
The Chaos and the Craftsmanship of Shenzhen - chinatrip02
http://rexstjohn.com/the-chaos-and-the-craftsmanship-of-shenzhen-part-ii/
======
aftbit
The author mentioned DJI, creator of the phenomenally popular Phantom line of
quadcopters, as a company which combined software and hardware to open new
realms.

From my personal experience, their software is absolutely atrocious. Talk to
anyone who has built more than a toy app using their SDK and you'll be regaled
with stores of insane hacks. For example, at least in the Phantom 2 days, they
didn't provide any method to determine the capabilities or model number of the
quadcopter that you were controlling. As a result, my friend's company had a
hack that would rotate the camera gimbal until it hit a limit stop and use
that angle to determine the model.

On the flip side, their "range extender", a required component if you want to
talk to a Phantom 2 from an Android/iOS device, is really just an OpenWRT
router acting as a 802.11g bridge.

There's a lot to be said about improving quality of Chinese hardware and
software, but it's definitely not up to western quality levels yet.

~~~
studentrob
> There's a lot to be said about improving quality of Chinese hardware and
> software, but it's definitely not up to western quality levels yet.

Anecdotally, last year I worked for an Asian company which had an office in
Shenzhen. They were not able to compete with western tech, in part because
they didn't understand the benefits of cloud computing. They wanted to own all
their own hardware and it really slowed down software development.

I also got the sense that most primary source programming resources are in
English (stack overflow, etc.), and that unless your English was pretty good
you might have a hard time keeping up with newer techniques. I think this will
improve with time.

~~~
desdiv
Cloud computing in China is a total shit show:

1\. Go with a foreign cloud provider which has horrible latency thanks to the
Great Firewall, and could get permanently blocked any time at the whims of the
government.

2\. Go with one of the big Chinese tech companies (Baidu, Alibaba and
Tencent), where it's almost guaranteed that they will steal your
idea/code/data, clone your product, and rely on their massive size and network
effect to destroy you. They didn't get big through innovation like Western
tech companies; they got big by stealing and government-backed monopoly.

3\. Go with a smaller Chinese tech company that has reliability problems and
could go belly up at any time.

~~~
matthewrudy
We use AWS.cn for our service. But found out last week that AWS doesn't
actually have a license, and piggybacks on some third party provider in
beijing.

[http://m.baidu.com/news?tn=bdbjbody&bjaid=392506&bjdomain=la...](http://m.baidu.com/news?tn=bdbjbody&bjaid=392506&bjdomain=lanjingtmt&)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I think all the western cloud providers work like this; e.g. Azure in China.
It isn't really that they can't get a license, but getting a license requires
a certain amount of exposure to Chinese law that many western companies can't
take on.

~~~
matthewrudy
I guess that's true. But it wasn't something we'd considered properly.

Gives us more of a reason to move to a Chinese provider for our CN servers.

(This is now simpler as we're standardizing on Kubernetes for deployments, so
Kubernetes on AWS.cn vs Kubernetes on Aliyun should be equivalent)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The idea is that the technology is constant at least. Also, tech support often
goes along with it.

------
jbpadgett
"The innovation process always starts with copying and in Shenzhen they are
copying systematically at a scale you can scarcely imagine. A student who
copies Van Gogh relentlessly may not initially understand how Van Gogh
undertook original works of art. After enough copying, that same student may
grasp the underlying theories and extend them into new areas."

\- China is often criticized for the copying as violating IP, but one could
also argue that copying and adding new changes to the copy is the lifeblood of
open-source innovation and the nature of decentralized systems as well as
human biological evolution. A great book that explores these ideas is 'The
Evolution of Everything' by Matt Ridley. I recommend it.

"much of the “Efficiency” America has traded for lower cost manufacturing has
come at the cost of our ability to bring all of the key pieces together at
home."

\- There is likely much truth in this statement by Andy Grove and perhaps
American companies and leaders should take pause. Labor cost arbitrage in
foreign countries like China and Mexico might be like a balloon mortgage for
America where the costs are low upfront for some years, but then the large
bill comes later.

~~~
userbinator
Here's a great article that explains how IP in China works --- it's definitely
more sharing-centric than the West:
[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

If it could be summed up in one sentence, it would be "Everything is a
derivative work." Instead of trying to claim complete exclusivity, they
implicitly realise that everything someone creates is always built upon the
knowledge of others.

~~~
rebootthesystem
> everything someone creates is always built upon the knowledge of others

Right. Sure. These are the kinds of beliefs often verbalized by people who
never risked their own time and money to solve hard problems and had to face
the risk and reality of the Chinese (or others) stealing the results of that
effort.

Here's the difference, the "R" in "R&D" is the most expensive part. The "D" is
cheap. By stealing they get the "R" for free and can afford devastating
predatory techniques to own the market.

We devoted ten years and millions of dollars to solving a very hard problem. I
decided we would keep all of it a trade secret.

Why?

Because, that was the only way to make "D" very expensive. Stealing something
when the cost is just as high as having to develop it often scares away a lot
of thieves.

It's one thing if you are developing a new set of headphones that don't really
have much in the way of technical innovation. It's quite another thing when
you are solving a hard problem (which can be risky, very expensive and require
a long and constant effort).

~~~
t0mk
What is the hard problem you were trying to solve?

~~~
rebootthesystem
I'll just say it was a very hard problem in imaging. A solution involving the
confluence of hardware, optics, software and real-time FPGA-based very high
resolution image processing. We even had to go as far as to develop
manufacturing techniques that involved assembling electronics in a vacuum
chamber.

Given the application I can't say any more than that.

------
Hondor
A bit tangential, but something fantastic it mentions is electronic payment.
In China it's already like living in the future. Most shops accept WeChat or
Alipay. Everything from chain supermarkets down to the old lady selling
vegetables on the side of the road. They've really penetrated the market from
top to bottom.

If you find a shop that does require cash, you can stop a stranger in the
street and trade cash for WeChat money. Or as the article said, the shop staff
themselves can sell you cash using their personal accounts.

I'm sure these services have to deal with their share of fraud but the system
is fundamentally more secure than credit cards which rely on trust. So there's
the potential for lower costs and wider availability. Who needs the expense of
PCI compliance when you never have access to your customer's payment
credentials? It seems bizarre to think that in paying by credit card, you're
effectively giving the merchant the username and password to your bank account
and asking them to please not take any more money than they promised to.

~~~
godbov
Do you know what their government's position on these currencies is?

~~~
Hondor
They're completely above board. It's still the RMB currency just using and app
to pass it around between people's app accounts and bank accounts. Bitcoin on
the other hand is restricted I believe, so is exchanging RMB for foreign
currencies.

------
studentrob
> The next decade is going to be all about the relationship between China and
> the United States in technology, I want to be there to see it happen.

So does the author plan to move to Shenzhen, one of the world's most densely
populated and polluted cities, in a country that doesn't have free speech?

I agree SZ has the best tech scene in China, perhaps due to its proximity to
the freer Hong Kong, which has always been the major gateway to the west. I
love SZ in many ways. But it takes a certain kind of person to want to live
and work under those conditions and I doubt even the author himself plans to
move there for the next 10 years.

~~~
Hondor
No country has free speech. But in choosing a country, you can choose which
types of speech you want to be allowed to make freely and which types you want
to be protected from other people making.

America gets its free speech by defining the word to mean any communication
that's permitted to be free. If the law disallows something then by definition
it's not speech anymore, or it's an exception that's so obvious nobody
mentions it. Examples: Flag burning, copyright infringement, libel, slander,
threats, incitement to violence, child pornography, false advertising,
revealing state secrets and trade secrets, violating NDAs, sharing insider
information about listed companies. Wow, there's quite a lot of things you're
not allowed to say in America!

It's a bit like Athenian democracy where everyone could vote. Of course women,
children, slaves and foreigners obviously weren't part of "everyone" so
there's no need to mention them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's pretty cynical. Its disingenuous to suggest 'free speech' ever meant
free to lie and hurt other people. The freedom is intended to mean 'free to
criticize the government', as that was called sedition in past ages.

~~~
Kristine1975
_> he freedom is intended to mean 'free to criticize the government', as that
was called sedition in past ages._

And then the US has these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone)

Also sedition seems to still be illegal in the US:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition#United_States)

------
erikb
I have been in China this and last February and feel this article represents
the development well. One of the bug strenghts of the US of the last 20 years
was the internet dominance. But the western world struggles to get the mobile
internet to a point where it should be. On the other hand China's internet
grew up with mobile phones. Many people have never owned a desktop computer,
maybe only know it from internet cafes. Their first internet access was with
their chat app QQ on Nokia phones at a time the first smartphones came up in
the western hemisphere (about 2010). Also Chinese people are less concerned
about privacy and more open to try crazy new things with their phones. All
that together with a locked in marked that can't be overrun by US startups
makes China slowly but surely beat the western market.

I certainly miss to pay stuff by phone or add contacts by just scanning their
QR Code (without an extra app my iphone can't even add a normal contact from a
business card with QR Code, despite the data in that code probably using the
Apple created digital business card format).

~~~
rurban
Yes, but the privacy bit is wrong. Chinese as all asians are very concerned
about privacy and government spies patrolling and censoring their free
internet space.

There are a lot of invite-only app spaces, and you trust the one you see, but
not a random internet guy. It's less about politics, more about government
track down of "porn" (=prostitution) and corruption.

~~~
erikb
Sorry, I don't understand it yet. In China most people use QQ and Wechat.
Nobody even thinks about that the government is reading their messages as
well. It's not a discussion point, neither behind closed doors nor in the
open.

"you trust the one you see, but not a random internet guy" the one I see
where? What invite-only spaces you know? Afaik everybody uses Wechat and other
chat apps are mostly disregarded.

------
himynamesdave
For those interested, there's also a great post by InstaPainting about Dafen:
How do you paint 10,000 paintings a month?
[https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-
to...](https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to-
paint-10000-paintings/)

