This article obviously focused on the city dwelling folks, while some other articles I read focus on the poor, undeveloped countryside. On the whole, all views of China are correct - it's simply that diverse.

As a lazy American I spend a lot of time wandering around campus or at home not-working, instead I dream up new ways to adjust my methods so that they take less time and effort. In the long run, tinkering with methods leads to a lot of innovation. It's this link between a tolerance for laziness and creativity that has made American science so successful.

>You try to tell them that China isn't a communist country anymore. It's got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army.

It's true, except recently in China it's no longer Harvard alums with the army, it's MIT (Tsinghua) alums.

Posted without comment.

Unfortunately all I have to offer is an episode of the simpsons where the intelligentsia take over the town for a while

The funniest bit being Comic Book Guy saying there will be forced mating only once a year, "for some, this will be much much less, for me, much much more".

from http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1517.html (via google):

> I myself have spent the past 19 years working for The Simpsons;

> indeed half our writers are Harvard graduates.

Rule of thumb: Any organization that allows you to level up is out to fuck you, take your money, or both.

Examples: School, business, military, computer games, government, religion, etc.

I'll give an example: my cousin is 17 and lives in Beijing. He's exceedingly intelligent but hates schoolwork. He knows more rappers (in the US) than I do and knows NBA scores before I do (I live in the US, I should clarify). He wants to attend college, but knows it's very difficult, but has backup plans as he's already making decent money as a web developer by day and a DJ by night.

Sure, "they instill in you ..." blah blah blah, but I get the sense that there's a strong undercurrent creative subculture emerging and we're going to see a lot of results come from that in the future in the form of movies, arts, music and, of course, startups.

His information is current (as of last year), but as part of the "establishment", he might be unaware of an underground subculture, so it doesn't necessarily contradict your cousin's experience. As far as the official system is concerned, though, it's still a vicious meritocracy with few opportunities for niche players.

Well put, I wish yet again for a feature that lets me modup*10 once a day...

The ending note is interesting. I'd like to hear more about expectations of change in China. The growth of a middle class could help out a lot. The inevitable failure of the Great FireWall will help.

The biggest push will probably come from the top, as insightful leaders see the need for independent thinking and creativity -- the opposite of rote memorization.

Many leaders have talked about that, but how many have actually done so? (Is it even possible to "push" for that or is the required action fundamentally different?) Why will China be any different? ("Because they must" isn't enough - lots of orgs have died rather than make changes required for their survival.)

Opening China to foreign banks would help a lot. The first consumer banks move into China on 2009, I think, but that might be pushed back.

People are smart there. Given the choice between a state owned bank which had 25% non-performing loans just a few years ago, and a citibank, they will choose the citibank almost every time. This transition could be blocked by the people on top.

My poorly-expressed point is that that's not really a "push" so much as it is a pulling back by the leader's organization, a giving up of power. Worse yet, it's allowing potentially competitive powers.

Orgs and their leaders gain power by controlling. Creating by giving up power is very different.

Put another way, you'll never get dynamic distributed growth through top-down decision making.

Yes, they need to give up power. If they don't, the change won't happen.

I don't see them overcoming this problem with their current system, much less moving to a service economy. But I wish them well.

People have reacted to those market pressures and got into services. And so the share of industry went down in relative terms.

I completely agree with you. More so, I believe China (and other developing nations) is pursuing a knowledge economy. We were pursuing it too, until neocons like Brooks took over 7 years ago and got us stuck in the middle of the transition.

The knowledge economy is a bit of a misnomer because by it's very nature knowledge creates multiple measures of value, not all of which can be measured in terms of _valuta_. It's also problematic in that knowledge is embodied in individuals, and while you can build information systems that support it's cultivation in individuals, it is not possible to treat knowledgeable individuals as interchangeable plug-compatible components.

"the second meaning, more frequently used, it refers to the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits."

"A key concept of this sector of economic activity is that knowledge and education (often referred to as "human capital") can be treated as: - A business product, as educational and innovative intellectual products and services can be exported for a high value return. - A productive asset"

Its a fallacy that all knowledge is free. Localized, and application specific knowledge, are definitely not freely available.

Think about Seagate's QA numbers, or their profit margins, or Amazon's official opinion on FIFO warehousing, etc. All "secret" and all fairly worthless if they were leaked. But as they stand that data are vital to their businesses.

I'm not qualified to judge the accuracy of the perspective. But the argument says a specific type of corruption is there and it's deeply rooted in the social fabric (even as he implies payoffs). If that's not corruption, what would you call it?

BTW, bribery is alive and well in the US too, but it's wide open (suppose to be, anyway) and it's called "lobbying" or "campaign contributions".

Whatever it is, the problem it presents is that there is not a single amount of predictable payments that can be made to create an economic transaction -- it's all up to the whims of the people who are involved. I guess it's possible to predict to some degree if you know all of the players, but there is no competition for doing it another way without the payments -- the same party owns the game, the tables, and all of the cards. I'm no expert either, but it seems that corruption in the states is of such a lesser degree to be of a different type altogether, at least as far as startups go. Likewise, corruption in some third world countries is so bad to make even the most trivial of enterprises fraught with hidden expenditures.

Here, if I want to make a startup to, say, sell fried chicken on the street corner, I've got 2 or 3 political people to meet and make happy. Now there might be lots of crooks in the local government, but each local government can be of a different political party, as can the state and federal governments. Even in a completely crooked world, that provides incentives for each section of political power to lower corruption, at least in sections controlled by the other guy. You simply do not have that somehow-it-works setup in China. And I think it's going to be a limiting factor in their growth.

I don't know if the author I linked to is knowledgeable, just something I read a couple days ago which seems quasi-relevant.

In which case we are all stuffed, lets learn mandarin and move to Shanghai.

You don't need to. There's probably a Confucius Institute just around the corner.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/mandarin_pr.html

Maybe this is like japan was seen post WWII - as inferior "clone" makers, but then things change. Maybe, I hope so.

I certainly have no problem with China "doing a Japan" at all, so it not out of fear or anything (which is probably the fuel behind the "talking points" I guess you are talking about). I think it would be great- a big, peaceful successful country producing great products that make life better, what's not to like !

Well its only anecdotal, but my log book of consumer good that fail about 18 months into use from basic fatigue problems and general shoddiness would say otherwise (all made in china). But then again, we don't have a choice now.

Have you seen the growth curves from China recently? Sustained double digit growth for _decades_. It is unprecedented. China isn't "doing a Japan". They are doing so much better than that.

How does that explain your iPod?

How necessary is automation in a country with a billion people?

Just as much as in a country with a million people, or a thousand. Imagine, China needs two billion shoes!

if their one child policy sticks, it will be a rapidly aging and shrinking population one day.