China is a world's factory. With disregard for copyright and intellectual property its hard to see when their own people will get motivation to invent and develop technologies.
That's because they weren't taught in our textbooks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technolo...
Not to say that the US didn't do it, or that Japan was also well known in the 70's for much the same thing, but to say that it is only because China has "more people" and more "probability" is misleading. The practice is widespread and encouraged, not just by their culture, but also indirectly by their government.
Must be the most innovative discovery of all times
Camera manufacture started as either junk, or as cheaper copies of German (Leica) bodies and lenses.
Car manufacture was in one case initially intertwined with licensed designs from the UK.
In both these cases, Japan grew to become the leader in cameras and amongst the leaders in automobiles.
The interesting thing is whether China can do the same thing with computers, but as software has such a cultural dependence, I highly doubt it. Aside from Matz, has Japan even produced any really notable software or operating systems?
Ruby
The NES, the MSX, The FM-Towns, Sega Master System, Megadrive, Dreamcast, the SNES, Mario, Contra, Starfox, Golden Axe, Thunderblade, Outrun, The PSP, The Playstation, PS2, PS3.
That's just in one industry (gaming). Of all of those the only ones that weren't significant out of Japan were the FM-Towns and MSX. The MSX was the biggest single threat to 8-bit computers in the early to mid 80s not because of it's power, but because it was a licenced standard (with OS software admittedly written by Microsoft, thank goodness they never got a hold on the OS market!)
And marketing, only one country is known to do well. And one company, specially.
It is not a lack of motivation. This device was built ground up itself.