

Chinese innovation starting to show itself on the world scene













Comments     Threshold


By PaterPelligrino on 3/21/2011 5:59:44 AM , Rating: 2

But then that was true of Japan in the years immediately following the war. The joke at the time was that the Japanese would buy some American product and make such a slavish copy of it that they would even reproduce the bumps and scratches it acquired on the way to Japan. It's been a long time such anyone made fun of Japanese tech.

We don't teach it, but when America was first emerging as an economic power, we were criticized by the more developed European economies for stealing tech and making cheap knockoffs. There were even cases of poisoned American food exports similar to the Chinese milk scandal. This provided the initial impulse for the imposition of quality standards on American industry

Everybody wants the good life and wants it now. When a country first develops it makes economic sense to take shortcuts. That was true of Taiwan and Korea when I first came out to Asia 30+ years ago, and now they are doing advanced research. China will follow.

The Chinese are a highly intelligent, highly creative people. It seems like half the contributors of the studies quoted in the science journals are Chinese.

You want to divide mankind up into competing tribes and keep score - go ahead. But it's OK by me if the guy who finds a cure for cancer or a revolutionary energy source is Chinese or Nigerian or whatever.

