back to article The Great China Tech Panic is just posh xenophobia

Donald J Trump has been stoking xenophobia since he took office as President of the US, aiming his sharpest barbs at China. But he's not alone. Others, with better manners than the president, have too – they’re just more subtle about it. Writing in The Times yesterday, WiReD UK editor David Rowan sounds the klaxon. We must " …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it faces the same hurdles that all engineering-led companies or economies face

    China is even less Engineering-led than UK. If we think of the UK glass ceiling for engineers being made of an inch thick armour glass, its Chinese equivalent is some futuristic material available only in Science Fiction and its thickness is measured in miles, not inches.

    For a Chinese, engineering is only a larval phase until you become a party member and a manager (usually in that order). Then you can advance past the armour glass ceiling.

    So any expectations that a Chinese company will produce anything truly innovative are misplaced. It is MBA driven - acquire, brand, copy and build cheaply through the power of significantly better local supply chain.

    By the way, UK is in no position to sneer at them. Not like UK is not suffering from the same MBA-itis.

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge

      It is not out of the question that something truly innovative will come from China. Culturally the barriers may be higher but the thing about true innovation/inspiration is that it doesn't come from R&D budgets, it comes from the minds of people and absolutely cannot be considered consistent. If the walkman was lightning, then we're seeing China trying to make the lightning strike twice.

      I wish I knew what will cause the next lightning strike but nobody knows.

    2. Mark 85

      So any expectations that a Chinese company will produce anything truly innovative are misplaced. It is MBA driven - acquire, brand, copy and build cheaply through the power of significantly better local supply chain.

      Pretty much sums it up. Innovation in China won't happen until their culture changes and allows people to think for themselves and not be afraid to try new ideas. The government is very much afraid that thinking and new ideas might just toss them out the door. So for now, innovation comes from other places, cheap manufacturing and "grunt work" comes from China.

  2. Christian Berger

    Well they are trying hard to come up with new markets

    That's why over there hackerspaces get quite a lot of blessings from the government. They see that this bottom-up style of innovation can work, as it did with the home-computer revolution of the 1970s.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Well they are trying hard to come up with new markets

      But the home-computer revolution is long past and do we really need a new Frogger?

  3. pavel.petrman

    Economic miracle? Really?

    Calling theft of the massivest scale the World has ever seen, run by a dictatorship with blatant disregard for human lives and rights, a miracle, that needs some party book journalistic balls.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Economic miracle? Really?

      Calling theft of the massivest scale the World has ever seen

      I think Europe got one better doing the American and African colonies, but, whatever.

      The build-up from a completely wrecked country after WWII to today while getting a "cultural revolution" rammed down one's throat is amazing stuff.

      Now, China is VERY nationalistic, doesn't care about diversity and now has 36 million single males (b/c no women), which makes a nice army that can be raised. Better beware.

  4. x 7

    Once the Chinese have out-competed western companies, resulting in closure, then they have no need for innovation

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, but if memory serves

      this was also a long-running Microsoft tactic disguised by the title "Embrace and Extend" - which in reality we'll buy you, shut you down, and maybe borrow a bit of your tech.

      China just does it at state level, not just as individual businesses.

      This is also culturally how China "works". I have also been to China and the way things are approach is not always comparable to how the west does things.

      This can create great opportunities, and also some amazing forehead slapping moments.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wilful Blindness

    Fear is never a healthy response to foreigners

    True, but wilful blindness to what China’s leadership is doing simply so you don’t appear xenophobic to your right-on social-justice mates is just dumb.

    The theft of western IP has already been mentioned (though the short-sighted transfer of technology to China by western companies looking for cheap labour hasn’t helped) but the reality in China is that any tech company of size will be plugged into the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) which also has many other methods of funding itself and whose leadership have been pretty bellicose for a long time. Wait till Huawei and ZTE control the supply of all 5G infrastructure to see what that means.

    China is busy fortifying islands to solidify its claim on the whole South China Sea. It won’t stop there: remember that place called Tibet? Taiwan certainly has reason to fear the hypersonic gliders the writer so looks forward to.

    China is actively working to make the Yuan the world reserve currency (partly by buying up gold like it’s going out of style), but don’t be surprised to see runs on any currency they disfavour - as they already hold billions that they can dump at any time to punish those who don’t act as China wants. Look at what happened to Korea a few months back – that was just a gentle trade spat.

    President Xi just became leader-for-life - with only a bit of a blanket censorship for any protest against this behind the Great Firewall. So don’t expect a change of direction or pace in China’s push for dominance. If you thought America was bad, wait till you have China in charge.

    So yeah, while Chinese people are as benign and friendly as people anywhere else, the leadership is far more sinister.

  6. msknight

    The Walkman was German

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereobelt

    ...just saying.

  7. Eduard Coli

    Excellent article comrade!

    For any company to open shop in the PRC a partnership has to be made with a local Chinese firm. The new company must also have a CPC member on its board. It is also common knowledge that if the CPC or the PLA are interested in something you are manufacturing in the PRC then you best be quick about giving them a peek otherwise your cheap exploitable labor goes on strike, you suddenly have IE problems and your factory burns down. The PRC is also helping students get into and pay for universities in the West as these are hotbeds of innovation thanks to cheapskate Western corporations that want to offload R+D costs while getting a big fat tax break and a gym or library named after the CEO.

    Only a naive Register reporter and those that are paid to think like him would believe that all of this has nothing to do with technology advances in the PRC. Sure, the Chinese are historically masterful engineers but why work for it when it is far easier to steal it.

  8. Notas Badoff

    They smiled at you and and won your heart...

    and, similarly to Bush meeting with Putin, you looked into their souls but you saw mere veniality. Which is what you expected. Shallow techies, everywhere!

    Remember the genesis of the US tech industry? The military needed better, smaller, faster, and sooner, and was willing to pay for it. (ex. article) The Cold War then add-on Space Race superheated science, technology and precision manufacturing in the US. There was a tremendous push for working products at high specifications. (and alas, not benign ones)

    You are pointing to the lack of *Walkmans* as certain evidence that the Chinese tech industry is not really doing anything advanced, nor is capable of doing so. But how long did it take for the advances fostered by the Western military to diffuse out to the public arena? You are benchmarking by widgets visible now. That is certainly short-sighted.

    The fear does not come from worry about 7-day battery life or 7G invented and owned by Chinese companies. The fear comes from the longevity and determination of the CPC, and their Putin-like concentration only on what benefits China, powered by a soon-to-be better than US-level economy.

    Oh, and those millions of STEM graduates. Given a big enough number, even a very small percentage of real movers comes to more than the US and EU combined, yearly, and increasing.

    The Chinese government does not care about consumer products. Those just naturally fall out of the process as by-products of centrally commanded technological advances. And those will keep the masses happy and content.

    It is the other products of the military industrial complex "with Chinese characteristics" that you should be looking for, fearfully. (and alas, not benign ones)

    It's 80 years later and Beijing is the new center of gravity for the future 大东亚共荣圈

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: They smiled at you and and won your heart...

      The fear comes from the longevity and determination of the CPC, and their Putin-like concentration only on what benefits China, powered by a soon-to-be better than US-level economy.

      So it's like being afraid of the critical Higgs mass that might lead to a vacuum phase change at any time and thus cosmological demise.

      Probably no need to get to excited. Europe will be rocked to death by African migration waves in any case during the next 20 years.

      Getting a log cabin in Siberia sounds good.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The US needs to accept it will no longer be the dominant economy

    It is a simple numbers game, China has nearly 4x the population so once they approach a third as productive per capita they beat us. They were also under-developed during most of the industrial age, up until maybe 40 years ago, so they have a lot of natural resources to exploit that have already been exploited in the US.

    There's nothing the US can do to stop this, being isolationist/protectionist against them is only going to hurt us in the long run.

  10. teknopaul

    them n us

    While people still write them and us articles like this, our planet is doomed. Chinese people, are people. Their success is our susccess and our is theirs. Your failure to see that is unfortunatly ours.

  11. Daggerchild Silver badge

    Feh! Xenophobia my bottom.

    I don't fear China because they're Chinese. I fear them because they're *human*.

    And *humans* are irrational, cruel, and degrade over time, and don't like letting go of power, and have bad days, and form self-reinforcing-feedback groups, and get *bored*.

    China will eventually be big enough to break companies and countries by *accident*. And the *victim* will end up apologising to stop the Chinese system fracturing. It will be the mother of all Too Big To Fails. I don't want to be anywhere near it when it eventually cracks.

    I trust Google more than I trust humans.

  12. Milton

    Beware

    I'm not xenophobic and I tend usually to believe the Cockup rather than the Conspiracy theories of human history. It's all too easy to become afraid of what you don't fully understand, and is different, and China, with its imbecilic language, positively insane writing system and exceedingly peculiar culture, certainly qualifies as being about as alien as most of us have seen. None of those things in themselves should frighten us. Nor, indeed, should economic growth, though personally I'd like to see it accompanied by some physical growth off-planet as well, lest we end up cooking to death in our "growth" of waste down here. But that's another story.

    The Chinese economy doesn't frighten me. The Chinese people don't frighten me. The Chinese military doesn't even particularly frighten me.

    What frightens me is the Chinese government.

    It's all fine for hypocrites like George Osborne to fawn over the Chinese with his sweaty little hand held out, and you couldn't expect anything better from western companies enslaved by mindless greed.

    But as a remotely decent human being, perhaps one with children—do you really want to see ever more power in the hands of a vile, murderous, dishonest, undemocratic, repressive, authoritarian regime?

    That's my problem. China might be fine, its citzens good people ... but its leaders remain, as they have been for 40 years, simply wicked, limitlessly corrupt, murderous filth.

    China's increasingly expansionist military posture and economic growth, coupled with IP theft on a colossal scale and ever-better infiltration of western technology, tell me (to my aghast surprise) that there is one thing I agree with the loathsome Steve Bannon about: almost certainly, the world either loses to China without a shot fired, or there'll be a war.

    I'm no warmonger. I know how appallingly nasty and tragic war is, even tiny ones. War is nightmare made flesh. If there is a bloodless way to turn China toward democracy and individual freedom, it would be far better than the alternative. But when all's said and done I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a free, democractic, creative, fearless, progressive world: and if we have to slaughter the so-called Communist Party to do it ... well, I'm afraid that's the choice they made by steadfastly and opportunistically turning away from democracy and decency. The bill is due.

    To let slip the freedoms purchased in blood during WW2 would be utterly pathetic. Tyranny shoud die. Literally.

  13. AmyInNH

    Fear? Stupidity. Tech sent their money and IP there, with the moronic expectation it was going to be "protected". West sent investment there, with some bizarre notion they'd get the upper hand on Chinese market. Stupidity. Trump more honest about, This Isn't Working, the last thing the neoliberalists are going to admit to, having gutted the West's middle class, to pave the way there.

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