Posted on 12/13/2005 6:49:06 AM PST by Willie Green
PARIS (Reuters) - China surpassed the United States as the world's top exporter of laptop computers, mobile phones and other information and communications technology devices in 2004, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Monday.
China exported $180 billion worth of so-called ICT goods in 2004, compared with U.S. exports of $149 billion, the OECD, a free-market agency funded by 30 countries, said.
OECD officials said that China was likely to take top spot in 2005 too, but hard proof would take many months to collect.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Let's see, the Chinese are getting free advanced engineering training, factories built on their properties, jobs for their people, and you think you can bully them with "standards", especially as the biggest US employers in China like IBM are pushing for "open" standards? Read the article, they just blew us out of the water on overall tech exports and the difference between the two, just like our dependence on their overall exports, is only going to grow.
Moving jobs to the South is a world away from moving jobs to China.
I respect your opinion, and I share the desire for the US to remain superior to the Chicoms.
I disagree that "overall tech exports" or "expanding US imports" of manufactured goods indicates a dwindling US technology lead.
The Chicoms can build all they want, but this capability says nothing of their ability to design a system from ground up.
I'm not sticking my head in the sand by sying this, but my point of view tells me that the more they build their economy on things they don't understand, the more precarious they become.
If the Chinese were to copy our free government, and implement a lower tax structure, and enable more freedom from political correctness, etc., such that China had a better standard of living than the US, would you still be anti-China?
On an individual basis, you are correct. However, jobs are a requirement for a country to survive. If we continue to ship all our jobs to China, we won't have an economy worth speaking of, and we all suffer.
Well I don't see how we could be doing anything better than possibly keeping pace, when their markets are exploding while ours seem stuck and wondering when the inevitable fall will begin. Several of our tech leaders like IBM and Sun have been reduced to giving their software and patents away for free.
The Chicoms can build all they want, but this capability says nothing of their ability to design a system from ground up.
Why do they need to design anything, when U.S. intellectual property is there free for the taking? I agree that intellectual property is the U.S.'s most powerful commodity, but when they can steal it easily or even better for them have it given to them for free, how are they supposedly missing out on what we have to offer?
"Technical training" on how to handle a motherboard without zapping it gives them zero capability to innovate a new design.
You think anyone in the U.S. is automatically more advanced than those in Taiwan, and now China? Not to mention people from all over the world now, including from the U.S., are going there to live and work. China is even buying U.S. tech companies, like the IBM PC division, and putting them under their own, now larger, "companies".
I'm not sticking my head in the sand by sying this, but my point of view tells me that the more they build their economy on things they don't understand, the more precarious they become.
My point of view is possession is 9/10's of the law, and even though intellectual property is America's greatest strength for the future, it's not respected in places like China and can only be enforced through legal proceedings.
If the Chinese were to copy our free government, and implement a lower tax structure, and enable more freedom from political correctness, etc., such that China had a better standard of living than the US, would you still be anti-China?
If they still have armed nuclear missles pointing at us, of course. I think there is very little chance they will ever become a true "ally", and at the rate they're starting to dominate the world there's very little reason for them to need to.
A Patent Portfolio is just Static Intellectual Property and is USELESS if it is not USED! Even in the US (at least in the tech industry) patents are rarely used to protect a specific idea from everyone else. Instead, companies "cross license" their entire portfolios and essentially agree "you don't sue me about my product's design and I won't sue you about yours." Really, it's legal collusion among the peeps with the biggest portfolios, and allows smaller players with a few good ideas to sell-out to the big guys.
You are absolutely correct though, that there is no respect among Chinese for Static Intellectual Property. They couldn't care less about Patent Portfolios because they aren't going to sue anyone and their government is not going to allow any US companies to sue them.
But the important part is Dynamic Intellectual Property, or, IP creation. IP can be copied, but IP creation CANNOT.
When the US IP creation rate slows behind the rest of the world (and I wouldn't count mere patent filings as such a metric), and when young kids are afraid to introduce the next big thing, then the US will begin to bite the dust.
Having been one of those "people from all over the world now, including from the U.S., [that] are going there to live and work" I can tell you from my personal experience that there absolutely is a differene in every American vs. "those in Taiwan, and now China." People from both Taiwan and China consider themselves as CHINESE. They consider themselves rivals in some (esp economic) situations, but brothers culturally.
Look, you can take my opinion and discard it completely, but as an engineer over there, the culture overrides everything, and that culture is to produce and to sell. The chinese culture is of course superior to that of the Middle East which is just mercantile...they sell things but don't make anything.
OTOH, Amerian culture, even for the NOLA welfarians is some kind of bizarre exceptionalism. Even the lowest person on the economic rung, if given an microphone, will tell the President of the United States that he's an idiot and would give you a complete list of things they would do if they were in charge. They may be idiotic and infantile things (like gimme 20,000 bucks cuz I deserves it) but they will not hesitate to state that they know best.
Chinese culture is the opposite. If their boss or coworker is doing something stupid, they will absolutely help them do it stupidly before they will risk calling them out.
What I'm saying, is that chinese culture is incompatible with IP Creation as compared to American ro Western culture where the inventor is celebrity. In chinese culture, the successful business person is celeb and attracts more capital, not the bright idea guy who is reticent to contradict conventional wisdom.
By this, even though there may be 1000 high school dropouts to one American engineer in America, if government stays out of the way, capital will flow to the smart guy.
In chinese culture, the entire workforce and management is uniformly distributed with incompetence, much like our congress!
This is why I am comfortable making these "narrow minded" hasty generalizations. There is something basically different, culturally, that has gotten us to this point in history. Training every single college kid in China with a BSEE from MIT will not solve their most immediate problem which has kept them comfortably in the dark for centuries.
Doesn't matter when the end result - IP - is available to them for free. They get all the benefits, with none of the required investment or cultivation.
Having been one of those "people from all over the world now, including from the U.S., [that] are going there to live and work"
China obviously doesn't need it's own design engineers, since it already has our own working for it.
People from both Taiwan and China consider themselves as CHINESE.
Which only furthers my point.
If their boss or coworker is doing something stupid, they will absolutely help them do it stupidly before they will risk calling them out.
Product of life in a totalitarian system. But as they further grow and advance, they will become as advanced as the Japanese and the South Koreans, except the Chinese won't be shackled by a limited supply of resources or personel.
Training every single college kid in China with a BSEE from MIT will not solve their most immediate problem which has kept them comfortably in the dark for centuries.
They don't seem to have too many problems that I can tell, since they just blew by the former #1 tech economy like we didn't even exist. And as you seem to be agreeing, it's obviously not the native Chinese that are feuling this growth, it's all the foreign investments, most of which come from right here in the U.S. I guess that's how they think we're supposed to survive long term, by either working for the Chinese or making smart investments in them.
What is your solution?
Treat them exactly as we did the communists in the USSR, that seemed to work pretty well didn,t it? At least make these companies pay full taxes on products made in China, and limit any export of technology to them whatsoever, especially these free givaways of IP originating here in the U.S.
If China wants our business, they should become a democracy, we shouldn't be giving it to them on the hope they will one day far in the future, because right now we are only proving they can get what they want without having to change much of anything.
Absolutely. Reagan was absolutely correct.
The grain embargo of USSR in the late 70's did nothing but hurt the American economy. Canada, Australia and Europe took up the slack and the embargo had no effect.
Reagan campaigned on resuming trade with the USSR and he did.
Oh, and Reagan won the Cold War, remember? Was he a Soviet sell-out?
Whoa! Careful now! Anyone who refutes GE is automatically a Commie sympathizer!
Better Dead than Read!
Reagan didn't allow tech transfers much less U.S. businesses building factories on communist soil. I agree we should sell China food but that would be about it.
These Chinese researchers at Shangdong University wrote How to Break MD5 and Other Hash Functions. I don't think it is wise to underestimate just how good Chinese research can be.
Yes, exactly like that. But since you are obviously so obsessed with Microsoft you should be aware their interaction with China is miniscule when compared to others like IBM, who has almost as many employees in China than Microsoft does altogether.
Those are exports. How much domestic product was purchased in each country?
Article from today about how Asian countries are begining to focus on product design and development.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20051213/bs_bw/id20051212254640
Thanks. That was interesting --- I know that there are at least a few Indians who are leaving the U.S. to go back to India because they think they will have a better future there than here.
On a somewhat related subject, I posted an article today on Honda's continuing research into humanoid robots at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1539365/posts. It's very good work; I think the Japanese are miles ahead of everyone else in this area.
What are they going to pay you in, RMB?
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