Chinese DIY Inventions
I think there's something of an ulterior motive behind these stories.<p>They present Chinese ingenuity in a charmingly harmless way - uneducated but plucky tinkerers, building some madcap machine out of scrap. In doing so, they subtly misrepresent Chinese industry by omission. China is rapidly transitioning away from low-skill, low-margin manufacturing to high-skill, high-margin R&D. The old jokes about Chinese R&D being a photocopier are wearing increasingly thin, as firms like Huawei become global players.<p>The article opens with the line "One visible sign of China's recent economic growth is the rise in prominence of inventors and entrepreneurs.", as if the photos that follow are in any way representative of invention in China. The real story is that Chinese R&D investment now amounts to over $160bn/yr and is set to surpass that of the US within the decade.<p>I'm reminded of the aphorism "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." It seems we're still laughing at the 700m Chinese citizens who are uneducated peasants, rather than preparing to fight the 700m who are urbanised and increasingly well-educated.