Innovation And China -- The Long Of It
Just read a very thoughtful two part article (here and here) on innovation in China, written by Bright Simmons. Entitled, the "Chinese Griffen," the site editor describes the two articles as follows:
In two installments, the author discusses China's ongoing efforts to instill innovation into its economy. The first article, below, raises a number of general themes about the quest for innovation and some unintended effects as well as identify clear failures the quest has met. This is to lay the groundwork for a more focused analysis in the second article, in which a critical perspective on viewing innovation in general is presented and the "innovation gap" in China dissected.
The first part is subtitled, "Despite Rapid Growth, Country Faces Innovation Gap." The second part is summarized as follows:
Chinese efforts to create an innovation society are based on one of two possible approaches. There is accumulative innovation, which China currently practices, and there is transformative innovation, which the country today shuns.
The overall thesis of the two articles is that China practices accumulative innovation, driven mostly by the government. This sort of innovation can be profitable (witness Singapore), but it is, for lack of a better way to put it, less innovative than transformative innovation (which is, I believe, sometimes referred to as disruptive innovation), as practiced by countries like Israel.
Comments (8)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endJoseph Wang - September 28, 2006 1:58 PM
I thought it was a very badly written article full of unsupported assertions and wild speculation.
If you look at the economy, technological innovation is just not going to be a major factor in Chinese economic growth for another generation. Just getting 1.2 billion to current levels of technology and productivity is going to keep the economy growing. There are a huge number of farmers who are working in low productivity agriculture and just getting them to work at less low productivity industry is going to boost incomes. Chinese factories are extremely inefficient so getting them to current levels of technology and management practice is going to also boost incomes.
Now in a generation, technological innovation is going to boost productivity. The trouble with that is that its not very clear very clear what does create technological innovation, and things like the Cultural Revolution and the mess in Iraq make me really suspicious of imposing an ideology on an economy.
It's also hard to take seriously an article that is just wrong with some basic facts. The NPCSC isn't a rubber stamp, and China is currently running a trade surplus with the rest of the world.
Minxin Pei has been "crying wolf" ever since the early-1990's, and his essays basically boil down to "(insert latest problem) will kill the Chinese economy and bring down the Communist Party which is unable to deal with this new problem." Five years ago it was the banking system. Two years, it was peasant unrest. Today its the environment. After about ten years of this, one wonders if the Communist Party is a lot more adaptable than Pei gives them credit for.
China Law Blog - September 28, 2006 2:40 PM
Mr. Wang --
Thanks for checking in. Though I usually disagree with Minxin Pei's predictions, I greatly respect his scholarship.
And though I certainly do not agree with all that is said in these two articles, I still think the issues they raise regarding transformative versus accumulative innovation are quite interesting and, at least right now, generally correct with respect to China.
Rich - September 28, 2006 4:04 PM
Ironically enough, china just announced the successful testing of a new fusion reactor
I think those that believe China is only filled with copyright violators are in for a huge surprise.
Sure they are known for pushy toys and stamped metals, but the government is throwing everything they can behind R&D.
The Goal is simple, to stop paying royalties and to start getting paid royalties.
Besides working on new DVD platforms, mobile platforms, and other consumer goods, a lot of work is going into renewable energies (as seen above), as seen in their work in computer batteries, and as seen in their work in car batteries.
Just because GE holds the patents, that doesn't mean they hold the ongoing development capabilities of their Chinese scientists.
China Law Blog - September 29, 2006 8:12 AM
Rich --
Thanks for checking in. I do not think anyone who knows anything about China thinks it consists entirely of copyright violators and I certainly do not think that. See e.g., my post yesterday on China's rise in nanotechnology.
Somey - September 29, 2006 8:46 AM
China's overall trade surplus is: 103 billion
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=6744198
Its trade surplus with the USA is 200+ billion. Eityher it runs a deficit with the rest of the world or somebody can't add up. My real concern with the article was the wild allegations linking recalls with outsourcing to China.
Joseph Wang - September 29, 2006 9:04 AM
I do respect the work that Pei puts into fact gathering. It's the conclusions that I have problems with, and it's not so much the conclusions themselves but the fact that Pei makes certain assumptions without attempting to defend or even identify them.
Unlike Pei I think it is generally a very good and hopeful sign when a large bureaucratic organization finds a million things wrong with itself. In some ways, the more bad news that is coming out, the better the outcome.
Something that has greatly helped Mainland China is the brain gain that happened after the dot-com bust and the difficulty of getting visas into the United States after 9/11. In the 1990's, practically no one went back, but that changed radically after the dot-com bust. Also, the difficulty in getting student visas into the United States means that someone who would have ended up in a graduate university in the 1990's is now stuck in China.
China Law Blog - September 29, 2006 4:45 PM
Somey --
Thanks for checking in. I see your e-mail address has "sony" in it, so you tell me. Do the battery recalls have anything to do with China? Our clients have experienced all sorts of manufacturing problems in China, but I agree that linking the battery problems to China, though interesting, is a bit unfair.
China Law Blog - September 29, 2006 4:47 PM
Mr. Wang --
Thanks for checking back in. I generally agree with you re Pei. See one of my posts on this (which links to more) here: