These two are really funny...
#37 15 years ago, China was 14th in the world in published scientific research articles. But now, China is expected to pass the United States and become number one very shortly.
#38 China now awards more doctoral degrees in engineering each year than the United States does.
I used to work for Micron (semiconductor industry). Many years ago we explored options to either partner with Chinese companies and/or expanding in mainland China, we already had partnerships with Taiwanese companies. Micron is practically obsessive/compulsive regarding data collection/analyses, even more so than Samsung. Some would say grossly overkill. Anyway, we studied the differences between mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. Everything from production floor environment to executive officers, from education to training, from experience to creativity. We did all this under the radar, from doing with our own people to hired technical consultants. Nothing illegal or even unethical. Just good business sense.
To a team, mainland China ranks the lowest in terms of creativity, from Production to Executive. Oddly enough, the most enthusiastic were technicians and engineers to do the proverbial 'thinking outside the box'. Not the executive ranks. Managers are foremost political animals, even if a manager came from the engineering ranks. I know executive 'suits' who came from Production. Like my old boss...
Steve Appleton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Appleton averaged one promotion per year in his entire career at Micron. Like most, I never knew the guy personally, but he was at least respected throughout and I was saddened at his death.
Anyway, even though guys like Appleton are rarities in the US, they are not unknown but they are even more rare in China. In the US, a manager is a political animal in the restricted sense of corporate politics. But in China, executive managers in corporate China are beholden to The Party and every decision must be analyzed through the ideological prism set by The Party. The result, then, now, and most likely for a long time to come, is that creativity throughout corporate China is considerably stifled when compared to the enormous human intellectual potential. I know (and works with) Chinese engineers who initially were hesitant at making decisions that literally could halt an entire product line for weeks, from the fab all the way to shipping, just on their 'because I say so'. To them, that kind of decisions are restricted to the 'suits' and would take weeks, if not months, to make. In the mean time, deficient or even defective products continues to go to customers.
We all make mistakes, including US. But we do not hesitate to empower the human will to exercise authority to correct mistakes, the same will that is on a par with creativity that gave the world so much technological advances. So as long as The Party continues to have its tentacles deep into corporations, from top to mid or even low level managerial levels, all that patents and degrees are next to useless and China will continue to remain our manufacturing -- not inventive -- partners.
Sad part for the Chinese members here is that none of them have any industrial and/or manufacturing experience to
DIRECTLY relate to what I am saying...
