There Is No Maker Movement in China
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> the "We here in the Maker movement could not be more pleased with ourselves" vibe.
This is another of way of saying that we enjoy making here beyond earning a living. Yes it's work, but it's also recreation and art. In places like SV and NY, people make because mainly it's fun.
Over there, 'making' is not really something you enjoy; it's a means to an end. It's something you have to do to make money or save money, which in turn provides for your family and increases your reputation the more money you accumulate. The key point is that there's no love for a trade because nothing else really matters aside from family including your personal hobbies. Therefore on a whole there's no 'maker culture'. If something doesn't make you money for your family, there's no point. There's no doing something just because it's cool and not practical. It must be practical. (This imo is another reason why Chinese open source is anemic.) Add to this the repression of free expression and the work and school hours that are the longer than here, and what you get is a focus more on making copies and knockoffs of name brands (something safe) instead of something truly Chinese like say this:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/robots-of-wu-yulu The main reason I've always remembered this man is because he's one of the few Chinese people in China (that I'm aware of) who actually enjoys making for the sake of making, and not just as a livelihood. You can see the pride in his work.
In general their dreams aren't to change the world with something cool. It's to make enough money to send their family off to the US or Canada, where the water and air are cleaner...
I can go on and on with this subject. Yes maybe things are slowly changing in small pockets of places like Shanghai where there's a lot of Western expats, but on a whole what I've described is accurate.
The gist of it all is that China is a low trust society. Everyone has a price and rules are only rules unless you have the resources to bend them for yourself. Yes this happens in Western culture as well, the big difference is the both degree and how prevalent it is. e.g. it is much harder to bribe a police officer or teacher here than it is in China. Over here it's an extraordinary event; over there it's mundane. So how do things work in a low trust society? If you can't rely on the rule of law to be consistently fair, you rely on your family. I'm not just talking immediate family. I'm talking about your cousins, and not just your immediate cousins; people over there rely on extended relatives as well like second or third cousins. That's your network of stability. Everything and everyone else (short of close friends) don't matter. In general you put your family ahead of yourself and your personal desires i.e. You don't study philosophy even though that's your love; you go into something practical like being a doctor or computer engineer (yes we have that here as well, but again the difference is the degree)... If there's any culture that truly adheres to the psychological theories of evolution, it's Chinese culture.
One more thing: It's a society of pragmatic pessimists, which I feel is yet another reason Chinese society has against it when it comes to innovation.
For example, businesses rely very highly on trust in China, precisely because you can't rely on laws to protect you. But it is another kind of trust.
Also, Chinese are quite optimistic too, that's why they never stop creating restaurants, businesses, etc.
And pragmatism: it is a strange pragmatism that who bring one billion of people to fire crackers and spent thousands of rmb in smoke and noise
I'm not sure this makes any sense, unless you're referring to the way companies and businesses can rely on being able to bribe people.
> Also, Chinese are quite optimistic too, that's why they never stop creating restaurants, businesses, etc. And pragmatism: it is a strange pragmatism that who bring one billion of people to fire crackers and spent thousands of rmb in smoke and noise
Regardless of what people say, the true type of outlook is reflected in the types of business ventures that are undertaken. Yes, there are always 1 or two exceptions but as a whole, most mainland Chinese only undertake safe cookie cutter businesses and cookie cut products that are already proven. This is even more evident when the end goal is a race to the bottom for pricing. All of this is pragmatic.
> And pragmatism: it is a strange pragmatism that who bring one billion of people to fire crackers and spent thousands of rmb in smoke and noise
This is called tradition, and when you think about it; it's also safe and old compared to snow boarding, surfing, rock climbing or whatever new is in fashion in the West. Conversely US culture is primarily about rebellion in spirit, which helps explain our near constant need to do things that are new and experimental.
China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic to think that you can make generalizations about overall Chinese culture and then just call it a day. The fact is that even "maker" culture in the US where its currently being celebrated (because it makes people money) is made up of a very small percentage of people working in North America - you would not meet nor have heard of a large group of people "making things for the sake of making" in China but it doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Ok I'm open to being wrong. How about proving me wrong? What parts of my description of Chinese culture are wrong? For one thing it's a pessimistic society hence the photocopy culture (why take a crazy risk for something unknown and original when I can just use someone else's safe and proven ideas?) and lack of open source (why share when I don't immediately benefit while others will for free?).
> The fact is that even "maker" culture in the US where its currently being celebrated (because it makes people money) is made up of a very small percentage of people working in North America
I agree about the small and minority part, people here are mostly about consumption and that needs to change. However, I strongly disagree about the 'because it makes people money' part. You're confusing the West with China. On a whole, people in the maker culture do it for the love and not as a job or lucrative opportunity. Most of the things being made seem unwanted and not polished for the mass market. Have you looked at Make, Instructables, or any of the other maker communities. People share their plans and designs. People do it for fun. They also make stuff as a way of rebelling against set institutions and consumption. (Maybe this is another strike against Chinese culture? Overall they are used to obeying 'emperors', while our culture is used to a near constant state of rebellion against old norms.) Making money for the majority of this idea tribe is mostly an afterthought. This is way different in China.
About the only thing I can think of in China's defense on this issue is that I'm guessing more people and a larger percentage of the population have the ability to make stuff as opposed to people over here which is probably due more to necessity than personal preference. EDIT: One last edit, there is one more thing that I can think of where people in China Make more due to love and pride and not mainly for money: things related to their space program.
I used to spout this phrase (or ones like it) back when 校内／人人 used to look like a pixel-perfect clone of FB. But I think China is growing beyond this phase. There are small things (like the touch to talk in iMessage? WeChat/微信 has had that for ages) and bigger things like the emergence of drones - the FAA just recently allowed filming of TV shows but some of China's most popular shows are already filmed almost entirely from drones (i.e. 爸爸去那儿).
I think as Westerners it's easy to see what's a clone (because it looks the same) and much harder to see what's not (for us without full fluency) because we can't recognize the innovative ideas everyone else in China may already take for granted.
Do you really think people in China do not share?
Do you really think Chinese are 'used' to obeying 'emporers'? Is that because they did 100 years ago? Which emperor do they follow now? (if you answer is the CCP or Xijinping, how is that different to Congress/Obama?)
Is buying a movie off iTunes for $10 more of a rebellion against institutions than p2p-streaming it over PPS?
BYD - Innovative, non-copy cat company (A kind of chinese-mirror of Tesla).
Tencent - Non-copy cat company, crazy amount of innovation and market penetration
So the above invalidates pretty much every point you make about 'chinese culture' being the reason they have no maker community, because it clearly hasn't stopped them from doing all of the things you say they don't do in other areas.
Not disagreeing with you that their is real innovation going on in China (I think there is), but I don't think this is a great example. The US Congress and President Obama are all elected officials, whereas Xi Jinping and the CCP are not.
Electing your own leaders is a pretty big deal, thus the protests in Hong Kong.
You'd be surprised. Tons of Americans don't bother to even vote, and when they do they vote for the same old shit parties, that are very much alike except for some token issues.
Wait, what? This is a terrible example. Tencent is anything but innovative. They are notorious for copying ideas from local startups.
I did not post a racist rant. I'm Chinese. Unlike you I'm not blinded by nationalistic, ethnic pride. I'm more open to self-examination of our culture. Apparently to you anything legitimately critical of Chinese culture is 'racist' even though I've posted specific points.
> Do you really think Chinese are 'used' to obeying 'emporers'? Is that because they did 100 years ago? Which emperor do they follow now? (if you answer is the CCP or Xijinping, how is that different to Congress/Obama?)
Xijinping ascended to his throne. Conversely Obama and our Congress are elected officials.
> Do you really think people in China do not share?
Yes when it comes to family. No when it comes to everyone else. This is because it's still a developing nation. Unlike here, most people don't have the relative luxury of an easy life with a decent social net. Who can blame them?
> Is buying a movie off iTunes for $10 more of a rebellion against institutions than p2p-streaming it over PPS?
I think you're forgetting that both P2P and torrents were created here and not in China. Moreover, torrenting is still pretty popular here.
You're right about BYD, but Tencent is just yet another copy cat machine. Tencent's main differentiation is the scope and range of copycatting, and no not all of it is from the West since S Korea and Japan are so close by.
You haven't really disproved that mainland China has an overall culture of obey and follow. The reason that there's not many people who don't fit the opposite mold over there is because most of them left the mainland a long time ago. It was natural for us, since we are descendants of pirates.
The parent comment is describing a cultural trope that frames the way people behave in that part of the world. There is a lot of pressure to work towards making money. That doesn't mean 100% of people are necessarily following the priorities set out by their society but it does mean that it makes a maker culture much more difficult there. It's inherently counter-cultural.
> China has 1.35 billion people, and it seems incredibly unimaginative and frankly egotistic
Surely, by your own suggestion, there should be countless examples of open source projects driven from there. Otherwise, their point (even in its generalized form) still stands.
Edit: I'd suggest you do some research on this: where's all the information hiding in the Chinese internet? - An interesting example is this: http://www.pudn.com/ It works different. Yes you can download stuff for free there, but you have to upload your own stuff to gain credit.
It's just that, things work quite different here in China... All the things you talk about, you have to think whether they stand, first.
I'm pretty damn sure I know what I'm talking about. For one thing, I'm not blinded by pride. (Going on a tangent, I don't even understand why people seem offended, since this isn't about talent or skill that a lot of mainlanders possess, this is simply about their culture.)
Pudn is a horrible example of Chinese 'open source' because it's not really Chinese open source. It's really just a Chinese search engine for open source projects of which a lot aren't even Chinese.
1. Like you said, you can't even download anything unless you upload something. Why is this important? Because you can't just build something for the sake of building something and sharing, it still has to be out of self interest and self gain.
2. A lot of the serious projects there aren't even projects that are hosted there. Most of them are just other non-Chinese people's projects that are really hosted on github, sourceforge, google code, or some other open source repo site like code plex (i.e. Pudn's users aren't even uploading their own work.) which makes the 'you have to upload something to download something' even more ridiculous.
3. Of the projects that are really hosted there, most of them just look like the result of small homework assignments.
4. It's not really a place for people to collaborate. It's more of file share and search where people find examples to help finish their upcoming trivial homework assignments. They upload their own completed homework assignments so they can download other people's homework. There's nothing special there.
My point stands. Chinese open source is near non-existent, not because of talent; it's because of culture.
Months ago I released some kernel patches for Xperia Z2 on github. Nobody forks it or send me pull requests. I then released kernel images to both XDA and a forum in China. It got so hot that even today there're still 100+ replies a day under my thread. Of course in a Chinese-'zombie'-style like "fawefawiefuawsef" to satisfy "reply to download".
You can see how information flows... Someone releases something. Tens of thousands of end users rush to it and disrupt the ambience of communication. Makers then hide themselves, and turn to do something else. Of course sometimes they don't face end users directly. They have their own community (but usually formed as an instant message group or so) and release stuff through delegates, who are usually mods of forums.
Chinese forums is an interesting thing definitely worth taking a look at. Most hardware modders post things there ranging from vehicle modding to custom guitar stomps.
In your posts (the previous one and your last one) you were essentially saying that mainland Chinese do things differently, but it was just as good. Well I've listed specific reasons as to why it's not as good as the way things are in the West.
Your current example about 100 replies to your post is like the number of projects on csdn.net; it's just not impressive like other things in China like the pace and scope of Chinese construction (e.g. the 3 Gorges dam) or China's ambition for manned moon landings... and again it has nothing to do with skill or talent. It's just mainland Chinese culture.
No. Read it again. It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing.
> it's just not impressive like other things...
Trivially true. Universally applicable. Nonsense.
> It's just mainland Chinese culture
Agree. What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here. It's not just simply 'different' in one or two parameters. It's not about good or bad. You can say it's bad, I've got no problem with it. But I really want to say that it's interesting, and it's not just China. The fareast countries are similar.
(Well talking about quality do you really think I'm arguing that pudn is good? Chinese open source is good? Why would you assume me that kind of person after all? :-)
Ok then I guess I don't understand your point/purpose of posting that then. From my point of view, it seemed like you were providing an argument against what I previously posted.
> What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here.
I think I've already done a good job of that myself ;)
> It's not just simply 'different' in one or two parameters. It's not about good or bad.
It is bad and it's not subtle bad; it's pretty obvious, glaring, and embarrasingly bad. Again here are the reasons why I feel that it's pathetic that China is just one big photocopier:
1. As everyone has already mentioned, most of the population in China are very capable when it comes to anything technical, making stuff, or hacking it. The skill and talent are both there.
2. China dwarfs everyone when it comes to population.
3. Recapping, China has a lot more people than every other country and proportionally it even has a more skilled population due to many factors; yet most of the innovation still happens Outside of China. China always follows. It never leads in innovation.
> But I really want to say that it's interesting, and it's not just China. The fareast countries are similar.
I disagree. I would say that both Japan and Korea are ahead. Japan is still pretty original, and while Korea does some copying for the most part they also innovate (You can even see it in their films and shows).
China's current predicament is the price for having a totalitarian way of life, where too many ideas are censored by the CCP. Maybe one day China can mitigate the lack of creativity by either allowing more freedom or by importing enough foreigners like Singapore... I kind of doubt it though given the CCP's paranoia and the current laws concerning ownership if you're not a citizen.
What will happen in HK will have more repercussions for the mainland than just control and order.
sorry for that. the logic chain is a bit long... I was working on exploiting the problem of the statement "if Chinese people have Maker culture there will be (same_ratio * population_base) open source projects". I should have quoted it there.
Anyway there's one thing clear (for me), that one create and share when he/she stops struggling for living.
So ok here's a better model:
(same_ratio * max(0, non_struggling_population(china))
But given the fact that open source didn't make it here, this one doesn't make sense (because I know that some little portion of this huge base is really not struggling). nevermind:
(get_ratio_by_culture(china) * max( ..... )) ^ `this is what we get at this point.
Ugh, too simple isn't it, I'd really like to see something more interesting.
Let's first not introduce forums, IM groups of producers. Just consider one thing: Chinese people crack things. The more 'struggling' they are, the more they crack, but the skill gets lower. Say that now we have a close source binary. Some top-notched hackers extracted/disassembled the code to make it more readable, and runnable. (Maybe they're from Russia, just sayin :-D Lower tier programmers bind hooks to the routines. Lower tier programmers use editors to iterate through the binary to seek for useful literals, inject resources to make mods... Lower tier resellers, though not capable of these technical stuff, are able to follow the tutorials released by all higher tiers, and subtly modify the thing.
And this model suddenly becomes a non-deterministic close-source-binary cracking ecosystem, that tries many possible solutions simultaneously, and hierarchically(given the fan-out factor high enough between each two tiers).
Yeah I know you would never say this is "good". But I think this is at least mathematically interesting. And it gives some sense to how to utilize this kind of ecosystems to do something real(though this model is still far from realistic).
> I would say that both Japan and Korea are ahead
Sure. Just consider get_ratio_by_culture() and non_struggling_population().
get_ratio_by_culture() is similar. It doesn't mean the current whole picture is similar. But the later one is variable and the former one is nearly const.
Another trend that gets exposed here is that anytime anyone has a valid criticism of China, the inevitable "China is still developing" or "Most of China's population is poor" excuse tends to come up.
At the end of the day, the true reason for the lack of mainland Chinese innovation is probably the suppression of freedom by the CCP as well as the culture that is created from a low trust society due to the CCP's corruption. It's hard to be creative when you have to think about what you can and can't say or type, as well as missing out on the ideas that could have been shared, but have not due to the lack of free expression. Unless things change, China will never become much more than a larger and larger photocopier. HK is the first test.
Maybe the only place China can innovate are in sectors that have legal controls in the West like bioengineering.
You can easily check out Chinese language code hosting sites, like
https://code.csdn.net/explore/projects?tag_name=python
Of course, I'm pretty sure that's not going to convince you of anything.
Why? What does it mean "generalizations about overall Chinese culture"? Are you claiming that in China there is only a collection of small, unrelated cultures, and no shared core? The whole point of the concept of "culture" is to observe that such generalizations do exist, and they drive many common behaviors in societies. That's why sociology of culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_culture) is a thing.
Are you implying it isn't? I mean there are more than the Han chinese (ethnic culture), and even within that there is are quite varied cultures within the Han. Most people's "chinese generalisations" are generalising about upper-middle class Chinese from the Big 3 cities + Hong Kong. Because they are the majority that migrate.
Shanghai-ese are not like Guangzhou-ese are not like Hong Kong-ese are not like Beijing-ese are not like Taiwanese. But they'd all call themselves Chinese. So yes you can make some fairly mundane observations: "They all use chopsticks", "They like eating rice", "They have an incredibly competitive education system", "They share a common grammar".
But you could make similar observations about "Europe"... and I'm not sure your point still stands at that point :\
The only question is whether the specific observation discussed here is correct.
There's not a huge, ginormous difference between the Han sub-cultures. I know because I'm descended from both a less populous Han subgroup as well as a larger one, and so are my friends and family by marriage. Usually when Chinese people speak of the 'differences', they are just referring to popular stereotypes.
As for the other non-Han ethnic groups, they make up less than 9% of the population. Most of them also don't really consider themselves as Chinese or part of Chinese culture at large (since they aren't really integrated with it - nor are they treated as Chinese) like the Uyghur's which are closer to Turkish people, and the Tibetans and Koreans. In China's defense, this isn't much different from what happens in Japan.
I didn't see it that way. To me it meant: "we are pleased with ourselves that we are not just helpless consumers but also creators and self-reliant". We are smug with our technical know-how. Another form of machismo.
I saw the whole Maker movement with a kind of bemused "why is this news" kind of attitude because I (and many of the people I knew) had made things our entire lives and it never seemed in any way noteworthy. It was quite a surprise to find that there were actually people who found DIY to be an alien concept.
There used to be places in the US like that, focused on specific consumer product areas. Lower Manhattan for garments, Trenton, NJ for minor tablewear, Pittsburgh PA for heavy steel items, North Carolina for wooden furniture, and Silicon Valley for ICs. Once the Interstate Highway System was built, and UPS and FedEx really go their act together, there was less concentration. China's government is trying to spread things out more, building cities in the interior provinces, building up the expressway system, and offering companies incentives to move. This goes against a long history of discouraging long supply chains. For centuries, inter-provincial trade was discouraged, and there are remnants of that today.
That said, I don't think the presence of hackathons (or other such "scene" events) should be taken as evidence of the existence of a hacking community (or lack thereof).
Part of the point the author makes is that, unlike in the West, hacking/making is not a big deal. It's not a subculture or a statement, it simply is. One of the things I really despise about hackathons here is how much time they spend wallowing in their own cultural statement. Sponsored by Monster Energy? Check. Important investors as judges? Check. Nerf guns? Yep. Quadcopters flying everywhere? Yeeeep. In the end it feels like 50% creating stuff and 50% reinforcing your place in the Subculture.
In the same way the video game subculture is 50% enjoying video games, and 50% self-referential memes about its own subculture-ness.
When I first got started in programming it was on obscure forums on the Internet. I didn't participate in any "scene" events, I just wrote code, and collaborated with others online who wrote code. We did it for its own sake, not to win competitions or impress judges or hobnob with industry luminaries. We just did.
I'd venture that most of the hacking going on in the world (in the West or the East) is going on in backyards - both virtual and real. It's hard to gauge how much is going on precisely because they're just hacking and making, not preening their feathers ostentatiously and inventing capital-letter names for their movement.
> US makers have the luxury of being able to be makers because we outsourced manufacturing. And as China's manufacturing wages rise, that middle class has less romanticism about making things, because the skills are not two generations in the past, as they are for us. The kids there who wanna be makers most likely (based on a handful of conversations at MF Shenzen, not systematic) romanticize the part of a US Maker life that we now find tiring: the part where we hold down a high-wage job designing things to be made in offshore factories.
> I'm wondering if Maker culture is just genx's mid-life crisis. Instead of getting Porsches, we get 3D printers.
When robots bring down the cost of new goods to the point where it no longer makes sense to repair things--because they are so cheap to replace--China will lose its Makers just as America did.
And then they'll have a Maker movement.
I think you're being a bit overly pessimistic here.
Oh my, yes, it is rather cringeworthy.
Living in Beijing, I'm so bored of cybermarts. Also, if you want to find the makers here, try wangjing and CAFA (central academy of fine arts) rather than Zhongguancun (where all the e-markets and grand tech universities are). It should not be surprising that the designers and artists would be more passionate about this than the engineer/entrepreneurs/traders trying to make some bucks.
Also, never leave your computer with the solder guy; always insist on watching the repair. They have swapped out good components for broken ones before.
NEVER trust those people at the cybermarts...buy from the Apple store, a certified Taobao store, or at a real storefront (though you still have to be careful). They will cheat you if they have any opportunity to do so.
Even if I'd missed the naan in Japan, my experience with Japanese Mexican food alone would have left me somewhat skeptical of your claim. b^)
I'm not really a big fan of central Asian naan (too hard, not fluffy), but we have a local variation of that here from Xinjiang.
O_o
(I hope I'm not mixing them up.)
But in Singapore, the mother lode is probably Koba Electronics[1] in Chinatown..
[1] http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/08/06/global-geek-tour-s...
Around the Sim Lims (and across the island) you also have lots of small hardware shops.
The overall point though, that electronics were in particular made obscure at some point in the 80s or 90s, seems pretty spot on.
(Digression: another dynamic, thrusting young blogging/social networking system without permalinks for the comments? How absolutely darling. To think that WordPress, Blogger and nearly every sad, dumpy old-wave blogging system had this one figured out back while the WTC was still standing. Strangely appropriate given the topic of this conversation.)
I imagine it's the same with electronics in this example - it's nothing new,it's just that America has forgotten how to do it so now it's "hip and special".
I make bread regularly. It's not a big deal, my mom did it, and probably her mom before her, etc. If we're out of bread, it's not too hot to run the oven and I feel like it, I make bread.
But then my mother-in-law comes over and can't stop raving about the bread and if there isn't any, asking if I'm going to "make that wonderful bread" and fawning over it to the point where I'm ready to puke. It's just bread, FFS. Any idiot can learn to make it.
Update 5:02 PST: All out, sorry.