Guest post by Ethnologist Tricia Wang, via TechRice, writes on The Future of Computing in China. Touching upon such issues as culture, cloud vs super computing, and Silicon Valley vs Massachussetts’s Route 128, she builds a case that, despite great strides and individual successes and brilliance, China’s computing future will move in a different (perhaps slower) direction compared to the WestAccording to the article, this difference will be due to a lack of trust towards counterparts and government, no community spirit among developers, and no common “myth” or “story” among Chinese developers (where the Western computer community has the shared myth of resistance to top-down education, fighting for the cause of self-directed learning and exploration).
On the upside, China still has hope for computing advancement, but by developing its own model of growing trust based on cross-border links among its diaspora and cross-boundary links between people involved in not only computing by also art and design.
Editor’s note: I was speaking this week with an executive from a large, US-based private equity firm that focuses in China. He recounted to me that this lack of trust is pervasive and is a terrible problem for up-and coming companies in China, because when they try to attract investors, even if they have solid profits and have been audited by respectable Western auditing firms, nobody believes their numbers, so they often can only get valuations that are less than one year’s revenue.
In contrast, it’s not uncommon for profitable firms in the Bay Area to garner 10x or higher valuations. Why the lack of trust in what should be hard numbers? It’s likely because of a history of cooking the books and shady, opaque public-private financing and partnerships. In other words, it’s not just the distrust that various Chinese concerns have for one another: as eager as potential investors and partners are to partake in China’s economic miracle, they’re no dummies. They share the distrust.
This idea that only innovation matters and everything else is worthless is just so wrong. Innovation has become the buzzword of the decade.
The problem here is this western centric thinking. In the west you have no choice but to innovate. In Asia we still have lots of other options so innovation isn’t a big priority. It’s economics, basically.
In Asia we have lots and lots of cheap labour but capital is expensive and hard to come by. So if you have money in Asia you can easily earn more money by just following the safe route of setting up a factory, small store or some other tried and tested method. In the west labour is expensive while capital is cheap. So you have lots of money that you can gamble on new inventions. If you succeed people praise you as innovative. If you fail no one hears about you.
When China or any other Asian country becomes rich innovation comes naturally. All the safe methods of employing capital no longer provide the return that they used to so people start innovating. So that is why the West innovates and the East produces.
OSbunny,
I found the article way too long to hold my interest, but I do think your comment hit upon some differences.
In a business class we went over cultural differences and one of them was that eastern cultures value collective merit or success whereas western cultures emphasise individual merit or success. Although I suspect western thinking is contaminating the eastern thinking these days.
Maybe you could give some insight into some of these differences from your perspective?
In the US, all too often a few industry celebrities take the credit for the work everyone else has done, and the US media is all too happy to give it to them.
Fascinating article, thanks for posting it.
Being in IT about half of the people I work with are of Chinese ethnicity. Some are US citizens, some are Chinese citizens. A few are from Taiwan or are Hong Kong people, but most are from mainframe China (PRC).
My personal experience with these folks would not tend to support what I read in the article. I don’t see cultural differences at work in some way detrimental to China’s development. But of course this is based only on experience with Chinese in the US, rather than in China! I have never been to China and do not speak Chinese. I will definitely ask my many Chinese co-workers if they agree with the article or not.
I love the mainframe comment!
Anyways, I had worked with Mainland Chinese programmers in my company.
So, what are the interesting things about working with Mainland Chinese programmers? They usually understand the (right wing) South Korean government’s policies of internet censorship better than your average South Korean programmers. They seem to have a bigger picture of utilizing programming languages other than C++, of course, than your average South Korean programmers.
The Big Iron Rice Bowl.
This guy has his head stuffed too far up his own libertarian ass.
Silicon valley happened because California had the most access to the few computers on earth at the time. Jobs, Woz and Gates happened to be the rich kids that got to use them.
Electronic manufacturing has moved to China. From the chip fabs to the (retail)packaging. As long as China keeps training engineers they will eventually cut the west out of the process.
The Chinese government owns majority share in all Chinese companies. That’s where the money comes from and that’s where the profits return.
Innovation happens everywhere, especially where your not looking. Who’s this guy kidding other than himself?