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From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

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Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#41

Post by Arn_Thor »

yusuke10 wrote: post #20

It's funny, if an author with a book to peddle repeats the mantra enough times..."China is innovative", it might become true. And yet, what evidence does she raise? "the electronics were assembled in China; almost never were they invented in China" "paying with your smartphone has become the norm" "bikeshare firms" "China has the largest number of unicorns outside the US" Nothing that would define as innovations. Let…

You're ignoring the fact that China's rise is really in its 17th year, if we count from it joining the WTO (which is arguably too early). At that point if I recall my cultural history correctly Japanese copy products were just about managing quality parity with US and European products. Give it time

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#42

Post by hownottowrite »

The article is missing the real step one: Education.

From "China’s rise as a major contributor to science and technology"[0]:

"China is now the world’s distant leader in bachelor’s degrees in Science and Engineering, with 1.1 million in 2010, more than four times the US figure. This large disparity reflects not only China’s dramatic expansion in higher education since 1999 but also a much higher percentage of students majoring in S/E in China, around 44% in 2010, compared with 16% in the United States."

[0] http://www.pnas.org/content/111/26/9437

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#43

Post by intended »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #38
tristanj wrote: post #2

This article is missing the key part where China blocked and limited products by major foreign tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft et al so homegrown Chinese variants could flourish.

The classic 'East Asian growth model' tactic. It's classic because it works, almost every time

Also its not like the west managed its growth solely out of the strength of their intellect and labor.

It seems that all major ladders to the top have some dark rungs the victors are happy to hide when they reach the top.

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#44

Post by dep_b »

speedplane wrote: post #35

I was recently reviewing front-end frameworks (i.e., React vs. Angular), and part of the review was looking at Google Trends to get an idea of their relative popularity. I was pretty surprised to see that while React has been gaining on Angular for some time worldwide, it's had remarkable growth in China, where it now surpasses Angular by a wide margin. Certainly seems that China is faster to adopt this technology th…

Reminds me of a story I read a while ago about Russian programmers that didn't speak English at all so all things we recognized as words in the programming language didn't have any meaning to them.

Perhaps React has a syntax / mental model that's easier to grasp for non-English speakers. OO programming is definitely more wordy than functional(ly oriented) programming.

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#45

Post by dep_b »

The next step in China will be that an important part of their citizens will earn a living above a certain threshold where they will think about non-material problems in their lives, which is the moment the Chinese government has to start dealing with unruly citizens. This happened in the 1960's in Western Europe and the US.

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#46

Post by nl »

Animats wrote: post #15

It's mostly making real stuff, too. The US suffers from ad-based companies, especially Google and Facebook, dominating "tech". YC recognizes this; most newer YC startups are not ad-funded. But it's going to take a while to turn this around. It's like that strange period in the 1990s when 40% of US corporate profits came from financial activities, and every big company had to have a finance subsidiary with a trading d…

It's mostly making real stuff, too. The US suffers from ad-based companies, especially Google and Facebook, dominating "tech".

This is an odd criticism. Newspaper, Cable and TV companies have always been financial giants. It would be more surprising if ad-based companies hadn't remained big players.

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#47

Post by nl »

yusuke10 wrote: post #20

It's funny, if an author with a book to peddle repeats the mantra enough times..."China is innovative", it might become true. And yet, what evidence does she raise? "the electronics were assembled in China; almost never were they invented in China" "paying with your smartphone has become the norm" "bikeshare firms" "China has the largest number of unicorns outside the US" Nothing that would define as innovations. Let…

DJI, WeChat, Quantum comms satellite, the Xiaomi production model, overnight train station building etc etc.

I dunno - I can think of lots of criticisms of China but this isn't one.

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#48

Post by tinyrick2 »

tristanj wrote: post #2

This article is missing the key part where China blocked and limited products by major foreign tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft et al so homegrown Chinese variants could flourish.

Don't you think that by limiting foreign companies' products the local companies would operate less efficiently since there is no competition? I think I was taught about this in my econ 101 class. Why does it work differently this time?

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#49

Post by intended »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #3

There was an article in the WSJ yesterday that called the last 20 years of GE under CEO under Jeff Immelt “success theater” due to the underlying rot. China is a country of “business theater”. They sure look like they’re doing business, lots of factories, tons of people in suits, cargo container ships, etc. But it’s all just a lie. It’s nothing but the 21st century planned economy version of the Soviet Union. It’s no…

At this point this is hearsay.

Sure, Hong kong submitted financial documents are opaque (to be generous) on a regular basis.

There could be massive falsehood underlying a lot of China's numbers.

But at the same time, they also are producing vast amounts of goods.

If their numbers are fake, those fake numbers are good enough for them to bully their neighbors, set up billion dollar ports, give billion dollar loans, and create the massive OBOR project.

And no, in the intervening years many of the claims of democracy proponents have failed to come true. China thrived because of its opaque crack down on free speech, the people who rose up did not survive if they rose up at all.

It is also quite likely that China is immune to the kind of issues of foreign funded news articles that western firms are open to.

And China has objectively uplifted one of the largest chunks of human population to a better life than what they had before.

It a life many people would not countenance in the west, but its better than what the options were before.

Unless someone has hard facts, to indicate exactly how deep the rot is - its speculation.

The facts and actions of China which are observable tend to hold more weight

Re: From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower

#50

Post by petra »

nl wrote: post #47
yusuke10 wrote: post #20

It's funny, if an author with a book to peddle repeats the mantra enough times..."China is innovative", it might become true. And yet, what evidence does she raise? "the electronics were assembled in China; almost never were they invented in China" "paying with your smartphone has become the norm" "bikeshare firms" "China has the largest number of unicorns outside the US" Nothing that would define as innovations. Let…

DJI, WeChat, Quantum comms satellite, the Xiaomi production model, overnight train station building etc etc. I dunno - I can think of lots of criticisms of China but this isn't one.

Maybe China is innovative, but regarding Xiaomi, i'm not so sure they have a unique production model, or rather they are willing to sustain low profits, or are even be subsidized by China - because controlling people's phones is a really valuable thing.
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