Loading ...I know I havent been around (the blog) much lately.. just havent been motivated to write.. I mean, you guys already know I think it sucks to be in Taiwan.. and my days just havent been very eventful.. anyhow, I just read this article on Slashdot.. here’s the excerpt:
The New York Times’ Chris Buckley reports that China is the new hotbed of advanced technology research and development for hundreds of global technology companies. The list includes household names like Oracle (which ‘opened a lab in Beijing to tailor its Linux operating software to suit its Asian customers’), Motorola, Siemens, IBM, Intel, General Electric, Nokia and others. Microsoft Research Asia hopes Google-surpassing technology comes from a group of ‘10 researchers … working on new ways to drill deep into the Internet and select and organize the information found there.’ Growth of the R&D sector in China is so rapid that ‘within five years China could overtake Britain, Germany and Japan as a base for corporate research, leaving it second only to the United States.
When I find an interesting article on Slashdot, I’ll usually read the comments to see what views and comments people have on the article.. lots of times people inject a lot of information that was not in the article or links provided.. and if you’ve read Slashdot before, you know people just dont “throw” out random facts because they’re usually challenged by the other geeks.. anyhow.. in reading the comments.. I read this one (below).. and it pretty much sums up what I think about China also.. so instead of writing my own opinion, I’ll just cut and paste this guy’s :smile:..
Re:Is “insourcing” a word? (Score:3, Insightful)
by uradu (10768) on Wednesday September 15, @01:48AM (#10247953)What all the newcomers will eventually find out is what the early “adopters” already have: that China is an industrial Black Widow. It wines and dines and flatters corporations it has interest in, gets them to commit major resources to China and thus into a vulnerable situation, and then it scavenges them to the highest degree possible for technical know-how and IP [intellectual property]. It’s happened with heavy technology companies, it’s happened with electronics companies, it’s happening with car manufacturers. And yet they are still all drawn to China by their money-grubbing little hearts. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if in the long run most of these western corporations won’t benefit much or any at all from that mythical Chinese exploding consumer and workforce base. But they will lose a lot of their technical advantage in the process, when all of a sudden they find themselves competing in their own home markets with either cheap and cheeky clones of their own products, or with cheap products heavily influenced by IP they so willingly handed to China as the price of doing business there. Of course, in their minds that will only happen to their competitors, not to themselves.
Of particular note is how this guy mentioned that its happened to car companies.. and thats what I heard when I was in China.. I heard VW was basically screwed out of their “car making knowledge”.. VW (was forced) to partner with a local company.. once the local company got what they needed (the knowledge) they embarked on their own money making ventures.. when I was in Shanghai, a co-worker would repeatedly point out vehicles that looked like VWs (like Jettas or Foxes) and tell me how those aren’t really Volkswagens and the logo, although it looked identical to me, was not the same (he said it was bigger).. go figure..