Chinese Cannot Innovate

If it weren’t for messes, human rights abuses and a mockery of justice, the Chinese could not innovate a thing.

Here is a scholarly look at this truism.

Excerpt

BY JACK DINI – China ranks 151st out of 181 countries in the World Bank’s annual survey of environments for entrepreneurs. “China has a long way to go before it will be anything like the US in its ability to foster innovation or entrepreneurship,” says Daniel Altman. (1)

Yet hardly a week goes by without a headline pronouncing that China is about to overtake the US and other advanced economies in the innovation game. Patent filings are up, China is exporting high-tech goods, the West is doomed. Or so goes the story line. (2)

So, what is innovation? According to Wikipedia, “Innovation is the development of new customer value through solutions that meet new needs, unarticulated needs, or old customer and market needs in new ways. This is accomplished through different or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society.”

As Steve Lohr reports, “Innovation is a tricky thing to measure. Patents are the most widely used yardstick, but they are an imperfect gauge of innovation at best. A November 2011 report by Thompson Reuters tries to draw a more accurate link between corporate patent filings and real innovation. It does so by measuring not only the number of patents a company files but also the influence, global reach and success of its patents. The result is a list of the 100 most innovative companies in the world, not ranked, just in or out. Most of the names on the list are no surprise. Forty percent are from America, including IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Boeing, Exxon Mobile, and Intel. One surprise! Not a single Chinese company is on the list. Yet China has become the most prolific patent filer in the world, pursuing a national plan to become an economy based on innovation rather than imitation.” (3)

Yet there is less here than meets the eye. Over 95% of the Chinese applications were filed domestically with the State Intellectual Property Office. The vast majority cover Chinese ‘innovations’ that make only tiny changes on existing designs. In many other cases, a Chinese filer ‘patents’ a foreign invention in China with the goal of suing the foreign inventor for ‘infringement’ in a Chinese legal system that doesn’t recognize foreign patents. (2)

Link

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/china-struggles-with-innovation/123