China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
and wechat is indeed in the center of this system. For example, a fruit stand would now accept mobile payment via wechat. those who run fruit stands are usually farmers.
I think it makes a lot of sense to build mobile payment into a a social app. because any currency would require a social network. and transferring money is a key social activity.
building independent mobile payment without the support from a mature social network is a bad idea, for example square and apple pay (only useable in the apple ecosystem, a partial mobile ecosystem).
China never seemed to have a credit card era, it jumped directly from paying cash to paying with mobile. whereas in the U.S., credit card is so convenient, people don't want to change.
for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many opportunities.
you can use wechat to order food at restaurants, you can log into public wifi with wechat ....
This is just one example. Another thing I noticed is online shopping. At the gate of our apartment, each day, there are many deliver guys on tricycles. They have a more efficient and cheap delivering system.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
This is not a complex idea, but hard to implement in the U.S., because we don't have the same population density here. When you build an infrastructure like this, you want to serve as many people as possible.
Overall, I feel that China is like the U.S. in its early days (1920s). Or the 1999 Silicon Valley
There are a lot of opportunities, but less rules. It's a jungle basically. For people with tech depth and want to build something steadily, China is not the best place.
a high percentage of young entrepreneurs there are just opportunists. They are not interested in sitting down and building something useful. Instead, they just want to quickly raise/burn money and go public.
There are way more theranos' there in China.
And you need to have connections to success in China. This is a historical and cultural thing.
I don't know how many of you noticed the recent news of didi acquiring uber China. The leaders of the two companies are actually from the same family. One is the daughter of the Lenovo CEO. The other is the niece of him. Probably coincidence，but you see coincidences more often in China.
My attitude towards China is that I take it seriously. I admit what it does better. But I don't think I'm strong enough to fight in the jungle.
I worked for several SF startups and most are the same. So I don't agree there are way more Theranos' in China. I would say they are probably around the same level in terms of many people claiming they are for something when they are not.
This doesn't just happen in tech though. I have seen it in banking as well when it was booming. When there is a booming industry, it tends to attract a lot of posers that exasperates the hype.
I see this phenomena everywhere in China. I can't tell where Chinese silicon valley and wall street are. running start-ups has become a all-people movement.
For those who do manage to become billionaires, the game often becomes even rougher: http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont...
But on the other hand, you seldom see people in Silicon Valley are actually from the valley. They are immigrants from different states and countries. They abandoned their connections (especially family connections) from home to start over here. Many of them became successful.
China simply doesn't have the same soil for this kind of success.
at least, SV is the birth place of many hardcore tech companies like intel.
We've had these in Japan for decades, but less high-tech - it's just a manual code lock and the delivery man writes the code down on a delivery slip and sticks in your mailbox.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
But China invented the fruit lockers: you want fresh fruit, it gets delivered to a locker in your apartment everyday. I haven't tried it, but was a bit floored when I saw one.
We personally just have them leave packages at the wuye (apartment management), any high end apartment just has a counter that will keep your package for you, no need for a locker solution.
Whether that's advantage China or advantage US depends on your perspective.
I heard that railway systems in most countries are not profitable, they have to be funded by the government.
But the Chinese railway system is so advanced and profitable, due to cost-of-labor and population density. Even high speed railway wasn't a Chinese invention. As a comparison, the U.S. railway is so old and kinda desolate.
Most ideas are not originated from China, but they grow better in China.
Because of the population density, the network effect is stronger in China.
For example, consider high speed rail in California. Due to the existing rail system, the marginal increase in economic benefit gained by building a new high speed system is fairly small.
Compare this situation to high speed rail in China. Without the existence of a fairly efficient existing system, the economic benefit to building the high speed lines was massive.
This historical pattern is somewhat common.
Rising societies have all of the latest advances gained by building previous systems, and none of the existing societies' technical debt.
They get the newest and shiniest technological base, simply because they're building it now.
That's only true of passenger rail though--freight rail in the US works really well.
Best thing ever.
Strange to hear no one uses them.
Granted, post offices are beginning to hold less and less now, cutting costs I guess, which may be increasing the usage.
But in the U.S., it may be a good idea to locate the lockers in grocery stores. Picking packages while doing groceries is also convenient.
I bet facebook is thinking hard how to merge Messenger and Whatsapp without getting people angry.
Indeed. Simultaneous communication between WeChat circle, QQ group, the odd email CC'd to people in and out of the conversation. 'Keep the momentum'. Should anyone get confused, send them a screenshot from your phone of the other conversation. It is very fluid. Show you're communicating and getting things done. For transactions, pay via WeChat, or pay via AliPay, doesn't matter, works anywhere.
No need to integrate anything; users will do it themselves if they see a compelling need.
Nah, WhatsApp was just crippled by its origins. It was started independently from a major social-network, and in a country whose currency and payments infrastructure wasn't going to scale outside the original borders very well.
a.) can do things without switching apps. (?!)
b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)
c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)
and the dominance confirmed by
a.) a single quote from kik founder (who is trying to convince people qr code is...good?)
b.) bigger mobile user base (well of course, they have more people)
c.) uber lost in china (if you're a foreign company in China and you haven't learned yet Chinese government only lets Chinese companies win, then...)
This actually is "cutting edge" if you compare it to the bullshit we in the West have to deal with daily. I have way too much apps on my Android phone, none of which can talk to each other (despite intents) and half of which should be infrastructure-level anyway.
> b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)
... and almost completely ignored by Europe and the US. That they turned something potentially useful into actually useful is interesting in its own right.
> c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)
Except it is 2016 and in Europe (and presumably in the US) it only barely works somewhere, sometimes, for some things.
I mean, let's not play double standards - if it's entirely fair to call Western companies (especially SV startups) "innovative" for wrapping something common in a Bootstrap theme, or turning something that should be a product into a butt service to extract rent from people, then it's entirely fair to call China "cutting edge".
But not switching apps would be freaking amazing. Anything resembling a decent inter-app API, or a scheduling process that doesn't suspend apps for small focus switches (which still regularly crashes even high-end apps like Amazon) would be magical. Many of my apps would be much more valuable with even minimal non-switching, and I'd write sync/communication software myself if the focus issues didn't make it so painful.
As far as I know Sweden is generally more advanced in this kind of technologies than what I see in Hong-Kong.
NFC was considered inferior to BLE too but BLE has come and literally no one uses them.
The reason why QR isn't adopted is because none of the major platforms has invested in it. Apple, facebook, don't have native QR support.
In China QR is built into wechat, which everyone has.
Bus stops just have a QR code that you scan to get the live countdown clocks for the next bus; there are many payment systems using QR codes, etc.
When there is a panel displaying in Arab numerals (i.e. for humans, directly) the same information, the QR code solution becomes a silly and convoluted thing that has to use the user's high tech just for the sake of it.
Another term for this is integration. It is not just about not switching apps, it is about ingratiating different features (chat&social&payment&voucher) and providing a natural and consistent experience for users in a single app. You don't see that quite often for SV companies.
How innovative is this? I am not sure, but definitely something new and first popularized by Tencent in the era of QQ before 2008.
> b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)
Not main point of the article, there are plenty of other innovations in the areas of living streaming and drone technology, but unfortunately you missed them.
> c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)
Not sure about how Nokia and Europe did it, but in China you can pay movie tickets, utilities, taxi fees, fines, etc in a single app. Maybe Europe was a pioneer in this and I wasn't aware of that.
Payment by phone is already a big thing here.
Thank you
Later a version for merchants was developed.
One thing that I was thinking about though was about the regulations and scare around security might be hindering development here in the U.S. .
Again, thanks for the info.
In terms of mass adoption of cashless transaction, the timeline in two countries seem to be parallel:
http://www.businessinsider.sg/wechat-why-it-dominates-china-... - AUG. 11, 2015
http://www.sciencealert.com/sweden-is-on-track-to-become-the... - 16 OCT 2015
Even if IRC bots could theoretically be feature-complete, you can't judge a product by saying "oh we had this feature as well earlier, just that we didn't succeed." Having a feature and having a feature that is successful can be quite different.
Microsoft might had the concept of tablet way earlier than Apple but it was Apple that made the success around iPad.
Are you saying that China is inventing a CLI on a phone? Because that is not true. Just touch and gestures.
I agree that "Apple Pay is far far better than using QR codes to pay.", less dependencies is always better.
Maybe it's hard to understand if you haven't seen it.
lot of apps used QR code since the iPhone had apps, Uber hail ride is present in several apps since long, Google Maps, CityMapper, ... There are apps to order pizza. Live streaming video app like justin.tv, ustream or livestream Tinder is not the first dating app, it just popularized a new model to begin a conversation : the double validation model, Badoo or Grindr existed long before.
The WeChat model is NOT great, it means a monopoly on apps, they can remove you from their micro app store if they want like they did with Uber and remove you from the country. We are far better with an equalitarian app store like Play Store or (in lesser ways) the App Store. I think WeChat is the result of the pseudo banning of the Play Store in China, and it should NOT be a thing of desire.
I find it hard pressed to take seriously the claim that being able to live in the WeChat app is an innovation. I can certainly see the appeal to companies interviewed by the New York Times like Facebook and Kik who probably look at that kind of usage model enviously, but I think it's important to note that the use of non-Chinese services is not looked upon highly by the Party and this can be seen as an expression of regional favoritism. As much as Facebook would hope you live and breathe in their ecosystem 24/7, 365, it's harder to get away with that in places outside of China.
Everything you read on those newspapers is about propaganda, propaganda to influence most small investors(what they call dumb money)on one of the financial centers of the world New York, or propaganda to influence politicians on the US political center of US, Washington.
The elite financial industry that rules USA really admires China authoritarianism.
China is an enormous country with lots of great things, but innovation is not one of their "fortes". There is a big bubble there that is going to do bang and is not going to be pretty.
Not so good important things about China( that of course the propaganda omits):
-Their internet is shit, capped by Government and closed to the outside world.
-There is an army of spies(more than a million) working for the State, everything you do is controlled.
- There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
-They are communist, the interest of the individual is always subordinated to the community. If you have a girl with a Chinese woman outside China when you visit China they can refuse to let the girl go out. China needs girls.
You listed some very generic things that are "wrong" with China, but have nothing to do with the point NYTimes was trying to make.
The article was talking about how China is ahead of the west in regards to mobile payment methods, and you try to refute that by saying they have an army of spies and are communist, and also have less women and limited access to websites outside china? I don't get it.
If you said: "From living in China for X years I can tell you that it isn't really the case that almost any fruit vendor accepts payment via mobile phone, and it isn't really a common payment method." - That would've been valid criticism addressing the core points of the NYTimes article.
As it stands though your comment fits perfectly in the stream of comments trying to downplay the articles credibility without actually addressing it, which is somehow common of any article mentioning "China" and things like "cutting edge" and "innovation" and is making me increasingly suspicious of who is actually spreading propaganda.
Edit: And honestly the things you listed are common knowledge by now, and have no place in an article about mobile tech in China. That would be like including a paragraph about Guantanamo bay in every article about Silicon Valley.
They shown the world how to land a rocket stage intact? Perhaps they developed a bunch of new medical treatments that are not actually snake oil? They invented social networks that the rest of the world copied in envy? Introduced touchscreen tech that's actually usable?
Honestly I must have missed all the "big" news in soft and hard tech, 'cause another eBay clone is sure as hell ain't big. It feels like rerun of Japan craze from 3 decades back, only without ninjas and shurikens this time.
If you want to think that there's no difference between PayPal, eBay and modern Chinese versions you are free to do so. But until you've used these things in China (or at least had sufficient imagination), you won't actually know if there is something there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZsvJUa9FpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/
Wechat is great but here (Norway) payments have been a solved problem for years. I'm not even sure I used cash this year at all other than to unlock a luggage trolley at the airport and it's been like that for over a decade. Even the bank card transaction is so smooth, fast (seconds) and ubiquitous that mobile payment services like Vipps struggled to get a foothold.
Regarding gender imbalance, this wasa cultural issue. It's a problemin many cultures where male heirs are preferred over female heirs.
I'd also lile to point out the Bay Area also has an infamous gender imbalance issue.
Chinese culture still has many elements that are absolutely barbaric and primitive. The concept of "face" is one of them too.
In 40 years, the Soviet Union went from a medieval-like society with 95% of the people being peasants working their lords' lands, to inventing LEDs, grid-scale nuclear power, orbital launches, artificial satellites, manned space flight, commercial supersonic flight, seminal work in transplantation and artificial organs, etc. It became the second world superpower in science and innovation, which by the way, it no longer isn't after the fall of communism.
It was pretty much an economic miracle, like the so-called "German miracle" and "Japanese miracle", although of course most current thinkers won't recognize it because Communism is Bad(tm) and it seems we can only think in black and white (as the Soviet Union had an autochratic and murderous regime, apparently we can't say what they did right).
So I don't think the statement that communism is bad for innovation holds water historically. It's bad for other things, but not necessarily for innovation.
China even more so. For much of history, China has been the richest country on earth! Not just total, but even per capita! Ya, the late Qing and republic eras were a mess, but that China would prosper after a period of decline has happened before and isn't surprising. Mao's Great Leap Forward and cultural revolution probably hurt more than helped, and China is mostly where it is today inspite of the communists. It's all about the people.
Germany and Japan were both developed before they were devestated, and knew collectively how to develop again; it wasn't a miracle in any case. Leading countries tend to lead even when knocked back with setbacks. What is perhaps a miracle was Germany breaking away from its Holy Roman Empire roots in the first place, or Japan modernizing in the mid 19th century (incidentally, this happened at the same time). Once you make that "step", you are likely not to fall backwards.
Communism is bad for innovation for two major, connected, reasons. First, there is very little, if any, competition. Most innovation comes from trying to beat the other guy and there just isn't any competition in a system that wants the state to run everything. Second, entrepreneur's are non-existent because there is no way for them to make money off of their inventions outside of cozying up with the State.
Also, your point about them moving from a medieval society to a modern one is ironic considering the USSR's pathetic technology. Outside of military applications they were failing in almost every single way. Just read some stories about the East Germans trying to flee to West Germany or the USSR's Olympic team visiting the US and thinking that our grocery stores were fake because of all of the food.
If they didn't then they wouldn't have been able to keep up for such a long time and Russia today couldn't be such a big geopolitical adversary to this day.
If they had not implemented Communism after WWI I believe they could have been a second US.
Soviet Union: Yes they industrialised at an astonishing rate, but they did this only for a single purpose: war. Even after the second world war the only area in which they could keep up with the West consistently was the military complex. And in the end the system failed although Soviet leaders were smart enough to let it implode in a way that didn't create civil war at a grand scale.
Yugoslavia: Socialism failed, ended in a nasty civil war.
Cuba: Technologically backwards, people live there like we did a 100 years ago.
North Korea: They have such a poor and malnourished population that today a North Korean is on average significantly smaller than a South Korean. Yet they maintain a massive military.
Venezuela: A oil rich (one of the largest oil reserves in the world!) country with internal and external peace and fertile lands was turned by Socialism into a starving country. Venezuelans today literally hunt animals like dogs and cats on the streets so they don't starve. Absolute madness.
China: Communist policies under Mao led to 30-40 Millions of Chinese starving to death when he collectivised the land. Later the Chinese turned their internal system around to something that resembles more a wild west capitalism with a sprinkle of Meritocracy and only then Chinese saw significant improvements in their lives.
Nazi Germany: This is controversial today as many claim that they weren't really Socialist. My opinion is that it was although it had a private sector. Still all economic activity was under 100% control of the government and all they produced went either to their massive social system or towards war. A rough translation of the Nazi parties name is "National Socialist German Workers Party". I believe that Socialist reject the Socialist nature of the Nazis because it embarrasses them.
To my knowledge there is not a single example of a Communist society that worked. But besides the economy there is a disturbing similarity between all societies that tried Socialism: Concentration Camps and Authoritarianism.
They needed this because there's always too much resistance to the Socialist System in every society that tried it. (people want to be free) In Socialist societies you need to police the thought of everyone and send them to correction camps if they resist because otherwise it would implode.
Can't understand this, why they refuse the girl out?
To put in in to perspective, there are 1.06 males per female in China [0] which though high, isn't materially different to other large developing countries such as India and Pakistan.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
On another note, the ratio for Arabic countries in the peninsula are quite fucked up. If you see the TV show "Generation Kill" from HBO, the character played by James Ranson has a theory, which is quite interesting watching the numbers : there would not be a single war if there was enough women in the Arabic Peninsula.
Anything above 1.07 at birth is proof of selectively aborting girls.
Downvoting because almost-entirely off-topic, and TBH slightly racist.
> There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.
There is no possible benefit imaginable for any government to encourage the killing of girls. This just doesn't make sense from a Collectivist perspective.
I believe that China actually had strong laws that forbid doctors from telling pregnant women which sex their child would have because many Chinese in rural areas would abort female children on their own accord.
This was basically because of the one child policy and the fact that Chinese men are supposed to take care of their parents when they get old. So it was more of a result of really bad government policy and self interest of families.
But from what I know the one child policy has officially ended in China, so I don't think this will be a big issue in the future.
It makes sense that China (and Korea) have leaped ahead. They have relatively high average IQ populations. They have cultures that celebrate education, intelligence, and hard work (not sports and broism). They have heavy governmental investment in infrastructure (eg internet, cell networks) and they heavily regulate industries so as not to stymie utilities such as the internet.
Hopefully the US and Europe can create a cultural shift (particularly the US on this front) and can see more government investment in infrastructure for technology and ease of access. If so, the US/Europe will maintain/grow their competitive edges vs China at least, as they have better property rights, fairer courts, more developed financial markets, more meritocracy of opportunity, etc. Korea has the best of all worlds in many ways, but not a large enough population or enough natural resources to be a contender for one of the top few economic powers in the world.
The rest about "higher IQ people" is utter nonsense.
How ridiculous and bigoted on every front.
China values 'hard work' and 'intelligence'? It would seem you could also say they value oppression, poverty, pollution and copying everything. But that wouldn't be fair.
Some places in China have done well in infrastructure, as has most of S Korea, but there are two primary differences:
A) China / Korean built up their infrastructure nearly from scratch in the modern era. Totalitarian or near totalitarian governments actually can do well when their are obvious investments to make.
B) Their populations are closer. This is a big one for transport, in particular.
China is what China is, and I see it being a little bit more than that for 2 more decades, but the only long term difference will come as they bring more people out of poverty = more consumers. By that time, they will have their own demographic problems.
I believe that most of the geopolitical shift has already happened.
The 'next 50 years' will be driven not by China, so much as 3 billion people in other places, currently living on $2 a day, coming into living on $50 a day. That will be huge, and more spread out.
Hopefully, it comes without too much tension.
I'll bet in 50 years the 'leaders' in various fields will generally still be the leaders in those fields, for the most part.
I cannot see undeveloped parts of Africa, Asia and South America being much better-off in 50 years, just because time passes. They will all have super cheap phones, and their own version of poverty. Plus many places can actually spiral down due to continuous wars (ie middle east)
Doesn't that address the points you made about the benefit of government intervention and infrastructure build up?
> B) Their populations are closer. This is a big one for transport, in particular
You realize that S.Korea is ~3-4x as dense as China, that China is only about as dense as the UK, and the distance between major cities in China is comparable to distances between major cities in the US, right?
I could agree with some of the latter part of your post. Could have done without the glib rudeness at the beginning. I don't mean anything "bigoted" whatsoever and I'm curious what exactly came across that way.
I think there's a big element of not being handicapped by 'legacy' infrastructure here. The US won't roll out chip+pin because it already has magswipe POS systems in too many places. Whereas places in China which have no existing system can deploy whichever is most convenient to get started with - which sounds like wechat at the moment.
When the West moved toward a thriving ecosystem of web applications, the web scene in China was a complete mess. Not many people were confident enough to use the Web, let alone trust a random website with their bank account which has no dispute channel. Plus the web is full of malware and scams and almost all PC ran pirated Windows XP with abysmal if any antivirus software.
When most people equated internet with the IE icon, people in China did it with the dorminating IM software made by Tencent.
The explosion of mobile ecosystem speaks to the lackluster of a thriving web ecosystem and to some degree a clunky financial system and lack of meaningful consumer protection.
I still think it's best to be the leader, inventing new things rather than improving the legacy systems of your competitor. If only because falling behind and deflating land and labor prices is painful during times of peace and traumatic during times of war.
[1] http://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailands-public-health-minist...
To try to make this more concrete and tractable. Imagine this oversimplified scenario:
Country A's population is 100 people and their "culture" values education, intelligence and hard work. Country A's average IQ is 107 and the two most desired professions in the country are to be an engineer or a businessperson.
Country B's population is 100 people and their culture looks down on "nerds" and favors "coolness" and hanging out. Country B's average IQ is 100 and the top desired professions in the country are being a sports star or a rock star.
Obviously I'm drawing at extremes here, but you see where I'm going... which country produces more citizens that contribute to technology? Country A is probably gonna produce more cool tech over time than country B, even with equal-sized populations, due to a combination of cultural values / social incentives and population intelligence.
A few years ago when renren.com was still the most popular social media for Chinese users, it was filled with people sharing funny pictures and videos, interesting news and discussing trending topics automatically suggested by the site.
Around that time on Facebook though, people are still posting their vacation photos, text status updates and nothing more. Nobody was sharing anything on the platform.
Now Facebook has became Renren No.2, while Renren lost to WeChat.
Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated.
The only thing that still remains a red flag for me is China's lack of democracy and political instability that may come due to it.
And all the countries around China, I visit them often, they use none of China's internet stack. Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, are all very strong in SE Asia. This includes Chinese places around China, like HK, Taiwan, Singapore. If Chinese mobile innovation was so great...wouldn't they have even just a little bit of success outside of China?
> Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated.
China will be continued to be driven by China, but the internet world has already began fragmenting into China and everyone else.
- stole most techs from us/Japan/Europe
- innovated...nothing
- copied apple products down to the last screw
- prevented Google and Facebook to compete, even though they claimed to be open market to wto
As for your momentum, don't forget the trillions of state debt, the wto membership expiring this year, xi the dictator closing down news channels, billions in capital outflow
Calling copying successful products, methods, inventions "stealing" is a very subjective statement. If you want to see what someone who doesn't "steal" can achieve look at the stories of children that provided the inspiration for the Mowgli story. A more reasonable description of not reinventing the wheel is "being smart".
When I hear about technological prowess, I am expecting things like rockets that land on barges, self driving cars, and even block chains. Not web apps and mobile apps.
China has enough of the pieces in place that I wouldn't be surprised to see some innovations soon that would impress me. But it just hasn't happened yet.
Most of Chinese people share the same opinion. There are huge resources poured into the areas you mentioned above. Though the progresses made on those fronts in China won't be covered by Western media, until they happened.
(Almost) Nothing is led by China and (almost) nothing ever will.
I remember as a boy the stories of Japan taking over the world in the 1980's. The same will come of China.
The Bubble will burst, and they'll slowly find their way into the world order.
Bar codes? Give me a break.
They've done well with some type of commerce activities wherein the tech facilitated development given their needs (Ali Baba), but that's not really tech.
Everything is copy.
Tell me - what tech does anyone use that was conceived of, developed and made in China?
Nothing really.
And that won't change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_tunnels_by_type
Choose your arbitrary metrics wisely :)
http://brobible.com/life/article/average-penis-size-study/
(Sorry, could not resist)
This?
Meanwhile, talk to any rail car maker in the world, and they'll tell you that as part of the deal they had to sell trains in China, they had to hand over 100% of the IP, research, R&D, plans, schematics. And within 1 year the government had handed over the plans to a state owned competitor who had copied the entire thing from top to bottom.
When we see those nifty trains running over San Francisco, you'll have a point.
As far as I know, the modern trains that I've seen in China seem to be manufactured by Chinese companies.
The technology, if I am not mistaken, were transferred to China by Soviet Union and European companies post WW2 in a legal and friendly manner, i.e., they send their experts here to do manufacturing or China send some people overseas to learn about the technology.
And the same thing happened to Japan if I remember correctly, they were able to "learn" designs from the West and improve on it to build their railway system that is one of the best in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#Techn...
However the key part that China cannot copy from Japan is the human software part, that is the training and service excellence of 50 years of history with hundreds of millions of passenger kilometers of operational history and zero passenger fatalities during operation.
China's HSR has already had multiple fatalities during operation, unfortunately.
Yes - because in order to do business in China, you have to give over your IP to a Chinese company and 'partner' with them to sell there, OR, after you give over your IP someone else gets their hands on it and copies you and you've wasted your time.
China is not an open market, most sectors are heavily protected.
Granted - it's arguably a smart thing for them to do during 'catch up phase' - but you can't remain competitive by doing those things.
Non-Chinese nations should impose tarriffs on all Chinese goods until we can freely sell things there without government interruption.
They can protect their banks, telecoms etc. like every country, but not every consumer good.
The companies that have been successful there are largely consumer retail like restaurants, clothing etc..
Not that I love the idea of a monolithic app controlling everything in our life, but the next big thing to take its place need to live up to its level of convenience.
With globalization in a world that is flat, and the extremely hard working attitude plus education-first tradition there, the future looks great on its side.
In US, we're dealing with so many social issues while other countries are catching up on many key fronts.
I totally agree on the education-fifth attitude in the US though. I think attitudes are changing a bit as reality bites those who screwed off in school harder and harder every year. The public schools are still a shambles.
I think this is a more nuanced issue. For instance, for the most part, China seems like libertarian paradise, but try and fuck with food supply and you'll get sentenced to death. Which, honestly, I consider fair. In the West, we're too far on the other end of the spectrum - overregulation of honest businesses and not enough punishment for dishonest entrepreneurs. Regarding private property protections, we have this IMO absurd notion of intellectual property, which hinders innovation and progress on our side, sometimes in pretty ridiculous ways (Elsevier comes to mind). As for fair courts, I had (thankfully) zero experience with those in China so I don't know how bad it is there, but the justice system in Western countries isn't looking peachy either.
I also encourage you to look a bit deeper at the issue of the legal system. I think your tune will change the moment you're put to death for juggling carrots you don't own while drunk.
I'd have to see a vast amount of unbiased supporting evidence to believe such an outlandish claim.
The actual results sure don't indicate that's the case: Japan's 25 year disaster, collapsing standards of living and generally very poorly run economy. Cambodia. Laos. Philippines. Vietnam. North Korea. China's vast poverty and pollution, extremely poor system of government and hyper debt problems. Taiwan has half the standard of living of advanced Western European nations. South Korea's economy is particularly unimpressive compared to the US and much of Western Europe. And of course then there's Eastern Russia, which is a big part of East Asia, no need to elaborate on their condition.
Where's the empirical evidence for such a bold IQ claim? There isn't even scientific production evidence to support it versus the US and Western Europe.
If anything, it has gotten much better to live in over the past 5 years (Fukushima Daiichi residents excluded).
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasch_model#Invariant_comparis... Basically if you do not have a test in which harder and easier items are also harder and easier in both populations you have nothing to compare.
The quality of most of those degrees is lacking. If you look at high quality output, then China lags the US; many Chinese students still dream of heading to the states for grad school.
And further proof of China being a non-threat: US manufacturing has grown dramatically since China's manufacturing came onto the global scene 30 plus years ago. The US economy has grown dramatically, while China's economy boomed. US standards of living have not contracted; quite the opposite, more people have moved up out of the middle class in the US, than down out of it, over the last 30 years. The US has the world's second highest household median disposable income level, which hasn't been diminished at all by China's rise. The US has seen no significant damage to its ability to create full-time employment, or possess a low unemployment rate. The US hasn't lost its wealth position in the world in the last 30 years, still owning around 43% to 45% of all private global wealth. The US has seen no damage to the USD global reserve currency with the modest rise of the Yuan, it has mostly taken position from other second tier currencies.
So, where's the evidence supporting damage - now or in the near future - exactly? There has been none. If anything the US has benefited from China and is likely to continue to do so.
China doesn't have politics and stupid games?
What are these generalizations even?!
The common thread is that each area has had millions of people ascend into the middle class after cell and then smartphones were "good enough" to replace landlines and PCs.
All other things (education, market) being equal, the biggest pool should generate the most hits, and the most advancement.
The problem is there are many, many, many factors. Too many to count.
'Education' - even that is hardly comparable. Rote learning/memorization, a culture of copying vs. a culture of learning in innovation. I'm not saying one is better or that one country is necessarily more of the other, just giving one small example of quite radically differentiation even in one comparable vertical.
It's really hard to compare US and China tech side by side.
I think it's best to just look at them independently.
A sliver of merit exists in the article; Chinese internet companies do match American ones when it comes to scaling their infrastructure. Many Chinese software developers, designers, and architects are similarly talented as their American counterparts.
Otherwise, this department-store-esque vertical integration of different features is just an artifact of the domination of fewer players with SOE connections and not a sign of dominant innovation. Is payment provider lock-in really something the rest of the world wants to emulate? At least American consumers can choose between 3 major credit companies.
Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor, nothing jumped out at me.
It's an article about homegrown internet services that does not mention the Great Firewall, as you alluded to somewhat. Given the myriad reasons listed for the services' success, this could be considered by some as a lie by omission.
"Already in China, more people use their mobile devices to pay their bills, order services, watch videos and find dates than anywhere else in the world. Mobile payments in the country last year surpassed those in the United States."
Yes this tends to happen when you have a population of 1.2 billion people compared to 330 million.
Also seeing how outside of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong you need a VPN(and even this is a constant game of whack-a-mole) to access Facebook and Google, it's hardly a level playing field. Economic nationalism in China has been discussed pretty extensively at this point.
"But China’s tech industry — particularly its mobile businesses — has in some ways pulled ahead of the United States. Some Western tech companies, even the behemoths, are turning to Chinese firms for ideas."
Nowhere in the article does it go on to substantiate how they have "pulled ahead." Have they pulled ahead by using QR codes? By using dating apps? Have they pulled ahead because of in app purchasing? (Hello, Uber Eats?)
Different cultures respond differently to different services, this is evidenced by US/European music streaming apps that have had a real difficult time getting traction in the Asian market. Does this mean they have "pulled ahead" and are now setting the pace? Perhaps ocal entrepreneurs understand their local market and culture better?
Ugh, this US/China dichotomy makes for good headlines but I hope the good people of the actual tech industry are able to see beyond it. The supporting examples are ripe with confirmation bias: - Yes, MoMo is older than Tinder but Badoo is older than MoMo - Drones took off worldwide - "walkie-talkie" = sending audio messages are you kidding me - QR codes were tried and not adopted by consumers in EU a century ago (recall the Economist being all up in arms about how they were going to revolutionize everything back in 08), no wonder companies were reluctant to bring them back
Yes, Messenger surely wants to become wx but with a user base that's infinitely more fragmented -- it's going to take infinitely longer to launch a global payments solution that partners with all banks everywhere and obeys all regulations.
You know why apps start in wx? Because there is no single app store.
Yes -- China has some awesome mobile stuff going on, but this whole "TIL Chinese people also use the internet and it has other stuff???" fascination is just sad.
It takes 15 minutes to open a bank account and get a bank card which can be used at ATMs, POS transactions, and online. 'No credit card' doesn't mean 'no bank card'.
What am I missing?
For example, even in countries like Spain, buying a new car and making payments is a new concept.
Without functioning consumer credit, some industries have a hard time.
A functional credit system is fairly essential.
Alibaba in some ways solved that problem by providing guarantees, escrow-ish stuff. More than anything 'credibility' is the value add in a region wherein there is/was little.
There are definitely pros and cons of both ecosystems. But from the common everyday user's perspective, I can see how China's ecosystem is more user friendly. Perhaps that's also why they have traditionally non-tech savvy adopters (farmers, fruit stand owners) using these apps.
It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing. Doesn't this just pass the buck down from the phone's operating system and app ecosystem to the do-everything-app's ecosystem? I'd sooner see mobile OS and app software improve their inter-app communication and APIs so that the do-everything app isn't necessary.
An abstraction layer on the Internet, needed for China due to the langauge barrier of the Western/English-language Internet/WWW.
Most of the stuff the West uses on the Internet is utterly useless for Chinese (also due to blockage by the Great Firewall), hence a walled garden makes perfect sense.
I'll admit, I've never gotten Apple Pay to work myself. The interface is confusing as hell; I prefer cash or plastic.