Chinese Syndrome

By Regina Abrami

The Chinese invented gunpowder, the compass, the waterwheel, paper money, long-distance banking, the civil service and merit promotion. Today, though, many believe that the West is home to creative business thinkers and innovators, and that China is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners — a place where R&D is diligently pursued but breakthroughs are rare.

When we ask why, the answers vary. Some people blame the engineers. “Most Chinese start-ups are not founded by designers or artists, but by engineers who don’t have the creativity to think of new ideas or designs,” argues Jason Lim, an editor at the website Tech-Node. Others blame the government for the unprecedented scale of its failure to protect intellectual property rights.

Apple’s products have been pirated the world over, they point out, but only China has opened entirely fake Apple stores filled with employees who think they work for the US company. Still others blame the Chinese education system, with its modernised version of what the Japanese scholar Ichisada Miyazaki calls “China’s examination hell”.

How can students so completely focused on test scores possibly be innovators? From our decades of field experience and research in China, and the dozens of case studies we have collectively produced, we see some merit in all those views (but we must point out that many of the most innovative Western firms were founded by engineers).

From “Why China Can’t Innovate”