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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."
this makes me happy that I'm learning mandarin. å好ä
I look forward to the new and inventive ways to hide toxins in consumer products.
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.
Wah, i am gonna miss the cheap copies of electronics. Damn it. :-D
Well, I don't know about the situation regarding health care and education. But Hong Kong certainly *looks* very advanced already.
you mean safe like loaded with high fructose corn syrup or aspartame?
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.
Luke, help me take this mask off
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.
Think Deeply.
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.
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.
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.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
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.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Yes, much like those repressed, authoritarian Germans, I don't think we'll ever have to worry about innovation coming from such societies.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Didn't all these things happen before the Cultural Revolution?
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.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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.
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.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
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.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
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.
WHen you are ordered to think outside the box or risk having your entire family wiped off the planet, you think outside the box.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In about two million emails, the font was never readable.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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?
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.
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.
Think Deeply.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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.
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Deleted
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.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Recursion and a stack overflow?
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.
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!
True. But 500 years is not a long time by Chinese standards.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.