| I would not trust her main point "China is far beyond copying the West." for 3 reasons: 1.Everything on China is in the end Central planned, an article that criticize anything about the Govertment-country and you are out of business, so when writing people auto censor itself in the bad things, over extend in the good things. Of course Chinese Internet services are better than those from the US in China. Most of them work at Kbits/second if they work at all. 2.The person that writes this is in a privilege position, e.g when I was living and working on China I lived much better there that in Europe, so of course she believes everything is fantastic. 3.She is Chinese national. Just watch CCTV for five minutes on a song festival and you will start hearing songs about how great the Chines army is. In China you are surrounded by this stuff all day. Like advertisements most people believe they are not affected by it, but it is pervasive and it does affect you after a long exposure. I consider Chinese central planned system poisonous for innovation, specially: "Chinese companies are fierce and grow out of alkaline land". What the last statement means is that Chinese companies have absolutely no ethics, and in the end everything is about knowing-buying the people in power because those people will remove your taxes or give you the permit or credit or anything you need(and you need anything they want you to need or else...). In China you have to share your innovations with other companies, this makes your bargaining power near zero while the company with more direct line with power gets the profit. |
I disagree.
> 1.Everything on China is in the end Central planned
This is bullshit that our media like to feed us, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny even if you read what media writes. Remember (cringe) "hoverboards"? Consumer electronics manufacturing is all like that. It keeps pumping random crap, dynamically adjusting and readjusting to what is popular on the western markets. It's the exact opposite to central planning. China has come a long way, and it's most definitely not USSR under Stalin, like some would like you to believe.
> I consider Chinese central planned system poisonous for innovation, specially: "Chinese companies are fierce and grow out of alkaline land".
I cringed at that paragraph too, but that is not the tell-tale sign of central planning. That's tell-tale sign of capitalism. Back-stabbing and lack of ethics is what you get when you unleash an insufficiently regulated market on unsuspecting people.
Anyway, China is decentralizing. They've figured out that the economy grows better if you don't try to micromanage it so much.
> What the last statement means is that Chinese companies have absolutely no ethics, and in the end everything is about knowing-buying the people in power because those people will remove your taxes or give you the permit or credit or anything you need(and you need anything they want you to need or else...).
At the risk of committing a tu quoque fallacy - hell, it takes some balls for us in the west to say things like that. Like our companies are any different.
> In China you have to share your innovations with other companies, this makes your bargaining power near zero while the company with more direct line with power gets the profit.
There are good and bad sides to that. Around hardware manufacturing, sharing is actually good. At least good for them. Bad for the US companies, who make money on intellectual property. But ignoring the western IP is what let China iterate and innovate on hardware products quite well, to the point that the US had to pressure Chinese government into curtailing the behavior.
As for main point, "China is far beyond copying the West" - in terms of software, this is totally true. The way they've integrated their digital and mobile services into daily lives is something that's almost unheard of in the West. She's not joking about how people there literally run half of their lives through WeChat. Every big Western Internet service has a Chinese equivalent that is somewhat similar, but heavily adapted to fit the local culture and lifestyle. They didn't just copy them, they innovated the hell out of them, to the point that those services offer better features than our own. For instance, Facebook is now desperately adding features to its app that are common bread for WeChat users.
TL;DR: China is not stereotypical North Korea. There are smart people there living happy lives and building cool stuff.
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> Just watch CCTV for five minutes on a song festival and you will start hearing songs about how great the Chines army is. In China you are surrounded by this stuff all day.
This is an off-topic, but let me show you another POV on this difference. Here is a short clip comparing media coverage of the recent visit of the President of Poland to China. Left is Polish media, right is Chinese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFr9wWnwJt8
It's just one recent example, but there's tons of similar, and seriously - if our media are somehow "better" because they focus on irrelevant bullshit that's meant to amuse or outrage people, then fuck our media.