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."
Good Going, America! (Score:1, Insightful)
McDonalds made your bread.
The Chinese factories build your circuses.
You've lost everything and don't even see it. Enjoy American Idol!
Go for it (Score:1, Insightful)
Then we'll just have some other country in South America or India make our crap for us. Personally I'm really tired of hearing of all the crap they make that's being recalled because of melamine, lead, etc...
I would rather pay more money and know that what I'm buying is safe.
Hong Kong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:innovation starts now (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
None of the Asian Tigers Replaced US innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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:Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
As for this:
Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?
I would be a little more concerned about when they killed everyone with a college education (or sent them for "re-education through labor") than them having been "bred-out" of the population.
Re:Culture (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't all these things happen before the Cultural Revolution?
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.
Re:Culture (Score:2, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
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 stuff that doesn't flourish that much in a restrictive, conformist society.
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.
Re:innovation starts now (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit, every toy made in the 50s to, what, the 70s had lead in it. Our parents somehow survived.
Re:Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
WHen you are ordered to think outside the box or risk having your entire family wiped off the planet, you think outside the box.
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.
Re:Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
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 case, it was actually foreigners who adopted it for navigation and taught the Chinese to use it for something other than Chi lines and harmony.
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.
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.
Re:And up comes Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 industries, this time in China, and is very likely to be played out again in still other industries.
Re:Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
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.