The solution has been pointed out hundreds of years ago, that is, the people need to reform. The hardware (factories, buildings, businesses, investments, machines...) are all there, the software (human minds) isn't up to speed.
I am no historian or economist, but I will suggest that perhaps the States had the "protestant work ethic", and that the Japanese had "loyalty to manager, company, and country."
The Chinese have neither; in a country that went from Corrupt and Dying Monarchy to War to Communist Revolution to Rapid Modernization, Materialism and Capitalism in a hundred years, the Chinese are still searching for a culturally unifying identity. Esp the last 50 years has been cut-throat, sell-your-mother-to-prosper survival mode, and the way businesses are run now reflect this. When the people feel more in control, feel ownership of their lives, they will start to feel more responsible towards themselves, their families, and to their communities.
I don't know, that's just what I think/hope. Anyone else?
Good article, but all problem description, no solutions.
That's true of this article, and often of Economist articles generally; this isn't necessarily a negative though, because it provided an enlightening insight into circumstances that weren't necessarily obvious beforehand (to me anyway.)
I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China.
I get the impression that the business models of America, Japan and China are quite different; I don't think the US or Japan started out like China and then changed, on the contrary I think they set out in different circumstances and therefore with different aims.
I get the impression China is attempting to compete almost solely on cost, which wasn't the case of the US (innovation) or Japan (a combination of cost/quality and innovation.)
China may be very different from Japan in terms of culture and industrial history, but I'm not so sure China's current industrial evolution is that different from the US.
If you read books about the US's industrial revolution (both modern ones and ones written during the era), I'm sure you can find a lot of parallels with modern China (even with issues such as IP - Charles Dickens was angry seeing bootleg copies of his books in the US)
Seriously, now that you made me think about it, we are much too much inured to articles by writers who have solutions, and are damn well going to find problems for them.
I am no historian or economist, but I will suggest that perhaps the States had the "protestant work ethic", and that the Japanese had "loyalty to manager, company, and country."
The Chinese have neither; in a country that went from Corrupt and Dying Monarchy to War to Communist Revolution to Rapid Modernization, Materialism and Capitalism in a hundred years, the Chinese are still searching for a culturally unifying identity. Esp the last 50 years has been cut-throat, sell-your-mother-to-prosper survival mode, and the way businesses are run now reflect this. When the people feel more in control, feel ownership of their lives, they will start to feel more responsible towards themselves, their families, and to their communities.
I don't know, that's just what I think/hope. Anyone else?