Well, well, we have got an interesting new topic for our discussion this week: China as the copier of the world's technology. Your colleague, Dipta would like you to read the following articles discussing this issue:
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/24/202259.aspx,
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/e7e48a137b144110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html,
and http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=400000040&blog_post_id=300000630
This final one is really just a few-line entry in a blog discussion, however you might get some insight from it, as well.
You have until next Thursday to reply to this blog when I will also collect your final drafts for the Interview Report. Please, bring both word lists (for Topic #7 and Topic # 8) at that time.
Thanks, and as always, have fun,
Kinga
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10 comments:
China does have lots of fake stuffs, no matter what kind of products. As a personal experience, I have been to a place that sells all fake famous brand stuffs. Some people choose fake stuffs have several reasons; one of them is because of the price. For example, DVDs or CDs, the real ones are just too expensive, if it is fake, then the price is not even reach tenth of the real one. There are many bad sides in this situation, the cheap and fake stuffs do not have quality guarantee, and some can be broken and poisoned. For me, I do not like fake stuffs because the fake ones have bad quality and it is illegal. However, China does those copies because sometimes the real one is just too expensive for everyone to have it, in order to satisfy everyone, fake and cheap is the best thing at this point. In the end, we can not say this is an exactly a bad thing or a good thing because different people have different thoughts about this situation.
As a person who live in Beijing for 5 and a half years in total, I know how fast China has grown up.
The first time I went to China was year 1998. Telling, from what I have seen, Beijing was really dirty. Air was polluted, roads were dirty... in general, sanitation was very poor. Also, there were merely nothing at outside of downtown. Simply, country was not developed enough.
I left Beijing in 1999 and came back in 2003. by the time, Beijing was still not that much improved, yet some archaic objects have disappeared. Also, government was trying to develop the country. At this point, as Jolie has mentioned, the number of fake goods made/supported has increased.
I think it was 2005; when olympic was decided to be held in beijing, Development in China was boosted. Along with this, technology was developing, too.
not just fake goods, their science and engineering were developing as well. Just using fake goods as an example, they are becoming more real.
Before, China used to be classified as an undeveloped country. but with the speed in development now, in few years, china will be one of the most developed country.
In my point of view, the ability to copy something or someone else is a gift, almost as valuable as the gift to be able to create something new.
It might be true that China has been copying and modifying a lot of innovative techonology that have patents. However, it is not China to be blamed for the lack of action, but it is the companies that "originally" came up with the tech. If they don't think it is fair for Chinese companies to be imitating their products, don't just stand there and do something about it. Otherwise, I think the complaints should stop.
Furthermore, I think that the fact that China is copying techonology from other nation is helping the world to boost competition. Every time China copies a product, it is sold for a cheaper price and the product quality is as good as the original one. Therefore, they help, in a way, to bring in more competition so that companies can come up with more products that could better-suit the market.
As a chinese student,this topic really interests me. my home is in beijing, the capital city of china,as seunwan said, many years ago,there actually were something that make people unsatisfy,like enviromental problem, traffic problme,etc. but now, beijing is not half the city it used to be. it completely changed.as beijinger, i can witness the development of this big city. also it symbolizes the development of china basically. for example,in US, you can see alot of merchandise including clothes and digital stuff marked "made in china",one side, we can see that the price for labors is much less than those developping countries, another side, it can reflect the techonology and the ability of production.
about fake stuff, i think it's a normal phenomenon in most of developing countries. why there are alot of fake stuff, like DVD or digital camera, because the purchasing power in this country have not reach a certain level yet,besides, the price of those real ones is too expensive for most of people. as a ordinary person, i dont think there is some bad effect of it,if the quality of those fake stuff is no difference with those real one, and the price is just 1/10 of real one, why dont we but it. if the price of real ones go down, i think we will buy it.
I agree with eunsol, that this ability to copy is a gift almost as valuable as the gift to create and create something new and original. And I believe that with some development, China will eventually get to that point. On the second link there is a description that China has created an iPhone Clone but in the development of the so-called iClone, it turned out that the specs of the iClone is better than the iPhone itself. And also, electronics products made in China year by year are getting better and better in quality. What I am saying is that by at first copying and faking technology, it leaded into developing new and original technology. The technology itself now threatens famous brands because China's products is much more cheaper than famous brands' products. I guess this step will make China advance faster to become a leading country.
China's technology has been developing extremely well since the past decade. Their abundant human resources enable them to move and develop even better than the other big countries. Twenty years ago, China was not as big as now. The country used to be known as the "Curtain Bamboo" for its isolated relationship with other countries. However, as globalization and modernization takes place in this world, where every country seems to be unbounded with others, China slowly opens their “curtain” to the other countries. As a result, it has obtained and learnt new technologies.
Supported by its large number of population and human resources in China (currently it has up to 1.3 billion population), its technologies became more developed. It results in many great thinking and innovations. Nowadays, China is recognized as the number one copier in the world. There are many products that they have copied, including game consoles, computer, cars, etc. Mostly it is recognized to copy electronic devices.
The nature of good and bad depends on each individual. Copyrighted and patented products are extremely expensive and it causes us to think twice before buying a product. Commonly, we would choose to buy cheaper product which has the same quality as the expensive one. That’s the most common way of human thinking. However, considering the company whose product is plagiarized, it seems that we don’t give credits to those who invented the original product. Therefore, actually it’s a challenge for each company to produce products which are difficult to be copied. And like what Eunsol have said, it will enhance the competition in the world which leads to more developed technology.
I think China’s copying ability will be good for their economy for short term, but in the long run, their sons and daughters will blame their fathers for what they did. Economic development is not simply achieved by the amount of products produced. It grows with the other aspects of social values including authenticity, credibility, company or nation’s image, political system and so on. Many people are worrying about the dominance of China’s economy over the world, but, I think it will be not that easy as seen from their initial growth rate. Without the genuine social values, the economic growth simply can not sustain.
The problem with the copied product is not a world wide problem because everyone in the world prefers the cheaper copy version. It is a world wide problem because the genuine manufacturers are losing their biggest market in the world since Chinese people prefers the cheaper copied one over the original one for now. However, this trend will change over time as Chinese people’s values change and the society gets higher standard, even though it will take much longer to change the other world’s view about the Chinese products.
What made me surprised most is the Chinese company’s ability to copy the original manufacturing facility itself. It cannot be done without government’s acceptance or acquiescence, which is not really a good sign. As I said, without correcting these kinds of problems, China may have a hard time to be a real economic leader of the world.
I personally have never been to china so I have not seen the end products of the Chinese technology but I have definitely heard a lot about them.
In my opinion, every country has a lot of fake things to sell because it caters to a different segment of society who cannot afford to buy the expensive products of the original brands. So copying ‘technology’ is good for people who cannot buy the expensive gadgets and is bad for the companies as their brand image deteriorates.
People who copy the finished good can make it look like the original piece but cannot make it of the same quality which is very important. This practice is obviously not ethical because the brand value decreases and so does the consumer response. Countries like and china and other nations should stop this practice and respect the original brands as it is completely their creation.
The power of China (not only in the military and workforce issues) is increasing at a very quick rate. Although most of the people believe that China is not a technological efficient country, they are developing right now huge advances.
The cause why it is believed that China is not very developed in this area (technology), is that they have being copying technologies from Japan, Europe and America; and, they have even improve them.
Nowadays the technological power of China is evident. They have released their own satellites, they have one of the most important software and hardware enterprises (Lenovo) and they military technology is outstanding.
In fact, a huge part of today's economic importance of China is they technological prospective development. China is expected to be the next most powerful country, and in order to be that, apart from a huge workforce, it is essential an outstanding technological development.
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