
China is challenging the idea that censorship thwarts online innovation - JumpCrisscross
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/america-wants-to-believe-china-cant-innovate-tech-tells-a-different-story/2016/07/19/c17cbea9-6ee6-479c-81fa-54051df598c5_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_chinainnovation-1050pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
======
stickfigure
Article provides only two specific examples:

 _You go on Facebook and you can’t even buy anything, but on WeChat and Weibo
you can buy anything you see_

 _A more recent trend: live-streaming sites where people pay real money to
reward performers with virtual gifts. (You sang beautifully, here’s a digital
Lamborghini, dear.)_

I might grant the first (with reservations), but the second is laughable (and
was tried without success here in the early days of social networking). I
can't help but think this article should be titled "Chinese internet companies
flourish in Chinese market". Well duh - even aside from the "virtual
protectionism" of the GFW, Chinese companies are more likely to understand the
preferences of Chinese consumers than non-Chinese companies. This is
important, but it isn't exactly _tech innovation_.

How many HN startups are localizing to Mandarin? Language alone provides a
massive market barrier that leaves opportunity for regional companies to
thrive. But that barrier works both ways - what Chinese internet companies are
thriving in the world marketplace? The best example I can think of is Alibaba,
but that is strongly tied to Chinese manufacturing. Is anyone using WeChat or
Weibo outside mainland China?

I personally am very excited and encouraged by the emergence of China as a
modern, educated populace. Great things will come from bringing another 1
billion humans online and contributing to the world marketplace - tech is one
of the great positive-sum games. I'm looking forward to it! But this article
is a pretty poor illustration.

Also, as a Norteamericano, I'm deeply offended by statements like "America
want's to believe China can't..." \- we're not all xenophobic Trump
supporters, not even most of us.

~~~
rmah
"Is anyone using WeChat or Weibo outside mainland China?"

I don't know about Weibo, but WeChat is available in 200 nations and 20
languages. Over 70 mil people use WeChat outside of China. They seem strongest
in south and south-east asia. Wechat penetration into the mobile markets are:
Malaysia 38%, India 22%, Philipines 19%, etc. My understanding is that they
have aggressive inititatives underway in Brazil and South Africa.

So, not super-awesome, but respectable.

~~~
nindalf
22% of Indian mobile users use WeChat? I'd like a citation for that, since in
my experience less than a percentage use anything other than Whatsapp or
Facebook Messenger.

~~~
pyre
They do not need to be evenly distributed across the country. It could be a
specific regional area. The stat could also just mean "installed and is used."
It's possible that there are a lot of Indians that use it to communicated with
business partners / etc in China.

------
acd
China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the
Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese
innovated and made very high quality items.

[http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of-
quality/overvi...](http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of-
quality/overview/total-quality.html)

"In the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese goods were synonymous with cheapness and low
quality, but over time their quality initiatives began to be successful, with
Japan achieving very high levels of quality in products from the 1970s
onward." source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management)

Top500 super computer list, the fastest super computer now has a Chinese CPU
Sunway SW26010 which has 260 cores.
[https://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/](https://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010)

List of inventions
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions)

~~~
gioele
> China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the
> Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese
> innovated and made very high quality items.

Same story with Italy. It started its industrial success of the '50s as a
country where you could get cheap, unschooled (but not unskilled) workers that
would work for 20 hours a day without any protection from the existing legal
framework. (Plus a devalued currency.) Just like the eastern Europe of the
'90s or China in this decade.

Now people forgot all that and like to think of "Made in Italy" as a symbol of
innovation and style.

I think this is the pattern:

1\. country attract foreign investors because of lower wages and little legal
protection;

2\. people work their ass off, without really understanding what they are
doing;

3\. workers get skilled in what they do, a culture of "doing X properly"
springs up;

4\. people realize that they are being exploited and demand more protection
from their state;

5\. slowly people get what they ask for, but this has a cost and so factories
move somewhere else;

6\. (This is the main point =>) You are left with a country filled with
skilled workers and sense for the production of the good X, but it no longer
makes sense to produce it there for the big market; you turn to the "luxury"
market;

7\. people start losing jobs because the luxury market is hard to please and
it is not big enough;

8\. the state gives away some of the rights acquired and starts the slow path
towards becoming a state with lower wages and less legal protection.

I wonder if this vicious cycle can be broken with the advent of non-tangible
products (for example services) and some kind of heavy taxation on transports
(instead of VAT you would pay dist-in-km^0.12).

~~~
pducks32
I really like your pattern and it fits in with what I've thought for years,
but today I was thinking: what happens when there is too much luxury products?
The end of the cycle doesn't work or else USA, UK, and a few other European
countries wouldn't be doing very well. And what about highly skilled workers
like Iranian/Persian rug makers?

~~~
sievebrain
There can never be too many luxury products because the definition of 'luxury'
is simply redefined upwards.

------
spodek
Where there are factories and competition, innovation will happen. When we
started manufacturing in China, we had experience building and they didn't so
we had to show them how to do everything. Now they manufacture without our
oversight, have the relationships with suppliers, and figure out how to do
things faster, cheaper, and higher quality because it directly benefits them.

Meanwhile, we don't have the experience building things that they do with
their equipment and people.

The only problem is believing that other people innovating hurts us. It
doesn't.

~~~
rvense
Not read TFA, but in my country (Western Europe) there's so much talk of how
in the future we're going to live off our ideas and innovation, not
manufacturing, and there always seems to be this.. underlying... thing that
the people who run the factories don't have any ideas of their own. So we're
going to sit here and think up brilliant things, and send them off to a land
of smoke stacks and cheap labour to be made. And I just don't see how that
system could ever be anything other than temporary. After we've outsourced all
the dirty work, when would the expertise out there not insource the thinking
work and cut me out? I would if I was them.

(And honestly it is very hard to ignore the colonialist undertones of this
thinking)

~~~
JPKab
You are exactly right. There is this inherent superiority complex in this
thinking. And I think I know the reason why:

The elites in western nations aren't builders or doers. They are talkers
(lawyers, bankers, politicians, MBAs) who have told themselves their entire
lives that builders don't matter as much as the talkers. They love Steve Jobs,
but wouldn't know who Woz was if you asked them. They talk about the "jobs of
the 21st century" but make fun of the technology experts by calling them nerds
on the floors of Congress.

If this is your line of thinking, then the whole "let them build the stuff,
and we'll do all the ideas and innovation" makes perfect sense. Its a perfect
example of why the remaining "doers" in the US have such a deep-seated hatred
of all politicians and government. I'm talking about the remaining auto-
workers and the oil-drillers, etc.

~~~
Omniusaspirer
Fantastic comment. This country seemingly has a genuine disdain for its
laborers, an attitude that has pervaded into every section of government and
will surely bite us in the ass much like Brexit did in Britain. It's very
telling that I've yet to read a single comment showing support for that
movement online yet 51% of the voting population approved of it.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's impressive that we manage to disdain laborers and intellectuals at the
same time.

~~~
PopsiclePete
It's classic, text-book divide-and-conquer! You tell group A that group B are
"liberal college-educated elitists" and you tell group B that group A are
"gun-loving Bible-thumping rednecks" and let them go at each other's throats!

------
halfelf
Though as a Chinese programmer, I have no doubt we will achieve some great
innovation here, the author of this report apparently doesn't know internet
industry well, for choosing a bad example. Xu Dandan himself is just a joke
here, and himself is widely considered as a bragger.

------
Unklejoe
Perhaps the reason there's a stigma of China not being able to innovate is
because they're so widely known for blatantly copying existing products and
designs (and selling them for a much lower price). In some cases, it’s a
direct rip-off of an existing product (for example, search AliExpress for
“TIAL Wastegate”), and in other cases, it’s a similar, but often cheaper (in
both cost and quality) design.

The problem is that people love to generalize, and the fact of the matter is
that when many people think of Chinese products, they think of cheap knock-
offs being sold on eBay. Obviously, this is a pretty bad generalization
considering many of the “legitimate” products we use every day were made in
China, but we’re talking about perception amongst the general population.
[Criticizes China for making knock-offs while typing on an iPhone…]

The point that needs to be made is that making cheap knock-offs does not
preclude them from innovating. There are a lot of people there, and I’m sure
the entire country isn’t composed of mindless assembly drones.

It’s a shame that this stigma exists, and it will take a while before it
completely fades away.

I realize that some people might be offended by this (and my use of “cheap
knock-offs”), but if you don’t believe me, just go ask around for yourself.

~~~
Nokinside
Copying is usually the best strategy to start from behind.

Japanese started the same way. In the 60s and 70s "Made in Japan" meant cheap,
low-quality knockoffs. Japanese cars were called rice cups in the 80's. Then
they caught up and it took Detroit by surprise.

~~~
moufestaphio
Ditto for Korea. In the 80/90's they were the cheap Japanese knock offs for
tech stuff like TVs etc.

------
jayadevan
I was at the Alipay headquarters a few weeks ago. What caught my eye was a
large IBM machine kept outside the office with lots of signatures on them.
When I asked them what it was, they said this was the last piece of American
technology the company used and they'd kept it as a trophy. They've replaced
every thing else in the company with Chinese tech. That's quite something for
a company which processes millions of transactions in a day.

~~~
jamespo
What operating systems, stacks, languages, compilers, etc do they use?

~~~
kriro
Those are pretty hard to assign to a country I'd say. I mean is the Linux
kernel Finnish?

But yeah if the point is just to use non-US tech they could run Ubuntu Linux
(SA) or OpenBSD (Canada) or I suppose Red Flag Linux (China). Language
wise...maybe Python or PHP or Erlang or an ML language?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Popular FOSS projects are typically invented in the US, funded by US
companies, and consists of US developers. I think its a little arrogant to
pretend these things would exist without the US.

Also, whats in those Lenovo boxes? Godson chips or American Intels? They are
absolutely not running Windows on any desktop then I assume?

~~~
PopsiclePete
The whole thing is laughable. And even then, even if they replace all
"American" pieces of software and hardware, the remaining will probably be 80%
_European_ anyway! Great Victory, Comrades!

------
pzh
When I saw the word innovation, I was expecting something a bit more than
web/mobile chat and e-commerce apps. Not saying that the Chinese startup scene
is in any way worse than SV, but I think we've put the bar for what
constitutes innovation way too low everywhere...

~~~
amelius
I guess they mean innovation in the business sense rather than the technical
sense. I.e., finding new web-based business models.

------
hourislate
In Marc Goodman's book "Future Crimes" he discusses the largest transfer of
Human wealth to ever occur.

Through China's hacking efforts they have stolen Trillions of Dollars of US
Tax Payer money that has gone into research and development of anything the
Government has done including the F 35 fighter development.

They have also attacked US Industry and stolen trade secrets and software.
Recipes for Carbon Steel, Stainless Steel, etc. Decades of R&D and 100's of
millions of dollars gone. Chinese State Owned Sinovel Wind Group stole AMSC's
computer code that was developed to run power generating Wind Mills. It cost
the company almost a 1 billion dollars a year in lost revenue and all the
money it took to develop it.

Here is an article regarding the F 35 Program.

[http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-
politics/o...](http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-
politics/owner-of-b-c-aerospace-firm-gets-prison-sentence-for-stealing-
information-on-f-35-fighter)

Is it really innovation when all you do is steal and copy from the west?

~~~
james-watson
It ain't innovation, it's cleverness.

I can sit here and try to re-discover the fundamentals of physics from the
ground up, or I can go to a library and read a textbook.

Discovering from first principles is the honorable path, but it is a colossal
waste of time. To get to the state of the art, you have to steal knowledge.
Only then can you begin to understand and improve it.

~~~
bllguo
This is a ridiculously biased and oversimplified view. If everyone operated on
your espoused principles, nobody would be incentivized to innovate.

You seem to believe the Chinese have some God-given right to get to the state
of the art. No, there's a reason things like intellectual property, copyright,
patent, etc. exist. How people here are defending the Chinese theft of
proprietary US secrets and technologies is beyond me.

~~~
uola
There a case to be made that innovations which require a lot of research won't
be made, but I don't agree that nobody would have incentive to innovate. When
there's no intellectual property you can't afford not to innovate. The fashion
and food business, which aren't covered by copyright, are fast to follow
trends. If someone can put out something very similar to yourself you have to
have and keep your edge.

The other things is that why we can have such long copyright terms, but not
the same for patents, is because it didn't use to matter. There were real
limits to making anything useful out of it. Patents on the other hand outright
suppresses innovation in the short term to reveal the knowledge to everyone in
the long term.

The third things is of course that something can't be secret and morally
defended by intellectual property at the same time. At least not from a
functional perspective.

------
antoniuschan99
I think we need to figure out how to bring manufacturing closer to North
America. For example, getting a prototype batch of PCB's from Advanced
Circuits cost ~$400 for 5-10 pieces. Whereas it costs ~$30 from Seeed Studio.

The quality is obviously better from Advanced Circuits, and it doesn't take a
whole month as it would from Seeed (I've heard good things about OSH Park and
they're US Based).

The quality of Chinese products is improving, and the parallels with the
history of Japanese tech are strikingly similar.

In terms of software expertise, I think the talent is still in North America.
The hardware expertise though is somewhat non-existent. I'm surprised there's
no city like Shenzen here.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Do engineers in China view software engineering as a kind of "second best" or
even "third best" pursuit when compared to hardware engineering and
manufacture?

Talking to some hardware engineers from Japan gave me the sense that they
really think of hardware as the more "noble" or "higher" pursuit when compared
to software engineering. They don't necessarily think of software as a really
interesting challenge. Or something like that.

I know this is all very vague. I'm not sure about these attitudes at all.
Curious about your take on it.

~~~
antoniuschan99
I'm not sure but we know that the government invested into manufacturing.
Perhaps Electronics Manufacturing was a byproduct that came from that? I think
they're in a better position for the future if software innovation does slow
down and hardware innovation continues to accelerate:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-firmware-engineers-paid-a-
lowe...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-firmware-engineers-paid-a-lower-salary-
than-software-engineers/answer/C-J-Windisch?srid=hSj0)

Software and Hardware is pretty fragmented now, and it seems its converging
because of IoT and availability of cheap hardware.

In terms of noble pursuits:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763367)

------
Retric
The problem with innovation in China is the same problem it has in most areas
namely corruption. In an actual free market innovation has huge dividends, but
when success is arbitrary and often based on outside connections it's far less
useful. That's not to say the people are not innovative and there is plenty of
innovation in smaller more competitive markets.

In the end they will continue to innovate, but as long as it's fighting both
the government and social norms things are going to be bottleneck.

~~~
eric-hu
Corruption is an inefficiency of China, but the Chinese market is much larger
than the American one. Compare the 1350 million mainland Chinese to the 350
million English speaking north Americans. A Chinese startup has 4x the
potential customers. There's a lot of room for inefficiency.

I'm currently in Singapore. Some entrepreneurs here lament the small market
size. The population is 5 million. Though it's highly educated and affluent,
national and cultural borders set upper bounds on software startups. Creative
(of Soundblaster fame) was the last really big Singaporean tech company.
Software startups here can't quite compete with big country startups because
they don't have the population to grow their user base. Exporting their
software means going through translation work, redoing their marketing for a
different culture and adapting to new laws. Now when I consider a country in
the reverse position like China...

~~~
Retric
This really depends on what you are selling. China is a huge market for soft
drinks and fast food, but BMW really can't care less for people making under
20k/year.

Singapore's total population size is less important to a restaurant than the
number of people near your store.

~~~
eric-hu
Okay, let's run with your counter argument.

In 2015, BMW sold 463000 cars in China, and 346000 cars in the USA. This was
not the first year that China was BMW's largest market.

Last year was the first year that China was the largest market for Mercedes
and Porsche. America was the second largest market for both companies.

[http://www.best-selling-cars.com/china/2015-full-year-
german...](http://www.best-selling-cars.com/china/2015-full-year-german-
luxury-car-sales-worldwide-and-in-china/)

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bmw-group-us-
reports...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bmw-group-us-reports-
december-and-2015-sales-300199606.html)

~~~
Retric
1.3x sales with 4x the population _proves my point._ BMW is a mid+ brand (1
series is 25k) who does not care about total population just population with
sufficient income.

~~~
eric-hu
That's interesting. It demonstrates my point that a large machine is not to be
disregarded just because of its inefficiencies.

------
whack
> _“There’s this strange belief that you can’t build a mobile app if you don’t
> know the truth about what happened in Tiananmen Square,” said Kaiser Kuo,
> who recently stepped down as head of international communications for Baidu,
> one of China’s leading tech companies, and hosts Sinica, a popular podcast.
> “Trouble is, it’s not true.”_

There's something that's hilarious, delightful, and depressing about the above
statement, all at the same time.

------
keenerd
Let's play write the article that should have been written!

Here's my favorite example of Chinese innovation: the ESP8266. It is original
hardware and 1/10th the price of the equivalent offering from TI (their
CC3000), with more speed, more features and better reliability.

~~~
petra
The esp8266 is cheap because they used expnsive to design, cheap to produce
process(40nm). Quallcom had a similar chip(QCA4004 ?), probably with similar
manufacturing costs, which they sold only to big companies, probably at a
higher price.

Also when you come to judge that chip, don't forget china's interests in the
chip industry and in security. I wouldn't be surprised those helped the esp to
become reality.

~~~
makomk
The ESP8266 is an ingenious little chip. It's fully integrated - no external
balun required unlike many of its competitors, no calibration by board
manufacturers, just drop in and use. They reached the scales required to
justify their NRE costs by making it a dual-use chip that could serve both as
a a WiFi interface for cheap Android tablets and a standalone IoT design.

------
kosmic_k
Of course Chinese entrepreneurs can innovate. That being said, the CCP has
been making it more difficult. As of this month every single mobile game needs
government approval at cost to the developer.

~~~
Nokinside
On the other hand there is less red tape on biotech and pharma and Chinese
government is encouraging innovation.

New Chinese biotech companies are dong well. gene therapy, proteins, viral
vector therapeutics, cell therapy, small molecules, antibody engineering.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Certainly those couldn't go horribly wrong with less oversight, right? As
opposed to mobile games...

------
Zenfinch
Chinese companies are certainly innovating and they are picking up R&D teams
anywhere on the planet.

For example you have Andrew Ng as Chief Scientist at Baidu Research in Silicon
Valley even though Baidu pretty much only operates solely in the Chinese
market.

~~~
arcanus
The key being, "in Silicon Valley"

As an analogy, Russian VC money supported FB. I don't believe that is an
argument that Russia is a tech innovator.

------
chvid
Blocking Facebook and Google may have been brutalist censorship at first. But
as a policy for encouraging innovation it is pure genius.

Will be interesting to see when/if some of the Chinese social networks become
popular outside China.

~~~
Unklejoe
So would it be safe to assume that you support Donald Trump in his plans to
force companies to remain in the USA by increased tariffs on imports?

I don't necessarily agree or disagree, because it's really out of my realm,
but it seems like a similar approach.

Block competition from outside the country...

~~~
chvid
I cannot vote in the coming us election.

I just find it slightly ironic that had Facebook and Google (and probably the
us government) been accommodating for Chinese requests to censor uygurs during
their uprising some 10 years ago then the situation likely would have been
completely different.

Now Facebook and Google are missing out of a big high growth market - a market
that ultimately may foster companies and innovation strong enough to challenge
us social media dominance.

------
fumplethumb
> The United States wants to believe that the scourge of censorship thwarts
> online innovation, but China is challenging the idea in ways that frighten
> and confound.

As an American, I do believe that a culture of censorship and phenomena like
the Great Firewall stifle an economy's capacity to innovate. That's not to say
that innovation is impossible in such an environment, just more difficult.

> “It doesn’t matter how the car is capable of traveling. Once it gets on the
> highway, you can imagine what the end result will be,” he said.

> The implication is that China’s government is happy to have companies build
> shiny, fast things as long as regulators can put up roadblocks as they
> please. So far, they’ve mostly targeted foreign firms.

Exactly, so far! What happens when the state determines that your blooming
startup threatens their agenda?

------
Nokinside
Kleiner Perkins has currently offices in four cities: Menlo Park, San
Francisco, Beijing and Shanghai
[http://www.kpcb.com/china](http://www.kpcb.com/china)

China has markets, opportunities and innovative people. Things are just all
somewhat different.

------
Symmetry
In general a nation's ability to copy technology is a very good indication of
its ability to innovate. Back in the day the USA copied British technology and
art shamelessly. Later Japan was known for copying technology. Both went on to
be great innovators.

Copying well, figuring out what to copy and what isn't needed, is hard.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I've been hearing people say "the Chinese can't innovate" for many many years
now, and I've seen "the Japanese can't innovate" in older sources, and once I
saw a reprinted claim from a Brit in the 19th century that "the Germans can't
innovate".

------
jokoon
I think that's why Chinese leadership want to separate themselves from the
west, because they don't want western-style capitalism to influence their
country, and end up negotiating economic advantages with developed countries.
That's what state-capitalism is all about.

I think they want to have both the benefits of isolationism, and the benefits
of exports.

Ultimately it's very easy to play with anti-US views. Much easier to blame the
US than to blame the chinese government. For example the vietnam war, iraq war
or japan nukes might sound much worse than the tiananmen square for a chinese.

But in the long run, a country like china should be able to catch up with how
late they have developed. I believe they have excellent human capital. Not
sure if they will be able to compete in very high tech fields, but they might
one day.

------
blalksdkl
The thing most people forget is that China is the largest economic market in
the world and is one of the only ones that is still growing in the economic
slump the world is in right now. So even if Chinese startups and businesses
aren't becoming multinational as fast as most western ones it has a hold of
one of the ones that really matter. Think about it this way. Most of those
western companies that have such a global presence are dumping billions of
dollars to try and make it in China. Why is that? Clearly China is the market
everybody wants but China is the market that Chinese companies already have
which puts them at a big advantage for the future.

For example Apple is supposed to be the highest profitable tech company in the
world. It is shaking in its boots now because it has 33% losses in China and
has been funneling tons of its profits into trying to stop that loss from
getting any worse. Meanwhile Chinese companies like Huawei are moving into
their other markets while still holding on to their Chinese standing.

------
awt
America's service economy where we "own" IP and everyone sells each other
backrubs is a joke.

------
throwanem
tl;dr Internet fails to turn China into America; Americans frightened,
baffled.

~~~
narrator
The biggest surprise of the 21st century is that the Internet and massive
outsourcing did not turn China into a country with policy acceptable to
western powers.

The other comperable surprise is that massive debt fueled growth in China did
not lead to a collapse and bailout by western powers.

The next surprise will be the complete substitution of the entire commercial
and financial infrastructure of the world by Chinese institutions. Check out
CIPS (alternative to SWIFT) or UnionPay (alternative to VISA/Mastercard
networks), Asian Infrastructure Inxvestment Bank (alternative to wold bank),
and of course the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (alternative to NATO), and
the Shanghai Gold Fix (alternative to Comex and London Gold Fix).

Some are even saying the Chinese have got a new global currency in the works
that's not the SDR or the dollar. However, I really doubt that is going to
happen, at least in the next few years.

~~~
marcosdumay
> The biggest surprise of the 21st century...

The century is only 15 years old. Give it time.

Social revolutions take decades to hatch after the conditions become right,
and decades more of "happening" before there is any certainty about what they
turned into.

The only thing that was ridiculous was the idea that a country with 1/3 of the
world population would stay irrelevant forever. But outside of that, the
future is incredibly uncertain.

~~~
botw
not 1/3 but 1/5

------
jsonmez
I'm here in Beijing and I just experienced this first-hand. Amazing.

Came over here for the launch of the Chinese translation of my book, Soft
Skills, and I am amazed by the tech community here.

------
jakub_g
I get a big popup "To keep reading, please enter your email address", any
simple way to remove it other than removing nodes from DOM [1] and manually
removing "drawbridge-up" CSS class from `<html>`?

[1] using [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hack-the-
web/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hack-the-web/)

~~~
kbart
Firefox's reader view did the trick for me.

~~~
lemiffe
Smart, I just inspected the <article> section, set margin-top to -1px, and
then just pressed down an arrow key and watched the article scroll while I
read. Everyone has their methods of circumventing things like this :)

------
Vampires123432
The article fails to touch on what I regard the major barrier to Chinese
innovation. Specifically, Chinese cultural norms are prohibitive towards the
creative enterprise. They just don't think through a problem the way hippie
American kids do; and why should they? The creative process NP-complete.

Chinese society is ingrained with the "get ahead by besting your peers". That
sort of mentality is not conducive to creativity. It is stifling. It forces
one to take the shortest path _all the time_ without any opportunity for
making constructive mistakes.

And I don't buy the mentality of Chinese kids coming to US universities and
solidifying their critical thinking skills. They congregate into throngs of
Chinese students which perpetuate the Asian version of the "keeping up with
the jones'" lifestyle. Trendy t-shirts and designer jeans, flocking to the
basketball courts to ape Yao and JLin, nary an independent thought lest they
should offend the echo chamber. "Why do we do what we do? Because we are told.
Sure I can recite that the uninspected life is not worth living... But do I
understand it?"

Furthermore, you see in Chinese pockets a lack of respect for their fellows
should one fall by the wayside, whether it's the victims own fault or not.
Those with weakness (or being different) are cast aside like lepers. It
disgusts me. And to my original point, it stifles creativity.

The Japanese at least have Murakami. What celebration is there in China for
revolt and indignation?

The Chinese competing with American innovation? Get real, and go F yourself
(the preceding inserted as a provocative demonstration of American anti-
normism, vote me down, square peg).

~~~
james-watson
Where you see weakness, I see strength.

American companies are obsessed with political correctness, affirmative
action, marketing and copyright law.

Chinese firms are only concerned with winning. They'll steal, lie and cheat,
as long as they can build a superior product. Because they have no marketing,
the product has to speak for itself.

Furthermore, Chinese culture is ruthlessly competitive as you alluded to.
Guess what? This means it is incredibly robust and successful.

I personally believe the west is collapsing in on its kindness, and the east
is rising up on its strength. A cursory look at what the two societies value
will tell you the whole story.

West: Feigned Altruism at the expense of survival

East: Survival and Victory at the expense of everything else

Who wins? I think history can make a good guess...

------
pipio21
Chinese have not innovated yet in anything in the present day. The examples
given are just taking individual parts, and copying them all in one system.

The main difference is that in China there are not software and business
patents. There are patents but in practice you can do whatever you wish. Also
the Government can and actually does whatever pleases them. Someone knocks
your door and tells you: We have decided you have to teach those guys what you
do so they can do the same you do.

It is not innovation, but forced collaboration. Almost any technology is
bought from outside, they will offer 10, 20 times(or whatever necessary) more
salary(than what they actually earn) to key workers outside China with tech
experience in order to go China and train Chinese replicating products in
China. Once in China they will teach other companies to replicate the
technology. This process is totally natural and periodic in Middle Land.

It has nothing to do with innovation. In fact the System makes it really hard
to really innovate in China: Only traditional products like Silk, Porcelain
and tea are protected from counterfeits. The rights of the individual is
always less than the collective. The education teaches you submission and
Confucian values, not risk taking and disruption.

Never forget that disruption and innovation is synonymous with change, and the
first thing they will want to change is their Government.

Their system have worked fine for them until now, coming from total
poverty(most people in China actually remembers the famine that killed
millions, you see people wasting food as a symbol that they are "rich" enough
to waste it),the advances have been impressive, but is not a model for
developed countries.

~~~
oneloop
> Chinese have not innovated yet in anything in the present day.

Really? Because it seems to me that Facebook Messenger is now copying WeChat.

~~~
wepple
I was really impressed by WeChat while living in China. Quite a few times I
thought "hmm, I wish we had that back home"

To counter the argument that it's not true innovation, just a re-combining of
existing ideas... what other type of innovation is there?

------
waterphone
Similarly, with regards to the common western belief of poor manufacturing
quality from Chinese factories, I find that this is primarily true when
western companies push the Chinese manufacturers to cut costs. In contrast,
high-end Chinese-designed and -built products that I've bought have been
excellent. Which is no surprise, and yet so many people associate "Made in
China" with poor quality.

------
infinity0
It's insanely ignorant to even hold such views in the first place. It's not as
if American media doesn't effectively self-censor already.

------
perseusprime11
I've also heard Foxconn drives a lot of what is possible in the future
versions of iPhones and advises Apple on component level innovations.

------
toomanythings4
>what’s more revealing is how Chinese firms have taken the best tech and
adapted it.

Only felt like skimming the article but it seems that quote is at its base.
There's a difference between "adapting" other people's work and "innovation".
There is also a difference between manufacturing products and creating the
original idea for those products and making them.

------
chrisper
Interestingly, the German part of Seafile just stopped working with the
Chinese part because they got greedy and did other weird things they did not
like.

Here is the source: [https://seafile.de/en/about-the-future-of-
seafile/](https://seafile.de/en/about-the-future-of-seafile/)

------
criddell
Big Chinese tech firms may not always be the first to come up with a good
idea, but they certainly are able to refine an idea (which is often
innovative). They also will run with bad ideas.

There's a story on TechDirt today [1] showing how the large Chinese firms have
been putting together massive patent portfolios and have started litigating...
in East Texas.

[1]:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160718/06573135006/just-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160718/06573135006/just-
as-we-warned-chinese-tech-giant-goes-patent-attack-east-texas.shtml)

------
otaviokz
It's amazing the lengths western people will go in order to convince
themselves that competing political/economical systems will never pose any
real challenge...

------
msl09
Doesn't Chinese techies circumvent the great firewall of China constantly?
Also, I think there was an article recently about how the government officials
turn a blind eye at breaches that didn't involve political matters.

Somewhat on topic: [http://time.com/4283248/china-great-firewall-fang-binxing-
ce...](http://time.com/4283248/china-great-firewall-fang-binxing-censorship/)

------
tmaly
I use WeChat along with WhatApp. Mainly I use it to communicate with some
foreign friends. I like seeing the different features it has, it gives me
ideas of what is popular in other regions.

Its nice to have that insight as to what works outside of the US market, I
hope my side project could work in China.

------
known
Recently Jack Ma claimed that China is delivering "low cost- better quality"
products than USA;

------
ryanmarsh
Innovation. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Seriously this is such an over used and hence watered down word. Every new
thing isn't and innovation, novel maybe but not innovation.

The assembly line was an innovation. Ride sharing was an innovation. Pokémon
go was a novel use of tech.

------
LiweiZ
Innovating takes time. There is way much less room for things that need more
time to happen in China. The operation there is simply stimulated by different
direct drivers. Now, with this taken into account, it's probably easier to
have a rough idea of the reality.

------
mtgx
> “There’s this strange belief that you can’t build a mobile app if you don’t
> know the truth about what happened in Tiananmen Square,”

I think people want to find out what happened in the Tiananmen Square for
other reasons than "wanting to build a mobile app".

------
Vexs
Bunnie of chumby/novena fame has this pretty great blogpost on how cheap stuff
spurs innovation.

[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

------
known
It's
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect)

------
dang
We changed the baity title to a representative sentence from the article. If
anyone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it
again.

------
ksk
Replace America with Britain and China with America and travel back a few
hundred years.

------
awt
I think we should censor articles about how censorship is good for China.

------
andyidsinga
"Silicon Valley may be powered by organic kale"

sheesh.

------
liveoneggs
I wonder who is paying for this shill.

------
untilHellbanned
So what are the actual innovations? Opening coffee shops and having lots of
e-commerce transactions != innovation.

------
bionsuba
> we're not all xenophobic Trump supporters, not even most of us

If one wishes not to be generalized, that person should abstain from doing it
to others.

~~~
1439205948
Are you a Trump supporter who isn't xenophobic? How do you reconcile his
"build a wall" rhetoric, his comments about Gonzalo Curiel, his call to ban
immigration of Muslims, and his recent isolationist-flavored comments in the
New York Times about refusing to honor NATO? It seems like xenophobia is a
core tenet of his campaign.

~~~
sremani
How would you reconcile that with the fact that his wife is Slovenian? Things
are complex and you can simplify to fit your label of the day.

NATO commitments are a joke, when outside of Britan and few Eastern European
countries, Germany, Netherlands, France are not spending to their commitments
so why should Americans subsidize their mega-welfare states?

Here is a fact, Germany has about 330 or so battle ready tanks and most of
them are made before 1980. That is some abysmal commitment to NATO.

~~~
cronin101
Do you really believe that the world would be a safer place if Germany had a
greater number of "battle ready tanks"?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-end-
of-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-end-of-the-tank-
the-army-says-it-doesnt-need-it-but-industry-wants-to-keep-building-
it/2014/01/31/c11e5ee0-60f0-11e3-94ad-004fefa61ee6_story.html)

~~~
NhanH
Do you really believe that the world would be a _better_ place if the US has
more commitment to NATO?

------
nxzero
>> "In April, the U.S. government officially named the Great Firewall a
barrier to trade."

That's absurd.

~~~
mikeash
It's a massive barrier to trade. It means Chinese people can't access services
from many American companies. It's gotten so bad that I can no longer plan
long working trips to China, because I simply can't work remotely with any
reliability while in the country. It's little different from a law which just
says "Foreign internet services aren't allowed here" except with better
enforcement.

~~~
stcredzero
Something that's deep, nebulous, and legally deniable is better than an
explicit law requiring enforcement. Therefore a language/culture barrier is
better than any trade law. Likewise, something that's technologically
enforceable (even if imperfectly so) is better than something requiring
bureaucrats to enforce. Therefore the Great Firewall is better than any trade
law.

Therefore the combination of the two -- Great Firewall plus language/culture
barriers -- is a truly powerful combo. (What would that be in Magic the
Gathering cards?)

