Nickname: Lets be objective...

Review: Academia is a place of research among other things looking at the past and also at ID'ing trends. In this case, a trend has emerged which the author has thought interesting. So lets look into the past at so called "developing economies" such as Jpn in 60s, the 4 Newly industrialising Eco (NIEs)of Singap, S.Korea, Taiwan + HK of the 70s + 80s who followed the "shortcut" to industrialising. ie by "copying" + Reverse-Engin. As ppl working in competitive industries such as Finance, Car, IT etc would know "Industrial Espionage" (ie copying) is everywhere. Anyone wanting to start a business and compete HEAD-ON with an established rival is almost suicidal as the resources and Mgmt know-how required is too great. most would prefer to compete on other qualities such as price and features or diff areas. Some interesting egs - Tv sets were long dominated by US makers were initially copied by Japn, Korean + now chinese makers before their own innovations surpassed US manufacturing tech. How many well-regarded US TV makers do you know of? Look also at cars, mobile phones and PCs, over the next decade you will see emerge in China / India the next Toyotas, Samsung, TSMC, Honda

Date reviewed: Aug 13, 2008 1:39 PM

Nickname: holywhiner

Review: the only thing we can learn from China is to stop whining. someone unfortunately said that this is a nation of whiners.

Date reviewed: Jul 30, 2008 9:30 PM

Nickname: able

Review: China has no chance of long term success because of the top down hierarchical nature of Confucian culture and Communist society, which discourages any innovation which may lead to individual power (at the expense of the State). By contrast, India's democracy and freedom provide much better prospects. India and America are free societies which will CRUSH China.

Date reviewed: Jul 8, 2008 1:17 PM

Nickname: James

Review: I have been working in China for seven years and have heard all this before. You are forgetting one small thing, do you seriously think that a country run by the communist party can be open enough to create great new technologies to advance society, do you think a communist China could have ever developed the internet, computer networking, modern communications systems...I think NOT, to date thier greatest tecnological acheivement is The great Chinese Firewall, hardly anyone lining up to buy that...yet .

Date reviewed: Jan 17, 2008 1:58 AM

Nickname: JC

Review: Let's face it, there has not been fair in this planet for a long time. In some corner of the world, people can do nothing and make $1000 or more a month, such as in some welfare systems. While in other corner, people perform highly skillful work make less than $50 for same period of time. Sooner or later the balance will change and need to be changed. People who learn hard and work hard will be rewarded and those who learn and work badly will suffer. The longer the governments try to make the imbalance in place, the worst will become for later generations. The West, including the US, is hopelessly looking at China, India and other countries who can make things cheaper as well better the same time for anything can move across the borders.

Date reviewed: Jan 25, 2006 11:42 PM

Nickname: globalworld

Review: Depends on what the author means by "staying ahead." And why such a focus on "national leadership" as opposed to "consumer well-being"? Clearly, this professor of business has forgotten the basic objective of free markets -- to maximize consumer well-being. (For instance, he takes the example of what happened to Britain when it lost technological leadership to the U.S. OK, tell us what happened? Was Britain worse off as a result? Go read Krugman, man.) Tongo's appears to be the only sensible voice in this debate.

Date reviewed: Jan 20, 2006 12:42 AM

Nickname: ugo

Review: Phenomena in China is something that will definetly happen to the rest of the world eventually. It is obvious that investors will look for countries with cheap production costs and abundant labor resources. Where do you think they will go? Obviously the choices are China, India, Indonesia and other typical countries. With the advent of Internet and globalization, knowledge and technology transfer is inevitable. It's just a matter of time before knowledge and technology would finally be everywhere and one of the most important agents to this shift is transnational corporations. For the U.S, China or other countries, the key in facing this problem is to keep learning and exchange knowledge. U.S and China learn from each other and the rest of the world would see and also learn.

Date reviewed: Jan 20, 2006 12:24 AM

Nickname: Tongo

Review: Everyone seems to see any advancement of another country as a treat to their own. I just want to ask why. The benefit others gain is not a zero-sum game. We all will benefit from a prosperous country such as China. One should look at it from a global prospective. US, Japan, and W. Europe are like individual engines for advancement in science and technology for the rest of the world, but by adding a much improved China we now have another big engine. This will help to push new groundbreaking R&D and new technology for the benefit of all humanity. Before, some new science and technology breakthrough will not be available until much later or worse never be discovered. With China on board it is mathematically possible we could now be living and using technology a decade or two ahead of our time. This added horsepower to the world would benefit us all ranging from bio/genics, space, medicine, electronics, etc.

Date reviewed: Jan 19, 2006 7:57 PM

Nickname: tgj1912

Review: I always love it when college-professor types start talking about liberalizing (increasing) work visas (knowing that his job is perfectly safe from outsourcing or going to a work-visa holder). The fact of the matter is that work visas like H-1B and L-1 are being abused by Corporate America (to cut Stateside labor costs). Robert Lutz in his book "Guts" described how engineers are treated like "rock stars" in Europe and Asia. In the U.S. however we seem to do everything we can to discourage Americans from seeking a career in technical fields.

Date reviewed: Jan 19, 2006 5:23 PM

Nickname: pessimistic

Review: Unfortunately, we are (in the US) and most of the so- called developed world, paying the price for our insatiable appetite for cheap goods. Now is is time to pay the piper, and pay the piper we will. The inability and absolute lack of motivation on the part of most US companies and workers to once again become competitive and treat this for what it is, an economic war, will lead to only one thing. That is, that we are the ones destined to become the second world country. How sad that we now have to rely on the likes of Hyundai to build state-of-the-art plants to put Americans on the assembly line. That's just the beginning of what's to come.

Date reviewed: Jan 19, 2006 3:14 PM