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Can those numbers be trusted? https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-about-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anythin

by rvba 6y ago

Can those numbers be trusted? https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-about-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-a...

bserge 6y ago
At the very least we know Chinese companies (and by extension, the government) do indeed spend a lot on research, development and production. The sheer amount of tech made and shipped from China is astonishing. And the quality has massively improved, while prices stay low. Everything from amazing BGA reballing stations to high quality solar panels and power tools.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  A lot of that IP was stolen from US and EU companies. Cost isn't the only reason that manufacturing is moving out of China; companies are finally realizing that using Chinese factories is tantamount to giving the PRC access to all of your technical IP.
  - 0_____0 6y ago
    was the same not true with Japan? at some point China may move past Western nations in practical sophistication, and start making better stuff. example: you want a photography drone? Like, the best commerical one available? It's a Chinese product. Most of the other stuff on the market doesn't come close. The closest we had domestically in the US was 3D systems, and then went under if I recall correctly.
  - moreorless 6y ago
    > A lot of that ip was stolen from US and EU companies You can even go as far as ALL of that IP was stolen. Not only from US and EU, but Japanese, Peruvian, Jamaican, Mexican, as well as Brazilian. We all know that Chinese are NOT capable of innovation.
    - dang 6y ago
      > "We all know that Chinese are NOT capable of innovation" That's a slur, you can't do that here, and we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. That means, at minimum, not posting unsubstantive comments and not posting nationalistic (or other) flamebait, both of which your account was unfortunately doing a lot of. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fakeslimshady 6y ago
    Like 5G LOL. All knowledge and engineering is built on previous works of many others. Seems like Tesla and Apple have been successful there
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    That's an incredibly short-sighted way of looking at what's happening. If you want to become a Chef, you don't start by inventing new Michelin star dishes de novo. You copy your betters. Over and over and over. Then, once you learn how they do what they do, you innovate. Japan did this. Do not underestimate China.
    - xenospn 6y ago
      There's one major difference - Japanese companies took mediocre western tech (autos, transistor radios) and made it better. Chinese companies just copy.
      - chillacy 6y ago
        Everybody copies at first, then they start making state of the art improvements. It takes time though, Toyota was founded in 1937, they started by reverse engineering Chrystler cars (they were surprisingly open about this in the Toyota museum). Chinese companies got started maybe around the 1980s with market reforms.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      The difference is that a chef-in-training works for the Michelin-star chef in the "better" chef's restaurant, and then leaves to start their own restaurant. China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products. This cycle has already happened to over a dozen former clients. I went in-house years ago, but even before then my firm had begun discouraging companies from opening manufacturing facilities in China for any product with any sort of valuable technical IP.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        > The difference is that a chef-in-training works for the Michelin-star chef in the "better" chef's restaurant, and then leaves to start their own restaurant. > China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products. "working for" then "starting their own" yeah. See, you get it. Your analogy gets even better, just not in ways you expected, in that people who go work at Michelin starred restaurants in the kitchen do so for low-to-zero wages because the real benefit is the experience they're gaining initially.
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    This rhetoric is becoming more and more false with time... https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-property-theft-progress/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-prop...
    - godelski 6y ago
      Your source seems to support the gp's argument. It was written just under a year ago and is talking about a deal not struck. > According to some reports, Chinese IP theft has cost the United States $225 billion to $600 billion a year. No wonder, then, that getting China to better protect IP is a point of rare consensus among both the White House and the Democratic leadership. This isn't a small chunk of change. In fact, this is comparable to the R&D budgets the main article is talking about. It then says > But history tells us to be cautious; Washington’s demands are unrealistic. Countries do not enact strong IP rights systems until their ability to innovate at home displaces reliance on outside knowledge. The United States’ own century long drift toward strong protections is a case in point. Which the tldr is: don't expect it to work. So I'm not sure why this becomes less true over time, as this is very recent and doesn't seem to have changed anything. Sure, other countries did it too, but why does that matter? Doesn't make it right.
      - justicezyx 6y ago
        The subtitle literally writes: The country is making the transition from net importer of ideas to net innovator, and as it does, it is finding that good patent laws matter.
- rococode 6y ago
  Yeah, the specific numbers don't matter so much as the desired narrative behind the numbers. Clearly, the government wants to boost R&D. Regardless of whether or not they have to "adjust" their numbers for one specific year, the fact is that they've set their goalposts at double the R&D growth of the west (both US and EU are at around 5% R&D growth [1]). Unless in reality they're not even halfway reaching their goals, they're going to overtake the US and EU in spending at some point, probably pretty soon. The graph in the link below (published by the US gov) is quite clear. One of those lines is obviously not like the others. [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/global-r-d https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/global-r-d
Aperocky 6y ago
Most R&D are gov sponsored and comes with receipts, so they are mostly true. Of course a decent amount get lost due to corruption, but that's always the case.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Not really.
fakeslimshady 6y ago
More than anything from Trump's mouth

by rvba 6y ago

Can those numbers be trusted? https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-about-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-a...

bserge 6y ago

At the very least we know Chinese companies (and by extension, the government) do indeed spend a lot on research, development and production. The sheer amount of tech made and shipped from China is astonishing. And the quality has massively improved, while prices stay low. Everything from amazing BGA reballing stations to high quality solar panels and power tools.

gamblor956 6y ago
A lot of that IP was stolen from US and EU companies. Cost isn't the only reason that manufacturing is moving out of China; companies are finally realizing that using Chinese factories is tantamount to giving the PRC access to all of your technical IP.
- 0_____0 6y ago
  was the same not true with Japan? at some point China may move past Western nations in practical sophistication, and start making better stuff. example: you want a photography drone? Like, the best commerical one available? It's a Chinese product. Most of the other stuff on the market doesn't come close. The closest we had domestically in the US was 3D systems, and then went under if I recall correctly.
- moreorless 6y ago
  > A lot of that ip was stolen from US and EU companies You can even go as far as ALL of that IP was stolen. Not only from US and EU, but Japanese, Peruvian, Jamaican, Mexican, as well as Brazilian. We all know that Chinese are NOT capable of innovation.
  - dang 6y ago
    > "We all know that Chinese are NOT capable of innovation" That's a slur, you can't do that here, and we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. That means, at minimum, not posting unsubstantive comments and not posting nationalistic (or other) flamebait, both of which your account was unfortunately doing a lot of. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fakeslimshady 6y ago
  Like 5G LOL. All knowledge and engineering is built on previous works of many others. Seems like Tesla and Apple have been successful there
- arcticbull 6y ago
  That's an incredibly short-sighted way of looking at what's happening. If you want to become a Chef, you don't start by inventing new Michelin star dishes de novo. You copy your betters. Over and over and over. Then, once you learn how they do what they do, you innovate. Japan did this. Do not underestimate China.
  - xenospn 6y ago
    There's one major difference - Japanese companies took mediocre western tech (autos, transistor radios) and made it better. Chinese companies just copy.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      Everybody copies at first, then they start making state of the art improvements. It takes time though, Toyota was founded in 1937, they started by reverse engineering Chrystler cars (they were surprisingly open about this in the Toyota museum). Chinese companies got started maybe around the 1980s with market reforms.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    The difference is that a chef-in-training works for the Michelin-star chef in the "better" chef's restaurant, and then leaves to start their own restaurant. China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products. This cycle has already happened to over a dozen former clients. I went in-house years ago, but even before then my firm had begun discouraging companies from opening manufacturing facilities in China for any product with any sort of valuable technical IP.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      > The difference is that a chef-in-training works for the Michelin-star chef in the "better" chef's restaurant, and then leaves to start their own restaurant. > China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products. "working for" then "starting their own" yeah. See, you get it. Your analogy gets even better, just not in ways you expected, in that people who go work at Michelin starred restaurants in the kitchen do so for low-to-zero wages because the real benefit is the experience they're gaining initially.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  This rhetoric is becoming more and more false with time... https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-property-theft-progress/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-prop...
  - godelski 6y ago
    Your source seems to support the gp's argument. It was written just under a year ago and is talking about a deal not struck. > According to some reports, Chinese IP theft has cost the United States $225 billion to $600 billion a year. No wonder, then, that getting China to better protect IP is a point of rare consensus among both the White House and the Democratic leadership. This isn't a small chunk of change. In fact, this is comparable to the R&D budgets the main article is talking about. It then says > But history tells us to be cautious; Washington’s demands are unrealistic. Countries do not enact strong IP rights systems until their ability to innovate at home displaces reliance on outside knowledge. The United States’ own century long drift toward strong protections is a case in point. Which the tldr is: don't expect it to work. So I'm not sure why this becomes less true over time, as this is very recent and doesn't seem to have changed anything. Sure, other countries did it too, but why does that matter? Doesn't make it right.
    - justicezyx 6y ago
      The subtitle literally writes: The country is making the transition from net importer of ideas to net innovator, and as it does, it is finding that good patent laws matter.
rococode 6y ago
Yeah, the specific numbers don't matter so much as the desired narrative behind the numbers. Clearly, the government wants to boost R&D. Regardless of whether or not they have to "adjust" their numbers for one specific year, the fact is that they've set their goalposts at double the R&D growth of the west (both US and EU are at around 5% R&D growth [1]). Unless in reality they're not even halfway reaching their goals, they're going to overtake the US and EU in spending at some point, probably pretty soon. The graph in the link below (published by the US gov) is quite clear. One of those lines is obviously not like the others. [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/global-r-d https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/global-r-d

Aperocky 6y ago

Most R&D are gov sponsored and comes with receipts, so they are mostly true. Of course a decent amount get lost due to corruption, but that's always the case.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Not really.

fakeslimshady 6y ago

More than anything from Trump's mouth