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Posted on 12/31/2007 11:52:01 PM PST by steelboy
The current determination in China echoes what Americans experienced in the 1960s during the space race. Back then, we had a national focus. Programs touched everyone, even school children. We were thrilled to see an American take that first small step on the moon. The investments made to propel the U.S. through the space race and its military twin, the cold war defense buildup, became cornerstones of American economic prosperity.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Invent it here?
Hardly. What, if anything has China invented? What they have is a protectionist economy the forces international investors to used local content in order to ensure the lion’s share of the money stays in Chinese hands...
PLUS... a willingness to steal the intellectual property, proprietary technology or actual assets of anyone stupid enough to do business with them (OK they will also buy when necessary, but only if it includes detailed blueprints which will immediately be cycled out the door for reverse engineering and incorporation into Chinese products which will soon be marketed as competitors)...
AND...lets not forget the cheerful enthusiasm necessary to slash safety margins, cut corners, substitute lead for just about anything COMBINED with the willingness to treat their own workers like slaves, dump millions of tons of pollutants into their own water and air ALL THE WHILE complaining that the rest of the world is picking on them.
Invent? The only thing that China must have invented recently is some amazing drugs if a guy can write something this stupid and expect people to believe it.
Well, it has been a while but they have been widely credited with inventing gunpowder. :=)
paper money too.
“By insisting (as any country can) that products sold in China must adhere to local as well as international standards, China makes sure that Chinese inventions get built into high-tech products sold here. That means there is a Chinese voice in which products succeed or fail in China. And products that succeed in China have a much higher chance of succeeding globally.”
The article isn’t about laying claim to what has been invented, it is about making sure they control or at least strongly influence future developments.
Chinese Restaurants
Actually even the Quality Control is BS. They dont have any quality control on local companies. All their QC is focussed on making doing business in China more expensive and harder for foreign companies. Case in point the suicidal new Telecommunications 3G standard they are developing for China. It is designed to give access to only companies like ZTE and Huawei.
This is the great contradiction. Topdown planning takes no advantage of individual innovation or initiative. Without the intellectual and economic freedom to pursue one's own dreams and ambitions, there would have been no "Silicon Valley."
They are pretty good at reverse-engineering or outright stealing US technology.
So were the Soviets.
Paper. Gunpowder. Magnetic compass. Center pivot rudder. Silk. Tea. Ceramics. Earthquake monitoring. Noodles...
Anything within the last 500 years?
Picky, picky, picky...
That, and the ability to own the fruits of your own labor.
China and India both have huge populations. They are industrious and intelligent, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that in the coming decades they will have their share of Edisons and Fords.
*SNERK*.
What have they been doing the last several millenia, then?
Full Disclosure: Culture and other factors enter into it too, not just IQ.
Cheers!
Look, I’m just sayin’. You may have noticed the flood of crappy, shoddy goods at cheap prices flooding our markets.
You may have also noticed that they also make high quality items - like the laptop you might be posting from. Or the iPhone or iPod you carry around. I’m old enough to remember when “Made in Japan” meant junk - the only thing that I ever saw was cheap toys at the gum rack - squirt-gun type cameras.
It doesn’t matter what they have been doing the last “several millenia”, because we are talking now about the future.
But they haven't.
And if it weren't for the greed of multinational corporations seeking new customers to overcome the demographic decline of the West, combined with a healthy dose of mercantilism on the part of India and China, they'd *still* be poverty-ridden places.
Merely having the physical plant, or being able to copy other people's work, will not be sufficient. Innovation, a government and society which allows the markets to work, and a culture dedicated to honest competition are all necessary.
(As you can see by looking at Enron or the subprime mortgage fiasco in the states...the US is not magically exempt. It only looks like it because we have been living off of the bounty of the past and eating our seed corn for short term pleasure.)
Cheers!
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