China Aims To Move Up the Food Chain 257
krou notes reporting in the Christian Science Monitor that the current economic crisis is helping China's push into higher-end manufacturing by shaking out low-profit companies. The hope is that, instead of just assembling iPods, Chinese companies will be able to invent the next big thing instead. In this move China is following the well-worn path taken by Japan and the Asian tigers before it. "Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission announced revised plans to transform Guangdong and neighboring Hong Kong and Macau into a 'significant innovation center' by 2020. One hundred R&D labs will be set up over the next three years. By 2012, per-capita output in the region should jump 50 percent from 2007, to 80,000 yuan ($11,700). And by 2020, the study predicts, 30 percent of all industrial output should come from high-tech manufacturing."
great (Score:3, Funny)
Re:great (Score:5, Funny)
From the font I am using, it looks you are learning Swedish shorthand...
Re:great (Score:4, Funny)
A møøse bit my sister once...
PROTECT IBM JOBS!!!11!!! (Score:2)
There is no way one can protect IBM US-based jobs (the inneficient ones) without losing competitivity on the long run to folks like these that work for peanuts. It's just something called capitalism [wikipedia.org], and nothing politicians can do to stop it.
How do you say "University Diplomas?" (Score:3, Funny)
In about two million emails, the font was never readable.
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Stick with it. The fact that you've already started puts you seriously ahead of the game.
At risk of sounding spammish, I'm running a company from Beijing that specializes in online Chinese learning at http://popupchinese.com [popupchinese.com]. We are pretty exposed to conditions in the local market and are still seeing a lot of growth in small and mid-sized businesses in northern China. These are the smart innovative companies. In contrast, it's the export-oriented manufacturing sector down south that are having a really har
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Don't waste your time.
Hell, there are so many dialect that chines from different Providences can not communicate to each other using 'mandarin'. Care to guess what language they use? yep English.
English is the easiest language to communicate it.
You can share ideas, exchange information with an high degree of accuracy and you don't have to conform t all the rules to do so.
It's a bitch if you are trying to implement all the rules and be grammatically perfect. I argue that it's not possible to be grammatically
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Then how do you explain the terrible english speaking skills of all my math teachers and co-workers in university? If they all communicate with each other in English, you would think they'd have at least a decent grasp of the language before they made it to the US... no?
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Just today, I had my Data Structures teacher, who speaks passable English, replaced with some random guy that could not, for the life of him, hack out an English sentence clearly or coherently. First time I had to leave a core class like that early; I had other important things to try and take care of.
One thing is for certain; most of them have GREAT writing skills.
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I argue that it's not possible to be grammatically perfect
You don't say.
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Moving up the food chain; hmmm, what's next above melamine? polyvinyl chloride?
innovation starts now (Score:5, Funny)
I look forward to the new and inventive ways to hide toxins in consumer products.
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how about ipods made of lead?
Improvement to bricked ipods used as door stop ?
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how about ipods made of lead?
Depends, can I change the battery?
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how about ipods made of lead?
That's called the "Zune".
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Bullshit, every toy made in the 50s to, what, the 70s had lead in it. Our parents somehow survived.
Re:innovation starts now (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit, every toy made in the 50s to, what, the 70s had lead in it. Our parents somehow survived.
"The U.S. incurs $43.4 billion annually in the costs of all pediatric environmental disease, with childhood lead poisoning alone accounting for the vast majority of it." http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/lead/pbwhere_found2.html
Re:innovation starts now (Score:5, Funny)
You know that lead poisoning makes people go crazy, right?
That might explain an awful lot. When was Bush born again?
Our Parents Survived, but (Score:3, Informative)
Lead Seldom Kills, but it often would cause anemia, behavioral problems, Diminished IQ, lethargy. Sure they survived, but how many of them would have had better lives?
Re:innovation starts now (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes. But their parents were willing to tell them "No, don't do that".
Today's parents aren't into doing that so much.
MP4 Players (Score:5, Informative)
I'm quite happy with my unbranded Chinesium MP4 player that I bought from Chinavasion. [chinavasion.com]. All I wanted was something that would let me watch TV shows or movies at the gym. I looked at the iPod Touch and Nokia N800 products but they were all over kill (and over priced). This fits the bill perfectly. The software is XP only and just a gui wrapper to mencoder, but the ini let me write a nice shell script to do it [exstatic.org] on Linux/OS X.
There are quite a few products on that website that seem pretty cool. I'm thinking of getting the toothbrush cam to see if it will make a cheap bore scope for engines, etc. This hard drive enclosure [chinavasion.com] seems pretty cool (Although I'm sticking with my XBMC).
The BEST part about all of these products is that they can't afford a proprietary connector nor can they afford to lose market share to not being able to connect to everything. Everything is Mini-USB or USB.
The biggest problem they have right now is UI and translations. The "MP5 Player Manuals" is quite entertaining to read and full of Engrish. [engrish.com]
Re:MP4 Players (Score:4, Informative)
This is the same Chinese outfit that makes such great knockoffs of other stuff, like this copy [chinavasion.com] of a Samsung WEP-200 [samsung.com].
When the WEP-200 first came out, I ended up needing a new headset, and it looked cool to me. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't even buy one for two weeks. All the mall carts had were the copies. And they weren't that good.
China has a ways to go. Creative I wouldn't call them. Opportunistic. Which also works.
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Ebay will likely be the leader at the forefront of this revolution. I, for one, can't wait.
As much as I don't like ebay, you have to admit they match the little guy from China DIRECTLY with the buyer (you and me). I just bought 12 screen protectors for my PDA for $3 free shipping. I bought a replacement 1200mAh same--physical-size-battery-as-the-Dell-900mAh battery for $8 free shipping. 33% extra battery capacity! I could have gotten the 2200mAh version for $10 free shipping but I didn't want it sticking ou
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You sir, have made my day! I've been looking for a new MP3 player, but all the MP3 players I've looked for from "known" brands (Creative, iRiver, etc.) have all been, as you've stated, "overpowered". Thanks for pointing out this site to me, since the players here are far more within my price range.
I will be missing it! (Score:3, Funny)
Hong Kong (Score:3, Insightful)
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My grandmother's place is like that too. They're government housing that was mass-manufactured in the late '40s. They're being systematically torn down for updated government housing now.
Melamine (Score:2)
Would that be a melamine laced food chain?
What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't surprise me that the PRC government wants to encourage adding value to it's economy, by moving up beyond manufacturing to design. Hell, it was going to happen even without becoming public policy.
US economists, particularly those on a grant to say so, have gone on about the constructive destruction of the US economy. I can't count the times I've heard the analogy about Ford and the buggy whip. But, it's a bad analogy. Does it work when Henry isn't American, or doesn't make his investment in the US?
Constructive destruction is an attempt to describe a kind of economic activity, the redirection of capital and investment. But, it's not graven in stone that it's a benefit for any particular economic player, even if that player is the USofA.
But, just as those US economists made excuses for the hollowing out of US manufacturing (we'll move into design, we'll go upmarket), they'll think up new excuses now, and they'll probably pass muster at editorial boards and newsrooms as gospel.
In the meantime, the goals the Beijing government has set have INFLATION spray painted all over them, in dayglow.
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Why would the US economists (whoever those are supposed to be) need to come up with an excuse for helping bring millions of dirt-poor peasants into the modern era with some fure prospects? Or are you trying to turn this into a flamewar related to the current crisis?
The growth figure might be shown in real terms. I have no idea having not actually RTFA, though it won't surprise me if it isn't.
Re:What Excuse Will US Economists Have For That? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the issues in shifting gears to these new high tech capital intensive industries is the shift away from low-capital, labor intensive industries.
In developed countries this is counterbalanced by the suddenly unemployed workers going back to school or entering a new job that should overall pay better and produce more overall as the unemployed fall into appropriate jobs(effient allocation). Capital intensive jobs need education on how to utilize that capital(machinery, computers, development software, etc.).
However, in a country as huge and diverse as China you have sections of highly developed and wealthy people, and sections of abject poverty.
A good example is the Three Gorges Dam which displaced millions of people when they flooded the river valley and towns and villages that lived off it(Remember how Bush got slammed for how he handled Hurricane Katrina? This flood was actually man-made and much bigger!). The rationale of this huge dam was that the electricity would help catapult modern china into competition with the other first-world countries, i.e a propaganda move. Essentially, poor Chinese were pushed aside to help develop the modern areas.
In the USA, if you get kicked out of your job, you try to get another one. You've probably got a highschool diploma or GED. You can read a training manual, or maybe even take out a loan to go back to school and accumulate some knowledge capital so that you can sell yourself and your education to get a better job than the one you lost. If you're a poor fisherman who can barely read, when you lose the river your family has lived off of for generations...you're pretty screwed. You don't have the education infrastructure to enable you to fall into another line of work as easily.
It may be prudent for China to invest more heavily in its infrastructure before trying to chase after other countries which are much more thoroughly developed.
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Why would the US economists (whoever those are supposed to be) need to come up with an excuse for helping bring millions of dirt-poor peasants into the modern era with some fure prospects?
"Whoever": Gregory Mankiw, Tim Kane, Douglas J. Young, Brink Lindsey, just about anyone at Heritage, Cato, the Club for Growth. I can go on, but that'll get you started.
"Why": Around about the time when everyone notices that US firms, whether US or foreign based, have cleared out their engineering and design staff. Around
None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.
They don't have to. Our own intellectual property laws have strangled innovation in this country.
Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation (Score:4, Interesting)
None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.
They don't have to. Our own intellectual property laws have strangled innovation in this country.
At least we have some. In China, forget about R&D unless you're willing to pay the police to go raid the counterfeiters for you. In Hong Kong, Shenzhen, etc. you can buy real North Face and -insert-favorite-brand-here- clothing. The manufacturers are told to produce a certain number of goods, but it's _so cheap_ to make stuff over there they still produce more of it, and sell it to street vendors, who then sell it to you for 90% less what you'd pay over here, and the street guys STILL make a profit on it.
North Face, for example, pays this fee to keep the street vendors at bay. Friend was telling me about his trip there a few months ago-- "Do you have any NorthFace" "No, no no, no NorthFace. Here look at these instead, see this nice backpack? $5." "No but we want NorthFace" "No NorthFace, I don't have it" "Surely you've got something NorthFace." The guy looks at my friend, decides he's legit and not an undercover cop, looks left and right up and down the street, and the proceeds to climb up his shelves into a compartment above his shop and begins throwing down North Face sweatshirts, fleeces, backpacks, etc.
They won't be able to move up the food chain until they get _some form_ of copyright/trademark/IP protection. There is no "code of law" there, anything they can replicate is fair game. Better make sure anything you produce can't be replicated or they'll undercut you fast.
Re:None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
In China, forget about R&D unless you're willing to pay the police to go raid the counterfeiters for you.
As opposed to here in the United States, where taxpayers pay for the police to raid grandma who downloaded a "ZZ Top" song. I'm not seeing the Western Civilization Advantage Program(tm) working here.
They won't be able to move up the food chain until they get _some form_ of copyright/trademark/IP protection. There is no "code of law" there, anything they can replicate is fair game. Better make sure anything you produce can't be replicated or they'll undercut you fast.
That sounds like capitalism to me, and they seem to be raking in quite a bit of money for being at the "bottom" of the food chain. As to "some form of IP"; I disagree. They seem to be proving that the entire model of intellectual property is a fraud.
They deserve to succeed (Score:5, Informative)
In short, he likes them, and considers them a major looming threat. Every design he brings in he knows will be analyzed to enable them to better it. Hey, ho, that's evolution. Competitions wonderful if you can beat it often enough to live. If not, introduce protectionism and live off your capital for a while.
They are not tigers of course. Those are a protected species. Not T. rex cos that's just a bunch of bones. I cannot think of a suitable analogy. An unassuming animal that out-competes us while we are watch video games.
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It's not competition when you steal someone else's product, slap your name on it and sell it cheap because you have no RnD costs.
It also not competition when you make a knock off, try to make it look that same and then mislead people.
The US really only has branding (Score:2)
As more and more the actual design is moving out of USA and all that is left is branding and putting a US friendly face on the product through the brandi
A BIG PROBLEM (Score:2)
And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ... (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife is a fashion designer, and it's quite obvious that the trends in manufacturing have been shifting for quite a number of years now. Clothes at Walmart (socks, underwear, t-shirts, etc.) used to be made in China. Now these low-value items are being made in Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, etc. At that time, the mid-to-high-end fashions were made in Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Now China has largely overtaken this mid-to-high-end market (dresses that go for up to $1,000 are frequently from China now).
Clothes today. Cars and planes in 25 years. Or is that Toyota still funny Japanese engineering that falls apart?
Also - with our recent peanut/salmonella/spinach/drugs health scares, it's not like we can point fingers at others anymore for having shabby food quality standards. I know we're still lightyears ahead of many countries, but the gap is certainly closing quite quickly.
LOL. (Score:2)
Cars and planes in 25 years.
Perhaps sooner.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7879372.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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with our recent peanut/salmonella/spinach/drugs health scares, [snip] we're still lightyears ahead of many countries, but the gap is certainly closing quite quickly.
Scary!
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Or is that Toyota still funny Japanese engineering that falls apart?
Um...what?
It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time when Japanese cars had a reputation for being shoddy pieces of crap. The GP refers to this belief, which was clung to by particularly jingoistic westerners up until, oooh say around the mid-1980s (and maybe still today, in the US, for all I know). In the beginnings of the Japanese car industry, say in the 1950s, it was certainly true; now, as we know, the US is decades behind. The GP draws attention to the fact that this scenario is being repeated in some
Some of the doubters here are hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
The ones who are suggesting that the Chinese are incapable of making high end or innovative products.
Are you aware of how enormously successful Chinese immigrants are in places like Silicon Valley, where there's actually money and motivation for R&D? Did you know that both ATI and Nvidia were founded by Chinese immigrants? Did you know that there are many high end computer parts companies in Taiwan (who are ethnically and culturally Chinese)? Are you aware that the average IQ of a Chinese person is 105, which is exactly the same as the average IQ of a Japanese?
I guess what I'm trying to say here is, those of you who underestimate the Chinese will be proven wrong in the coming years, just like how nobody took Japan seriously when they first entered the electronics and automobile industries.
Not all it's cracked up to be.... (Score:2)
> And by 2020, the study predicts, 30 percent of all industrial output
> should come from high-tech manufacturing.
They should be careful what they wish for -- high-tech manufacturing is not all it's cracked up to be.
from what i seen of Chinese electronics (Score:2)
now to go back to winding copper wire around a cardboard tube...
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The best Ham radio I ever saw was made in America.
by me.
Great. Now we can steal their IP. (Score:2)
Glad we can help (Score:2)
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Re:Go for it (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. HFCS is only "dangerous" if you over eat it, just like sugar - or for that matter organic raw vegetables. Aspartame, as far as anyone can tell, only hurts certain people who have a reaction to it.
Melamine in baby formula or pet food, on the other hand, will cause kidney failure in a very short period of time. Antifreeze in toothpaste or cough medicine will do the same. Lead in paint on childrens' toys will cause developmental problems.
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Bulgaria seems to be the next location for call centres, so maybe they will move into manufacturing as well.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan is also a culture on conformity. Look at where they are now.
In fact, the same could be said about us and our "religious culture." Take off your myopic generalizations on different cultures.
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The Japanese at least respect their own kind; the Chinese are happy to exploit everyone. That makes then too American for America to like it.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nonsense. Answer me this, How did China invent paper, compass, press printing, and gunpowder then? How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then? Just because China repressed individuality doesn't equate to repressing innovation. In fact there are many many innovations in China most of us probably never even heard of. The only problem is China hasn't been applying its innovative power toward the right path. People innovate to copy the look and feel of others product, they also innovate to break any sort of protection and drm schemes that we have in our products. This is really a legal policy issue. People are not properly motivated to innovate and create new products, better products. Many local Chinese business operate on the idea where they just have to copy what is popular. This in term cuts down their operating cost because the basis of the idea already exist and the marketing has already been done. The government should give more incentive for entirely novel innovations, and that is how China can reinvent itself and become a real top-tier player in the world.
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Didn't all these things happen before the Cultural Revolution?
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Wait, what?! You are not making sense. Culture revolution alone doesn't qualify crowning "historically repressing individualism" to China in GP's statements. And since when did people copied products in Culture revolution?
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Why is this modded, "Flamebait"? His the parent's post is correct. The gp post is iffy at best.
I'm going to assume the moderator was ignorant of the Cultural Revolution [wikipedia.org] rather than just being spiteful.
Also, saying the Chinese invented the compass is about as accurate as saying the Greeks invented the steam engine. While technically true, in both cases they were clueless as to what they had discovered or how to leverage it. In the Greek's case, the invention went completely under developed. In the Chinese ca
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No. You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.
Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!
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China is in the midst of a new cultural revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Haven't you all noticed? It's only the largest event in modern history.
Talk about bizarrely misplaced complacency. Particularly since the US is a trillion in debt to China and has shipped most of the production capacity there as well.
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Most people will read this sentence and say it contradicts the rest of your argument. "Many local Chinese business operate on the idea where they just have to copy what is popular."
Until they develop their own new products, people will not believe in the ability to innovate. Of course Microsoft said the same of FOSS.
Re:Culture (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the point he is trying to make is that free markets and free speech tend to promote innovation, while government oppression tends to do the opposite.
He overstates his case--of course China could innovate, even under its current dictatorship. But all other things being equal, the advantage will remain with the West in the innovation department.
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China is becoming less and less oppressive.
Ironically, this is due to the Tienanmen Square incident.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
These are all wonderful inventions - and China should be proud of them. But remember that Zheng He's fleet and charts were burned after he died, and China turned its back on the world. What great inventions and innovations have come from China since the decline of the Ming?
The past 500 years have been an era of stagnation for China. Perhaps things are not as visibly bad as they were 100 years ago, but I see little proof that it is entering a new age of innovation.
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True. But 500 years is not a long time by Chinese standards.
Re:Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
These are all wonderful inventions - and China should be proud of them. But remember that Zheng He's fleet and charts were burned after he died, and China turned its back on the world. What great inventions and innovations have come from China since the decline of the Ming?
Exactly. Western civilization is so successful, effectively dominating all others, not because it was the "smartest", but because it was the most pragmatic. Inventing powder is a great invention, but using that knowledge to engineer groundbreaking powder-using weapons that change the whole balance of the battlefield is what gives real world results. Same goes for compass, steam engine, and there are plenty other examples.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Western civilization is so successful
Western civilisation (a nebulous and misleading term, but let's run with it) has been successful over the same sort of period (say 3 centuries) as the Assyrian, Persian , Song, Ming or Roman empires, or possibly less in the case of the Romans - it is not the pinnacle of civilisation, it is not the final word in empire building, and it is not the apotheosis of innovation or even pragmatism. It will soon fade away like other empires before it.
That's taking 'Western civilisation' to mean the current hegemony of the West in world affairs, since perhaps the time of the colonies, culminating in the dominance of one of those colonies - The United States. There has been no even tenuous perception of unbroken world hegemony of western interests before then, so I assume that's what you mean. I suspect history will see the period in a more fragmented way, with a dominance of European powers giving way to that of the US, which lasted for perhaps a century. The centres of wealth have clearly been moving east in the last few decades, and that is not going to slow down.
Many empires before the US one have made the mistake of telling themselves that they are something new in the history of the world, something more civilised and refined than those around them, and will change everything due to unique trait 'x'.
PS It's interesting that empires often use 'the civilised world' to mean the world under their dominion, and barbarians to refer to those who live beyond the pale. The phrase Western civilisation is presumably born of that impulse.
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People are not properly motivated to innovate and create new products, better products
A worldwide malaise. So many products have already been invented to cover every niche of desire that what people really need is a neighborhood warehouse to share really-not-that-much-used-but-I-really-like-it-if-it's-available-when-I-need-it stuff. Theoretically, it would be a lot greener if there were just one or two lawnmowers per cul-de-sac instead of a dozen.
Even the new stuff that I yearn to buy within 2006-2010 (I've
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact (Score:2)
How did Zhen He travel the world in leviathan sized ships and even left traces in California then?
Eh? As far as I know the only pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with N-America and it's indigenous peoples that has been archeologically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt was by Norse seafarers from Iceland and Greenland. Apart from the Norse the only other candidates for any significant pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with the Americas their indigenous peoples are Polynesian seafarers. Everything else including America bound voyages by: Africans, Andalusians, Arabs, Moors, Australians, Irish, Chinese
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Yeah, they Did do that, but there hasn't been any real innovation in over a hundred years. Even in area you would logically expect it, like manufacturing.
Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with the intelligence of the common Chinese person, but to do with the culture there government has created.
What this article says is exatly what China needs to do to be come innovators.
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As for this:
Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?
I w
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I'm going to go out on a limb to say that you've never actually read the Four Books of classical Confucianism mandated by the imperial examinations. Or are familiar with the exact Daoist influences on government either.
Confucius taught that the first steps to being successful were to 1.) cultivate essential goodness and humanity 2.) study one's own actions as well as history and literature.
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No, I think that's a stereotype. For instance, look at the Amazon reviews for Richard Nisbett's The Geography of Thought, a book that purports to show different ways of thinking between East and West.
http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Thought-Asians-Westerners-Differently/dp/0743255356/ [amazon.com]
Frankly, I'm worried that I'm going to be upstaged by all the smart people in China who are working a lot harder than I am.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, much like those repressed, authoritarian Germans, I don't think we'll ever have to worry about innovation coming from such societies.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that western culture can argue from a position of strength at the moment, seeing as most of our advertising revenue is spent on persuading people to take up lifestyle brands. I'm not sure that we have many individuals left under the age of 40. I'm throwing this out as a challenge of course, but I'm seeing huge pressure for rather drone like conformity being expressed in politics as well as the commercial sphere.
It doesn't take very many creative types to grab hold of the rudder and steer the ship - just look at the impact of the iPhone - or the Walkman cassette player for that matter from another society formerly regarded as too conformist to change the world. The creatives in China have had access to a western lifestyle for more than a decade now and I predict that its not going to be long before interesting new things start flooding out in a very visible way.
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Here's an interesting anecdote - Buick.
There are many interesting articles and image galleries about the models that Buick designs, manufactures, and sells exclusively in China and other parts of east Asia. These Buick models have received endless praise from the auto industry, and might have saved GM from their predicaments in the U.S. if perhaps they had decided to sell some of these models in the U.S.
According to my artist friend, China is the emerging market in modern expressionist art - the sort of stu
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if perhaps they had decided to sell some of these models in the U.S.
The U.S. has tight crash, exhaust, and fuel mileage standards, as well as much richer consumers.
For example, frontal airbags requirements were only enforced in new Chinese cars in 2007.
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The U.S. leads the world in safety mandates for cars, which I very much appreciate.
Although fuel efficiency standards are a whole another matter. In China, it was a 38MPG requirement in 2005 and 43MPG in 2008.
Re:Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")? ...
How many generations of Chinese have been born into that way of thinking? Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?
Oh, you were referring to China. I thought that you were referring to the US and for what passes for our entire public education system. It seems that we've been leaning heavily on the primary schooling of other countries for some of our best new immigrates. If we were so great, why does it seem like every other educational system in the world is better than ours except for maybe our R&D university system. (Heck, that's where we make the biggest use of foreign educated folks!)
Saying that we are free thinking is silly. The US has historically repressed individuality. The Pilgrims and Quakers didn't come over here because they wanted their children to be free thinking individuals. Our system has encouraged farm workers and factory workers, but discouraged anyone of being an inventor. Those are the weird folks.
China if anything has a history of valuing the types of folks that we routinely dislike. O.k. they have a stricter general system, but they do ID certain types and pool them all together sooner than we do. You can be creative as much as you want within your field, but every where else you need to conform. That's the same general rules as the US. If you don't conform to the surrounding rules, the general population will arrange the rules, laws, mores, and police to where you'll be arrested and jailed sooner or later.
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WHen you are ordered to think outside the box or risk having your entire family wiped off the planet, you think outside the box.
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The dominant culture has not been around so long that creativity could have been bred out of the population, and despite attempts to force out foreign influence, they cannot claim the level of success necessary to have eliminated creativity from all individuals. Further, this is assuming that the culture itself is capable of repressing innovation in an individual.
China is big, really @#%^ing big. Among that immense population you can find a chinese person to fit virtually any description. There is too much
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Conversely, you can say that in Western culture, jocks and athletes are favored over nerds in courtship and mating that by now all the intelligence have been bred out...
It's a silly, unsubstantiated, and stereotypical way of characterizing something as complex as a society or country. Your conclusion needs something more substantial than stereotypes.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
China has changed a lot since Nixon. The current generation of young Chinese are more self-centered than previous generations. It is called the Little Emperor Syndrome [wikipedia.org]. It comes as a byproduct of the one-child policy in urban areas. Since couples can now have one child, they tend to lavish their attention on one child. More often than not these children are spoiled and filled with self-entitlement as they are their parents only hope for prosperity in the future. Coupled with China's mixed economy of communism and capitalism, ambition is rewarded these days.
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I don't think that's really an accurate characterization of Chinese history, honestly. Typically, and I'm talking about ancient China right up to the present, ruling governments have had no problem with innovation and individuality so long as those traits didn't manifest themselves as rebellion. The exception that jumps to mind might be the Cultural Revolution, but that was a pretty chaotic period and not a representative example. And east Asian cultures also value individuality and innovation, provided tho
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It is unfortunate that you got modded down-- you have a good question.
However, the answer is two fold.
1) The chinese masters are just as good as the masters from other cultures-- they acquire creativity after completely mastering a subject while other cultures use creativity and eventually acquire mastery.
2) The chinese are damn cheap and extremely motivated while other cultures are expensive (not their fault) and lazy (is their fault but partially the fact of growing up in an easier, safer society-- the ch
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The west has largely lost the concept of "shame" and so now individuals are capable of doing anything for their own personal benefit.
Like adding poison to powdered milk?
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US agrees with China's desire to innovate for that reason alone. That China never respected people's copyrights. Whatever China makes, US will just steal. And there ain't nothin to be done about it.
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Recursion and a stack overflow?
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Then those manufacturing jobs can come back to United States.
China has for decades been losing manufacturing jobs to robots faster than the US hase been losing manufacturing jobs to China. Any job that can be easily automated, from manufacturing to paper-pushing, will be. Those jobs are toast. There's no point in whining when they move to someone who's willing to work cheaper than a robot (or shell script) - those simply aren't jobs for humans in the long run.
This is *not* a zero sum game, nor a race to the bottom. If every human in the world were working efficiently (ie.e, not do work robots can do) we would be producing such an amazing amount of goods and services that everyone could have a comfortable lifestyle, despite uneven distribution of wealth. Forcing goods that could be made by robots to be made by humans, or otherwise lowering the efficiency of the total human economic output, only means less stuff to go around.
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Then those manufacturing jobs can come back to United States.
China has for decades been losing manufacturing jobs to robots faster than the US hase been losing manufacturing jobs to China. Any job that can be easily automated, from manufacturing to paper-pushing, will be. Those jobs are toast. There's no point in whining when they move to someone who's willing to work cheaper than a robot (or shell script) - those simply aren't jobs for humans in the long run.
This is *not* a zero sum game, nor a race to the bottom. If every human in the world were working efficiently (ie.e, not do work robots can do) we would be producing such an amazing amount of goods and services that everyone could have a comfortable lifestyle, despite uneven distribution of wealth. Forcing goods that could be made by robots to be made by humans, or otherwise lowering the efficiency of the total human economic output, only means less stuff to go around.
It doesn't matter if you have an amazing amount of goods if large percentage of the population is unemployed.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
If only one person per family is employed, but that wage pays for everything a family needs to live and a number of luxuries, then the system works. Or, better, if you can earn what you need working 10 hours a week, there will be *far* more jobs.
The point of an economic system isn't to provide eveyone with a job, or with money, but to produce and distribute the goods and services that people want and need. Forcing people to work at some job to earn their keep works better than any alternative we've tried thus far, for social and psychological more than economic reasons, but that doesn't mean everyone working 60+ hours a week. Short work weeks are a *good* thing. One parent raising the kids full time is a *good* thing.
Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity. Pointless make-work jobs are a bug, not a feature.
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I believe you're correct. It's inevitable that companies will automate as much as possible. It's the only way to make a profit once someone else does it.
The way to go for jobs will be dealing with information and manipulating it, from the near future onward.
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Scarcity is an interesting word.
Is it better to have a scarcity of HDTVs or scarcity of food 'driving' you to work? (Need: a want that your neighbor already has.) I've got a scarcity of Ariel Atom 500s myself.
You are correct about the implausibility of completely eliminating scarcity.
That said we have in the developed world effectively eliminated scarcity of staple foods. If you are not eating in America it is not because there is no food you can afford (you can get free food at the bottom). We have
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The Chinese have been engaging in protectionism for years now, by keeping their currency artificially low.
You accuse the Chinese of manipulating the currency. Yet, look at what our wonderful FED is doing to our own currency [stlouisfed.org]. That chart represents how much money the FED has printed (fisically, electronically or otherwise). If you really think we are at risk of "deflation", you have been drinking too much kool-aid.
Also, look at history, we (the US) conned the world by telling them that dollars where redeemable for gold. And once the dollar became the world currency, we went off of the gold standard (1971) and
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how can someone buy cheap products if they are unemployed and broke?