> Everything Facebook, Google and Microsoft designs gets built here (or nearby) anyway.
I'm going to have to disagree here. The vast majority of stuff is designed or thought up elsewhere. Things might get assembled or manufactured in Shenzhen (it is after all, the manufacturing capital of the world) but the innovations aren't coming from China. In fact, China doesn't even rate that high on manufacturing innovation (they rank 41st place). While they may manufacturer more than anyone else, the bulk of their manufacturing is low tech stuff (Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-innovative-countries/). - Scroll down to manufacturing.
That's why I wrote 'built there', not 'designed there'. I meant the factory aspect - but it also means people here have access to those designs as well as tools and expertise to iterate on them, tweak them and repurpose them.
> but it also means people here have access to those designs as well as tools and expertise to iterate on them, tweak them and repurpose them.
I don't see how that's relevant. If they're designed elsewhere, then who is going to be tweaking and re-purposing? The Chinese slave labor? Anyone who matters will be back in their home country, doing the work there. Anyone overseeing manufacturing operations in China literally doesn't matter from a design or innovation standpoint.
Oh this is very relevant. You need to see things that are happening here in Shenzhen. Western companies may bankroll some interesting designs, but they are not innovative wrt. applying technology to life. Not compared to "the Chinese slave labor".
And honestly, who "matters" is a matter of a point of view. Big tech companies try to lock you in to maximize their profits out of devices they sell. Meanwhile in Shenzhen, nobody gives a fuck and you can get any permutation of electronics you can imagine for fraction of the western price, and it's often user-servicable. This is the place where actual innovation happens - selling overpriced gadgets that do 5% of features everyone saw in Star Trek 30 years ago is not innovation. I want to live in the world with more gongkai[0] and less attempts at locking people in unneccessary, wasteful, idiotic cloud platforms.
I want the Western tech giants to lose the war on general-purpose computing.
> Meanwhile in Shenzhen, nobody gives a fuck and you can get any permutation of electronics you can imagine for fraction of the western price, and it's often user-servicable.
And this is exactly why China is on the road to nowhere. With a lack of IP protection, blatant IP theft and rampant piracy, nobody (big businesses) will invest the time and money into China. In fact, those that have, have pulled out (see: Microsoft, Google, etc). It's why despite having over a billion people, nobody really seriously considers China a potential client.
And yet, despite having over a billion citizens, their innovation and technological breakthroughs are non-existent. They are simply not a technological innovative country. Nearly every article you find on google will back this up. Just do a quick google search. Again, see the link I included above.
I'm sorry, but the data and reality shows otherwise. You're not going to find anyone saying "innovation happens in China". Quite the opposite in fact. The only way they've been keeping up with the rest of the world has been through theft and buying the technology from those who created it.
And that's the problem. Since they're so used to stealing and buying their technology, they don't have a foundation in which to create their own. That's what China hasn't grasped yet -- the process of creating new technology and being innovative (the discovery) is itself just as important as the end result because it's a foundation that allows you to move forward onto the next breakthrough. China doesn't have that. And they're getting left further and further behind.
I'm going to have to disagree here. The vast majority of stuff is designed or thought up elsewhere. Things might get assembled or manufactured in Shenzhen (it is after all, the manufacturing capital of the world) but the innovations aren't coming from China. In fact, China doesn't even rate that high on manufacturing innovation (they rank 41st place). While they may manufacturer more than anyone else, the bulk of their manufacturing is low tech stuff (Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-innovative-countries/). - Scroll down to manufacturing.