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China's Tech Copycats Transformed Into a Hub For Innovation (wired.com)
hackingbear writes: Following similar path of the 19th century America, China has advanced from being copycats to innovators. After its middle class has risen from 4% of population to 2/3 in the last decade, a generation both creative and comfortable with risk-taking are born. "We're seeing people in their early twenties starting companies—people just out of school, and there are even some dropouts," says Kai-Fu Lee, a Chinese venture capitalist and veteran of Apple, Microsoft, and Google, who has spent the past decade crisscrossing the nation, helping youths start firms. Major cities, i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, are crowded with ambitious inventors and entrepreneurs, flocking into software accelerators and hackerspaces. They no longer want jobs at Google or Apple; like their counterparts in San Francisco, they want to build the next Google or Apple. Venture capitalists pumped a record $15.5 billion into Chinese startups last year, so entrepreneurs are being showered in funding, as well as crucial advice and mentoring from millionaire angels. Even the Chinese government—which has a wary attitude toward online expression and runs a vast digital censorship apparatus—has launched a $6.5 billion fund for startups.
what a bunch of whooey - China has a quarter of the world's population, and a quarter of the world's smart people. Do you really think those smart people are just going to make 'rip offs', when there's more fun stuff to do - Chinese geeks are just like geeks anywhere
Spend some time hanging out in Shenzhen and you'll see just what you're up against, lots and lots of smart people - your designers in the US are building in China, but they're designing 1000s of kilometres away from their factories, designers in Shenzhen are a subway ride away from them, they can pop over and tweak a process to save money and time to markegt
Chinese IP law may not be the same as the US's - they're a different country, you know they are allowed their own laws, they don't have to have yours. If they can compete better by not having the US-style copyright nightmare - good for them - without Disney on their backs they can compete far better than you can
It's worth pointing out that the U.S. became the industrial powerhouse it is by ignoring European patent and copyright law during the late 1800s/early 1900s, and illegally building tools and products based on European designs.
I'm of the opinion that IP holders have gotten fat and lazy by manipulating the legal process to extend IP law and duration far, far beyond the point where it's helpful to the economy. And if China can build this stuff cheaper and better by flaunting IP law, then the world will be better for it even if it screws over the IP holders. That's not to say IP is useless. Just that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction, and it needs to be swung back to return us to the point where IP law is benefiting society.
It was the same with Germany at the beginning of the 19th century, with the U.S. at the end of the 19th century, with Japan in the 1950ies and Taiwan in the 1970ies. It always takes some time for a society to learn all aspects of a trade, and until then, it it is mostly trying to copy the perceived leaders. What else is there except asking: How did they do it? and then trying to figure it out by trying it yourself. And if there is not much of intellectual property to protect inside a country, there is no incentive to even have this protection. And even more: the U.S. needed decades after introducing protections for domestic works and inventions, to expand that protection to those of foreign origin. You can read the letters of complaints Charles Dickens wrote when he learned that in the U.S., his novels were reprinted and sold cheaply, and he wasn't able to do anything about it. Only when cheap rip-offs of their own products started to flood the export markets of the U.S., it agreed to allow similar protections to foreigners.