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How Does Chinese Tech Stack Up Against American Tech?
The Economist: China's tech leaders love visiting California, and invest there, but are no longer awed by it [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. By market value the Middle Kingdom's giants, Alibaba and Tencent, are in the same league as Alphabet and Facebook. New stars may float their shares in 2018-19, including Didi Chuxing (taxi rides), Ant Financial (payments) and Lufax (wealth management). China's e-commerce sales are double America's and the Chinese send 11 times more money by mobile phones than Americans, who still scribble cheques.
The venture-capital (VC) industry is booming. American visitors return from Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen blown away by the entrepreneurial work ethic. Last year the government decreed that China would lead globally in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. The plan covers a startlingly vast range of activities, including developing smart cities and autonomous cars and setting global tech standards. Like Japanese industry in the 1960s, private Chinese firms take this "administrative guidance" seriously.
The venture-capital (VC) industry is booming. American visitors return from Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen blown away by the entrepreneurial work ethic. Last year the government decreed that China would lead globally in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. The plan covers a startlingly vast range of activities, including developing smart cities and autonomous cars and setting global tech standards. Like Japanese industry in the 1960s, private Chinese firms take this "administrative guidance" seriously.
It's the same shit.
That's what they said about Japan: they make shitty copies, no, they make good copies, wait, Japanese products are putting ours to shame.
In actual tech (not these web and app based services TFA calls "tech"), innovation, industrial design and quality control, the Chinese are getting there. I've worked with some first rate original Chinese software, and just this weekend got my hand on an upcoming product designed in China (not a knockoff of a Western device). First class stuff that competes with the top brands here and is actually better in some ways. Their English language manuals are actually useful now, and they are finally waking up to the fact that Times New Roman is a poor choice of font to use on buttons and equipment, and looks especially shitty when printed in gold. The coming years will will continue to see a flood of cheap rubbish coming from China... but the amount of quality Chinese original goods is set to increase. Western designers take note. And you can be sure that China will pay more attention to IP laws when that trend continues.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...