China PM Wants to Rule Global Tech With India 1020
GrumpyDeveloper writes "As reported in this Wired story, China's prime minister said Sunday that China and India should work together to dominate the world's tech industry, bringing together Chinese hardware with Indian software.
Re:One word. (Score:2, Interesting)
I should probably elaborate... (Score:5, Interesting)
China's management of the internet ought to give us some idea of what they would do with a monopoly on internet tech.
Re:new Asian century (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't help but think that it is no coincidence that this is going on at the same time as anti-japanese riots [independent.co.uk] in Japan. Seems like China is pulling out the stops to truly become the dominant Asian power.
So basically... (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only one finding this to be a problem?
You know, there was once an old joke on a comparison of Heaven and Hell based on which nationality did your food, car, laws, lovers, etc. I think we're headed towards the same in IT.
I wonder what the South American FOSS contingent will have to say as time goes by or what influence the hacker high thing will have.
Probably just nationalistic chest beating but it is weird news.
Re:Who writes the docs? (Score:2, Interesting)
CC.
Bet this surprises most /.ers (Score:5, Interesting)
About the topic
Could Chinese Hardware & Indian Software be married to produce the World dominating Tech Industry? Is it a mere whimsical dream of the Chinese Premiere or is it a real workable proposition to tilt the balance of the World's technological power base? As the wise sage said "Time will tell"!
Curretly though, the traditional rivals are ready to bury the hatchet over the common border [yahoo.com] they share and also have set a target to raise the bilateral trade to $30bn by 2010 [yahoo.com] from the $13.6bn in the last fiscal. The two countried have signed a dozen agreements [yahoo.com] today, ranging from phytosanitary protocols to more open skies, and China is backing India's bid to the UN Security Council [yahoo.com].
So for the time being, they do seem to be working together to the mutual benefit of the two Asian behemoths. Also, if the friction is diffused the world has one pair of nuclear neighbours to worry about!
This Is Nice But What About Quality? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now in all fairness, there are Chinese and Indian companies producing high quality products, but these are not cheap and those companies are the leading tail of the bell shaped curve. If quality continues to be a problem for companies in the bump and the trailing edge, then U.S. workers will get another chance. Of course this all assumes that consumers actually care about quality...
Re:Chinese Hardware & Indian Software (Score:3, Interesting)
China is too top down for this to work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One word. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the very short term it's great for consumers because prices are low. However, in the medium term, a slew of jobs will be deprecated in non-Indo-Chinese nations as the industries relocate. This will cause all sorts of economic and political headache as people will fight the change with tariffs, stressing the system which will then snap nastily when all local demand will vanish and companies go belly-up. Those folks who have enough foresight will work to develop new industries that provide the higher value required to support "western" wages. So, eventually things will shift again.
This is simply the economic cycle on a global scale instead of many small local ones; when any area gets an advantage, wealth shifts there for a while, but it will eventually shift somewhere else again (maybe South America? who knows...)
Savings are only great, also, if people use those savings to save and hedge against disruptions, not if they use it to buy more expensive luxury items and to improve education to better cope with change.
Re:Just Maybe (Score:3, Interesting)
Once that happens Uncle Bill and IBM have them!
Re:they're no dummies (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:they're no dummies (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is their land worthless? Too rocky? They do have a pretty huge amount of coal for energy supplies but I don't know if you mean value of land for farming. Apparently they have enough farmland to be able to export food to the US, given how much pressure some sectors of farming are getting from Chinese imports.
Re:One word. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:In the US, we have some problems... (Score:2, Interesting)
During the 3 conferences I've had with my oldest son's teachers this year their main focus of conversation was the testing they do and where he resides on some scale.
My issue with the present system is how much class time is spent entirely on passing a test instead of learning and retaining information. Look at all the paper MCSE's, A+'s, Network+ certified techs walking around. Yeah they know the information long enough to take the test but put them behind a computer or a router 2 weeks later and they can't figure out how to login!
We are fostering a generation that has the ability to pass a test. Not to mention that the test itself seems built to make the schools look good by judging them on material that should've been covered imho well before.
If I had any doubts that my 3rd grade son would fail a test asking him to what 45 + 32 was or 7 * 3 I would be ashamed of myself and feel a failure as a parent for not ensuring my child a proper education.
I constantly have to supplement what he learns in school because they do not have time to cover anything but what's going to be in the standardized testing.
Re:they're no dummies (Score:0, Interesting)
Job Hold 'em (Score:2, Interesting)
Your point is well taken, but much like an all in bet in poker, it works every time but the last time. And I'd personally like to see the next frontier horizon first.
Oh no!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Incoming: 300 alarmist responses about how India and China and the rest of the Asian Tigers are going to own everything / run everything in 10 or 50 years, because they work so much harder than us.
Funny thing. 20 years ago it was the Japanese who were going to "own everything". It's actually funny (in a tragic sort of way) to watch movies from the 80's and early 90's, with their dire predictions of our impending Japanese Overlords. For a good laugh, go rent "Rising Sun" or even the Micheal Keaton comedy "Gung Ho".
In reality, Japan is slowly dragging itself out of a recession which has spanned decades due to the inept bungling of the bureaucratic masterminds who were supposedly going to guide Japan to a peaceful takeover of the world's economy. Heck, I even drive a Honda: it was made in Kentucky.
If you honestly think that China and India are going to surpass the West through the magical power of Central Planning, you haven't been paid much attention for the past 100 years or so.
Incoming: Hundreds of slashdotters raving about how hard Indians and Chinese work in school (quietly ignoring the vast majority who live in rural areas). Big deal. It didn't help the Soviets, did it?
China isn't going to be a frist-world country as long as their central government insists on tightly controlling the most important aspects of their economy. India is better off in this regard, but as an imperfect democracy I see them as a potential ally, not a rival. Indeed, the Bush administration is cozying up to democratic India specifically as a foil to totalitarian China. Smart move.
Most people even on slashdot are profoundly igrnorant of economics. For example, they routinely assume that economics is a zero-sum game. If that were true, we'd still be living in caves.
Eastern Europe? (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem wiht eastern europe is that they are landlocked and unable to get goods and products out easily.
I wouldn't even mind living in the Ukraine now. Currently they have far more religious freedom than the US has, possibly more than any other country in the world.
Re:India should say "No Thanks!"... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Educational Spending? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, so many people in the country think it is beneath them to buy American products. They believe that if the products they buy are from other countries it carries more cache. The trade deficit that is causing the massive black hole is a direct result of this.
Just curious, you slam because of the lack of funds for higher education, but do you contribute to the American economy and the American worker by buying American products or do you drive a foreign car and wear foreign clothes. If you buy American products great but if you don't you need to think about what you are really doing.
Re:Bet this surprises most /.ers (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Carter#Ear
He didn't seem to have used his B.S. in technology all that much. But Carter was by definition one of the finest men in politics. Too bad, thats not the kind of men you want in politics.
sri
My own doubts about this claim. (Score:2, Interesting)
Last quarter (February, IIRC), the San Jose Mercury News had an article in their Business section on the top 3 Indian Outsourcing firms' gross revenues. (Tata, et. al.). It came in with an underwhelming $1.5 Billion.
If you assume all of that is from outsourcing, and they charge $10,000 per engineer, that gives a grand total of 150,000 Indian Engineers. And these folks are all tied up with Western Outsourcing efforts. That's not a lot of Software people. A subset of Silicon Valley alone has 800,000 jobs in it [mercurynews.com] and I'm guessing 5%, or 40,000 are Software. The entire U.S. certainly has a much bigger pool, dwarfing what it has taken India over 10 years to achieve.
So, yes, India and China have the motivation to join forces. But they don't have a pool of skilled people which begins to dwarf the U.S.. They also don't have a Venture funding pool with even approaches the U.S.. Nor due they have an adequate legal system to protect businesses when there are contract disputes. And both countries have a huge amount of corruption.
The only thing both do have is cheap Engineering talent.
And to top it off, many people are looking at China's balooning financial structure to "pop" over the next few years.
This is not a good base from which "to dominate the world's tech industry". To be a player, perhaps. But the U.S. can get cheap manufacturing anywhere, if it really needs to.
I'm sure we'll see a bunch of cheap products which don't work too well. But forgive me if I have doubts about their ability to dominate.
In a word: interests (Score:2, Interesting)
"Greed" is the typical response of college students who think that all of "society's" problems can be boiled down to 1) people not getting what they "need" which is caused by 2) people "exploiting" other people because of their "greed." It's as simplistic as it is stupid, and I wish that this dogma would finally fall in the same way that so many of the wicked commist regimes that it spawned have fallen.
Indeed, it is a valuable question to wonder why the United States, rhetorically a country that supports "freedom," would view freedom-crushing, wicked regimes such as China and Saudi Arabia as "strategic partners." The answer can be summed up in one concept: interests.
It has been said before, "In diplomocy, there are no friends. Only interests." Why is it that some countries of negligable threat (Iraq) get flattened by our military while others that wholesale export America-hating terror (Saudi Arabia) get a pass? Because some key players in our country's power structure decided that it was in our country's (or in some certain individuals') interests to do so. For instance, should the United States, on the matter of principle (pick your favorite: women's rights, religious freedom, not-chopping-hands-off-of-petty-thieves, whatever) boycott Saudi Arabian oil? Well, what would be the consequence of such a thing? Is it in our interest to do so? Should the fact that oil is the backbone of the American economy take precendence over standing up for (fill in the matter of principle here)? It all depends on what the consequences for not standing up for "what is right" might be at the time, and that usually comes down to key players taking political hits in the domestic or international community.
As everyone can see, maintaining the oil has, for whatever reason, trumped standing up for human rights in Saudi Arabia. This type of duplicity can be managed through media spin. How often do we hear of the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia compared to those that happen in Guantanamo Bay? (Well, I'm conflating two different political factions there, but I think you get the idea.)
And don't get me started on China. Will the USA honor its treaty to Taiwan if China invades? The answer to that question will be framed in terms of, "Is it in our interests to do so?" If the government is so willing to defecate with reckless abandon on liberty, then don't think that for a moment it's going to treat Taiwan with any higher degree of respect.
The idea that the USA stands up for freedom is naive. Those who run the USA will act in their interests, which they try (or, at least, pretend to try) to make the same as the interests of the USA. All other countries follow the same path: they fight for their interests.
Re:Bet this surprises most /.ers (Score:4, Interesting)
People will generally not like a president who presided during bad times, and like a president who presided over good times, regardless of fact or party affiliation.
Re:Educational Spending? (Score:2, Interesting)
I know I will get slammed (again) for saying this, but education is overrated. Most people do not use the kind of knowledge taught in school on their actual jobs. A think a "Just in Time" education system would be more flexible. One could get certificates in requested specialties and topics. The idea that you jam a bunch of info into somebody's head when they are 15 and expect them to remember it all when they reach 30 is ridiculous.
JIT may also make education more affordable by spreading the costs over a longer period of time. The needs of the work world are very dynamic, so our education should be also. The "big lump up front" approach is archaic. How can our comparative advantage be adaptability when our education system is not?
Re:Educational Spending? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a farce that Toyota while classified as an "import" could boasted that their cars (manufactured in the United States) contained MORE American manufactured components than American branded cars.
Re:Global perception... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah... Europe must be doing something wrong... I mean hell... look at the value of their currency! It's only TWICE that of the dollar.
I think Europe is a little better off than we are.
Hell they work less too.
Re:Educational Spending? (Score:2, Interesting)
American automobile manufacturers, however, do not have my support. It will take great improvements in American automobile engineering before I will buy a non-classic American car. To me, they are horribly inefficient, poorly designed and engineered, and stifle technological advancement in personal transportation. From simple things like cupholder, instrument, and console placement and design to more involved engineering like oil, air, gas filter placement and general maintenance engineering that I have enjoyed in foreign (Japanese) cars for 10 years. To me, it seems like the engineering of American cars is not entirely thought through. The industry seems to not care, as people will voraciously consume anything they are fed on television.
Why have American SUV manufacturers manufacured automobiles that will hit almost all other vehicles above their "safe" collision height? Even large freight vehicles have been engineered not to do this! (see the "extra" low bumper on "tractor trailers" in the front and rear, its so that the two vehicles will collide in a "safer" manner, with the frame and its engineered "crumple" zones able to meet in line with the trucks frame, instead of sliding under the truck frame)
There have been many improvements in American cars, but for me it is "too little, too late" followed by "OK, now what have you done to make things better".
Re:they're no dummies (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Tibet (Score:3, Interesting)
China may not be exploiting the riches, but people have been driven out of their homes, murdered, and tortured. So they should be glad to be part of China? Your vision of what consitutes happiness seems to be very shallow given these people lived in probably more happiness than most of us might ever realise.
Please feel free to correct me if I misunderstood anything of what you said.
Remembering the War of 1962 (Score:1, Interesting)
Not sure who the Indian government is trying to please, with the probablilty of war [rediff.com] still looming. The former Indian Defense Minister has gone on record [atimes.com] saying that China is potential enemy number one. China already controls US economy due to it's mammoth firepower in manufacturing [freenewmexican.com]. Their next target software and services.
Posting this as Anonymous Coward -- All my component suppliers are from China, and I have happy customers
a bug in slashdot? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:There is simply no way... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bush's administration has only been in power for four years (elected 2000, took office early 2001); that's hardly enough time to affect the vast education system in the United States in any significant way.
Sure, they could potentially wreak some havoc, but I see them merely influencing it in petty ways such as increased federal support for parochial schools and voucher systems and reduced federal support for teachers' unions. None of which are particularly awful things to do, in fact; the unions seem to be opposed to every change and innovation that comes down the pike except for higher salaries.
Now, cutting innovative programs at the federal level and federal science budgets such as that of NIH and DARPA, that's bad stuff that will hurt the U.S. in the long term. However even so, U.S. spending on science and technology is still very high, higher than anywhere else even today.
As for this China-India rapprochement, I think it's a mere political ploy. India needs Chinese manufacturing right now, but India is definitely gunning for the hardware market and would love to undercut China. Indeed it's been widely reported that China is beginning to experience some labor shortages [npr.org] that may drive up factory wages there. Google for "china worker shortage" to find many articles about this issue.
These two countries are natural competitors with no love lost between them. Mao's invasion of Assam in 1962 and the 1987 border skirmish are pretty recent events, well within the memory of most adults now alive. Clearly this announcement is just a way for China to intimidate the U.S. and rack up a few diplomatic points at little cost, and a way for India to annoy Pakistan (and remind the U.S. that India is an important country in the region).
Re:Educational Spending? (Score:2, Interesting)
And employeers love them.
The focus is on the fundamentals of how computers work and how languages are constructed. With this knowledge, it is then possible to adapt to any new technologies that emerges.
Who says the other guy is less adaptable? Sounds like he is good at picking what he needs to know on his own. Software is not about NAND-gates anyhow, it is mostly about psychology [geocities.com].
American success wasn't just bootstraps (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no evidence that people now work less hard or are any less smart.
Despite the propaganda, there is no evidence there is any shortage of US scientists and engineers. There is a shortage of US science and engineering *careers*.
Re:Who writes the docs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Having been surrounded by water all this time you probably haven't noticed the documentation your boss writes for it's export customers comes across as similarly ridiculous. Try asking any Indian person about the legibility of M$ Windows 98 documentation for instance.. It's time to learn Chinese, Spanish and then Indian in that order.
P.S your URL appears to be a grammatically troubled conjugation of two verbs, where are you from?