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China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese innovated a

by acd 10y ago

China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese innovated and made very high quality items. http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of-quality/overview/total-quality.html http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of-quality/overvi... "In the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese goods were synonymous with cheapness and low quality, but over time their quality initiatives began to be successful, with Japan achieving very high levels of quality in products from the 1970s onward." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management Top500 super computer list, the fastest super computer now has a Chinese CPU Sunway SW26010 which has 260 cores. https://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/ https://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010 List of inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions

gioele 10y ago
> China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese innovated and made very high quality items. Same story with Italy. It started its industrial success of the '50s as a country where you could get cheap, unschooled (but not unskilled) workers that would work for 20 hours a day without any protection from the existing legal framework. (Plus a devalued currency.) Just like the eastern Europe of the '90s or China in this decade. Now people forgot all that and like to think of "Made in Italy" as a symbol of innovation and style. I think this is the pattern: 1. country attract foreign investors because of lower wages and little legal protection; 2. people work their ass off, without really understanding what they are doing; 3. workers get skilled in what they do, a culture of "doing X properly" springs up; 4. people realize that they are being exploited and demand more protection from their state; 5. slowly people get what they ask for, but this has a cost and so factories move somewhere else; 6. (This is the main point =>) You are left with a country filled with skilled workers and sense for the production of the good X, but it no longer makes sense to produce it there for the big market; you turn to the "luxury" market; 7. people start losing jobs because the luxury market is hard to please and it is not big enough; 8. the state gives away some of the rights acquired and starts the slow path towards becoming a state with lower wages and less legal protection. I wonder if this vicious cycle can be broken with the advent of non-tangible products (for example services) and some kind of heavy taxation on transports (instead of VAT you would pay dist-in-km^0.12).
- pducks32 10y ago
  I really like your pattern and it fits in with what I've thought for years, but today I was thinking: what happens when there is too much luxury products? The end of the cycle doesn't work or else USA, UK, and a few other European countries wouldn't be doing very well. And what about highly skilled workers like Iranian/Persian rug makers?
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    There can never be too many luxury products because the definition of 'luxury' is simply redefined upwards.
- SilasX 10y ago
  >Same story with Italy. It started its industrial success of the '50s as a country where you could get cheap, unschooled (but not unskilled) workers that would work for 20 hours a day without any protection from the existing legal framework. ... >Now people forgot all that and like to think of "Made in Italy" as a symbol of innovation and style. Kind of funny for Italy to follow this pattern, since a few hundred years before, they were the at forefront of the Renaissance, with high-earning artisans (in the non-ironic sense) producing the highest-quality goods in Europe.
mooreds 10y ago
Yes. And the same thing could have been said of the US 200 years ago (made cheap bad quality items, compared to the British and moved up the quality ladder). Suggest reading "Concrete Economics" for a perspective on this: https://hbr.org/product/concrete-economics-the-hamilton-approach-to-economic-growth-and-policy/11357E-KND-ENG https://hbr.org/product/concrete-economics-the-hamilton-appr... Heads up, the authors are not circumspect about having an axe to grind with American economic ideology since the 1980s.
HillaryBriss 10y ago
I believe you are correct. One thing I wonder about though: is Japan a truly special case? I mean, Japan has a long history of taking ideas/culture/art/tech from outside and refining/elevating it into something almost entirely new. (e.g. zen buddhism, samurai swords, transistor radio technology, television sets, cars, industrial production line efficiency, French pastry and other world cuisine, whiskey, etc). I often think the Japanese have taken "taking it to a whole nother level" to a whole nother level.
- eric-hu 10y ago
  I generally agree with you...but French pastry? Have I been missing out on good Japanese pastries?
  - HillaryBriss 10y ago
    I get that sense of the pastry world from articles like this one: http://blog.forbestravelguide.com/5-tokyo-bakeries-that-take-the-cake http://blog.forbestravelguide.com/5-tokyo-bakeries-that-take... though I have not had a chance to visit these bakeries myself. They're even in Paris, competing with the French, in pastry: http://hipparis.com/2014/04/25/the-sweet-life-japanese-pastry-chefs-are-making-waves-in-paris/ http://hipparis.com/2014/04/25/the-sweet-life-japanese-pastr... I mean, who does that??
- mooreds 10y ago
  Korea did it, Taiwan did it, Thailand is doing it. The USA did it in the 1800s (see previous comment from me).
james-watson 10y ago
Precisely, I've been saying this for years. If you look at time frames, China is right on track to become an economic powerhouse in the production of quality products just like Japan in the 90s. Japan started in the 1950s after WWII, but China didn't get it's start till the 80s because of the Cultural Revolution of Mao. China is 30 years behind, so we're starting to see their potential now.
- varjag 10y ago
  30 years ago Japan was on its peak. 25 years ago the bottom fell out of their economy. China better hurry.
  - mooreds 10y ago
    Yes. They're aware of this, but time is running out (both because of debt and demographics). If you want some trenchant analysis of the situation, Michael Pettis is your guy: http://blog.mpettis.com/2016/06/rebalancing-wealth-transfers-and-the-growth-of-chinese-debt/ http://blog.mpettis.com/2016/06/rebalancing-wealth-transfers...
Animats 10y ago
There's a new push for higher quality in China manufacturing. Last year, Li Keqiang publicly shamed China's ball-point pen industry for making shoddy products. This resulted in CEOs on TV looking scared. There are some neat innovations coming out of China. One I particularly like is the development of LED power supplies that don't use electrolytic capacitors.[2] Currently, LED lamps tend to have power supply failures before they have LED failures. With the elimination of electrolytics, the power supply outlasts the LED. It's a clever piece of electrical engineering, with a 4-phase oscillator. Transistor count goes up, but transistors on an IC are cheap. The effect is that LED lamp life doubles and the power supply size decreases. [1] http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-make-good-ballpoint-pen http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-m... [2] http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/164083/1/Content.pdf http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/164083/1/Content.pdf

by acd 10y ago

gioele 10y ago

> China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese innovated and made very high quality items. Same story with Italy. It started its industrial success of the '50s as a country where you could get cheap, unschooled (but not unskilled) workers that would work for 20 hours a day without any protection from the existing legal framework. (Plus a devalued currency.) Just like the eastern Europe of the '90s or China in this decade. Now people forgot all that and like to think of "Made in Italy" as a symbol of innovation and style. I think this is the pattern: 1. country attract foreign investors because of lower wages and little legal protection; 2. people work their ass off, without really understanding what they are doing; 3. workers get skilled in what they do, a culture of "doing X properly" springs up; 4. people realize that they are being exploited and demand more protection from their state; 5. slowly people get what they ask for, but this has a cost and so factories move somewhere else; 6. (This is the main point =>) You are left with a country filled with skilled workers and sense for the production of the good X, but it no longer makes sense to produce it there for the big market; you turn to the "luxury" market; 7. people start losing jobs because the luxury market is hard to please and it is not big enough; 8. the state gives away some of the rights acquired and starts the slow path towards becoming a state with lower wages and less legal protection. I wonder if this vicious cycle can be broken with the advent of non-tangible products (for example services) and some kind of heavy taxation on transports (instead of VAT you would pay dist-in-km^0.12).

pducks32 10y ago
I really like your pattern and it fits in with what I've thought for years, but today I was thinking: what happens when there is too much luxury products? The end of the cycle doesn't work or else USA, UK, and a few other European countries wouldn't be doing very well. And what about highly skilled workers like Iranian/Persian rug makers?
- sievebrain 10y ago
  There can never be too many luxury products because the definition of 'luxury' is simply redefined upwards.
SilasX 10y ago
>Same story with Italy. It started its industrial success of the '50s as a country where you could get cheap, unschooled (but not unskilled) workers that would work for 20 hours a day without any protection from the existing legal framework. ... >Now people forgot all that and like to think of "Made in Italy" as a symbol of innovation and style. Kind of funny for Italy to follow this pattern, since a few hundred years before, they were the at forefront of the Renaissance, with high-earning artisans (in the non-ironic sense) producing the highest-quality goods in Europe.

mooreds 10y ago

Yes. And the same thing could have been said of the US 200 years ago (made cheap bad quality items, compared to the British and moved up the quality ladder). Suggest reading "Concrete Economics" for a perspective on this: https://hbr.org/product/concrete-economics-the-hamilton-approach-to-economic-growth-and-policy/11357E-KND-ENG https://hbr.org/product/concrete-economics-the-hamilton-appr... Heads up, the authors are not circumspect about having an axe to grind with American economic ideology since the 1980s.

HillaryBriss 10y ago

I believe you are correct. One thing I wonder about though: is Japan a truly special case? I mean, Japan has a long history of taking ideas/culture/art/tech from outside and refining/elevating it into something almost entirely new. (e.g. zen buddhism, samurai swords, transistor radio technology, television sets, cars, industrial production line efficiency, French pastry and other world cuisine, whiskey, etc). I often think the Japanese have taken "taking it to a whole nother level" to a whole nother level.

eric-hu 10y ago
I generally agree with you...but French pastry? Have I been missing out on good Japanese pastries?
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  I get that sense of the pastry world from articles like this one: http://blog.forbestravelguide.com/5-tokyo-bakeries-that-take-the-cake http://blog.forbestravelguide.com/5-tokyo-bakeries-that-take... though I have not had a chance to visit these bakeries myself. They're even in Paris, competing with the French, in pastry: http://hipparis.com/2014/04/25/the-sweet-life-japanese-pastry-chefs-are-making-waves-in-paris/ http://hipparis.com/2014/04/25/the-sweet-life-japanese-pastr... I mean, who does that??
mooreds 10y ago
Korea did it, Taiwan did it, Thailand is doing it. The USA did it in the 1800s (see previous comment from me).

james-watson 10y ago

Precisely, I've been saying this for years. If you look at time frames, China is right on track to become an economic powerhouse in the production of quality products just like Japan in the 90s. Japan started in the 1950s after WWII, but China didn't get it's start till the 80s because of the Cultural Revolution of Mao. China is 30 years behind, so we're starting to see their potential now.

varjag 10y ago
30 years ago Japan was on its peak. 25 years ago the bottom fell out of their economy. China better hurry.
- mooreds 10y ago
  Yes. They're aware of this, but time is running out (both because of debt and demographics). If you want some trenchant analysis of the situation, Michael Pettis is your guy: http://blog.mpettis.com/2016/06/rebalancing-wealth-transfers-and-the-growth-of-chinese-debt/ http://blog.mpettis.com/2016/06/rebalancing-wealth-transfers...

Animats 10y ago

There's a new push for higher quality in China manufacturing. Last year, Li Keqiang publicly shamed China's ball-point pen industry for making shoddy products. This resulted in CEOs on TV looking scared. There are some neat innovations coming out of China. One I particularly like is the development of LED power supplies that don't use electrolytic capacitors.[2] Currently, LED lamps tend to have power supply failures before they have LED failures. With the elimination of electrolytics, the power supply outlasts the LED. It's a clever piece of electrical engineering, with a 4-phase oscillator. Transistor count goes up, but transistors on an IC are cheap. The effect is that LED lamp life doubles and the power supply size decreases. [1] http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-make-good-ballpoint-pen http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-m... [2] http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/164083/1/Content.pdf http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/164083/1/Content.pdf