Taiwan is effectively China the went down the capitalist path a few decades before China itself. Taiwan's engineers now lead the pack in what must be one of the

Taiwan is effectively China the went down the capitalist path a few decades before China itself. Taiwan's engineers now lead the pack in what must be one of the the most punishing technology areas - semiconductor manufacturing. In less punishing areas mainland China leads the world in manufacturing. Yes, part of that is to do with having cheap labour, but you don't get to be the best at the world at anything by sitting on your hands. Every time someone business figures out how to build something cheaper than anyone else on the planet they have been innovating, and China has done this many, many times. What is different about China is an attitude. It was crystallised for me by a Australian Documentary titled "Two Men in China". One of those men was formerly Australia's chief scientist. They walked into a typical Chinese apartment. Very small, but it had all the latest gadgets. Then they showed the doors had fallen off some cupboards. In fact a whole pile of things had broken a few weeks after the couple had moved in. This was considered perfectly normal - they even had a word for it (which I forget). In extreme cases it leads to things like baby formula suppliers adding melamine (a poison) to get the protein readings up to spec. (Australia's baby formula industry has done very well out of that little episode, so well there fights in the baby food isles appears on the nightly TV news as Chinese expats empty the shelves to make a quick buck. Turns out that _really_ pisses of local mothers with a hungry baby in their arms.) If you read stories on HN you come to the conclusion this attitude must pervade the entire business culture. Building falling down because of sub-par concrete, stories of "we sent them a spec, they built it well for a while, then someone notices part X had been replaced by a cheaper version" is a very common thread. Anybody who does business in China has to spend an inordinate any of money verifying all their suppliers are not cutting corners. Americans are coming face to face with this now Amazon has allow the Chinese suppliers unrestricted access. Fake products, fake reviews, fake suppliers, fake purchases on other products leading to critical reviews, bribes for fake reviews - any scam that might work even only for a short term is being tried. Now imagine living in the country where that is how all business is done. Is it is at all surprising someone bought a system with face recognition, only to discover later it could be fooled by a photo? If you are thinking China can't innovate you are just plain wrong. If you are pinning your hopes they will be perpetually held back by corruption you might be right (things look bleak under the current leadership) - but it's also possible they could turn into another Taiwan or South Korea, albeit with 1.3 billion people. If that happens we will see innovation on a scale we have never seen before.