From imitation to innovation: How China became a tech superpower by Christina Larson (2/2018).
“In China, change comes so quickly that the future can arrive before the past is fully stripped away
In late October 2017, when I went to visit Kai-Fu Lee, China’s premiere artificial intelligence (AI)-focused venture capitalist, I entered his office complex from the back side of the building. Mistakenly, I took a wrong elevator and, as if tripping through a wormhole, briefly found myself in the Beijing of the past century.
In the early 2000s, this corner of Zhongguancun – the area of northern Beijing now often referred to as China’s Silicon Valley – was mostly famous for its sprawling electronics markets. There were several high-rise buildings, in which you could roam vast open floors connected by narrow escalators and packed with stalls selling everything from cameras to TVs, DVD players to toasters, dancing Santas to neon dildos. Some items were made by major, household brands such as Samsung, Nokia, and Canon; many more of them were knock-off products, with names creatively similar to the “real” thing. Most of the time, the electronics were assembled in China; almost never were they invented in China. This image is still deeply ingrained in the western imagination – that of the industrious “copycat” nation…”
