RamBLer WithOUT BorDers

This entry was originally appeared in "Guilin - Day 3 - Fengyu Cave, Yao Minority", dated 16-Sep-2009. In my usual way, I went off the tangent and talked about China's IPR development. I've expanded it a little and thought it deserves a seperate entry.

A story circulated in 2009 about fake chicken eggs were sold in some places in Guangdong (this name seems like a headline hog when it comes to fakes). Allegedly that these fake eggs are indistinguishable from the real ones. The wholesale price of the fake egg is half that of a real one. At first, this fake eggs story sound fake - a hoax, but videos with 10 steps instructions on how to make a fake egg to convince you. Still, I find this fake eggs tale hard to swallow as the price of eggs is a bit too cheap for the effort. I think this is symptomatic of the distrust of Chinese made goods or the ease of taken in due to all the past stories of fake chinese products that flooded the market from DVD, designer label handbags to most lucrative of all fakes - cultural antiques that elude even the experts. Does the fake egg story smells fishy? Which is fake, the foul/fowl story or the egg? You'll be the judge.

Atta's dad who shops for grocery everyday - sometimes twice a day - has never came across these fabled fake eggs. I just talked to him last week about this. More than 2 years, and he has never seen it. Yep, he lives in Guangdong. When a country fakes so many things, it's easy to buy into any incredulous story. If the runour occurs in Japan or USA, people will dismiss off hand. Avoid fake stuff, but avoid fake story about fake stuff too.

Another phenomenon that is related closely to fakes, but distinctly different is the product copycat. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. This is very true in arts. Elvis Presley or a hosts of celebrity-artist imitators are not frowned upon, but are in fact grab affection. Spoofs or send-ups in movies aren't sued for intellectual property rights infringement, but are in indeed highly admired. And parody - another form of copycat - is held in the high regard.

Manufacturers don't care for flattery so much as fat bottom lines (beauty is in the eyes of the accountant. And accountants universially like fat bottom lines). In China these copycat products are better known as shanzhai products. Shanzhai (山寨) is litereally translated as 'Mountain village' or 'Mountain stronghold' - places where bandits call themselves Masters of the Manors, Kings of their Castles, Lords of the Lands, Titans of their Turfs. 'Shanzhai' came originally from the Cantonese slang when referring to the low-end factories in Shenzhen, Guangdong (there's the name again). These shangzhai factories specialized in making many fakes and knock-off products from designer labels. These factories make electronics more than other products, so the term shanzhai tends to associate with goods like mobile phones, etc. Guangdong is the Wild Wild South of the industrializing China.

China has no copyright on this copycat phenomenon, it's common to economies at this stage of development. Sony, a name synonymous with forefront of innovation today, was once upon a time a notorious copier of US products (not restricting to copying photocopier machines) in the 1950's when Japan had to restart its economy after WW2. Sony was just one among many Japanese future multinational companies busily micmicking others. US nicked many British product ideas during the 19th century while US was in the stage of similar economic development as China today. And only when the economy is advanced into the next stage that the country is loaded enough to throw wads and wads of cash into the R&D machine. China is already in the initial stage of this economic development with their own designs of space technology and supercomputers, etc.

Shanzhai factories don't make these low end hardwares because they can. They do it because there's a market for them. At this phase of economic development, the bulk of consumers can't afford the originals with higher price tags (to cover their R&D costs), but still would like to own one. The copycats provide a niche (or give a damn) for the poorer folks. Sometimes, they are favoured by dudes who just want to identify with the counter culture ("I'm cool because I shop underground goods, pal. I don't dig big name brands; they're strictly for the squares dude. I'm a unique man, man!"). As Chinese consumers' wallets are getting fatter, they would prefer higher-quality, original brands, reflecting their wealth status, and the shanzhai operators simply be marginalized eventually. They then have to flog their cheap wares to relatively less developed economies, say, their 'good neighbour' or frienemy of Vietnam.

Australia - the youngest post industrial Western nation in the world - is an industrial granny (actually post-industrial, which implies she had retired from Industrialization) when comapres to the New China who's only an ankle-biter, a teetering tolder of less than 60 years old, and most of its toddling was done in the last 30 years after the Opening-Door and Reform policy, and she's very much still growing and developing her industrial strength, muscles, pimples, warts and all. Lots of it and quite ugly, too. All part of the growing pains. Just grow thick skin, and she can deal with it fine.

The Aussies, on the other hand, were going at it for more than a century with hammer and tongs (so to speak, although this is what industrialization tries to get rid off - the blacksmith trade - and replaced them with steam driven machines). In the XIX century , while the Yanks were busily stealing ideas from the Limeys, the Brits did some nicking on their own from China. Chinese got the Brits hooked on to tea (and other Chinese products), and thus create a huge imbalance of trade deficit on the British side. Sounds like the same problem China has with the U.S. today. To fix the economic trade imbalance, and to get back at the Chinese for hooking them on tea, the Pommies got Chinese hooked on opium.

It was the Chinese fault too for not buying goods from the Brits to cause that trade imbalance. The Pommies got lots of good stuffs to sell to Chinese. Take the good technological marvel called the car - or horseless carriage - that moved at a breathtaking speed of 35 km/h that was sure beat walking, or the clock that was taller than people, or the tall hats that made you look taller than the grand father's clocks, or the cameras that took pictures of you if you would stand perfectly still for a few mins, lots of ingenious inventions like that. But the Chinese was contend in just selling tea and silk forever, and missed out the whole industrialization. What the Chinese should do would be to steal the ideas from the many British invetions as a pay back. Well, the Chinese didn't think anyone else could make anything that interested them or of values. They preferred to close themselves off as they did for centuries. As they did again in the future in the 1st 30 years after the founding of PRC. Bad habits die hard.

The Chinese monopolized the world's tea industry and wouldn't trade her secrets for all the tea in China. The British Empire called upon the service of Robert Fortune the can-do Scottish botanist to nick the tea plants and its secrets and smuggled it out of China (You didn't need to smuggle opium, however. They sold openly across all opium dens near you. They lived in interesting times). After nicking the plants , he grew it in Indian, and the Darjeeling tea was born. The Indian has the Britishers to thank for this. And Chinese has the British to thank for its downfall (the lost of tea's monopoly, and the gain of opium addiction). Oh...by the way, the opium that exported to China was also grown in India by the British Empire. The two way traffic now balanced the British trade deficit. Robert Fortune made a fortune, knighted and wrote a book about it. One country's bitter tea is another country's bitter tear. One nation's hero is another nation's thief. One Empire's Mister Fortune is another Empire's Miss(ed) fortune or misfortune. It's all a matter of perspectives.

And tea isn't the only product idea Chinese invented and was copied elsewhere. One day when China is shifted into the higher gear of developed phase, they will develop their own product ideas, and less developed economies will pinch it from China. Why? Because the world is circular. What goes around comes around. And the Hindus discovered that idea and turned it into a religion. They call it karma. The manufacturers call it industrial espionage. And the intellectual property lawyers call it a main source of income (so sue me). It's all a matter of perspectives.

I'm not picking on the Pommies (just the British Empire), they weren't the only country who pinched product ideas from China. It's just Robert Fortune's tea story is so delicious (or is it bitter? It's all a matter of tastes and perspective). Until 18th century, China had produced more inventions than any counrtry. Of all inventions, international intellectual property protection wasn't one of them. Most Chinese inventions produced before the Industrial Revolution were copied by others. And by the time Industrial Revolution had taken grip in Europe, and China had totally missed it due to the ineffectual Qing Dynasty. Now they're doing the copying. Debt paid. The Circle is complete. The Law of Karma is enacted. Not a defence of Chinese intellectual properties thefs, just stating the fact, M'am. It's all a matter of historical perspectives.

Further back in time. Much further back. Another time, another Empire. This time the Eastern Roman Empire. The time, circa 550 A.D. (after the Silk Road was established). Emperor Flavius Justinian sent two monks to China to steal the secrets of sericulture. The monks hid the seeds of silkworms and mulberry tree in a bamboo stick. Like the subjects of Bristish Empire who couldn't get enough Chinese tea, the subjects of the Roman Empire couldn't get enough silk. The Roman Empire was running a trade decifit (depletion of gold an silver coins) with their hunger for Chinese silk the way the Bristish Empire was hunger for Chinese teas. If you can't beat them, steal them. Seemed like history loves to play the same tune over and over again like a broken record. Those who ignore history will doom to repeat it. And the British Empire ignored it, the way the Hitler ignored the failed Napoleon invasion of Russia. Look what happened...The Roman Senate went as as far as passing an edict to prohibit commoners the right to purchase silk. Only the aristocrats can buy them. This is 6th century, double standard was the standard way of doing things. Remember the status of women then? If there's not a blatant double standard.

The monopoly by China tilted the supply demand curve in China's favour. I wouldn't be surprise, I think it was likely, if the silk cost more than its weight in gold. It's a very light material. And so Turkey inherited a long tradition and a thriving silk industry for centuries for this reason. In fact, in my packaged tour to Turkey some 6 years ago, our tour group was led into a silk factory in Bursa - the 1st capital of the Ottoman Empire - and shown the process of sericulture. Silk production was an important part of economy of the Ottoman Empire. Another Empire benefited to the silk. In the old days, it was leading botanist and respectable monk who carried out industrial espionage, today they're done by lesser men.

As I said before, as China progresses further in the industrialization, they will steal less and innovate more. This is how baby learn to walk - indeed how we ALL learn - we look and then imitate, ape, copy. Only after we learn to walk than we can learn to run, and jump. China is learning to walk, and is looking like is learning to run.

This isn't just a historical trend as I pointed out, but today's patents stats back this up. It's hard to imagine today, the number of patents that China files and being granted are among the top 3 by most measures, only below that of Japan and USA. Here's the stats. If you look at this historical trend, shown here by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Although these are stats for patents file in U.S., but the trend is applicable to international patents. You can look it up yourself), it's clear that the number of patents increased over the last 3 decades by countries like Japan and Germany are gradual, similarly matched by the speed of their GDP growth. While China's upward surge in patents granted in the last decade - like their increase in GDP or Olympic medal counts - is breathtaking. There's no reason at all this trend would stop abruptly. In view of this trend, it isn't hard at all to see that China's total patents granted would quite easily exceed that of USA or Japan in a foreseeable future. Also, have a look at this news article to get a feel of China's future of innovation. By the way, I wrote this entry in 2009, thus predating this news article by 2 years. I'm not saying I'm a prophet, just saying it's obvious from what I could see.

This is a shock to some because while PRC produces number of patents only below that of USA and Japan today, IPR infringements are still rife. This isn't because they don't have new ideas, it's just copycat products are simply more affordable to the masses, and copying is always easier than inventing. Also, the government's effort to stamp out this practice isn't quite up to the scratch. This is also changing (albeit not as fast or as far as the victim of IPR infringement would have liked). But you can trust the PRC government would want to uphold this cleaning of copycats because as China itself is wishing or actually becoming an innovator, it wants to wipe out the counterfeiters for their own interests. Still, with country this size, enforcing isn't a trivial task.

Of course, all these patents stats show is the quantity, not quality, of patents. Once again, the same logic applies to both quantity and quality. It's just a matter of time when PRC produces not only more patents, but patents of higher quality. I'm quite sure some are of high quality (just don't know the percentage). Having said that, I don't think respectable patent offices simply approve any rubbish that land on their desks. Criteria needs to be met. China is still quite new to this game. The important point is that the Chinese government understands the importance of innovation, and wants to wean itself from being the Factory of the World. And avoid the middle income gap. The Japanese did it, and then the S. Korean and Taiwanese, China likes to copy their successes. Would they pull it off? My gut feeling is, yes. Time will tell.

Pablo Picasso maybe a born painter, but he isn't a painter when he was born (he could barely hold a paintbrush. He probably put it into his mouth instead of onto the canvas). When he was a apprentice painter, he copied, and imitated other great masters before him. Only, and only after he did all the copying then he created. Not before.

Here's the thing, when a typical toddler teeters and falls on you, you don't feel much because of its size. So you don't mind when it falls on you. With China the supersize toddler, when it falls as she learns to walk, she may crush your ribcage. For a small toddler, say Vietnam, nobody cares if they do what China does.

The best stealing, imitating or copying isn't products of another country, but culture. The Roman stole the Greek culture wholesale, from architecture, arts, music, politics to religion. And rechristian (if that's the right word) ALL Greek gods to Latin: Zeus to Jupiter, Aphrodite to Venus, Eros to Cupid, etc. Of course, the Roman also created many new things. Well, this is how it goes, first you copy, then you invent.

The same could be said about Japan of China. Most of the things you thought of as Japanese - Kanji, sumo wrestling, Japanese swords, kimono dresses, martial arts, etc - has its roots in China. In fact, they're mostly confined to the Chinese Tang Dynasty. Look at Japan today, it has outdone China just as Rome had outshone Greece. Unlike Greece, China is trying to re-invent itself. With such a large country and long tradition, it's a wonder that it could reinvent irself the speed that it did, which exceeds ALL observers' expectation. In fact, many doubt if they could change at all. And some people speak about China in equal terms to that of USA or Japan in its IPR, for example. Or everything else for that matter. No historical perspectives whatsoever.

While culture is the best thing to steal, it has no IPR (because it wasn't invented by any individual. But its value transcends any individual). Well, the best things in life is always free - air, sunshine, water (almost free, and getting dearer). We can't live without these free things. Diamonds on the other hands has limited use as drill bits, for instance. Hollywood is taking full advantage of this by 'stealing' the best, but freebies - Chinese culture - for their movies. No Chinese can sue them because if it's free, it isn't stealing. Not so fair, eh? You dirty rat!

To be fair to the West, the Chinese has been helping themselves with the freely distributed Western public domain software like Capitalism, and Scientific Method. And Chinese is tentatively trialing their very best and free killer app - Democracy. This killer apps sits in the very core of the Western Operating System. If the Chinese is smart, they will install as many of these free killer apps as possible onto their Sino Operating System. There're going to be some technical glitches when you install softwares from a different operating system onto yours, but the cool killer apps really worth the troubles. What some call technical glitches or bugs, others call it program features. The Japanese cultures are full of these wonderful program features. It's so wacky and wicked. What more can one ask?

...And so the debugging continues.

And these killer apps aren't static either, new versions with improvements are keep coming up. At the moment, China is trialling Democracy beta version. Unlike other killer apps like Capitalism and Scientific method where they are installing the new versions - not the latest, but quite new. I say load up the full and latest instalment of Democracy Version 6.2.9.1 - it's wicked! Everyone who's cool - USA, Japan, France - are using it, don't be left out and looking like a nerd.

I too is an absolute fan of free softwares, they're the best! Skype, Free Rar Extract Frog, uTorrent, Open Office, Free Download Manager, Free File Sync, Unzip Them All, VLC Media Player, Autoruns, to name just a few. They're better than many paid products if you ask me.

Vive la liberté, le logiciel libre! (Long Live Freedom, Free Software!) Oh...let's throw in égalité, fraternité into the whole mix.

Am I talking about Chinese or French Revolution? Who cares? It's free, just get onboard with the computer program.

The history between the East and the West isn't so much difference from that between Macintosh and Windows Operating Systems. The Macintosh won the first round when they invented great ideas for their operation like the mouse and the windows interface while Microsoft was still based on DOS - a boring, less productive, non-graphical interfaced Operating System. Microsoft stole/copied that idea of Windows GUI. Yep, the good old stealing/copying was applied when Microsoft was still young and learning the game. Soon, Microsoft had refined its Operating System and eventually dominates the (PC) world. Increasingly more and more apps that are available on Windows are ported across Macintosh. And even their interface are increasingly similar except for superficial differences. In short, they're more and more alike. Today it's Microsoft that's doing the innovation, not Macintosh as it used to be. With all these, either Apple or Microsoft may lose, but the consumsers/users always win. In other words, the people/citizen always win with all these competitions between countries to be the best country.

One can't ignore religion in the equation after talking about Westernization of China in terms of scientific, economic and political developments. If you look at the number of christians by country, China ranks 7th according to this list. Many academic thinks this number is too small as many are Christian 'unofficially' or 'privately'. Like everything else in China, the term 'fastest growth in the world' is applicable here. Compare to the time of the Opening Up in 1978, this number has increased by many folds. There's simply no reason why this trend should suddenly stop. Like everything else in China (or anywhere or anything else), once the momentum started, it's harder to stop than to continue (according to the First Law of Mechanics). I won't be shocked - albeit not inevitable - that China is more Christian than Uncle Sam in a few decades. China is already having more Christian than any European country right now.

More than 15 years or so ago, I asked my Chinese tour guide where I could buy Mao suits. He frowned and demanded why I wanted something like that? There's a Chinese movies website that contains just about everything from many foreign films to the most obscure Hollywood titles. Of course, it also has a huge library of Chinese language films from HK, Taiwan and Mainland China. But when I tried to do a search on the iconic of Cultural Revolution propaganda piece "The East is Red", it isn't there! All this gives me the feeling that the Chinese are making conscious and concerted effort to rid of its Communist ideological past. Good ridden, I say. Although I still like to get my hand on some old memories of that era. Tough luck with that. Maybe things like Mao suits are easier to get it today than 15 years ago because it has became a souvenir rather than a reminder of their past for the Chinese.

With the 30 years under the rule of the atheist Communism, worships were discouraged, especially during the Cultural Revolution, the result is a generation of Chinese without religions. Chinese traditions, including religions were swept away, displaced and replaced by Communist ideology. Now that Chinese has ejected their communist ideology out of their collective being, something needs to fill that gaping hole.

And since Christian (in general, the Mormons in particularly) is evangelical in nature while Buddhism or Islam (in general) is not. I'm not talking about proselytizing, which is a harder task. I'm talking about selling to people who already have the thirst/hunger for some kind of spiritualism. And missionaries are basically salesmen of Christianity (to put it rather crassly). It's easy peasy to sell to hungry people. This is food news - sorry typo, 'f' is next to 'g' in the keyboard - Good news (as in Gospel) for the Christian missionaries. Oh, alright, ambassadors of Christ, better? My friend in the missionary position.

So with all the missionaries, who along with business people, are going to China (not on a slow boat, but on jumbo jets these days), the spreading of the Gospel to China, hence the explosion in number, is inevitable. ROK has something close to 30% christian while Japan barely has only 3%. China's situation should be more similarly to ROK than Japam for a number of reasons. First, Japanese industrialization/Westernization started in the 19th century during Meiji period. To the Japanese in the 19th century, Christianity was a foreign devil religion, and there was a very strong anti-Christian movement. ROK, like China, has its industrialization/Westernization in the 20th century, naturally no such stigma or movement existed. In fact with the spiritual void created by the atheist Communist, it's possible, although not highly likely that the Chinese may end up having a higher percentage of Christian than S Korean. Even with 18.5% Chinese being Christian would put China the country with the most Christians. 18.5% doesn't sound outlandish when looking at the 30% for ROK. A 10% to 15% for China would be quite likely. Why not? Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country has some 12.3% christian population. China is nowhere done Westernized to the extent of Japan or ROK. Not that I think it ever will because of the size of the country. Still, it has long way to go.

There're no reason for the explosion in the West in Christian numbers (decline is the trend). Missionaries in China today has a much better time than the pre-Communist's 19th century, thanks to communism. Like everything else, China is catching up with - ok, ok, copying. Happy? - America, including Christianity. Don't tell anyone though. Let's be as quiet as a church mouse.

These days you see a lot more bicycles returning to the streets of China in great number. They're ridden by newly born again Mormon missionaries. Onward Christian soldiers!!!

Do I sound happy that Chinese culture is losing ground to Christianity? Not at all. Remember Buddhism, like Christianity, is imported from the West (as in "Journey to the West"). I had re-iterated in several entries that Chinese culture is a great amalgamator because it's a gargantuan Spongebob. In a 1000 years from now, because the large number of Chinese Christian in China, tourists will be flocking to China to sightsee their greatest cathedrals in the world (and because cathedrals in Europe had crumbled). Unlikely? Impossible? Not at all...Who saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Berlin Wall even 1 year before? Who saw the normalization of Sino-US relationship that eventually led to the Opening Up of China in 1978? Who could imagine that only 3 decades of Opening Up, China had became the 2nd biggest economy in the world? In 16th century, what historian would in their right mind think Europe would dominate the rest for 17th to 20th centuries? In 1000 years, anything unimaginable will be reality. That scenario probably won't happen because IT IS imaginable...Amen!

Tea, anyone?