[jomamaxx]

"Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated"

(Almost) Nothing is led by China and (almost) nothing ever will.

I remember as a boy the stories of Japan taking over the world in the 1980's. The same will come of China.

The Bubble will burst, and they'll slowly find their way into the world order.

Bar codes? Give me a break.

They've done well with some type of commerce activities wherein the tech facilitated development given their needs (Ali Baba), but that's not really tech.

Everything is copy.

Tell me - what tech does anyone use that was conceived of, developed and made in China?

Nothing really.

And that won't change.

[Asetsuna]

http://highestbridges.com/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_500_H...

[varjag]

On the other hand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_tunnels_by_type

Choose your arbitrary metrics wisely :)

[Noseshine]

Like this? :)

http://brobible.com/life/article/average-penis-size-study/

(Sorry, could not resist)

[paradite]

> Tell me - what tech does anyone use that was conceived of, developed and made in China?

This?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214675

[Noseshine]

I think that's not a good example. This isn't an "invention", it's just an obvious engineering solution for a problem. So the reason others don't build buses like that is much more likely because they don't have a problem that can be solved by that design, not that they haven't thought or can't think of such a solution.

[jomamaxx]

Thanks for that. Nifty invention - that nobody uses outside of China.

Meanwhile, talk to any rail car maker in the world, and they'll tell you that as part of the deal they had to sell trains in China, they had to hand over 100% of the IP, research, R&D, plans, schematics. And within 1 year the government had handed over the plans to a state owned competitor who had copied the entire thing from top to bottom.

When we see those nifty trains running over San Francisco, you'll have a point.

[paradite]

Uhm... Not sure about selling trains to China.

As far as I know, the modern trains that I've seen in China seem to be manufactured by Chinese companies.

The technology, if I am not mistaken, were transferred to China by Soviet Union and European companies post WW2 in a legal and friendly manner, i.e., they send their experts here to do manufacturing or China send some people overseas to learn about the technology.

And the same thing happened to Japan if I remember correctly, they were able to "learn" designs from the West and improve on it to build their railway system that is one of the best in the world.

[MagnumOpus]

He is not talking about 1980s communist-era trains, he is talking about HSR which was "technology-transferred" wholesale from Japanese and German companies under small-series licensing deals, then eerily similar trains were manufactured en masse locally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#Techn...

[gkanai]

If you have traveled in a Shinkansen in Japan and then been on Chinese HSR, you can see that the HSR interiors are almost identical copies of the Japanese equivalents.

However the key part that China cannot copy from Japan is the human software part, that is the training and service excellence of 50 years of history with hundreds of millions of passenger kilometers of operational history and zero passenger fatalities during operation.

China's HSR has already had multiple fatalities during operation, unfortunately.

[jomamaxx]

"As far as I know, the modern trains that I've seen in China seem to be manufactured by Chinese companies."

Yes - because in order to do business in China, you have to give over your IP to a Chinese company and 'partner' with them to sell there, OR, after you give over your IP someone else gets their hands on it and copies you and you've wasted your time.

China is not an open market, most sectors are heavily protected.

Granted - it's arguably a smart thing for them to do during 'catch up phase' - but you can't remain competitive by doing those things.

Non-Chinese nations should impose tarriffs on all Chinese goods until we can freely sell things there without government interruption.

They can protect their banks, telecoms etc. like every country, but not every consumer good.

The companies that have been successful there are largely consumer retail like restaurants, clothing etc..