Dan at China Law Blog made a commentary about an article in Forbes called “Five Reasons China Will Rule Tech”. Dan’s criticism of the Forbes article focuses whats wrong with the article. I will summarize the post to say that the Forbes article says five things that don’t stand up to logical scrutiny. I’m adding my comments to both articles here.
Dan says:
[according to Forbes article] China’s leadership understands engineering [because] In China, eight of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, including the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, have engineering degrees…So what? Running a country is running a country and there is no evidence that those who are better able to design a television are any better at running a country than those who are not.
Of course Dan is correct.
Jimmy Carter was (at least until George Bush), indisputably the worst American President since Hoover and he was (I think) the only engineer.
How dare you! Carter didn’t start wars in SE Asia, invade Cuba with irregular troops, etc. Please don’t repeat right-wing BS about a great man (and a not-horrible President)
China’s leadership wants to out-innovate the U.S. China’s political leadership has made technological innovation a leading goal in everything from supercomputers to nanotech. …. Again, so what? The United States’ leadership wants to out-innovate China and it too has made technological innovation a leading goal. …
Yes, but there is no denying that China has more coherent industrial policy, which the United States lacks. Actually, China is not so good at realizing their industrial policy because it seems that it tends to promote older and less competitive technologies in the energy generation and infrastructure sectors and others. But at least China’s stimulus spending goes to Chinese companies in targeted industries…instead of too banks.
China is getting U.S. technology, all of it. In 2008, Sony Corp. closed what was identified as the last television manufacturing plant in the U.S., in Westmoreland, Pa. It shifted work to an assembly plant in Mexico, but the vast majority of TVs’ electronics components are made in Asia. (Dell sources $25 billion annually alone in components from China, for example). This just about cinches it, I guess. If the United States is losing television manufacturing then it must be falling behind on the newest technology.
This, here, is the key issue. Those of us who live in China all know that the education system has problems and does not produce engineers or, just people, who have the ability to innovate themselves out of a cardboard box. We all know that China’s lack of IP protection also hurts innovation. And we all know that a lot of industry has moved out of US to China. But what I do not know is a good analysis of the extent that the technology transfer to China has really helped China get ahead in a broad range of technologies.
Everywhere I go, I see factories with so-called R&D departments. However, the vast majority of this “R&D” is really customization work for the Chinese market. Many companies transfer patents to China. But they usually just transfer old patents in order to get tax breaks. I know in the pharmaceutical industries, there is a lot of R&D work in China. But a great deal of this is just chemical synthesis. Big Pharma transfers to China the grunt-work of R&D, much in the same way software companies transfer code-creation to India. Its not something which will help China get ahead in any technology curve.
So where is the analysis of how much cutting-edge technology is really moving over to China? I’m very curious about this. Just an observation from my personal experience. I have been living and working as a consultant in Suzhou for the last 6 years. Suzhou is one of China’s most advanced “showcase” industrial zones. And in all the time I have been here, I have never seen a company which performs cutting edge research, or any real development work other than China-market related development and customization.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.