You’d think with over one billion bright entrepreneurial people in a rapidly industrializing economy that some Chinese geniuses would have come up with some world beating stuff by now, but I’m not seeing much in the way of Chinese inventions hitting the world market.
Why? What’s the hold up? The Japanese turned heads with the stuff they came out with as Japan ramped up. Why are the Chinese inventors lagging behind?
Well, they ARE investing quite a bit in their infrastructure. I was reading today that China is investing hugely in wind power (at the same time they are investing a lot in coal), for instance.
The reason you aren’t seeing a large increase in Chinese innovative products is that this isn’t the main Chinese focus atm. They are building up their infrastructure and also attempting to extend their market penetration in goods and services already in use world wide by increasing their manufacturing base with tried and true technologies and methods. They aren’t TRYING to invent the wheel…but instead are taking a page out of Japans play book from the 60’s and making a better mouse trap (sorry for the mixed metaphors there).
Sure, they did that…but it took them decades before they became the innovation juggernaut that they became later. China is approximately at the point Japan was in the 60’s or early 70’s.
-XT
WAG #1: They are, we just haven’t noticed.
WAG #2: They’ve focused on being the world’s manufacturer, making things for foreign engineers. A fact intrudes: I have read, I forget where, that China is wanting to move toward more engineering & design, as that’s where the real money is, not in production.
WAG #3: I speculate utterly without basis that they have had to date a lousy patent process that they’re probably trying to fix.
Just to be clear, about 75% of the Chinese population are peasant farmers. The “entrepreneurial class” is relatively small compared to the overall population.
But give them time. Many of the brightest minds are studying abroad, and often staying abroad. It’ll take some time for the university system to catch up with The West’s, but I have no doubt it will in the not too distant future.
Give them time. They’re cranking out engineers like it’s going out of style. They are already developing their own standards for HD DVD. I think we’ll start seeing some real innovation in hard science and biomedical research. It will be interesting to see what they come up with respect to space exploration. I’m hoping they start figuring out some clever solutions for renewable energy sources.
Ditto. Although I’m sure it’ll dawn on them, if it hasn’t already, that they have some of the strongest reasons for doing so amongst nations.
The Chinese (of the modern era) aren’t really innovators, they’re integrators. They adopt an existing technology and figure out ways to make it cheaper or better (rarely both at the same time). The same was true of the Japanese; many of the innovations that came out of Japan in the form of consumer electronics, automobiles, et cetera were actually Western innovations. For example, analog video recording was developed by engineers working for Bing Crosby Enterprises in the early 'Fifties, but the first really practical system for permanent storage (i.e. using mass production recording heads and a cassette system to protect the tape media) was the Sony Composite U-Matic in 1969. As a result, Sony had a virtual stranglehold on the videotape market until the consumer-grade format wars (Sony’s Betamax versus JVC’s VHS), and even after that retained the bulk of the commercial market. No American company even made any real headway into the videotape equipment market, although Memorex and BASF produced media.
Stranger
From what I’ve heard they don’t have much of a culture that encourages individual creativity. Though, this is changing rather rapidly. The idea has been that Chinese firms imitated what works and now that they are successful and know the basics of production they are moving toward production. Firms like GM are frightened because Chinese manufacturers that they put into business are now becoming the competition.
They have an industrial base. When we had one ,much of our developments came from trying to streamline and integrate other sciences to improve production. They will do very well in the future. We will not.
:rolleyes:
Why does everyone predicate China’s success on America’s demise?
Sore memories of Japan kicking our economic ass in the '80s.
How do you know they’re not inventing up a storm? They probably are. Companies are opening up R&D Labs in China (as they close them over here). Bell Labs has one over there. According to this article, there are over 600 R&D Labs in China now:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-09/13/content_373938.htm
This Business Week article says that China accounted for 130,000 patent applications in 2004, far behind the US and Japan, but catching up:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_45/b4008057.htm
This one says that Chinese patent applications increased by 33% in 2005, placing it right behind Japan and the YS:
You can’t fault the rationale – it’s much more convenient to have the labs where both the factories are and where you intend products to be sold. It certainly helps that the overhead is much lower, and you can get results for less money in China than in the US. I’d be very surprised if those R&D labs weren’t already starting to generate patents, and will only increase their output as time goes by.
http://blrc.edu.cn/blrcweb/index.htm
According to Forbes, Chinese patent applications have doubled between 2000 and 2004:
http://www.forbes.com/leadershipinnovation/2006/10/16/leadership-korea-china-lead-innovation-cx_hc_1016patent.html
And check out these:
http://people.brandeis.edu/~jefferso/Patenting,%20China%20patent%20explosion,%20March%2027,%2005.pdf
http://www.athenaalliance.org/weblog/archives/2007/08/chinese_patents_1.html
I’d suggest you read The Post-American World
I was skeptical of it because it sounds a bit pessimistic about America’s future. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the overall tone of the book is that America faces some challenges as China and India rise as world powers but that America is in an excellent position to deal with these challenges and can remain the strongest force in the world.
There’s a good bit about China’s industrialization, and as well about Chinese innovation (or lack thereof), and the historical factors behind it. There’s also a nice debunking of the idea that China is “churning out engineers” to the extent that the US is falling hopelessly behind on technical aptitude.
Except that didn’t happen. it was the same irrational paranoia we have today. Japan came up economically, so what? We did fine. Americans seem to think that if they aren’t lapping their opponents that they are losing.
Where do you think they got their industrial base from. ? It sustained our middle class and was responsible for many innovations. But in our set up our corporations owe America exactly nothing. If they can make money elsewhere, they will and have already abandoned the US.
Chinese Inventors??? No such thing in the post Mao era.
And yet our unemployment rate is still one of the lowest in the world. How can this be?
It is not. It is a distorted twisted number that all adims have developed ways of counting that create an illusion you buy. Do you think the inner city rate is 5.5? You are aware we drop people from the count if their unemployment runs out. we also decide when people are not looking any more and we don’t count then either. The real rate is far higher and climbing rapidly.
A couple years ago The LA Times did their own count and found unemployment was undercounted by about 50 percent. And that is on the coast where times had not gone as bad as many other areas.
IP protection is a big issue. chinese campanies get ripped off and pirated as much as the foreign firms.