China is no longer a nation of tech copycats

This reads largely true for me, but it is also pretty obviously not true on a serious scale (compare the F-35 fighter to the J-31 fighter). That said, raising a younger generation of people who think outside the box has its own perils for any government where some boxes are not meant to be left (I include the US government in this list as well). I am a strong advocate of critical thinking and independent verification, but I can tell you that it gets me into trouble more often than it gets me accolades :-). The response to such thinking can be harsh. People who think critically are often considered "intellectuals" and China has dealt with such people harshly in the past, even at the expense of the greater country. Here in the US it is used as an insult in circles where the smart choice would dictate a different path than the current policy (yes I'm thinking about the whole global warming "debate").

Bottom line is that this is both good and bad news for China.

IMHO, China is still full of tech copycats.

What they have done so far is applying western technologies/business models to the Chinese market, maybe some modifications here and there for the local culture and marketing schemes, but hardly innovative.

Now, can you name a few things coming out of China in the last twenty years that are relatively innovative and influential? Maybe things like Linux, Java, Netscape, Rails, Jquery, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The definitions for 'innovative' and 'influential' are up to you, I am just genuinely curious.

So last night I met an interesting fellow who grew up in Germany but is native Chinese. He is an electrical engineer. I said great, I am looking for an electrical engineer to partner with on a project, I handle the software. Bang, we get talking. Meeting later today. I think we are going to do a physical electronic product startup here. We are in southwest China, at the edge of the Himalayas, miles from the megacities of the east. I have been here on and off for 15 years, and it really feels like this is the best time yet to get capital and try things.

PS. I am sure I have read this article before, somewhat recently.

This it how it always works with everything. You "copycat" your way to the state-of-the-art and only then start innovating. Otherwise you're just reinventing the wheel. Once China completely catches up it will start it's own thing, I am sure.

I find this impossible to believe; "In 2000, barely four per cent of China was middle class - meaning with an income ranging from $9,000 (£6,270) to $34,000 - but by 2012, fully two-thirds had climbed into that bracket." They must be counting something as a subsidy which people aren't actually consuming. To think that almost all of US GDP growth is occurring in the top, this would say almost all of China GDP growth is occurring in the bottom. But really saying that 60% of your population.. so the claim is that ~800 million people have moved into "middle class" in 15 years... And "middle class" is defined as "spending less than 50% of income on necessities".

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" --Isaac Newton

Website usability complaint: trying to highlight a caption under a photo sends you to the gallery, making you lose your spot in the article.

"of only"

there fixed it for you.

yeah, why the black turtlenecks then?

from the title I am going to assume this is an April fools prank?

Well, we should all be glad that the exemples from US are spreading to the rest of the world! If only more countries stopped being copycats and started actually copying the US model. God bless America. Humpf

The title is also really bad, as if China was at a given time a whole nation of copycats (although the article itself doesn't insist on this point).

People reverse engineer your product/company. So what?