China's Cultural Revolution is the reason why we have Chinese Copycats (kind of, sort of)

"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit) 01/25/2014 at 06:08 • Filed to: Chinese Cars, Chinese Knockoffs, Cultural Revolution

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As a prelude to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (which will focus on the People's Republic of China and its People's Liberation Air Force), one needs to understand the history of the PRC's aerospace industry. In order to understand that , one needs to understand the motivations of the Chinese Cultural Revolution - and how it not only failed in its goal, but in fact sent the PRC back in both industrial developments and resulted in massive atrocities committed against China's own people. Understanding, or at least mentioning, those atrocities is an important part of understanding the effects of the Cultural Revolution, just as the Holocaust is integral towards understanding Nazi leadership and government policies. However, this article will primarily focus on the Cultural Revolution's industrial ramifications.

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A (Very) Brief History of China

The genesis of China's Cultural Revolution lies ultimately in the dying days of China's great Empire. Throughout large chunks of the timeline of human civilization, the Chinese Empire was arguably the most advanced society on Earth. The most common and popular understanding of early Chinese history is a mix of fact and epic myth, and is among the most romanticized of societal origins: the Three Kingdoms period of warring factions who were mini-empires in their own right, and then eventually the unification of various disparate lands and people under Emperor Xin/Chin (whom we derive the name "China" from). From the Three Kingdoms period all the way to the year 1900 is where the classic impression most Westerners have of ancient China comes from: Shaolin Monks practicing both martial arts and mystic meditation, Imperial generals seemingly invincible in their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! -like deduction of their enemy's forces; great learned scholars recording the secrets of the universe.

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Like the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire was unusual in its stability and longevity; but also like the Roman Empire, it could not last forever, and eventually fell. Whether benign or simply bad, history shows that authoritarian governments eventually fall to internal and external pressures. In the case of China, it involves a very complex and diverse mix of forces. Pressure from Western governments who wanted to open up China for commercial development - and topple the ruling dynasty that was resistant to such commerce - was certainly one of those forces. There was also immense internal social pressure from very large portions of the population, particularly the peasant class, who felt that the dynastic tradition of government was failing them. More directly, the Empire of Japan began engaging China in open conflict as early as the turn of the 20th century, particularly in a number of key but little-known naval skirmishes; because Japan had earlier exposure to the West, they had access to more advanced weapons technology and had few issues with sending China's few modern iron-hulled warships to the bottom of shallow harbors and rivers (or in many cases, capturing them).

The whole point of this is to show that China had very little history or tradition with the type of mass-industrialized developments that characterized not only the West at the time, but pretty much every technological and cultural advancement since 1900. China didn't open up until the turn of the 20th century, and by then they were embroiled in both a brutal civil war and an equally brutal external conflict with Japan, ultimately culminating into the Second Sino-Japanese War - what we in the West mostly refer to as World War II. Superior Japanese technology and tactics meant very little in the way of stopping them, and Chinese cities were decimated along the way. It wasn't until the advent of British, Indian, Australian and particularly American involvement that military forces capable of repulsing the Japanese were available in-theater. Even then, upon the surrender of Japan, the brutal civil war that raged before the Japanese intervention - between the Communists and those who can be accurately described as wanting "something else" - nearly immediately resumed.

The Formation of the People's Republic of China

The Communist forces were, generally, far better organized than their Nationalist counterparts in nearly every criterion imaginable. The Nationalists had a number of things going for their side, to be sure. For starters, a surprisingly large number of very highly-trained, professional soldiers (and particularly, fighter pilots) left over from Imperial Japan were available to the Nationalists. Most of these were ethnic Chinese who felt loyal to the Nationalists; others were Koreans or even Japanese who were opposed to Communism, particularly those who felt Communist China had ramifications for the Korean Peninsula (which was indeed the case). The Nationalists also had the backing of the Western Powers, particularly the UK and the US. However, the Nationalists lacked clear leadership. Yes, Chiang Kai-shek is often recognized as the leader of the Nationalist forces but it was a very loosely defined leadership. Many of the so-called generals that lead the Nationalist army were glorified warlords hoping to escape domestic persecution by securing positions of leadership. Moreover, the Nationalists had very poorly-defined end goals, including for what kind of government they wished to establish. In contrast, the Communists had very clearly defined military and political goals which helped them secure more than enough domestic support to overwhelm the Nationalists. They also had the backing of the Soviet Union which was more than happy to help "export" Communism through any means they felt they can get away with. The Western Powers were (understandably) war-weary after WWII; while the Soviets shipped the Communist Chinese high-grade military kit including tanks and aircraft and even military "advisers," the Nationalists were often forced to contend themselves with hand-me-down Western equipment or even whatever the Japanese had surrendered and abandoned in-theater, usually in less than ideal condition (think Craigslist-quality). Given these conditions, it was somewhat inevitable that the Nationalists would be forced to retreat to the island of Formosa and establish their own nation-in-exile/refuge, surrendering the mainland completely to the Communists.

Finally Entering the 20th Century

Throughout an approximately fifty-year time period of near-constant war not only with Japan but with itself, there was understandably little opportunity for China to develop a manufacturing industry on par with the Western Powers. Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the People's Communist Party (and the de facto leader of the People's Republic) wanted to change that. Like Western Europe under the Marshall Plan, Japan and (South) Korea rebuilt and gained powerful manufacturing industries through direct American involvement and investment. Likewise, the People's Republic would receive assistance and investment from the Soviet Union - but Mao felt it important for the People's Republic to be largely responsible for its own industrial development. Furthermore, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic, the largest Communist nations by both land area and population, began to see each other as rivals on the international stage.

Mao's strategy for an industrialized China was known as the "Great Leap Forward" and "The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution" - an ambitious series of plans that would not only form China's industry into a supermodern economic powerhouse but reform China's culture to match. Large segments of the popular were re-organized to accommodate the development of industrial raw materials such as steel, often at a cottage level. Attempts were made to wipe out much of China's cultural heritage, particularly its religious heritage. Just as with Josef Stalin's "Five-Year Plans" that over-focused on industrial development at the expense of agriculture and sought to destroy societal elements he considered "undesirable" (resulting in what's basically Ukraine's own Holocaust), Mao's "Great Cultural Revolution" resulted in mass deaths from starvation, mass resistance from both the popular level and within the Communist Party's own ranks, and very little actual industrial development to show for it. The resistance towards Mao's plans were met with suspicion, paranoia and ultimately mass-executions. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! estimates that the number of Chinese citizens killed during the Revolution might equal or even exceed the number of Chinese deaths during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Having to Rebuild from Having to Rebuild

The "Cultural Revolution" didn't just leave the People's Republic with a net-zero gain; they had in fact lost much of their ability to self-industrialized as many of the brilliant minds most capable of engineering China's industry were murdered during Mao's Purges. This isn't referring to merely a few particularly gifted men within China's intelligentsia; this is literally tens of thousands of engineering students and other scholars - many who avoided murder but were nonetheless displaced. This left the People's Republic in an obvious quandary. The solution wasn't so much obvious as it was forced upon them - and the effects are still very visible today.

When Sino-Soviet relations were still warm, the Soviet Union gave the PRC advanced military technology, just as they had in order to help them win over the Nationalists. This equipment included, among other things, MiG-19 and MiG-21 interceptors; Tu-16 bombers; T-54/55 series tanks; AK-47s; blueprints for various warships and even submarines (and the weaponry to arm those warships). Upon delivery, all of the above were arguably the most sophisticated weaponry available to any military power. Then Sino-Soviet relations chilled, coinciding with the Cultural Revolution, and the People's Liberation Army found itself cut off from the weaponry gravy train. However, the military leadership felt that they were more than within their capability to simply copy these weapons - and later, improve upon them.

Thus, the Soviet's MiG-21 became !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ; the Tu-16 became !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ; the T-54 became !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and so on. They further re-purposed the MiG-19 design (also "remade" into the J-6) into a dedicated light attack-bomber called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and developed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a highly evolved twin-engine variant of the J-7 which became the equivalent to the Soviet Su-15 heavy interceptor. The problem was, the Cultural Revolution had set them so far back that by the time many of these aircraft were able to enter full production, they had become almost hopelessly obsolete and the Soviets had long moved on (to MiG-29s and Su-27 Flankers). For example, the H-6 reached initial operational status in the early 70s, but by then it was horrifically vulnerable to even a medium air defense network (the USAF had already been attempting a successor to the B-52 for years, already failing the Mach 3+ XB-70 and looking into what eventually became the B-1B; the Soviets began equipping their Tu-16s and Tu-95s with advanced long-range missiles that the Chinese initially lacked access to). The J-7 didn't reach full production capability until the 1980s, the same time frame the US began the export of the F-15 and F-16 fighters, the former in particular having improved Beyond Visual Range intercept/shoot-down capability with its advanced radar compared to the Vietnam War-era equipment the People's Liberation Air Force fielded. Perhaps the most antiquated "new" warplane in the Chinese fleet was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which was arguably obsolete upon initial manufacturing efforts and powered by WWII legacy-design jet engines. Its internal bombload of 3,000 kilograms is only a thousand more than the total warload of the smaller, faster and more flexible Q-5.

The legacy of the Cultural Revolution could go towards explaining why the Chinese !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Given the lack of industrial capability and the murder/displacement of much of their engineering talent, copying the best of what was available (often, if not usually illegally) wasn't just the most expedient means to ensure the viability of their armed forces, it was about the most practical option left on the table. The long gestation and manufacturing periods for much of this equipment - long after what most of the develop world would consider obsolescence - further suggests towards the endurance of this legacy. The story of Chinese aerospace is very different today. They have demonstrated not one but two stealth fighter designs, equal to the number the USAF currently has operational and one more than Russia has been able to demonstrate in the 21st century. That will be further discussed in A Brief History of Asian Stealth, Part 2 - The People's Republic of China.

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King Ginger, not writing for Business Insider > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 08:51

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Great write up!

mrexpat > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 09:45

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excellent.

sadfasdf > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 10:11

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Name one domestic auto industry that got started in the last 50 years that DIDN'T begin by copying (unlicensed or not) others' designs.

Axel-Ripper > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 10:24

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Also, with the automotive side you have to take into account that in order for a foreign manufacturer to play in the Chinese market (the biggest in the world at the moment) they HAVE to form a joint venture. This leads to things like thousands of top secret technical files being stolen and cars not being reverse engineered but basically being engineered FOR their companies to produce.

TadKosciuszko > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 10:29

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Hope part 2 mentions their efforts verge into much more than just "copying"- they're the most active nation in industrial espionage today, long ago having ripped the title out of France's hands.

Goshen, formerly Darkcode > Axel-Ripper 01/25/2014 at 10:43

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Hence, Qoros. Although it must be said that in that specific case it works both ways, since very few people would be tempted to buy an Israeli car, due to the foreign perception of the country.

Goshen, formerly Darkcode > sadfasdf 01/25/2014 at 10:44

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Production under licence is not copying.

PragmaticPanda > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 10:49

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Yes, your article is fine and all, but I would also add that Chinese culture has always considered replicas of art or anything else equivalent because it takes the same 'energy' to create it. I appreciate the 'sort of' part.

skyppl > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 10:49

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Great article

T-800 > sadfasdf 01/25/2014 at 11:01

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Domestic to where? Which country are you talking about? lol

ScreenShot > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 11:22

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Actually....in China/Asia, artisans over the centuries have learned from and payed homage to their ancestors by replicating works of art, tools, etc. It is a show of respect and a way to demonstrate your own skills.

Asian culture doesn't see it as being wrong in any way and if you look across history, the West has copied from the East on a routine basis as well.

Axel-Ripper > Goshen, formerly Darkcode 01/25/2014 at 11:27

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Yes, And I only know off hand of PTAC and SAIC, the two GM J-V companies.

CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 11:54

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It's not really culturally, it's the purges and cultural revolution that did it. It ravaged the country and fucked up it. The next Chinese president after Mao ordered the destruction/removal any idolization of Mao and demanded he would not be idolized like Mao.

MaWeiTao > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 13:51

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All-in-all this article covers some of the critical factors surprisingly well. However, some major factors are a lot more deep deep-seated and endemic throughout Asia, not just China. Culturally, the Chinese have always promoted the iterative over the revolutionary. There's a strong emphasis on established order over creating upheaval. It's endemic in their views of society and heavily reinforced by the educational system. It's evident today and goes back at least to the days of Confucius. Because Korean and Japanese cultures can trace many influences back to China a lot of these qualities are evident there as well.

I think this is the fundamental factor in why copying is so widespread, even in Japan. It isn't so apparent in the products that go overseas, but in the domestic market I'd say it's as common as what you'll find elsewhere in Asia. The unique quality with Japan is that they've so embraced the concept of refinement that often the copy is at least as good, if not better, than the original.

Although, the Chinese leadership loves to paint this history of a historically unified China that's not how their history unfolded at all. For most of that history China was fragmented, much like Europe. They've had countless invaders and internal conflicts of varying intensities. All that helped give rise to instability that likely also hindered advancement.

It is true that at various times in history the Chinese had more advanced technology than the rest of the world. But because of shortsightedness and arrogance, power struggles and an apparent inability to appreciate the technology they possessed it all went unexploited. Gun powder, moving type and the first seafaring sailboats were key technologies that disappeared from China but which the Europeans innovated and expanded upon.

I don't think the industrial revolution is really a factor at all because they eventually embraced it. The Communist overthrow is relevant only because it caused wealth to move overseas. Even in Taiwan, technological advancement is mostly iterative and copying is common. They acquired the manufacturing crown from Japan and largely lost it to China. But their own brands continue to struggle. This is in contrast to Korean brands who, fortunately, have seen massive amounts of backing from their own government. This enabled them to hire foreign talent and invest heavily in expanding their markets. It's the sort of thing Americans would balk at as corporatism. But it's something that was common also in Japan and now China but for whatever reason never materialized in Taiwan to the same extent. So where Taiwan excels is contract manufacturing for specialized technologies which Chinese still lack the skill set to produce. This is why the factories in China making stuff for the likes of Apple, Sony and others are owned by Taiwanese companies.

Also, don't forget that a lot of Chinese entrepreneurial spirit is focused solely on making money. So, kind of like we're seeing in America with internet startups, that often means taking the relative path of least resistance. Except that they get into things like real estate and banking.

Duckferd > Goshen, formerly Darkcode 01/25/2014 at 14:11

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Qoros wasn't actually a copy of anything in particular. The company had the money to throw around to hire top talent (western designers, engineers, invest in good supply chain); that's a completely different goal from actual espionage, stealing designs and then copying them.

Typically in the past these joint ventures were set up with last-gen technology so that the OEM retains its advanced technology for itself (such as Honda's newest generation hybrids and engines); however because the Chinese market has now exceeded the USDM and EU, these OEMs are forced to open up their R&D in order to stay competitive. Of course, they've been combating IP theft by simply doing what they should have been doing all along- hire talented Chinese engineers and let THEM do the R&D for their own market.

kschang > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 14:23

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Good summary of the post-WW2 civil war setup. However, Nationalist side *does* have a clearly defined goal: defeat the Communists and have a government based the 3-democratic principles handed down by Sun Yatsen. It could be argued that the warlords basically sapped the strength of the nationalists, and their best generals mostly died in the Sino-Japanese war, leaving a bunch of nincompoops for Chiang Kai-Shek to work with. :)

I have to ding you on your skimming of the cultural revolution though, as you didn't cover the predecessor: Great Leap Forward. The sort of slogans bandied about during GLF is "Catch UK in 5 years, Catch US in 10 years." They basically confiscated any metal and tossed them in clay urns to "refine into steel". What they got is lumps of useless metal, and farmers, without farm implements, cannot produced, and arguably made the famine much worse.

DIRTEE30 > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 14:31

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All the shit that happened to the Chinese in the past 250 years or so can be attributed to one thing: They can't unite worth a shit. I'm Chinese, and I'm telling you the straight truth. Chinese people are some of the most apathetic people around. They don't want to stir the pot, just go along with the flow. They're very innovative, but they do not understand the concept of collectivism. This mindset has existed pre- and post- Cultural Revolution. This is why China has been invaded by pretty much all the world power at the time: Portuguese, Japanese, Brits, Russians, and to some extent, the French.

Chinese history is amazing, and I'm not saying the culture is all bad. The Chinese are very family-oriented, and they display respect for the elders at a much larger scale than Westerners. But as a race, they're always money-driven, selfish, and apathetic.

7liter12598723 > Goshen, formerly Darkcode 01/25/2014 at 15:05

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Quoros isn't the best example of this, look instead to the Daewoo/Chery Matiz/QQ. GM opened a plant to make Matizs for China, under the name Chevy Spark, and Chery was using that same plant, after hours, to make the QQ on GM's tooling. Just, without the GM standards for materials in fasteners in particular, or any QA. Which is why the Matiz passed crash testing for the EU market and the Chery QQ literally fell apart. So Chery bought a few Matizs, rebadged them, VIN swapped them, and tried again.

Old-Busted-Hotness > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 15:07

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It's basically Hitler complaining that he can't find a good kosher deli. Once you decide you're gonna start killing people who don't agree with you, you're doomed to be a second-rate society.

jcpwn3r > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 15:20

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you also need to take into account how current Chinese society is structured. Very little stock is given to creativity. In schools, students hammer our the fundamentals: math, science, writing, and reading comprehension, but creative subjects like art and music are almost non-existent. This means a society of intelligent computers (who are incredibly competent when following instructions) are being created that can replicate, reverse engineer, and produce from plans, however when it comes to doing anything with any level of creativity, they get confused and try to copy something because they need instructions to follow. This mentality is a result of the communist revolution because you're supposed to think of yourself as a part of a group at all times, not an individual. Creativity stems from individualism as you don't have to make creative sacrifices for the good of the group, and for a long time individualism has been frowned upon in China.

Another bi-product of individualism being frowned upon is that in a work environment, Chinese workers see their boss as supremely powerful compared to them, where as in western culture, a boss is considered to be just an administrator, and slightly above you in importance. This mentality gives individuals creative liberty when it comes to design and engineering, and when more employees feel this liberty, the chances you get a good idea are higher. In China, people won't think outside the box because the boss should come with the solution, you just execute it according to the bosses instructions. Of course, this problem can infect the entire chain of command, so once you reach the top and the boss of bosses himself isn't very creative, his instruction set is someone else's product.

Also wonder why Chinese product are considered "cheap?" It's because the engineers and manufacturers followed the instructions to the T, however instructions are rarely complete and as a result you get an incomplete product because they either are too afraid to deviate from the instructions or don't know how to spot and fix errors.

EDIT: I said the problem with individualism and lack of creativity stems from the communist overthrow, that's only partly true, some of it is deep seeded culture that has existed for thousands of years. Though in regards to creativity, china (and japan) shut themselves off the the world for hundreds of years, refusing to explore, trade, or interact with other countries other than china. Isolating yourself from the rest of the world puts a serious constraint on your ability to advance technologically. When every other country in the world is working with each other, exchanging ideas, going to war, and producing to try and conquer the world like western Europe and the middle east were, China was content to rest on it's laurels and it has been playing catch-up by copying. Hundreds if not thousands of years of bad policy are at work here and only since Deng Xiao Ping have things started to turn around, slowly but surely.

tapzz > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 15:41

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I'm no specialist, but the Chinese history analysis looks very well done.

On the point of copying technology, however, I think the case is overstated. All developing societies throughout history copy technology from others like crazy. They'd be daft if they didn't; it's a shortcut you practically have to take if you can get away with it.

Even the US is no exception: British firms in the 19th century used to complain long and hard about these cowboys filching their patents and machine designs. Same thing for smaller European nations like the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland in the early 20th C. Same thing again with knobs on for Japan in the '50s-'70s, and then Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.

Chinese companies have started to come up with their own tech, and that'll just accelerate- just like it did in all previous developing nations.

Speedmerchant > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 15:43

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The culture doesn't really allow for decent. You don't step on toes, but without that nothing advances. Until they change that they will never be cutting edge but they are good at stealing ideas and can copy well but if any adaptation is required they hit a wall.

FelixScout > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 15:51

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This is a good write-up except you left out one thing that must be mentioned: European involvement, control, and conflict with China in the 19th century. This led to an extractive relationship with China that promoted raw material/traditional items export at the cost of industry creation. This foreign intervention is what led to the civil uprisings in the mid 19th century to the end of the Manchu Dynasty since the ruling class was seen as ineffective in stopping the west from carving out territories in China and running them like colonies with legal systems that allowed the Westerners to operate with effective impunity compared to the locals who could be punished at whim. This helped set the stage for the ineffective military performance against Japan, the warlord era, the Communist Revolution, and the Japanese takeover of vast swaths of the country. This bears mentioning.

Also it doesn't hurt to mention that the McCarthy era in the US slaughtered the Foreign Service and eliminated much of the hard gained knowledge on China. Which resulted in ideological policies that backed the not so great horse of Chiang Kai-Shek over any attempt to some form of power sharing. Not that it would guarantee to work but it would have been a better option. But this is not as salient as the top point which I do feel is key to your point.

Goshen, formerly Darkcode > Duckferd 01/25/2014 at 15:51

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Axel's post wasn't about copies, it was about joint ventures. Qoros is a JV between Israelis and the Chinese.

Duckferd > Goshen, formerly Darkcode 01/25/2014 at 17:02

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Yeah, my post was in context of Axel's statement about stolen files.

4thwall > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 18:32

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As a ex-resident of Beijing/long time student of Asian history/husband of a Chinese woman I thank you for writing such an excellent article.
Well done.
Do you write anywhere else?

sadfasdf > Goshen, formerly Darkcode 01/25/2014 at 19:28

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Yes, it is. It's legal copying.

Explain any non-legal distinction. And don't say "they don't copy the tooling" because there have been illegal copies where the tooling was purchased without permission of the first party from former second parties.

sadfasdf > T-800 01/25/2014 at 20:10

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Domestic meaning made for consumption primarily in the country of manufacture, and with significant design and engineering activities happening there (as in GM and Ford of Australia or Brazil for example). They start out building identical cars to overseas, but end up developing models specific to their home market. This happened with VW and Buick in China, as well; and in fact was happening with VW well before you started seeing BYDs and Shuanghuans and Cherys. The effect is the same whether it's done with support and permission or not.

There are three types of companies (and in the case of China they are all separate companies, even the ones with foreign parents) that make copies of foreign vehicles:

Joint ventures, usually bearing a variation of the foreign parent's name, which make the foreign parent's cars with the full cooperation of the foreign parent. These usually continue acting more or less as the domestic arm of the foreign automaker, with a different mix of the same models as elsewhere, but in some cases start doing some weird local development (Ford and GM Brazil and Australia, Shanghai VW...which did so at times without VW's permission).

Companies that manufacture foreign cars under license, without an ownership relationship, or at least without a controlling one or joint venture status. In some cases these companies go on to develop their own vehicles with the old one as the starting point, either with permission or when it's out of patent. Most Chinese copies of foreign cars that don't bear the same marque fall in this category, and most of them are Suzukis or Mitsubishis.

Outright illegal copying (Chery QQ, some Great Wall and BYD models, and a whole bunch of cosmetic copying from minor players); and out-of-patent copying without support (Landwind, and that Isuzu copy from a few years ago, IIRC). IIRC this happened in Russia a couple times, too.

The only non-boutique auto industry I know of that I'm not sure about how it got started is Malaysia.

I've no particular issue with most of the information in this post, just the thesis.
The problems with it are these:

It's happened places that didn't have anything like the Cultural Revolution, at least not recently enough to matter.

The Chinese auto industry didn't seriously get moving until the late 90s, early 2000s, and when there would already be young engineers who weren't even BORN until after the cultural revolution, let alone educated then; and there are and have been plenty of foreign-educated engineers in China.

The knockoffs for which China is infamous happened after decades of cooperative manufacturing in China.

A much better explanation is that there is a lot of capital and labor available willing to produce cars, but not enough or with enough patience to start from zero; and most foreign manufacturers aren't willing to compete with themselves by licensing their shit to everyone who wants it (except for Mitsubishi, seriously, every other Chinese car has a Mitsubishi engine). Some might be more willing if they could get a bigger piece of the action, but (here is the key difference with China vs. other fast growing emerging markets) the Chinese government allows each foreign manufacturer only two joint ventures. Almost every major foreign manufacturer in China has used their two JVs; and some have skirted the rules a bit by having their heavy truck business count separately.

alfaromeo > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/25/2014 at 21:11

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This article is so political and misleading. It shouldn't be published in car enthusiasts website like Jalopnik. Are we still in cold war?

Franzouse > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/26/2014 at 01:18

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Being involved in aerospace in China, I give this write-up a "bu zuo": Well built argument with a few aspects missing -it's impossible to include everything. I'd add that culturally, the chinese don't value creativity as much as ingenuity and the learning style they use favors those with the ability to learn and reuse tons of dense information, while more creative types are often marginalized. Furthermore, in a country that doens't respect IP (correct that, foreign IP) where is the incentive to spend the money and effort to innovate and create when you know you're not going to profit from that work.

Also, we got the designs we have through years of trial and error and evolution; the chinese are always late to that party, therefore it's only normal that they would start their work with what looks like the state of the art, i.e. our stuff.

Franzouse > alfaromeo 01/26/2014 at 01:22

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Goshen, formerly Darkcode > sadfasdf 01/26/2014 at 09:16

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When you authorize and give tools to a company to build your products parallely, the company isn't copying you. The company is acting by your orders.

sadfasdf > Goshen, formerly Darkcode 01/26/2014 at 10:14

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If it's a joint venture or wholly owned subsidiary owned by your company, yes. If not, no, it isn't following your orders. They're operating within limits you agreed to, but they're still learning your technologies, and after the agreement is over if they develop their own products it will be with what they learned working from your technology in mind, even if they manage to avoid infringing any still-active patents. Either way it's a transfer of technology, the only differences being: one is legal the other is not; the illegal copying is harder if done well (and will probably teach the copier more); the product of the legal copying is probably going to be better because of #2.

kschang > kschang 01/26/2014 at 14:22

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Here's a bit of interesting background... A book was recently published in Taiwan that consists of recently discovered diary of one of Chiang Kaishek's finance guys from during the war to the Nationalist... "relocation" to Taiwan. Apparently Chiang had been planning the contingency since as early as early 1948, and he KNEW ALL ALONG that people in his administration are corrupt... such as T.V. Soong . (However, to get the full impact, you should read the Chinese version of the article, through a translator) and his surviving generals are cowardly nincompoops.

There's no English translation yet, but here's the original book in Chinese:

http://www.books.com.tw/products/00106…

Finegreensilk1 > MaWeiTao 01/26/2014 at 17:57

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+1. The Chinese don't view copying as a bad thing. Their culture embraces the idea of "imitation is the best form of flattery." Also, stealing intellectual property isn't a bad thing to them, either. Proprietary advantage is foreign to their "shared society," where no one is above the common good.

sadfasdf > sadfasdf 01/27/2014 at 02:16

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haahahahaha, holy shit, I rescind that "no particular problem" remark. I had only really paid much attention to the last section where he actually starts talking about industry. All of the overview of Chinese history there is garbage.

Morgan Rock > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/28/2014 at 17:31

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the USAF had already been attempting a successor to the B-52 for years, already failing the Mach 3+ XB-70 and looking into what eventually became the B-1B

Just a heads up, the XB-70 was scrapped not because it was unsuccessful, but because we realized that ICBM's/SLBM's were more effective means of strategic payload delivery than large, expensive supersonic jets. The B-1B became a tactical bomber because we had to reduce our nuclear bomber count through START, and the B-1A strategic versions (the replacement for the B-52, essentially) were converted to tactical bombers, and the B-2 took on those strategic bombing roles unable to be fulfilled by the B-52 (penetrative conventional bombing).

Also,

The story of Chinese aerospace is very different today. They have demonstrated not one but two stealth fighter designs, equal to the number the USAF currently has operational

Well...

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-…

http://www.uasvision.com/2013/12/12/rus…

http://theaviationist.com/2013/06/02/chi…

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/…

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/20…

Everything about modern Chinese "Stealth" tech is copied from other nations. That's why you see advanced airframes with shitty old engines. The Chinese still can't put together a decent jet engine (which is why they're trying so hard to secure Su-35's with advanced engines from Russia), but they sure can steal airframe tech decently.

I suppose that, given time, they'll copy a decent jet engine well too, but metallurgical process advances really thwart reverse engineering pretty well, so fortunately that may be a good bit down the pike. They may be forced to have stealthy airframes with inefficient, low thrust vs fuel consumption, non-vectoring IR torches attached to them.