While doing some research on my next writing project I came across an old blog post from 2007, a conversation with a well-educated Chinese friend who lives and works in Shanghai, though she is originally from Sichuan province. I found the blog post re-enlightening in light of the narrative fiction making the rounds about the relationship between Confucian subservience and educational wherewithal around the world:
A casual lunch with an old Chinese friend at a Cantonese restaurant in Shanghai started me to thinking more deeply about China and innovation. Susan (not her real name) works for a consultancy that is concentrating on developing infrastructure for companies focusing on IT-related fields, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and R&D. She took her undergraduate study in Scandanavia, and her masters in Economics in the UK. She is a bright, thoughtful person who seems to actually think about things outside the purview of her immediate responsibilities in marketing.
Over a meal of rice-and-seafood soup, Chinese brocolli, pork wrapped in rice flour envelopes, and chopped green beans cured in vinegar and stir fried with pork and chili peppers we talked about her work and travels throughout China to cities that are driving hard to become information hubs. The topic of innovation came up when she mentioned.“The Chinese returnees from Western countries – especially America – are not optimistic about innovation in China.” Many returnees with advanced technical degrees from other countries receive subidies from the national- and local-governments to locate in China and carry on their R&D activities and indulge in their entrepreneurial instincts.
Surprised to hear her say it so plainly, as a Chinese herself, I asked why. She explained, “One Chinese PhD in semiconductor research returned to Hangzhou. He is having a very difficult time adjusting. He said the Chinese cannot think for themselves.” I noted that she herself is a returnee and that she seems to be managing quite well. She responded, “Though I was away for six years studying, I still returned in my twenties. It’s easier for me adjust. I’m more Chinese than he is.”
I pressed her on just why she thought China is not primed for innovation. She insisted one of the main reasons was the education system. “If you put a Chinese, a Japanese and an American in a room and give them a math test, the Chinese will easily come out number one. But if you give them all a problem to solve that requires using different ways of thinking and some creativity, the Chinese will come in last. The Chinese education system stresses theory over practice. Students don’t have any experience in what they study.”
Some may argue – as I have in previous articles – that China is at the same point in its innovation curve as Japan was in the early sixties. At that time, Japanese goods were the butt of many jokes in America, because the quality of the goods was so poor. Indeed, I remember a transistor radio I had as a kid in the sixties disintegrating in my hands, copper wires all exposed outside the cracked eggshell-thin plastic casing. However, Japan had already had a long history of innovation, Western-style, from the Meiji Resoration through World War II. Much of the effort, however, was driven by militarists that saw themselves as the rightful lords of all of Asia. One of the most deadly innovations of the time was the Japanese Zero, a fighter aircraft that was faster and more maneuverable than anything the Allies had for several years into the war. Since the mid-eighties, the Japanese have filed more patents than anyone bar the United States.
Susan also brought up a point I had never considered before, nor that I had heard anyone previously proffer: the way parents bring up their children in China is different from the way parents do in Japan and South Korea. “Chinese parents,” she said, “do not give their children much choice in what they should study. The most important thing is studying the for examinations. The parents put a lot of pressure on careers that will bring in money the child can use to support the rest of the family.” This is an important point in light of the increasing burden a single child will have to carry as the the new century develops. It is called the 1-2-4 problem: one child will have to support two parents and four grandparents. The strain will become greater on the children as in twenty years or so the elderly population explodes. Very few children will have the luxury then of saying to their parents, “I want to be a poet.” They will have to early on become bread-winners to support a stable of relatives. Creativity will be a fleeting consideration.
Finally, Susan offered, the Chinese legal system does not protect innovation. If a Chinese invents something new, it will be copied without remuneration and without shame within months. Westerners have only just been learning this over the last few years. Chinese have known this for millenia. Without proper protections, Chinese will be loathe to create something new and not be able to reap the full benefits of their efforts and contribution.
It seemed the whole time we had been chatting that I had been the only one eating. Susan had eaten some of her preferred dishes – the string beans and the soup – but had otherwise devoted herself to the conversation.
Afterword: Since that conversation three years ago I have met up with Susan a couple more times. She is a mother now, still working in Shanghai, unable to see her husband and child but once a month at most, since his job is in Sichuan (her parents take care of the baby). Her parents are forcing her to make a change out of commercial real estate marketing into the finance sector. “All my friends are in finance,’ she told me last time we met, “and they all make more money than I do, my parents remind me all the time. ‘Besides,’ they’re always saying, ‘you have a child now, you have to think about her.’” She smiled, “So, the next time we meet, I’ll probably be in finance!”
