think about how this innovation happened. For quite a while the USA has been a place for the best in the world to come to and get finance to make the next big thing. For most of the past decade it has been increasingly difficult for the innovators to get there and now it's impossible for them to get the finance - you have lost that game. You can mostly forget about home grown talent due to the state of your education system unless a lot of improvments are made.

Now you are left with "traditional values" like building low quality vehicles that are virtually knockoffs of vehicles that British Leyland became too embarrassed to build after the 1940s and protected steel and agricultural industries where innovation is seen as an unnecessary expense.

Things are going to change, otherwise you are all screwed and even more of them worlds economies to follow.

Meanwhile, China is actually in the process of getting itself organised after a disasterous century. It wouldn't take much for Hong Kong to become another "silicon valley" with a few policy changes in a small area and a few expats coming back and getting free reign. Remember that China is huge and has "special" zones where various rules don't apply.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[electrosoccertux]

Luckily there are libertarians who are not in support of the bullshit concept of Imanginary Property.

The Mercantilism of Our Time

There's also the story of how Watts sat on the patent for the steam engine, keeping innovation hindered until the patent ran out. Only then did he begin producing steam engines on a large scale.

But you have to admit, at the core of your argument you are saying "He holds something good, and I want to receive the benefit of that, so I think we should deny him the right to do what he wants with his good thing that I want."

He invented it, why doesn't he have the right to do with it as he please? Even if that involves keeping people from having it.
Agreeing to anything else (make him produce it! Yeah! It's for the good of all!) is a slippery slope. Who determines if it's good for all, and when does "good for all" become "we all want free stuff".

At the core, I do not have a problem with IP or the owner's control of it. I have a problem with the current method our country uses to enable the owner to control it. The existence of patent trolls, etc.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[drsquare]

As opposed to here in the United States, where taxpayers pay for the police to raid grandma who downloaded a "ZZ Top" song. I'm not seeing the Western Civilization Advantage Program(tm) working here.

In the US, if you invent something, you have full rights over it. Sounds like the system is working as intended.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

True enough. But do you notice that most of the innovations you've listed are refinements of products originally developed in the west, rather than Asian inventions?

Japan and China may well make the best cell phones and computers. But those products were not invented in Asia.

Excellence in detail and technical proficiency appear to be Eastern characteristics. Radical creativity does not.

There are scores of excellent Asian classical musicians - probably per capita more so than in the west. But there are no Asian Beethovens and Bachs.

Notice that despite the fact that Asians on average produce more and better scientists and engineers than the west, there are no Asian Newtons or da Vincis.

Asians on average are more intelligent than Europeans. But Europeans appear more likely to occupy the extremes of the bell curve.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[egcagrac0]

Shocking. People with no income pay no income tax.

What's next, people without feet not buying shoes?

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[BlendieOfIndie]

You missed the connection...

olddotter said:
government keeps favoring establish Fortune 500 companies over small nimble truly innovative start ups

BlendieOfIndie said:
Most small startup companies are not profitable in their nascent years. This means that they DO NOT PAY INCOME TAXES

egcagrac0 said:
What's next, people without feet not buying shoes?

No it is assuming that shoe sellers cater to people without feet.

Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation

[BlendieOfIndie]

Let me fix that:
No it is assuming that shoe sellers should cater to people without feet

PROTECT IBM JOBS!!!11!!!

[linhares]

...then just accidentally delete IBM from the map.

There is no way one can protect IBM US-based jobs (the inneficient ones) without losing competitivity on the long run to folks like these that work for peanuts. It's just something called capitalism, and nothing politicians can do to stop it.

Re:PROTECT IBM JOBS!!!11!!!

[interkin3tic]

There is no way one can protect IBM US-based jobs (the inneficient ones) without losing competitivity on the long run to folks like these that work for peanuts.

Someone obviously doesn't work for IBM and thinks his job is safe from being shipped overseas...

Re:PROTECT IBM JOBS!!!11!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's something called comparative advantage, which still functions in a command economies.

They deserve to succeed

[bornwaysouth]

They have been working at this for decades. My brother travels often to China where he oversees production designed here. He admires their industry (human and machine), relative honesty (not that different from Western companies), and ambition. A company with 100,000 employees has 100,000 people all wanting to own it. The government not only supports business, they have schemes to induce overseas Chinese to return to lucrative positions. And they are not too sympathetic to freeloaders.

In short, he likes them, and considers them a major looming threat. Every design he brings in he knows will be analyzed to enable them to better it. Hey, ho, that's evolution. Competitions wonderful if you can beat it often enough to live. If not, introduce protectionism and live off your capital for a while.

They are not tigers of course. Those are a protected species. Not T. rex cos that's just a bunch of bones. I cannot think of a suitable analogy. An unassuming animal that out-competes us while we are watch video games.

Re:They deserve to succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

An unassuming animal that out-competes us while we are watch video games.

Rats? Cockroaches? Both are very successful at our expense, but are actually desperately dependent on us for their survival.

Re:They deserve to succeed

[collywally]

Raccoons but without the bandit feel. Though I imagine that there are quite a few copyright and patent lawyers that think differently.

Re:They deserve to succeed

[geekoid]

It's not competition when you steal someone else's product, slap your name on it and sell it cheap because you have no RnD costs.

It also not competition when you make a knock off, try to make it look that same and then mislead people.

Re:They deserve to succeed

[mjwx]

They are not tigers of course. Those are a protected species. Not T. rex cos that's just a bunch of bones. I cannot think of a suitable analogy.

Crocodiles, tough, powerful albeit slow, they've been continuing to expand along Australian rivers making them unsafe for humans to swim in. This is slashdot though, we should be using Car analogies, Its like we have a 1980's Merc, powerful and innovative in its day but its almost 30 years old compared to the 2008 model Nissan, whilst less powerful and innovative then out Merc was when it was new, its still faster and more powerful.

THings have to change

[Anonymous Coward]

In particular, China is now pushing Obama to help them improve their situation by having us give them all sorts of tech. But, the last time that we did any agreements with them, US gave them MFN in exchange for their promise that they would drop their trade barriers and free their money in 2002. Neither was done.

The west has open trading for the most part. More importantly, our money is freely traded so that when the economy picks up in one place, the other gets cheaper. China prevents that. Until China carries through with their original promise, I say it is time to slowly raise an import tax. More importantly, EU is going to do this.

A BIG PROBLEM

[Jane Q. Public]

is the general lack of "IP" in China. There is little motivation to innovate. Other than the prospect of immediate profits (with nearly immediate copycats coming to market and grabbing share), there just isn't as much call in China to spend R&D money.

Chinese are like ants

[Anonymous Coward]

With the Chinaman it's all "monkey see, monkey do".

At my university there are a lot of chinks. Maybe over 50% of the student population. One thing I notice is that they lack any sense of creativity. Like a colony of ants or termites, the Chinamen all aspire to conform. As a matter of fact, conformity is their highest aspiration.

The idea that the Chinese could invent anything of interest to normal humans is ludicrous. We all know that. And maybe it is not so politically correct to point it out but their lack of creativity and their obsessive desire to conform leads to a culture of "monkey see, monkey do" groupthink.

Just cutting out the middleman

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that they have the manufacturing base and the know-how, it's just a matter of cutting out the middleman. Which is more than likely going to be the U.S. based or other global companies that shifted over their manufacturing to China.

They're already doing it with a lot of products in China, and I'm not going to be too suprised when they decide to start exporting inexpensive Chinese-brand clones of mainstream products like iPods.

What can I say, most western CEOs (and the corporate accountants they listen to) seem to put on the blinders when chasing short term quarterly profits. I guess the pitfalls they lead their companies into will be soon become China's gain.

And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ...

[HungWeiLo]

My wife is a fashion designer, and it's quite obvious that the trends in manufacturing have been shifting for quite a number of years now. Clothes at Walmart (socks, underwear, t-shirts, etc.) used to be made in China. Now these low-value items are being made in Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, etc. At that time, the mid-to-high-end fashions were made in Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Now China has largely overtaken this mid-to-high-end market (dresses that go for up to $1,000 are frequently from China now).

Clothes today. Cars and planes in 25 years. Or is that Toyota still funny Japanese engineering that falls apart?

Also - with our recent peanut/salmonella/spinach/drugs health scares, it's not like we can point fingers at others anymore for having shabby food quality standards. I know we're still lightyears ahead of many countries, but the gap is certainly closing quite quickly.

Re:And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ...

[serbanp]

with our recent peanut/salmonella/spinach/drugs health scares, [snip] we're still lightyears ahead of many countries, but the gap is certainly closing quite quickly.

Scary!

Re:And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ...

[SBFCOblivion]

Or is that Toyota still funny Japanese engineering that falls apart?

Um...what?

Re:And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ...

[Petrushka]

Or is that Toyota still funny Japanese engineering that falls apart?

Um...what?

It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time when Japanese cars had a reputation for being shoddy pieces of crap. The GP refers to this belief, which was clung to by particularly jingoistic westerners up until, oooh say around the mid-1980s (and maybe still today, in the US, for all I know). In the beginnings of the Japanese car industry, say in the 1950s, it was certainly true; now, as we know, the US is decades behind. The GP draws attention to the fact that this scenario is being repeated in some industries, this time in China, and is very likely to be played out again in still other industries.

Re:And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ...

[dunkelfalke]

same thing with guitars.
30 years ago, japanese and korean guitars were the cheapest.
now you look for japanese and korean guitars when you want a quality guitar and the cheapest is chinese.

Here's a question

[Colin Smith]

Anyone really think that the US dollar should be as strong as it is? After all, they're now throwing around trillions.

Re:Here's a question

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't I got over 50k USD in Chinese Yuan.

Furthermore, most of you people that have posted above me are clueless. I for one will be looking for jobs in China in the coming years. I don't mind going to China to work.

LOL.

[Colin Smith]

Cars and planes in 25 years.

Perhaps sooner.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7879372.stm

 

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARJ21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRsC4KUFDoM

How do you say "University Diplomas?"

[gatkinso]

In about two million emails, the font was never readable.

Our Parents Survived, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Lead Seldom Kills, but it often would cause anemia, behavioral problems, Diminished IQ, lethargy. Sure they survived, but how many of them would have had better lives?

And the US economy drops even further

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news: It won't be cheap to ship manufacturing overseas anymore, so plants may move back to the US

Bad news: No more cheap manufacturing in China means no more cheap parts. Cost goes up, profitability goes down and companies have to either cut other costs to stay afloat or find some magical way to increase revenues.

Some of the doubters here are hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

The ones who are suggesting that the Chinese are incapable of making high end or innovative products.

Are you aware of how enormously successful Chinese immigrants are in places like Silicon Valley, where there's actually money and motivation for R&D? Did you know that both ATI and Nvidia were founded by Chinese immigrants? Did you know that there are many high end computer parts companies in Taiwan (who are ethnically and culturally Chinese)? Are you aware that the average IQ of a Chinese person is 105, which is exactly the same as the average IQ of a Japanese?

I guess what I'm trying to say here is, those of you who underestimate the Chinese will be proven wrong in the coming years, just like how nobody took Japan seriously when they first entered the electronics and automobile industries.

Re:Some of the doubters here are hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

no different than the fucktards who claimed that muslims weren't smart enough to pull off 9/11. how smart do you have to be to get in 4 planes leaving at the same time and fly them into buildings? people all too often underestimate those around them.

Re:Some of the doubters here are hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Asians have a higher average IQ than whites. But that's misleading - whites are more often found in the extremities of the bell curve. While whites aren't as smart on the average as Asians, note the absence of Asian da Vincis, Newtons, Einsteins and Edisons.

The products developed by ATI and Nvidia are refinements of pre-existing products, not radically new concepts.

Re:Some of the doubters here are hilarious

[t0rkm3]

Yikes dude...

You're giving us a bad rap here. There were/are Chinese Da Vinci's, Newtons, and Edisons but you aren't aware of them. It has been a while since China was at the forefront of tech. However, given their population, if they internalize the value of invention, individualism, and capitalism then learning Mandarin would be a good course of action for your future.

I hope they do decide on a more egalitarian system for their sake and ours.

China...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got back from China 2 weeks ago. If you still think China is a 3rd world country you are right. But that only applies to the rural area. If you were in major metropolitans like Shanghai, and Beijing they are no different from any other US cities. Only thing is that there are 10-20x more people in these major cities.

Think of things this way. If US gets 1 genius per 100000 person and China gets 1/10th of that(due to substandard living). Well China would have 5.2 times more geniuses than the US.

Re:China...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got back from China 2 weeks ago. If you still think China is a 3rd world country you are right. But that only applies to the rural area. If you were in major metropolitans like Shanghai, and Beijing they are no different from any other US cities. Only thing is that there are 10-20x more people in these major cities.

Think of things this way. If US gets 1 genius per 100000 person and China gets 1/10th of that(due to substandard living). Well China would have 5.2 times more geniuses than the US.

china has ~4x our population, how exactly does your math work on that?

Re:China...

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of things this way. If US gets 1 genius per 100000 person and China gets 1/10th of that(due to substandard living). Well China would have 5.2 times more geniuses than the US.

Wow, you are really bad at math. And analogies.

If we had the same rate of selection, China would have just under 4.4 times as many as the US, based on population. If they really did produce them at just 1/10 the US rate, they'd have less than 0.44 times as many, not 5x as many.

Guess the old US educational system isn't that bad. Unless you are American, in which case maybe the dumb ass is just you. Or maybe you are an immigrant who thinks your parent's old country is somehow better, even though they chose to get out for some odd reason from that veritable paradise :p

Figures from the repository of all human knowledge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

Re:China...

[saintlupus]

Or maybe you are an immigrant who thinks your parent's old country is somehow better, even though they chose to get out for some odd reason from that veritable paradise :p

In grade school, it's always the kids whose families came to the US ten generations back who cling to their old country identity. "My family is French!" "My family is Irish!" Me, I grew up listening to stories about what shitholes my grandparents came from, so I was always more than happy to just be American.

Protectionism pays off

[plopez]

The Chinese have been engaging in protectionism for years now, by keeping their currency artificially low. It is in effect a sort of import tax on foreign goods.

Now they are going to use it as a competitive advantage to move up the food chain.

It has nothing to do with them being smarter or more hard working. It does have to do with them using an unfair advantage against the rest of the world.

And don't flame me for being a racist, because I am not. In fact, by taking this position I am defending the majority of the world's population which doesn't engage in this type of protectionism. Asian, African, European, etc.

So let the protectionism debate begin...

Re:Protectionism pays off

[paulpach]

The Chinese have been engaging in protectionism for years now, by keeping their currency artificially low.

You accuse the Chinese of manipulating the currency. Yet, look at what our wonderful FED is doing to our own currency. That chart represents how much money the FED has printed (fisically, electronically or otherwise). If you really think we are at risk of "deflation", you have been drinking too much kool-aid.

Also, look at history, we (the US) conned the world by telling them that dollars where redeemable for gold. And once the dollar became the world currency, we went off of the gold standard (1971) and started printing it like crazy.

One ounce of gold was worth $35-$36 beginning 1971, it is worth $914 at close today. That means that the dollar lost 96% of its value in 38 years.

The Chinese may not be free of sin, but we are certainly not the country to throw the first stone.

What do you think will happen if the Chinese let their currency gain value? Every product that comes from China will become more expensive, or simply unavailable. This "protectionism" is letting you buy cheap products. In the short run, yes, China's exporting companies will suffer, but in the long run, products in China will become cheap (relative to the US and the rest of the world), and they will enjoy consumption like we have here.

Re:Protectionism pays off

[plopez]

how can someone buy cheap products if they are unemployed and broke?

Not all it's cracked up to be....

[repetty]

> And by 2020, the study predicts, 30 percent of all industrial output
> should come from high-tech manufacturing.

They should be careful what they wish for -- high-tech manufacturing is not all it's cracked up to be.

from what i seen of Chinese electronics

[FudRucker]

Chinese electronics are cheap and inferior crap, i would rather buy Japanese electronics just compare any Japanese made ham radio (or any radio) to its Chinese counterpart, too bad the USA does not do much anymore in the way of manufacturing (thank you globalism for destroying the US manufacturing capabilities)...

now to go back to winding copper wire around a cardboard tube...

Re:from what i seen of Chinese electronics

[geekoid]

The best Ham radio I ever saw was made in America.

by me.

Re:from what i seen of Chinese electronics

[powerlord]

To quote "Back to the future Part III":

Young Doc: No wonder this circuit failed. It says "Made in Japan".
Marty McFly: What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Young Doc: Unbelievable.

Things change.

Re:from what i seen of Chinese electronics

[johnsie]

It depends what you buy. There are probably good and bad brands just like anywhere else in the world.

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact

[Savage-Rabbit]

How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then?

Eh? As far as I know the only pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with N-America and it's indigenous peoples that has been archeologically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt was by Norse seafarers from Iceland and Greenland. Apart from the Norse the only other candidates for any significant pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with the Americas their indigenous peoples are Polynesian seafarers. Everything else including America bound voyages by: Africans, Andalusians, Arabs, Moors, Australians, Irish, Chinese, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Indians, Israelites, Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians and the Welsh is unproved supposition.

california?

[citylivin]

How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then?

Um, citation needed. What traces did he leave in california exactly? Wikipedia has the following:

Amateur historian Gavin Menzies claims in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World that several parts of Zheng's fleet explored virtually the entire globe, discovering West Africa, North and South America, Greenland, Iceland, the Falklands, Antarctica, and Australia, passing the Arctic Ocean in the process. His thesis has been discounted "as nonsense"[16] by professional historians.[17][18][19][20]

China is in the midst of a new cultural revolution

[Colin Smith]

Haven't you all noticed? It's only the largest event in modern history.

Talk about bizarrely misplaced complacency. Particularly since the US is a trillion in debt to China and has shipped most of the production capacity there as well.
 

Great. Now we can steal their IP.

[Registered Coward v2]

Of course, methinks they will all of a sudden develop a keener interest in enforcing laws protecting it. Just like other countries as they began to develop their own IP.

The US really only has branding

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The value chain is something that has been building for a long time. For example, Toshiba first made just the ceramic compound for embedding chips which they sold to chip makers, then they started building chips for American companies, then they started building their own chips, then products and boardsets for other brands, then their own branded products.

As more and more the actual design is moving out of USA and all that is left is branding and putting a US friendly face on the product through the branding badge, manuals and tech support. As these Asian brands build up their credibility their brands gain value too: Samsung being a prime example. As this happens, the American brands lose value.

This is happening in all sorts of areas including electronics, car manufacture etc.

Branding is highly lucrative and is what allows Apple to sell an ipod Nano at perhaps 20x its build price. However, branding is not a sustainable business model and won't last forever.

Glad we can help

[icepick72]

We've been giving China so much money by outsourcing everything to them. I hope they remember or appreciate our contributions to their rise when they become the superpower.

Civ4

[tknd]

Answer me this, How did China invent paper, compass, press printing, and gunpowder then?

That's so easy. In the beginning they had their science slider at 100% and culture at 0%. Paper, compass, and printing press are pretty easy to get to anyway. Gunpowder they probably made a bee-line for. After that they probably dropped the science slider to 0% and pushed the culture slider to 100%. That works great for happiness in your cities. They did it wrong though, seeing as we (the US) were able to produce a bunch of pop singers and a bunch of rock bands. They also just tried to spam farms and everyone knows that doesn't work. You gotta do cottage spam (US suburbs) so you bring in the commerce. And you can't just stop at gunpowder, you gotta at least go for rifling--that's probably why Japan set them so far back in the war.

Anyhow, cultural victory for the win!

The whole point was propoganda

[HornWumpus]

Zheng He's massive fleet is about as historically proven as Noah's.

Re:The whole point was propoganda

[Stephen Ma]

You're wrong. We have massive Chinese histories of Zheng He's fleet, written by Zheng's contemporaries. They couldn't all have been faked. Then there are the letters written by the Ming bureaucrats to each other; a fleet that size needs immense logistics, which cannot be hidden. We also have corroborating documentation from the places Zheng visited, such as Thailand, India, Indonesia, Africa. The only major question remaining is whether he visited the Americas before Columbus.

Re:The whole point was propoganda

[HornWumpus]

Fair enough.

Restated: Zheng He's travels across the Pacific are about as proven as Noahs.

Funny how all his other voyages are documented. Not that exploring the China Sea should be considered all that great an accomplishment for China.

Other claims of Chinese explorers are clearly propaganda.

Re:The whole point was propoganda

[Stephen Ma]

Zheng He's travels across the Pacific are about as proven as Noahs.

We don't even know whether Noah was a real person. Whereas we have massive documentation, from multiple independent sources, for Zheng He and his giant fleet.

Re:The whole point was propoganda

[Stephen Ma]

Not that exploring the China Sea should be considered all that great an accomplishment for China.

You need to improve your geography. Zheng He visited Africa, which is thousands of miles from the China Sea.

Re:The whole point was propoganda

[Stephen Ma]

Funny how all his other voyages are documented.

I assume you are referring to a possible visit of America by Zheng He, decades before Columbus. That has never been a Chinese claim; as far as I know, the originator was Gavin Menzies in his book "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" (published in 2002).

Re:China is in the midst of a new cultural revolut

[_Sprocket_]

What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?

This "new cultural revolution" you're talking about is not the Cultural Revolution event in the 60's. A new cultural revolution does not erase history. And it does not somehow make paper and compasses inventions of Modern China's culture.

Good Luck China :-)

[johnsie]

Competition is good for technology because it means people have to come up with new and exciting ideas to try and stay ahead of the game. China has millions of workers who are hard working and able to work cheaply so should be able to invent some pretty good stuff. The US will need drastic to make changes to stay ahead of the game. The stereotypical perception of the fat, lazy American is going to have to be made a thing of the past. Americans are going to have to work hard and cheaply to compete. They can't afford to keep with the status-quo. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the future with both countries. Hopefully there will be a new space race and some good computers built by both sides.

This is great news for the USA and Western Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically this is the first step towards moving China's labor force from a cheap commodity everyone wants to an expensive resource that will compete directly and fairly with labor in the USA and Western Europe. Realistically China will join the USA and Western Europe and outsource the labor to somewhere else. May be Africa will be the next China and provide cheap labor that free markets need to exist. I mean with out slave labor how can you keep the costs of products down while keeping the board members and upper management teams in their G5 jets and billion dollar bonuses, right???

Re:Culture - No! Innovation!

[BranMan]

I don't think culture is what is being referred to here as the success of western civilization. I think what is being referred to here is the exponential development in every endeavor that has happened in the West. While the East and Near East have stagnated for centuries, the West has been a crucible of innovation due to intense warfare and competition. We went, in the space of just 100 years from Napoleon to WWII - from smoothbore muskets and field guns to machineguns, battleships, computers, modern surgery, antibiotics, jet aircraft, and nuclear power/weapons.

As far as pragmatic creativity and innovation go, modern Western civilization has been on the order of a Pre-Cambrian explosion. Nothing like it in history - it's truly staggering when you look at it that way.

I think that is what is meant. Empires? Feh! Going from blood-letting and medicine men chanting over chicken bones to mapping chromosomes and gene therapy - now THAT is what conquers worlds. That is what makes us unique. We need to hang onto that.