China's tech buildup: Peril and promise

As always, Practical Futurist readers produced a full medley of responses to last week’s column. I described China’s drive to build its own Silicon Valley — and my suspicion that China may be the first country that actually pulls it off. Broadly speaking, reader comments fell into two categories: what’s wrong with China and what’s wrong with us. First: what’s wrong with China.  

Robert Pascal, Toronto, Ontario: The biggest drawback to all the Chinese universities is the lack of freedom of thought. I worked and lived in China for almost fifteen years. The people are great and their politics are as corrupt as can be. China will always remain backward until there are checks and balances in the government.

Tom Simchak, Houston, TX: One important aspect you left out in this puff piece is the blatant theft of intellectual property rights and software piracy that the Chinese are known for ... or is that what you consider to be the "entrepreneurial spirit"?

Sunil Misra, Baltimore, MD: China is a fascist state. They oppress religions, commit cultural genocide in Tibet, and saber-rattle at the drop of a hat. They refuse to allow independent unions, which is why multinational corporations love them. They crush, ironically, workers themselves. They have executed prisoners for body parts. Need I go on? By these means, as Machiavelli notes, one may gain power but not honor. The Chinese are a model for no one. They will fail as all fascist governments do.

Jonathan B. Rogers, Tianjin, China: My wife and I have been living in China and teaching English for almost six years. There are so many things that your article DOESN'T say about the real China, its students, and its people. As so many 'foreigners' have said after living here: "How are these people ever going to be able to do anything? They can't even wait in line at McDonald's." It takes more than math to make the world go around, and it's going to take more than math and technology to make China anything more than a third-world country. We are so sick of hearing about the Chinese students' math scores. Just for the record, math is about the ONLY thing that some of them can do. Thirty percent of Chinese can't even write their name. From our and other expats' experience, if China "makes it", it will probably be because they lied, cheated, and stole to get there.

Alan Burger, Houston, TX: Your opinion paints a pretty picture of the China and its people. The fact is the government is extremely corrupt and anything there that resembles Silicon Valley has been built by U.S. companies, all for slave labor and no EPA restrictions. They have stolen just about everything they build. It's sad to see there are Americans like you who choose to make evil look good. You are American, aren't you?

Dan DeLucca, Seattle, WA: All of this pro-Communist Chinese rubbish that continuously appears in the American media gives me the impression the Communist Chinese know how to make the American media monkey dance.

China is a nation with a remarkable capacity for change, and anyone who still carries around Cold War notions of the “Communist Chinese” is far out of date.  Just take a look at Newsweek International’s fascinating piece on how the Party is remaking itself with a leadership training academy that “looks like an American business school.” Many of the most successful entrepreneurs in China are Party members: It’s less a question of ideology than belonging to the ruling class. 

That said, however, it is certainly the case that China remains a totalitarian state, with all that means for civil liberties and individual rights. It also has a corrupt banking system controlled by Party leaders. In the long term that will certainly throttle China’s internal growth, but for now — well, when you’re doing massive urban renewal, for example, the lack of due process certainly makes it easy to move the local residents around. Fascism may not be to American tastes, but it’s not clear that such a government is necessarily bad for either economic or technologic progress. 

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