Saturday, May 14, 2016

Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn — Innovation the only way out for China

For China, there is no way out but to innovate.
Its economic growth has slowed from double-digit rates to single digits. Drivers of growth -- the exports, property sales and manufacturing that have served so well for decades, have waned. Exports, in particular, will never again play the role they did before the global financial crisis.
The crisis and its aftermath have prompted developed nations to rethink their mode of growth, generating strategies such as Industry 4.0 in Germany and Re-industrialization in the United States, all based on new technology.
The new trends in these countries with advanced manufacturing capacities, and mushrooming lower-cost manufacturers in emerging nations have exerted double pressure on China, eroding its global competitiveness.
Meanwhile, China is increasingly aware of the environmental prices it will have to pay if it lingers in the labor- and resource-intensive section of the global manufacturing chain.
Overcoming these challenges while achieving its development goals can only be accomplished through industrial modernization. China is pegging its future prosperity on an economy underpinned by science and technology.
That strategy is to encourage research and development (R&D), the generation of new ideas, and scientific progress. It will support entrepreneurs who take a chance to make new technology and ideas to scale and generate better and cheaper products and services.
Denying the Western stereotype of a hard-working and uncreative "world's factory" that churns out mounds of low-quality goods, China is now closing the gap on innovation.
The country's R&D spending, second only to the United States, grew by more than 11 percent annually during the past three years.
The investment is paying off. China is now home to some of the world's most innovative companies, particularly in the fields of mobile technology, biotechnology and medical services.
Shenzhen-based telecom equipment producer Huawei employs nearly 80,000 R&D employees and spends 10 percent of its annual budget on R&D. The company held its place as the top international patent filer in 2015 and has been charging Apple patent fees.
BGI, also headquartered in Shenzhen, is now one of the world's largest genomics companies. It has sequenced more DNA than any other institutions worldwide and helped cut the cost of sequencing a complete genome.
There are plenty more -- the business model that led Alibaba to retail domination, the development of the world's longest high-speed rail network, the world's highest-elevation railway and the world's fastest supercomputer.
It's true China still lags behind in some ways. The country needs further reforms and better protection of intellectual property rights.
Yet for a country that invented paper, gunpowder and the compass, its ambitions could be realized.
China.org.cn
Innovation the only way out for China Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn

18 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"Yet for a country that invented paper, gunpowder and the compass, "

I seriously doubt that...

MRW said...

Matt,

You doubt that China invented paper, gunpowder, and the compass? Seriously?

Where were you educated?

Simsalablunder said...

Not only paper. Some 900 years earlier than Europe Chinese knew how to print. Around 10th centuries AD there where a large market for cheap printed books in China.

Simsalablunder said...

Under the Tang dynasty 618-907 they started printing paper money.

Simsalablunder said...

Sorry, it was under the Song dynasty 960-1279 government started using paper money.
While others still used their thumb Chinese used toilet paper.

Matt Franko said...

"paper" is a figure of speech from papyrus...

Tom Hickey said...

The word "paper" is etymologically derived from papyros, Ancient Greek for the Cyperus papyrus plant. Papyrus is a thick, paper-like material produced from the pith of the Cyperus papyrus plant which was used in ancient Egypt and other Mediterranean cultures for writing long before the making of paper in China.[1] Papyrus however are plants dried and woven, while paper is made from fibers whose properties have been changed by maceration or disintegration.[2]

Papermaking has traditionally been traced to China when Cai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court during the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste,[3][better source needed] though the earliest piece of paper found, at Fangmatan in Gansu province inscribed with a map, dates from 179-41 BC.[4]


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

MRW said...

The first Chinese printing press had 5,000 characters, and the Chinese decided to peddle it along the trade route. An abject failure. This was around 200 AD. I always remember this because it made me laugh when I first read it. Who the hell spoke or read Chinese in Europe? Or anywhere west of China? But they assumed it would sell.

Their printing press predated Gutenberg’s 1451 press by 1300 years.

Tom Hickey said...

The ironic thing is that if it had sold, we would all probably be using Chinese to communicate. Instead, the Chinese are learning English.

MRW said...

The list of Chinese inventions and scientific advances is really breathtaking. Their metallurgy inventions alone are staggering, particularly when you consider when they did it, starting over 4,000 years ago. They were coating chromium on their swords in micrometers while Jesus was padding around Palestine in sandals. Those swords (in museums) are as sharp and gleaming today as they were then, and they’ve never rusted.

The things I saw in the Royal Museum in Taiwan from 6,000 BC took my breath away. Eg: exquisite carved jade buckets with handles made from one (huge) piece of jade polished to a shine that you could only get today with a diamond sander. I don’t shock easily. But what I saw from their house collection was jaw-dropping.

Our old objects are crude-looking but utilitarian. Theirs reek with craftsmanship and beauty and scientific ingenuity.

MRW said...

They’re teaching their kids english starting at age 3. We have Neanderthals who refuse to teach our kids three or four languages when it would be so easy to.

MRW said...

The Chinese teamed up with Islamic Science during the Dark Ages of Europe. The Arabs taught them navigation, advanced ship-buildingand they shared their scientific knowledge. Of course, Christian historians wrote all of that out of existence, claiming it for themselves after stealing it during Queen Isabella’s reign, particularly the part that it was the Black North African Islamists who brought culture, science, mathematics, jurisprudence, architecture, botany, astronomy, civil engineering, weaponry, irrigation, optics, double-entry accounting, historicity, universities, and libraries, and so much more to a dull, dirty, and stupid Europe through their hub in Cordoba, Spain.

Tom Hickey said...

The things I saw in the Royal Museum in Taiwan from 6,000 BC took my breath away. Eg: exquisite carved jade buckets with handles made from one (huge) piece of jade polished to a shine that you could only get today with a diamond sander. I don’t shock easily. But what I saw from their house collection was jaw-dropping.

Second that. "Awesomely awesome" nowhere near reaches it. Some artisans produced only one masterwork that occupied their entire lifetime.

Matt Franko said...

http://www.aei.org/publication/china-exposed-on-steel-technology-cyber-theft-why-no-indictments/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=barfieldchinasteel


This is Chinese "innovation"....

Simsalablunder said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Simsalablunder said...

This is US "invention"… Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq stealing the VGA technology from Swedish inventor Håkan Lans. They got away with it.

Tom Hickey said...

http://www.aei.org/publication/china-exposed-on-steel-technology-cyber-theft-why-no-indictments/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=barfieldchinasteel

American Enterprise Institute?

Tom Hickey said...

It's laughable anyway that the US accusing other countries of espionage and cybersecurity issues. Pot calling kettle black.