No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, opposition to the norm
When you demand that your people bow and obey, and imprison people like A1 WW, this goes against promoting and nurturing innovation
https://steveblank.com/2012/11/06/entrepreneurs-as-dissident...
https://medium.com/@they_made_that/innovations-secret-ingred...
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/22/never_before_published_isaac...
When your culture is very antagonistic towards people who don't like the status quo and forces them to carefully think about what they say and write, the culture itself becomes a big obstacle to innovation. When you run garbage likethe Great Firewall that limits the sharing of information, that's another strike against innovation. (Of course one way to mitigate the effects of authoritarian rule is by being really favorable towards immigration from places with the opposite culture.)
I guess Shenzen is a place that's figuratively where "the mountains are high and the emperor is far away". I wonder how long before that changes?
Although I hold strong dissent against Chinese government in many aspects (in particular censorship, e.g. GFW), although I agree the traditional norm of Chinese culture and society does not commend rebellions, your argument is a slippery slope at its best. Essentially, you are exaggerating from both ends: a. going from political suppression and a humble (or even submissive, if you wish) culture to suppression on technical innovation; b. reading too much from the so-called SV culture and success stories, so much so to draw a strong equivalence between innovation and (social) disruption.
For (a), as many peer comments have already stated, there are many counterexamples. Japan has a much more submissive culture and Russia has similarly, if not more, suppressive political atmosphere. Innovations still happen in both places. And I also suggest you to read more history to see how many innovations were achieved in unwelcoming environment. Yes, these are obstacles and might affect the scale and success of innovations, but obstacles exist everywhere (if there were no opposition, rebellions even wouldn't be called "rebellions" in SV), and small (in the sense of domain, e.g. purely technical) innovations are still innovations, which leads to the second point--
For (b), "disruption" is really a buzz word loved by VC, and there is a trend of extending such buzz word to contexts we would not use this word originally, for example an invention in a particular domain is now a "disruption" in that domain, which makes a ripple sound like a tide. Fundamental, social disruptions can be significantly harder in China, but that does not prevent other innovations, or if you prefer, "disruptions", from happening.
In a nutshell, you are stretching these two ends to force them to meet: the negative effect of political/cultural suppression --> impossible to innovate <-- the "disruptions" of innovations
And finally, pardon my language, your examples and references are utter nonsense. I know where you are trying to go from them, but they do not prove your point by any means.
If my post is 'utter nonsense' then prove it with better arguments
These comments remind me of the time when I refused to believe that Mao was behind a famine or the Cultural Revolution after years of living in the West; it got to the point where I was arguing with a professor in class...
China resembles (British) monarchy of the old. There are laws, but they are not same for the common man and to the noble (60 million members of the communist party). If you steer away from the politics, you can be entrepreneur and become rich.
Corruption exists of course, but that's like taxation. You pay your taxes and bribes. Bribing can sometimes allow more freedoms than completely lawful society, because it allows more.
China has basically the same bioethical laws as the west, but they are not enforced because party does not care. China became the first country to approve the commercial production of a gene therapy.
A few years ago, at an economics talk out of Harvard, the speaker suggested there were advantages for innovation in China-style vs US-style corruption. One was that when legislative bribes are mostly paid by large incumbent companies, instead of being more broadly sourced, there's more systematic use of regulatory capture to reduce competition and replace innovation with rent seeking. Caveats: it was a side comment, and it wasn't clear to me the topic was fully within their research focus.
Similar issues exist around patents. I recently heard a billion-ish hardware tech CEO describe a large defensive patent portfolio as "table stakes" for playing. Though I wonder if they meant "buy in".
The US remains mostly uncorrupt at 2.2%.
Russia's GDP growth is at 1.3% per my quick google search, which is well underneath inflation. If you're sitting at the top with a mostly asset-dominated income, you have to be stealing if you want to grow. So only the thieves win.
Bribing allows one to buy more freedom, generally at the cost of those who don't pay. It's essentially pay-to-play.
One could argue that the Chinese system has more "devolved/decentralized" pay-to-play system as opposed to the US where the Federalization experiment (states allowed to experiment with different legal interpretation) has broken down.
This is a common misconception, especially by people who have never lived in China. Thinking political censorship means people are docile all spheres of life.
Chinese people are actually much more prone to rant and fight over everyday injustices: shopkeeper ripped you off, denied entrance somewhere, etc. etc. They just have to be careful not to publicly blame any politicians for the issue or try to organize some group activity to protest it.
Why do you think the government cracks down so hard? Because they're scared: massive and violent people rebellions have erupted throughout Chinese history.
Many Chinese people are also quite creative and innovative when it comes to making money and getting ahead. Some home cooks make deals with restaurants to let their patrons sample their homemade spices with their meals and to buy jars of it if they like it.
Others have started groups on Wechat where members pay to get advice on X topic (http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2015-11/13/content_22...). There are tons more examples like this. In fact, I'd argue it can be easier to get your idea started in China because regulations are lax and it's much easier to network to get what you need.
Also, just to point out, in the West, the majority of people aren't exactly "rebelling against the status quo" and showing "opposition to the norm" because they can march in a protest or sign a petition.
> This is a common misconception, especially by people who have never lived in China. They just have to be careful not to publicly blame any politicians for the issue or try to organize some group activity to protest it.
You've contradicted yourself pretty quickly; you haven't disputed my main point: people on the mainland on a whole are not willing to rebel and dissent against people and ideas that are above them like the authorities or even their own parents - this translates to other parts of industry and major schools of thought. For example, one of the reasons the Internet has a decentralized architecture is because its designers didn't want to give the US government centralized control over it. Bickering with your peers over trivial things doesn't count, willing to question your boss, teacher, or someone higher in the food chain is what matters.
That said I'm not saying that things can't or will never change. I'm just pointing out the major obstacles to innovation on the mainland.
> Also, just to point out, in the West, the majority of people aren't exactly "rebelling against the status quo" and showing "opposition to the norm"
Not everyone dissents, but there's a large enough portion of the population that does to push innovation and progress.
> because they can march in a protest or sign a petition.
It's easy to make fun of it, but yeah this shows how ingrained rebellion and dissent is in our culture and accepted, which is one of the main foundations of innovation.
Although the Japanese were not imprisoning people "like A1 WW", they were bowing and obeying when they ushered the era of consumer electronics a few decades ago. Now it's the turn of the Chinese.
> Quite to the contrary, the Chinese government encourages tech innovations.
No they do not. When you threaten your people with 'Conform or else...' or 'we will watch everything you do and listen to everything you say', it hurts both the flow and expression of new ideas. In China's defense, this is one thing Western governments are trying to copy.
> As an instance, China is one of the few large countries which have legalized shared cars nation-wide(Didi, Uber)
Car sharing originated in the West. It was started by bypassing existing laws without permission. In contrast, companies like Didi were sanctioned by the PRC likely after 'hey look how much money they're making in SV off this idea'
Can't we just say we like free speech? Because if we dont, and they can develop new commercial products without it, China will likely never get free speech. They'll just hear about it as something Western companies wanted that China succeeded without.
What happens now when with a flick of wechat the entire nation takes to the streets? All it will take is a leaders mistakes and a single spark.
It's not a question of whether China will have free speech and democracy but when.
Before you call out Chinese government on Great Firewall, What about Patent Trolls? Or the upcoming Physical wall south of the border? Painting an entire culture with a broad brush is stupid.
>> The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China.
To decisively refute your argument. The current leading company in Drones, is DJI The company was founded in 2006 by Frank Wang (Wāng Tāo, 汪滔). Who did not study Abroad.
Also they brought the most populous country in the world from extreme poverty to a near superpower status, and they managed to build home grown tech industry (Baidu, Didi) while intelligently keeping SV out. Is it ethical & moral that's a different question, is it innovative? You bet it is!
If the only innovation is some stupid IOT microwave made (with heart emoji) in Silicon Valley by hipsters supporting bernie then you are utterly deluded. The chinese government is filled with geniuses. Refusing to term the enormous progress achieved by the Chinese government (filled mostly with Chinese who studied in China) as innovation is antithetical.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21647981-chinese-firm...
>> To decisively refute your argument. The current leading company in Drones, is DJI The company was founded in 2006 by Frank Wang (Wāng Tāo, 汪滔). Who did not study Abroad.
If you can make that claim about a majority of such companies then you can say it decisively refutes the argument. You have given one example, which could either be a trend or an exception. But here is a question - how easy do you think it is to confirm if it is a trend or an exception? What does that say about the flow of information? If you were an entrepreneur trying to use this information to your advantage, how much confidence will you have in your assessment?
>> Before you call out Chinese government on Great Firewall, What about Patent Trolls?
Why can't both be wrong?
Doesn't that kind of prove his point? The worlds most populous country isn't even a super power. It under-performs.
BTW, a less hyperbolic rendition might be "china went from a low-income country to a middle income country", as that's all that happened. It was nothing particularly remarkable, the same thing happened in many Asian countries.
Before that, they first had to bring the country into extreme poverty (see "The Great Leap Forward"). This is like boasting about stopping to beat your wife.
I am not saying world changing innovation is impossible in China. I am saying that it's much harder to achieve compared to other places given the current conditions. Given China's size and access to capital, if the bad conditions that I describe were to improve there would be a 1000 more DJI level companies.
> If the only innovation is some stupid IOT microwave made (with heart emoji) in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley has long existed before the 90's. Its tech culture is almost as old as the PRC itself if not older. This is the level of world changing innovation that I'm talking about that I feel currently eludes China: http://www.swinnovation.co.uk/2011/05/southwest-celebrates-5...
The only place China has a huge advantage in is with biotech, since Western culture as a whole has a lot reservations with its advancement in certain taboo areas.
Creating an original product/idea is different from innovating upon an existing one. So is Google not innovative as they did not invent internet search? ApplePay is less innovative because Alipay (handled USD660B in 2012) was started in 2004? Or Wechat is not innovative because whatsapp was there first?
I am not Chinese but we sell software in Asia. In a smaller box, they have to be more innovative because of all the crap rules they deal with like Great Firewall. Sure, many of the copies are of low quality and pitiful. However, similar to the hindi word - jugaad, everyday innovations are made using whatever is available. In many ways, they are more flexible than the Japanese who defer more to standard practices and hierarchy.
Eventually some made it better than the forerunners. Wechat started as a messaging app but has outstripped whatsapp in terms of applications. It is so tightly integrated in everyday activities, i.e people pay for their daily groceries, buy mcdonalds, it has voice messaging way before whatsapp introduced it, withdraw sent messages etc.
I feel that the culture is only antagonistic towards people who don't like the political status quo, not business. Didi (uber), DHL type of services are illegal at the beginning but gained legitimate status eventually because of its usefulness to the society. The propaganda is not helpful but I don't see it as any different from religious propaganda. If you can ignore it, you are fine. (Well, some people claimed religious people are less innovative, but that is another discussion)
China is flush with money. So your arguments, railing against China, fall flat; unless you are willing to ignore the basic tenets of Silicon Valley.
(People also make great technological strides when it comes to defense of their livelihoods. That is why so much public spending towards defense has lead to so many innovative technologies. But that is a topic for another conversation.)
Who says breaking rules are considered innovation?
Oh. You mean, like, hacker news?
Thank you!
I am super inspired to go there... I have a product I want made, that I want to find out how much it would cost to make. It would be wonderful to go to Shenzen, but I found a place in Fremont CA that is a mfr of the component I need with offices in Shenzen. so trying to contact them.
Going into all the specialized malls in Huaqiang Bei and seeing the entire supply chain in one building is amazing.
Highly recommend that people interested in electronics hardware make a visit.
What I find particularly fascinating is that it provides powerful evidence that 'open' is innovative and 'closed' is stifling.
Early on in the tech business everything was 'open'. The IBM PC published the source code to the BIOS in its technical manual, Intel and Motorola documented all of the options on their chips and how to program them, early programmable logic (PALs and PLDs) were easy to program with available documentation.
As a result lots of people built a wide variety of devices and systems using those parts, and that supported (in the Bay Area at least) dozens of circuit board houses, small run manufacturers, fastener companies, assembly houses, and parts distributors.
Starting with 3D accelerator chips, documentation became locked up behind NDA walls, access to small quantities was nearly impossible, and it became harder and harder to build something out of off the shelf parts. Designers and inventors were held back, their reduced demand for services put pressure on the rest of the ecosystem and the vibrant economy around building hardware crashed and burned. The biggest loss was perhaps the small boutique chip houses that made interesting parts with a bit of this and a bit of that.
Reading Bunny's book and the economist's article it seems that a combination of "Gongkai" and many different small factories has created this environment in Shenzen. That is a good thing and bodes well for the future growth of the area (assuming it isn't crushed by the powers that be). I'd love to figure out how to rekindle that here in the Bay Area.
Learning the Mandarin number system made negotiating prices a breeze.
I just got the Hardware Hacker a month or so ago. Great read.
[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-gui...
>> early programmable logic (PALs and PLDs) were easy to program with available documentation.
The main thing that has shifted is that the bar is higher. 10x more than an early PALs/PLD design is not worth much today.
I'm convinced sufficiently that America has lost enough of that ecosystem and will continue the erosion trend enough for the foreseeable future that I'm giving serious consideration to physically moving closer to China if not establish physical residency there, a possibility that was unthinkable only 10 years ago. I don't think China will stop at atoms, and challenging US dominance in bits over the coming decades is no longer fanciful; maybe not in my generation, but perhaps my grandchildren's. The value-over-time delivered from "owning" an ecosystem was and is vastly underestimated by most US business leadership that is simplistically yield-chasing (focusing on ever-larger margins). Ownership in this context is the ability to iteratively turn around half-baked ideas into fully-executed forms cheaper and quicker than sourcing from an ecosystem where the local ecosystem's embedded culture (both socially and professionally), primary language, lingo, nuances, time difference, etc., add up to a significant edge.
What I'm increasingly seeing is ever-more fragile design cycles in the US, with an emphasis upon getting it right as far up front as possible (leading to highly dysfunctional organizational behaviors arising from the gaming of the metrics around "getting it right"), and tossing the design over the fence to the "lower value rungs". There doesn't seem to be an awareness that continuous, small feedback loops built around fast iterations are an excellent method to break up complexity of an effort too large for one person or even one small team to load into working memory all at once. I even see this a lot in commercial sector "agile" software development efforts, where even if there is some feature/area that is completely terra incognita to the team, there is little to no accommodation made to set aside generous time to perform discovery, experimentation, and trialing.
The focus upon ever-larger margins leads to value-ladder-justifications like ditching PC manufacturing, then wondering why your sales team all of the sudden can no longer organically find opportunities like they did before. Those PC's might have had "terrible" margins, but they were a built-in excuse for on-the-ball sales teams to uncover opportunities for cross- and up-sells of other products/services while discussing the latest PC refresh, for example. All that discussion that flows from those "low value" goods? The Chinese and Indian firms hold them now, and based upon what I'm seeing in the field, they know what they hold in their hands and they're inexorably leveraging those opportunities.
>Shenzhen has only a handful of lacklustre institutions of higher learning
Shenzhen University- while not Tsinghua, it well regarded and it's graduates are quickly hired by local tech companies.
>Shenzhen spends over 4% of its GDP on research and development (R&D), double the mainland average; in Nanshan the share is over 6%.
This is true "on the ground" and it shows- I live in Nanshan High Tech Park right in the center of this. The amount of money local government and local companies are putting into innovation is staggering.
>Most of the money comes from private firms. Companies in Shenzhen file more international patents
Lots of these are questionable. There are financial incentives for the number of patents filed. Goodhart's law applies in China like no place else. Likewise- you can get grants and tax breaks opening a Makerspace, so we have over 600. In reality nearly all of these are empty offices.
>He insists this could not have been done even in Silicon Valley, because California cannot match Shenzhen’s ecosystem of “makers”.
Shenzhen has no Makers, and no Maker culture. We have one, maybe two Makerspaces in the Western tradition and their focus is almost entirely on kids classes. There are huge obstacles to actually building an authentic Maker Culture in China which we have been unable to overcome. As a result- the same factory bosses and businessmen we've always had, are now called "Makers". People who actually do technical things- let along things with their own hands are still called engineers and still very much looked down on.
We have large, fantastically equipped Makerspaces- these are about as real as a North Korean fruit stand. They are part of the local cargo cult mentality and purely for face. It is common here to have a huge, privately catered "Maker Meetup" of hundreds of people- and not a single person in the room will have ever fabricated anything with their own two hands. They are also quite proud of this.
Yes- some tremendous innovation occurring here and it's a fantastic place for hardware. No- very little authentic Maker culture and very little interest in actually fostering it.
Thanks!
>have you lived in the US? always been curious where you picked up your fluency in english and western culture
No, never been to the West I'm entirely locally educated. When I first posted on Reddit I just tried to reply to everyone- and I was usually on my phone so my English was very careless. After a while I realized my "chat Chinglish" really made it hard for people to take me seriously. I slowed down, started using my computer, Grammerly is a huge help but for important stuff like the above post or my Hackaday article there's a small group of overseas educated friends that help me proofread my posts. I make all my stuff and document it all carefully on video, but you'll see regular disclaimers when my English has been polished for readability (but not content).
But I think there's a reason for that. Innovation faces a steep uphill climb in the USA.
1. I have a cool idea, but I don't have the capital to bootstrap it right away. No problem, I can work and draw a wage while doing my research on the side, right? Nope! This is America, and your employer likely claims to own everything that you create or think of, on or off the clock.
2. I have a cool idea, and want to play around with it even though I could use some help with some basic concepts. Well that's great, but I'm on my own. There are no incubators that specialize in electronics or circuitry, no groups of experienced hardware hackers to mentor newcomers, and no specialized training or local resources. You also cannot source circuit components locally when most cities seem to lack a single hobby shop. Often if you want to find out if a circuit will work, you need to wait a whole week for new parts, if you're lucky and can find them from a stateside retailer at a reasonable price.
3. You might think that academic institutions would make themselves available to their surrounding communities, offering night classes and/or access to facilities like machine shops or lab equipment which are typically beyond the reach of an individual. You would be wrong; this is America, and if you don't pay full tuition, you can fuck right off.
2) There's far more support online than there was a few years ago. There's good electronic CAD software for free. (KiCAD and LTspice are both free and useful.) Board fab is widely available and cheaper than ever. You can get overnight delivery from DigiKey if you order by 8 PM central time, but it will cost you. If you can wait a few days, no problem. They no longer have a minimum order. The 3rd edition of the Art of Electronics is out, so there's a good intro to modern electronics. (Although those old guys whine about tiny surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it.) There are good message boards. Usenet "sci.electronics.design" is surprisingly useful.
3) The machine shop situation is better than the electronics situation. I've been a TechShop member for years. Their machine shop facilities are good; their electronics facilities are about enough to do a blinking-light Arduino project.
Especially with Metrix:Create completely abandoning hackerspacedom for blah structure. Extremely sad.
The fact of the matter is that for all of the innovation you hear about there, it's really just romanticizing the margin thinning of existing products. Nothing wrong with that, but it's easy to romanticize.
The hacker dojo events seem somewhat broad though many are more software based: https://events.hackerdojo.com/
I think we are lucky to have things like hacker dojo and techshop in our local area as well as meetups for diverse interests. Pretty sure you could find like minded folks in the area if you made the effort.
There is no Maker movement in Shenzhen- there are well-equipped spaces we show to tourists, there is no Maker Movement in the usual use of the word. Go check- no Github repositories, no posted projects anywhere. It's entirely fake- and the money well spent because people believe it despite there being no actual output.
Techshop is just a place to learn and build things, not to showcase your commercial or innovative products. Those stay back home in the garage.
Unfortunately, few people seem to have one working. There are two hacker spaces that got one, and there's even an unboxing video, but didn't get it assembled and working.
I could use one of those occasionally. The tweezers and microscope thing gets tiring, fast.
I grew up in China and spent half of my life there before immigrated in the states while I was in college. Being bilingual and keeping an close eye on the start-up focused medias from both countries, I totally concur. And it's increasing clear to me that Silicon Delta[1][2] suppressing Silicon Valley is very probable. And Shenzhen is at the heart of it.
I am approaching 40, but if there is an interesting opportunity I would give Shenzhen calling a shot for sure.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/china-pearl-r...
>lived in Shenzhen, the internets are broken and everybody knows it
sn: Sometimes the required but irrelevant/"easy" classes do provide some value. Anyone in college should remember that you need to expand your mind a bit too and sometimes take these stupid classes seriously enough to get something out of them.
This phenomenon has been under appreciated by the macroeconomists guiding the US. If the people with the expertise, their factories, their suppliers - the whole chain -- migrate to places far outside the US, then something extremely important is lost.
And favorable exchange rates plus container ship globalization is not enough to get that something back.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/category/hacker-camp-she...
Does anyone know if there is something similar that is still going on?
(We are currently relocating to Shenzhen from elsewhere in China.)
Order and disruptive innovation are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What happened to ordered disruptive innovation?