China Plans To Build a Domestic Robotics Industry

jfruh writes China is known as a manufacturing export powerhouse, but it imports much of one particularly important kind of manufacturing tool: robots. Now the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is developing a "robotics technology roadmap," with a goal of owning over 45 percent of the high-end robotics market by 2020.

Comments

Incorrect headline.

[Kartu]

Stealing (e.g. learning / copying what others did, legally or not) is a great way to develop industry from scratch.
Note that many things they do go far beyond stealing. E.g.:
1) Moon probe returning back to earth
2) High speed trains (this one started with importing technology from all countries with major know how)
3) Longest bridge in the world
4) Biggest dam in the world

My point is, the steal at times, but they are not limited to it.

On the Fence

[DumbSwede]

I’m on the fence about this one. It reminds me of Japan’s big fifth generation computer project in the 80’s – and which was widely considered a failure. China has had many great accomplishments this last two decades, they are a force to be reckoned with, but many of their gains have come through brute force methods of applying ample labor to problems, not true subtlety or production efficiencies.

That said, the Chinese admire those who excel academically and are hungry for a prosperous modern future. I have actually been to China 5 times in the last eight years and the major cities are modern marvels to behold.

But what has worked well in the past, the ruling party deciding spending priorities, may not work so well in the future. China’s bureaucrats are very controlling. They have worked hard the last twenty years to drag China into the modern world, enriching their citizens and themselves alike, but now that a substantial portion of the population is educated and middle class they have become more restless and demanding of accountability on the part of the government.

This desire for control may also not work so well in an industry that needs the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. You can command the building of streets and bridges and skyscrapers, commanding new discoveries be made and made in such a way that are not a threat to the state and can be controlled by the state – that may be another thing.

Comforting to say, but matters not.

[DumbSwede]

It may be comforting to think China merely stole everything to become manufacturing heavyweights – it may even be true to a degree, but going forward they are becoming increasingly self reliant. They will at some point surpass us in many areas, or perhaps already have. Did I mention the admiration of academic achievement within their culture? Do you think only us good ol’ Americans have a lock on creativity and knowledge? They aren’t just building infrastructure, they are building know-how. When the Communist party wants something done they are not sidetracked by petty partisan bickering. Yes I outlined some weaknesses of theirs, but that is not to say they might not overcome or evolve past them.

We are the ones that need to start working towards the future harder. Get past the Common-Core complaints -- some are merited, some are not – and get on with it and apply what works in education. An educated workforce will be the only way for us to compete with them (or anyone else) in the future, and they have a 4-5x advantage numbers wise to cull the best from.