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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.