It seems to me that your assertion that Asian countries "have a difficult time with creativity" is unproven. Yes, the culture encourages conformance. But it not

It seems to me that your assertion that Asian countries "have a difficult time with creativity" is unproven. Yes, the culture encourages conformance. But it not clear from anything you've cited thus far that either the Chinese government or a significant number of the Chinese people think their supposed lack of creative thinking is somehow holding them back. The government's recent ability to completely flout the spirit of the WTO rules while obeying them in the letter strikes me as fairly creative, for example. (I'm thinking of the defacto emabargo of rare earth metal exports to Japan, wherein "independently" several dozen exporters stopped shipping on the same day.) To cite the field of software and content for examples is a mistake, I believe, because it's based on a presupposition that IP can't, won't, or shouldn't approach zero cost. If I were a Chinese administrator, I wouldn't care much if the blogging software my people were using was a clone of something from the West nearly as much as I'd be concerned that their creativity of expression was kept within the bounds of the Greater Good.