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China Lays Claim To Four Great New Inventions That Have Existed Elsewhere Before (bbc.com)
dryriver writes: The BBC has an interesting story about Chinese state media increasingly touting "4 Great New Inventions" in modern China that were not invented by Chinese inventors or in China at all. The original term "four new inventions" harks back to the "four great inventions" of ancient China -- papermaking, gunpowder, printing and the compass. The new claim, however, appears to be that China actually invented high-speed rail, mobile payment, e-commerce, and bike-sharing, which is not true at all -- all 4 were invented or pioneered in other countries, all of them decades ago. The provenance of the claim appears to be a Beijing Foreign Studies University survey from May 2017, which asked young people from 20 countries to list the technology they "most wanted to bring back" to their country from China. The respondents' top answers were high-speed rail, mobile payment, bike sharing, and e-commerce. Since then, Chinese media and officials have drawn on this to promote these technologies as China's "four new great inventions" in modern times.
China has certainly adopted these "4 great inventions" on a bombastic scale of late. China now has the world's largest high-speed rail network -- about 25,000 kilometres (15,500 miles) -- and aims to double it by 2030. China's total mobile payments in the first 10 months of 2017 stood at $12.7 trillion, the world's largest volume, according to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. And with more than 700 million internet users, China is also the biggest and fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, according to a 2017 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. In February, the vice minister of China's Ministry of Transport said that there are 400 million registered bike-sharing users and 23 million shared bikes in China. That much is true. But did these 4 great new inventions emerge from China itself? It would appear that that part is untrue.
China has certainly adopted these "4 great inventions" on a bombastic scale of late. China now has the world's largest high-speed rail network -- about 25,000 kilometres (15,500 miles) -- and aims to double it by 2030. China's total mobile payments in the first 10 months of 2017 stood at $12.7 trillion, the world's largest volume, according to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. And with more than 700 million internet users, China is also the biggest and fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, according to a 2017 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. In February, the vice minister of China's Ministry of Transport said that there are 400 million registered bike-sharing users and 23 million shared bikes in China. That much is true. But did these 4 great new inventions emerge from China itself? It would appear that that part is untrue.
This is straight out of 1984.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
... trump Trump?
That the current leadership so desperately plays the "nationalist" card at every opportunity; China has invented many things in the past, (gunpowder...) but of course that was under different management.
Maybe China also invented copyright piracy and stealing intellectual property.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
...they have the resources and the drive to perfect them and make them a part of daily life for their citizens, thereby changing the current paradigm and effectively OWNING the idea for the foreseeable future as they infect those around them with the same new minimum "standards of living".
Gee, I wonder where they learned THAT from?!?
mnem
I am not my pants. No, I am not your pants either.
Bike sharing? Come on China. I know I want my country to import facial recognition technology so I can be tracked all day. I also think my country is falling behind in turning coral reefs into mini-military bases to secure oil rights. I also like how you've managed to build out an internet that allows Man in the Everywhere attacks.
Don't be ashamed of who you are. Be proud of your accomplishments. You have a huge fan base in the 'I'm a citizen of the World but have yet to leave my own country' crowd.
"perfect them"
hahahahahaha, you've got to be kidding. it might seem that way, but it's only because any negative criticism is censored. rofl
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
How many companies (or countries) shoot themselves in the foot, denying themselves the benefit of an idea because it was "not invented here"?
If vanity stands in the way of doing the sensible thing, you can either learn to be humble, or you can confabulate a rationalization. Maybe America should do the same thing; we can even claim it's our own idea.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Communist dictatorship lies, bigly.
Some people shocked, oddly.
Next you'll be telling me that "republic" doesn't mean real voting and stuff there ...
Apple invented the mp3 player, the smartphone, music production on computers, the tablet computer
America of course saved everyone's ass in world war 2, invented the computer, won the space race, founded a nation based on freedom (black slaves, ethnic cleansing of native americans?) , invented free speech, invented american food like Pizza, Hamburgers and French fries.
Oh wait they didn't...
So the reasons given for them claiming it is the scale of their use?
China is a massive country, it's hardly a surprise is it?
Ask the estate of Charles Dickens, the USA didn't have a bookselling industry so didn't allow copyrights of books. When they did start to have their own industry however...
Oh and Hollywood is based and there entirely and solely because of their abuse of patent and cipyright. The current plethora of tiny production companies "federated" to big companies is based on that past: by the time a film using Edison's patents was spotted and the law sent to California to bring them to justice, the company folded after having made enough cash off the movie, and tarted up a new company to do it all over again.
How come you whine about them pretending they invented stuff when you did it first yet you want to believe that they stole stuff before you when the opposite was true?
During the Cold War, the USSR had stuff saying they invented all kinds of stuff. China is doing just the same. This is just repressive governments doing what they do best, which is historical revisionism.
Imagine the nerve of some people! Claiming they have done shit they have not done!
Did Clockboy move to China?
Yes, I do fully understand that this is known as "cultural imperialism". And yes, I do also understand the irony as I type this from the comfort of my air-conditioned home in the heartland of America on a PC built from 99% China-manufactured components.
mnem
" "(Holy Testicle Tuesday!)
China has no face. No face at all.
The article states "According to the Worldwide Rail Organisation (UIC), the first high-speed train service began in 1964 - Japan's Shinkansen or bullet train. There had been significant speed records set before in Europe "
However, invention is not the same as regular service. And while most of the development happened in Europe (such as the 210 km/h German EMU record in 1903, the 1930s German and British steam records, the 1950s electrical engine records in France), the South Manchuria Railway was the fastest in Asia, and the Japanese high-speed system was initially built on experiences from (and by people with a background in the) South Manchuria Railway, run mostly by Japanese in China.
Post-Maoist China has lots of "modern" things to be proud of. It doesn't need to exaggerate.
Embarrassing yourself with exaggerations is supposed to be America's job, at least as of January 2017.
Absolutely... in exactly the same way as we in the USA have "perfected" the economy in general, and "perfected" elections, and "perfected" the justice system, and "perfected" mass media, and continue working "to form a more perfect union" tailored to the only people who matter. [Insert sarcastic emoji of choice here]
mnem
With six you get egg roll!
1984 was a year. Nineteen Eighty-Four was a warning mistaken for an instruction manual.
They will believe THEIR country invented it. Just as with any repressive non open government, the people only know, what they are told if they cannot seek information from outside of her country. I remember, after the collapse of the USSR, some reporter was asking a newly freed person that came to the USA about his experiences. He said when he went to an American supermarket for the first time, he knew that his government, had LIED about the United States, his entire life. North Korea, thinks their "leaders" are Gods, because they know NOTHING else. China is a more open place in places like Hong Kong, and areas around Peking/Beijing, but, they have state controlled media, limited access to news OUTSIDE of their country, so, it's understandable that many in their nation, would believe they invented a lot of things, which we know is incorrect.
Can you prove that he didn't?
[1] Somewhat debatable, depending on what you regard as the original railway, but mostly true.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Real questions (not rhetorical, I don't know the answer).
How have they perfected e-commerce beyond what I do in the US?
How have they perfected bike sharing beyond dozens of European cities?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I've been to Shanghai recently. They have bicycle sharing on a scale that is vast. They are incredibly popular, to the point that there are large heaps of bikes --- heaps, not neat rows --- at the front gates of factories where workers have left them as they report in the mornings to their job. The bikes are everywhere. Two years ago, when I visited the same location, this was not the case.
In my home town in the US, we have bike sharing as well. Nice neat rows of locking stands that are prissy in comparison. The stand across from our apartment seems to have a service truck pull up to it each week, so they appear to need frequent maintenance, too. With the Chinese version of the system, you scan a QR code on each bike and off you go. The bikes in China are basic, utilitarian kinds. Sure, you could steal one, disable the locking mechanism (a simple angle grinder would suffice) and try to keep it as personal property, but then you'd have to go to significant measures to prevent someone else from taking yours as a rental. The place is saturated with them, at least in the part of Shanghai where I was.
Did they invent bike sharing? No, clearly not. But they figured out how to do it on such an immense scale that it has changed society there.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
What a lame choice of inventions to rip off credit for...I mean if it's supposed to harken back to the "four great inventions" this does those actual inventions a HUGE disservice. High-speed rail is at least somewhat interesting, but compared to papermaking? Gunpowder? Forget about it.
Ah soooo . me inventy MOW! MOW!
The people spreading it know it's false or don't care, because It doesn't matter, this is China's internal monologue that 99% of residents will have no way of verifying, and those that do will not be able to communicate it on a large scale effectively. Those 99% of residents aren't all naive either, but their only choice is to be suspicious of every bit of news or accepts it - based on nothing more than gut feeling, either way it works as a subconscious "we are great" propaganda.
APK will be along shortly to claim that the chines copied him too.
Who is Obama? Some fake President made up by the fake media?
Nobody that matters has ever claimed that the USA has "perfected" any of those things.
In fact, you're the first person I've ever heard suggest that anyone has ever said such a thing.
They haven't caught on to the trick of patenting prior art by appending "using the Internet" yet.
Have gnu, will travel.
Do the re-writers of history do so first and then later become victorious because of that?
Given my experience working with Asian and Indian colleagues, I have noticed certain "differences" in language and logic/reasoning skills that I can only attribute to neuro-development (aka: how the brain develops while learning specific language mechanics and cultural normatives). So I have to ask, not knowing a Chinese-language: how does "invent" and "invention" translate between actual Western languages?
Because I've seen a lot of empirical evidence to the effect that Asian peoples (Oh, boy, here comes the stereotypes, right?? Not intended, merely trying to understand.) often don't -believe- that taking somebody else's idea and improving upon it is "wrong". (Which is rather the simplistic version of the "Western" notion we're discussing.) Sometimes, I've attributed this behavior to malice, because sometimes the "thief" "tipped their hand" and basically admitted they knew it was copyright violation and they just didn't care. But often enough the attitude has been somewhat more to the Steve Jobsian "Great Artists Steal" concept, where it was not malice but "awe, coupled with an intense passion to improve" the idea. Can we fault that? There have been many times in history where the "inventor" of a product, although genius in that incarnation, was not capable of seeing the much more profound "bigger picture" of that invention's possibilities. If, in the Chinese language/mindset "invent" infers a certain amount of implicit iteration, e.g. "there is nothing new, only the newest thing improved upon", then perhaps what is really being said is "Our 'invention' is 'perfecting' these things, like only China can." In short, they always mean "reinvention".
I'm not disputing the propaganda perspective, nor the arrogance/brashness in which the Chinese governmental regime has historically flat-out lied; but I hold out that with such drastic cultural differences there may be a bit more complexity at work here. Maybe. Enlighten me!
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
It just looks like a mistake in their title; the actual article just talks about innovation. Of course, the BBC has to blow it out of proportion and the typical response from the sheep is just .. typical.
I freely admit that I don't speak Chinese, but I find BBC to be a questionable source as well. Could it be some Chinese word that means both "inventions" and "advancements"?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's comforting to know that while we may have a clusterfuck on our hands with our political system in shambles, partisan conflict tearing the nation apart, clusterfucks of healthcare, retirement, and education... other nations have their own problems and are generally just as fucked up as we are.
China certainly had "The Bad Old Days" of dictators leading to starvation and cultural purging. I thought they were passed all that. They were growing like mad once they finally accepted capitalism. But with Winnie the Pooh now having a president-for-life position, it looks like the nation is starting to rot. And wow is it fast. To sustain this level of delusion that they're re-writing RECENT history... they'll simply have to silence not only the intellectuals who know better, but god-damn near anyone who looks outside their borders. Hopefully they won't force the intellectuals to the western farms. Again. If so, hey, there's a post-doc position waiting for you over here.
Or is this just all propaganda?
You forgot about quatro-triticale.
#DeleteChrome
I expected to see "small Pacific islands" on the list too.
This morning at New York, Al Gore was reported staring at the Chinese embassy with a face portraying a complicated mixture of feelings.
I read Chinese news everyday. I do not recall the state media or social media there claim these four technologies were invented in China. They did claim there are numerous improvements to high-speed train such as laying high-speed tracks on hash terrain and that's likely true too.
Even the example cited in this story, I do not see that they were claiming the tech is invented in China. It is like nothing wrong that people would want to bring back rocket tech from the US even though (rudimentary form of) rocket was invented by Chinese.
Where are the large scale evidence of this claim?
All I read here sounds more of China bashing?
as a result of Santos-Dumont work. Ask *any* Brazilian.
Being the inventor and first to implement has problems, much as you point out with UK railways. As soon as the first implementation goes into use, other countries get to learn from what the first one did and improve their copies.
Who is Trump? A fake President made up by real media?
I am married to a chinese woman. Starting 2 years ago, her behavior worsen to the point of being racist with French people while living in France. This includes her own children (8 and 10 years old) which she started to annoy with sentences like "you french people are lazy" "what you learn at school is dumb, and chinese children are cleverer" "french language is useless" "your country is garbagge". ... you understand the point. ... maybe Russia if we can give them a fair proposal to join. ...
Well as usual there is a part of truth in her words; but
I noted a change in the behavior of her friend also when in vacation last year in China; a sense of condescension and irritation that they reserve to poor people.
Even the people in the street started to call be xinjiangren which means Ouighour, the muslim people in western, usually poor and illiterate.
The key event was the huge Quantitative Easing that saved the chinese economy in 2010, like Greenspan in 2001 it went to the real estate. Now they are rich with apartments valued at millions in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen.
Trump is wrong, Yuan is overvalued and if it would have been free floating, it would have been devalued by the huge money creation of the QE. But in that case it would have destroy even more western industry, buying even more technology freely and claiming to have invented it...
We westerners are basically fucked by the chinese (well myself obviously given my situation) and our only hope is being coordinated between free countries: EU, USA, Japan, Philipinne, India, Americas, some of Africas and
Without that, China will preempt the World Economy and something very bad can happen: wars, starvations, chinese conquests (colonies), end of democracy,
So with all its flaws I wish good luck to Trump.
Phone payment is ubiquitous, even for dollar shops by the road. Same goes for online shopping. Some people even buy groceries online. And delivery is typically very fast with no extra cost. In major cities, same day delivery is not uncommon. The smartphone has become the single most important device in everybody's life. You can leave home without your wallet but not without your phone. I don't know if you can call these "perfecting", but e-commerce is much more widely adopted in China compared to the west, and it's still spreading to every aspect of life in China.
how is it possible that they calculated 12.7 trillion mobile payment during the first 10 months of the year.
A payment to a shop is a revenue which, accumulated is a mean to evaluate the GDP (with investment, expenditure, etc).
- they are lying with the numbers ? I already notice that they include any mobile payment to the share of internet in commerce: for instance paying the local fruit seller by scanning a QR code is considered e-commerce for them. It is like saying using a bank card with a terminal is e-commerce because the terminal is connected to the internet...
- the payment are the true numbers, while the GDP only takes into account the declared revenues (avoiding taxes in China is an art)
An explanation ?
The easier thing to answer the first one would be to go around it the opposite way. They have almost nothing that is worse than what you do in US when it comes to e-commerce, and almost everything better. Wechat payments are universal and easy, deliveries are extremely fast taking hours rather than days within major cities, availability is "everything you see on aliexpress, amazon, etc and then some" and prices are excellent.
It's economy of scale, and China has incredible megacities and produce most of the things locally, so many of your orders that have "x days to deliver" because they're not in storage - they go straight from manufacturer's storage output in China with minimal logistical overhead.
About the only thing that is worse is availability outside major cities. Especially in rural China in the poorer regions, lack of paying customers causes problems with deliveries. And of course you have to watch out for crappy fakes, but there's the exact same problem on amazon.
As for bike sharing, they have so many of them, they literally have to clear them out to make room for new ones. There are huge landfill-style dumps full of nothing but those bikes of older models, supplanted by the newer ones. They're completely universal, and this universality is actually a problem, because they tend to get dumped anywhere and everywhere. Forbes had a good story on the problem here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/y...
Being the inventor and first to implement has problems, much as you point out with UK railways. As soon as the first implementation goes into use, other countries get to learn from what the first one did and improve their copies.
Exactly. The first British railways were built for carrying coal short distances and made too small for the long term as a result, both in the gauge between rails and the overall loading gauge. George Stephenson has a lot to answer for. Even British engineers building railways elsewhere built bigger (usually except the track gauge as it was hard to source wider wheelsets).
You're listing things that feel like they are here, or what I'd consider mobile payments and not necessarily e-commerce. Though I can see where you're coming from saying mobile payments is a subset of e-commerce.
In the US mobile payments basically don't work, I got that.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Email, Bitcoin, XOR, ...
I'm just giving you examples that are most visible from the view point of an average person's daily life. I think it's a good hint on macro level but you're free to interpret however you want.
Few people understand lying is an integral part of their passive aggressive culture. That is the mechanics of how "Face" works. Upon being told the the Pyramids are 4,000 years old, the then Chinese President proclaimed Chinese history 5,000 years old for no reason. The Japanese are so indirect one of their own politician's told them they had to take responsibility for the well earnt nickname "sneaky Japs".
Weak claims about inventing a few shitty buzzwords, what they seeking?
Antikythera Mechanism supported e-commerce and mobile payments. So they're clearly talking bollocks.
stole my bike ....
Lets see here, Printing was invented in Korea. Papermaking was invented in Egypt. 2 out of 4 aint bad I guess...better than 0 for 4.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
bikesharing? seriously? i know its what students wanted, but the state media are idiots. that isnt even something to be proud of if you DID invent it. its just a thing.
>than making fireworks
This isn't exactly true; the Chinese had used it for much more than fireworks-see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huolongjing, for example (the usages also included flavoring and as an ingredient in elixirs and stuff).
I've been eating popcorn non-stop for 18 months and now have diabetes. THANKS OBAMA
Because it otherwise makes no sense. Either you know what "you did it first" means your moronic bunch of merkins OR you know that *China* isn't claiming anything. Contries have no vocal chords and can say nothing to humans.
But I guess your butthurt needed distracting.
I'm not American and regardless you should probably double check grammar when calling someone a moron.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
See subject: Of a dozen imitators & YES, the chinese imitated that feature from me in hosts per evidence @ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/boffins_supercharge_the_hosts_file_to_save_users_plagued_by_dns_outages/ vs. downed or redirected DNS (happens a LOT on both accounts) & it also lets you resolve favorite sites you spend most time @ FASTER vs. local OR remote DNS!
* Mine's the BEST & 1st of its kind - accept NO substitutes!
APK
P.S.=> You LOSE motherfucker (as always) as you try to "put me down" & often BEHIND MY BACK when I am not around - you WISH you were me & that you were capable of such feats (but "your kind", inferior losers, never can be)... apk
President Xi claims to have invented the question mark. He sometimes accuses chestnuts of being lazy!
And all four inventors were also heroes of the state! (Until purged.)
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Without lend-lease, it's possible that England would have fallen and doubtful the Soviets would have blunted the Nazi invasion of Russia as quickly as they did.
Without the Marshall plan, it's possible that WWIII would already have taken place.
Still, haters gotta hate.
Greatest inventions of all time!
...Overpopulation!