When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China

[below_freezing]

That's an interesting point.

China has a pool of 1.2 billion people; does it really need foreign brains?

Is there anything special about foreign-educated scientists that cannot be provided by Chinese people themselves?

In any case, the biggest driver of innovation is good old fashioned human ego/greed. If China can convince its people that fabulous wealth lies at the end of the rainbow, innovation will flow.

the important part is this: as long as the US can print USD and people accept USD, then it will have an endless supply of cheap and highly skilled PhDs making less than garbagemen. Everyone that has a PhD in science/engineering from the US, knows that a PhD means you are making contributions hundreds of times your salary when you have the PhD: in effect, you are doing more for the degree, than the degree is doing for you. The pie in the sky prize, of course, is a stable job as a professor or company boss, but the majority are stuck as postdocs making near minimum wage while the hot jobs are mostly reserved for native born whites.

The real problem is, of course, cutting losses try to prevent people from leaving. A good way to start is to pay grad students more. Attracting PhDs back is more natural: the better China gets, the more they'll naturally come back. No amount of policy incentives can change that.

 

[Developereo]

the important part is this: as long as the US can print USD and people accept USD, then it will have an endless supply of cheap and highly skilled PhDs making less than garbagemen.

I guess we look at it differently. I don't look at the number of PhDs.

I am only interested in innovation and, if it's done by college dropouts like Gates and Zuckerberg, then they matter more than an army of PhD robots who do not create anything.

I will agree that basic research and innovation in hard sciences requires a PhD, but those guys are paid more than a garbage man. Considerably more. And the reason they are paid well is because the companies hiring them are willing to bet their salaries against untold fortunes if they get it right.

In America, if you have the credentials, you can get big money. One third of the companies in Silicon Valley are founded by non-whites. Venture capitalists only see one color: green.

 

[below_freezing]

They aren't paid well if their research isn't exactly what companies look for. Then they can only be postdocs and make minimum wage. A typical example is catalysis which is what my father's friend (his profile here: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jz2i/temp/jzhang.html) did, note how his research has been taken off. he has not recieved wages from CMU for 3 months and now is fired because his group's funding got cut off. This is catalysis, one of the most important aspects of modern chemical engineering. Imagine what if you went into some tiny niche area that no one cares about except a few tiny companies (or no companies at all), like piezoelectric ceramics or organic semiconductors?

Zuckerberg's technical skill is very questionable. the code of Facebook isn't complex at all and represents no new software innovation. It's mostly marketing that made it successful (and of course how it tracks user information for targetted ads). Gates is a statistical outlier, if you think you can be successful dropping out of college and become bill gates, go ahead.

Also, I don't think you know how a PhD works. A PhD by definition is a sign that innovation has occured. You are not awarded a PhD anywhere in the world from an accreditted university without publishing 1 or more papers that represent new knowledge in your chosen field.

 

[holysaturn]

Everything is big in china..soon we will expect an Indian answers to this with absurd claims like world largest population of engineers and doctors and bla blah!

atleast we want to compare,compete instead of enjoying over other countries achievements like u do,i dont know y pakistanis get very excited wen china develops something as if it their own invention,pakistan has to do on its own if it desires sustainance.

 

[Time]

the important part is this: as long as the US can print USD and people accept USD, then it will have an endless supply of cheap and highly skilled PhDs making less than garbagemen. Everyone that has a PhD in science/engineering from the US, knows that a PhD means you are making contributions hundreds of times your salary when you have the PhD: in effect, you are doing more for the degree, than the degree is doing for you. The pie in the sky prize, of course, is a stable job as a professor or company boss, but the majority are stuck as postdocs making near minimum wage while the hot jobs are mostly reserved for native born whites.

The real problem is, of course, cutting losses try to prevent people from leaving. A good way to start is to pay grad students more. Attracting PhDs back is more natural: the better China gets, the more they'll naturally come back. No amount of policy incentives can change that.

I rather agree with you about the poor PhDs especially in fundamental science area.

 

[somebozo]

What china needs is good enterprises who can capitalize on opportunities. Going the PhD and Engineering paths is a long term approach taking somewhere between 200-400 years for bearing fruit.

 

[Jigs]

i doubt many of the people that acclaim US "high tech" actually knows what high tech is.

the iPhone, for example, is not actually an Apple product.

It is a Foxxconn product.

Apple does 2 things: specifications and marketing.
Foxxconn takes care of everything else: design to meed the specifications, procurement of parts, assembly, packaging, shipping.

If you give out specs and then sell the product, that's not actually your product.

The exact same iPhone, but with a different logo, can be shipped to another company, but the consumer won't know that, they just know apple vs. no name phone. That's why I always buy no name pirated phones, they're cheap and get the job done almost as well as an actual iPhone (the iPhone is actually better since Apple rejects bad phones while no name pirate phones just take everything, but it's not "good enough" to spend 10x the money on, i can just buy 10 no name pirate phones and maybe 1 will break).

The same thing for facebook. The code of facebook is not complicated. It also stole ideas from blog sites like QQzone (out in 2003, earlier than Facebook's 2004), MySpace and Xanga. It's just fancy packaging and spin. The actual quality and innovation of american products is laughable compared to Japanese ones.

Correct to a degree on foxconn. They do build it but apple is the one that designs the product so to save cost they have it built overseas. So it is apples product unless your saying foxconn came up with it which they didn't. Take the J-11 for example it is Russian though china builds them. Same concept. Also QC is still a issue with foxconn they made motherboard processor sockets for a while and many of them had serious issues. Which caused the MB companies to drop them.

As for American products they are quite overpriced but do have good quality. For electronics though Japan just can't be beat. Especially Sony (Which for there lower end stuff does turn to China)

 

[TechLahore]

Jigs, fox conn is by far the worlds largest contract manufacturer. They do all the major brands, including Apple. QA is also all done by Chinese workers in China. hP laptops ordered in the US now get individually drop shipped to consumers straight from china. So I wouldn't say Chinese QA is weak. You just get what you pay for. If you buy better talent or more hours of quality assurance, you'll see the results. I think the issue is one of willingness of the customer to pay for quality rather than the Chinese ability to deliver quality.

 

[cityhunterhf]

The world second-largest economy will do something. We'll see.

Cha-cha here won't change anything.

 

[scuthan]

Correct to a degree on foxconn. They do build it but apple is the one that designs the product so to save cost they have it built overseas. So it is apples product unless your saying foxconn came up with it which they didn't. Take the J-11 for example it is Russian though china builds them. Same concept. Also QC is still a issue with foxconn they made motherboard processor sockets for a while and many of them had serious issues. Which caused the MB companies to drop them.

As for American products they are quite overpriced but do have good quality. For electronics though Japan just can't be beat. Especially Sony (Which for there lower end stuff does turn to China)

FOXCONN is the largest electric product maker in the world. Its revenue in 2010 is larger than Microsoft and Apple!

its success does not only lie in China's low labor cost but also technology innovations and state-of-the-art management. Foxconn is one of the high-tech companies that have the biggest number of patents in the world. Apple only know how to design it but have limited knowledge on how to make it, its Foxconn's manufacture tech make apple's design true. Foxconn's state-of-the-art management make it "Honda" in the electric manufacture industry. its factory in shenzhen alone has 300,000 skilled employees, top-notched labs and facilities, and proximity to the largest industry cluster in the world. it make quality products at the fastest speed with the lowest prices.

Apple's success lies in its marketing not technology. iphone I was barely a smart phone, but it achieved unprecedented success, cause apple succeed to establish the ownership of iphone/ipod with the image of being cool. On the other hand, the whole world was behind Japan in 2G era, Japanese has the best cell phone and telecom services. but it is market and technology was too closed. Some of my friends told me GSM cannot be even used in Japan. They had the best techs but give the opportunites to apple and sumsang.

 

[maurice]

How true is the statement! Whoever can channel brain into their country, that country will be the leader in technology.

China lacks the capability to attract foreign brains in comparison with USA, for the moment. This is the fatal weak point.

China’s hardware appears impressive enough, but still lacks software in that aspect: decent bureaucracy, freedom of access to information, transparent policies, equal opportunities to all (not just to Li Gang’s son like caste system), …, these become extreme important factors, IMHO.

Perhaps, when foreign students flock into China, instead of Chinese students head to EU or USA, that would also be the indicator of the heyday of Chinese innovation.

you are right. We have a long way to go in catching up with USA and we all know the defects of our political system. The trick thing is China and Chinese goverment is now making progress not only in economic but also in politics. The improving political system is far from meeting the western standards but is improving. Right now more students come to USA for further study and in return a higer percentage of those students come back when they finish their study in USA. And more and more chinese with green card and experience come back to china in recent years, like my tutor who was a professor in Columbia Univerisity. And as china keeps on developping, this could be more. Those brains are really important to our future, thought we really have lots of such brains considering the 1.3 billion people. And more, studying abroad is a good way to fresh and exchange the mind, which would definitely be good if you are doing research in universities.

 

[faithfulguy]

You must be out of touch, China's improvement is on accelerating pace, the growing economy will support even more robust R&D like you never see before. J-20 show how fast China has achieved. There are more examples, do more google, and read more non-western reading materials.

True, Chinese technology is improving greatly and it will catch up to Europe and Russia in 20-25 years. but Europe and Russia are still decades behind that of US. for example, F-22

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

True, Chinese technology is improving greatly and it will catch up to Europe and Russia in 20-25 years. but Europe and Russia are still decades behind that of US. for example, F-22

lol @ this statement.

Russia can't compete with us right now in many technological fields. It will take us 10-15 years to catch up US.

US technology isn't supernatural, and stop a$$kissing them, don't be Gambit#2.

 

[Speeder 2]

lol @ this statement.

Russia can't compete with us right now in many technological fields. It will take us 10-15 years to catch up US.

US technology isn't supernatural, and stop a$$kissing them, don't be Gambit#2.

Though i'am not that optimistic as your on 10-15 yrs time frame, basically I agree with you on the rest.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Though i'am not that optimistic as your on 10-15 yrs time frame, basically I agree with you on the rest.

Militarily, it is about 10-15 years. Since CCP has primarily focused to narrow the gap with US.

But China still has a long way to go with the Soft Power, it would take us about 20-30 to have soft power like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.

For now, we don't even have the soft power like Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo as Japan did.