China has gotten itself onto the world economic stage through an undervalued Yuan and low tech products.  Sure, they have a few companies, like Haier, whose two-piece air conditioners are innovative, but, lately, the government is pushing to shift its industrial might to higher tech.  Indeed, that is the underlying motivation for the new employment rules that went into effect, last year, which put over 20 million migrant workers out of jobs and about a million businesses, in Guangdong, out of business.  I suppose it is the misguided justification for Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s microcomputer business, a few years ago (IBM, on the other hand, has flourished since then because of their change in emphasis; Carly Fiorina of HP lost her job as CEO over her purchase of Compaq, almost a decade ago).

The bigger problem that China faces, in this attempted shift, as we see it, is the education system.  As part of Mao’s cultural revolution, all comrades were supposed to be equal.  Women were de-feminized (see our blog entry, in Leona Crag Art Blog: Why are Chinese girls so popular), and academics were imprisoned because Mao did not like the ivory tower.  The result is that, today, the education system, in China, is very poor.  Students are taught to memorize, and, even at the college level, students are pretty much told what they need to memorize to pass exams.  The whole system is devoid of creativity, which is the benchmark for innovation and development of the pool of knowledge, which is the key to technological development.

We can compare this to the German-U.S.-Russian experience.  In the first half of the twentieth century, Germany had many good scientists.  People, like Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein were all German and were responsible for the beginning of modern physics, including quantum theory and relativity.  During WW2, many of them immigrated to the U.S., and after the war, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union split up the leftovers.

Even though the Soviet Union was communist-socialist, they were smart enough to recognize the value of education, in general, and science, in particular.  Over the past century, as a result, there were many great physicists from Germany, U.S., and Russia.  As a result of the Chinese communist policies towards education and academia, there is a dearth of scientist and creative minds, today, in China, even though China’s population far exceeds those of these other industrial and scientific giants (even a blind pig finds an acorn, once in a while).

We, now, also read reports about Chinese trying to steal technology from both Germany and the U.S.  That was also the case with Japan, several decades ago, but countries have gotten, at least, somewhat smarter about keeping their technology secrets.  For China to become a technological giant will take a total revamp of their education system unless they happen to get lucky from the law of large numbers.

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