China Lays Claim To Four Great New Inventions That Have Existed Elsewhere Before (bbc.com) 193
dryriver writes: The BBC has an interesting story about Chinese state media increasingly touting "4 Great New Inventions" in modern China that were not invented by Chinese inventors or in China at all. The original term "four new inventions" harks back to the "four great inventions" of ancient China -- papermaking, gunpowder, printing and the compass. The new claim, however, appears to be that China actually invented high-speed rail, mobile payment, e-commerce, and bike-sharing, which is not true at all -- all 4 were invented or pioneered in other countries, all of them decades ago. The provenance of the claim appears to be a Beijing Foreign Studies University survey from May 2017, which asked young people from 20 countries to list the technology they "most wanted to bring back" to their country from China. The respondents' top answers were high-speed rail, mobile payment, bike sharing, and e-commerce. Since then, Chinese media and officials have drawn on this to promote these technologies as China's "four new great inventions" in modern times.
China has certainly adopted these "4 great inventions" on a bombastic scale of late. China now has the world's largest high-speed rail network -- about 25,000 kilometres (15,500 miles) -- and aims to double it by 2030. China's total mobile payments in the first 10 months of 2017 stood at $12.7 trillion, the world's largest volume, according to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. And with more than 700 million internet users, China is also the biggest and fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, according to a 2017 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. In February, the vice minister of China's Ministry of Transport said that there are 400 million registered bike-sharing users and 23 million shared bikes in China. That much is true. But did these 4 great new inventions emerge from China itself? It would appear that that part is untrue.
China has certainly adopted these "4 great inventions" on a bombastic scale of late. China now has the world's largest high-speed rail network -- about 25,000 kilometres (15,500 miles) -- and aims to double it by 2030. China's total mobile payments in the first 10 months of 2017 stood at $12.7 trillion, the world's largest volume, according to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. And with more than 700 million internet users, China is also the biggest and fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, according to a 2017 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. In February, the vice minister of China's Ministry of Transport said that there are 400 million registered bike-sharing users and 23 million shared bikes in China. That much is true. But did these 4 great new inventions emerge from China itself? It would appear that that part is untrue.
1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
This is straight out of 1984.
Just plain propaganda is all... (Score:5, Insightful)
During the Cold War, the USSR had stuff saying they invented all kinds of stuff. China is doing just the same. This is just repressive governments doing what they do best, which is historical revisionism.
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Russia wouldn't just claim invention -- they would wait until after someone invented it, then claim they invented it first.
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Russia wouldn't just claim invention -- they would wait until after someone invented it, then claim they invented it first.
Is that what you meant to say? I'll be charitable and assume not.
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During the Cold War, the USSR had stuff saying they invented all kinds of stuff. China is doing just the same. This is just repressive governments doing what they do best, which is historical revisionism.
Great, now they will lay claim to inventing historical revisionism.
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Great, now they will lay claim to inventing historical revisionism.
The best part about this is that they can claim it over and over...
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Most migrants of last century came to America already educated elsewhere. So, technically America didn't invent shit. This century on the other hand most migrants are shitty sand monkeys out of caves and jungles.
Must hurt bad when you have to reflect on their superiority to you.
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But let's be honest, this is not merely an exercise of a totalitarian regime; both the left and right in US politics are constantly involved in trying to rewrite historical facts for their own purposes.
What's wrong with China doing it is their effective MONOPOLY on the flow of information to their people, meaning obvious bullshit isn't revealed for what it is.
The problem is somewhat mirrored in the US however by the excessive number of information sources, meaning discerning actual authority worth listening
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Probably because he never claimed that.
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He took the initiative, presumably in providing funding. I don't know for sure, but that's perfectly believable. He doesn't claim any invention credit for anything in that quote, just that he pushed high-tech projects in Congress.
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Hmmm....why does that ring a bell? Why, why, why?
Re: Just plain propaganda is all... (Score:3)
Quick, who invented "the telephone"? Alexander Graham Bell? Nope. He was just a CEO with the connections & persistence to get approval to string wires over public right-of-ways. The 19th century's equivalent of today's Arduino & RasPi-using "Makers" had been sending sound over wires for YEARS. They were just unusable, impractical, or useless as commercial products.
Ditto for "electric light". Arc lights existed in France at least 50 years before Edison was born. What Edison "invented" was "the electr
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Stop! Stop! Before you tell me that Bill Gates didn't invent computers.
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You mean like...
No. Not like that at all. Just because you were told one thing as a child some decades ago doesn't mean the information is still current or complete.
Re:Just plain propaganda is all... (Score:5, Funny)
I keep telling kids that taking drugs during school hours is a really bad idea.
This is why.
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It's an "alternate history textbook" they use in some of the mandatory electives designed to make you read through the whole thing and disregard everything you've read prior. The alternative electives in the same category are things like women's studies and the struggle of minorities in modern society (picked it because it seemed the least politically-charged from the ambiguous description.)
You were asked for proof, and this is what you provide?
Well, I'm convinced.
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So you claim that there are one or more colleges that have "mandatory electives" (whatever the heck those would be) that use "alternative history textbooks" to say things that you paraphrase and claim are false?
How about providing some specifics. What books are these? Can you give title(s) and author(s)? What courses require these, and how do they fit into the degree requirements? What colleges require these courses? (I will note that my son recently went through the University of Minnesota, getting
Re: Just plain propaganda is all... (Score:2)
In Europe there are already schools
Where, and what schools?
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the USSR had stuff saying they invented all kinds of stuff
What stuff, exactly, they claimed to have invented?
I knew an old guy, soldier in WW2 who spoke to Russians in Berlin in 1945. They were using a lot of Western equipment which had been sent to them, Jeeps for example. They had been told that Russia had made it all and refused to believe my friend otherwise..
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Did that soldier talk to the Russians where they might be overheard? If the official line was that the equipment was Soviet-made, I'd expect the soldiers to pretend to believe it.
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High speed rail existed as TGV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , Intercity-Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , Transrapid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Only China could bring all the advanced tech together and make it in China as a low cost export.
People from 20 countries see the absorbed foreign tech working in China and like what they see. A company in China presents the tech as innovat
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Hey you ignorant sloth! High speed trains are invented by Ze Gemansz! ... 2:30h ... in a car it is 5:30 :D /s just kidding
ICE's predate TGVs! and those french suckers stole the technology from Ze Germansz! Everyone knows that
But I love to ride a TGV from Karlsruhe to Paris
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I feel like they made mobile payments work too.
The e-commerce (pretty universal) and bike sharing (I'm assuming Copenhagen invented that) are pretty rediculous claims.
Re: 1984 (Score:2)
I would say Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, and Japan were leaders in mobile payments. They had it before the iPhone came out!
Re:1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
China's high speed rail isn't even innovative though. They imported all the technology from Japan, and tried to build their own but it proved too unreliable. They have some domestic models now, but much of the tech is still Japanese and some European, and their trains are not actually any better. They run a little faster than the Japanese ones, but the Japanese ones are only limited to that speed due to noise concerns.
To be fair their did build the Shanghai maglev, which was quite impressive for the time. But for some reason they decided not to go with maglev technology for the nationwide networks, probably cost or reliability concerns. It's actually a little bit sad to ride it now, the cabin is worn and a little neglected it seems.
The rate at which they built the network is incredible, but it's old established tech and really maglev is the only way it's going to get any faster now, which would mean ripping up all the track...
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The Shanghai maglev was purchased from Germany, China just built the track:
"The train set was built by a joint venture of Siemens and ThyssenKrupp from Kassel, Germany and based on years of tests and improvements of their Transrapid maglev monorail."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Invite advance nations to show their products.
Study methods as part of an evaluation.
Export a copy.
Decades of hard work done in Germany, France, Japan is lost in a few years to China.
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It's a shame, really. Should be laws against exporting of certain technologies IMO. The MBA spreadsheet warriors love these agreements to boost short term profits, while long term the company completely fails.
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Re:1984 (Score:4, Funny)
Or Steve Jobs -
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
China does seem to have a thing about Apple.
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Nineteen Eighty-Four (Score:1)
1984 was a year. Nineteen Eighty-Four was a warning mistaken for an instruction manual.
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Yes, yes, hugely insightful, absolutely (- sarcasm, if you haven't already guessed).
It is of course absurd to claim that China invented those four things - but it is different from so many absurd claims made in the West, really? The combination of lack of real insight in your subject and wishful thinking almost invariably leads to this sort of embarrassing nonsense. Like when people spot the image of Jesus in a piece of toast or a skidmark, or see the number 666 in everything. Or for that matter, when they
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Again I ask: how much more crap can the Chinese citizens take before there's a revolution?
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Do they feel a need to... (Score:1)
... trump Trump?
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Nice. I think Xi Jinping is taking lessons from Little Rocket Man.
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Except in the meeting it was Rocket Man taking notes for Xi.
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Xieesh, you'd think he'd get a flunkie for that.
What a shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
That the current leadership so desperately plays the "nationalist" card at every opportunity; China has invented many things in the past, (gunpowder...) but of course that was under different management.
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Re:What a shame... (Score:5, Funny)
If I remember my history correctly, World War Two was won largely on the efforts of five Allied prisoners of war operating as an underground sabotage group out of Luft-Stalag 13, right in the heart of Germany.
China invented copyright piracy (Score:1)
Maybe China also invented copyright piracy and stealing intellectual property.
No, the USA invented that long ago. (Score:2, Insightful)
Ask the estate of Charles Dickens, the USA didn't have a bookselling industry so didn't allow copyrights of books. When they did start to have their own industry however...
Oh and Hollywood is based and there entirely and solely because of their abuse of patent and cipyright. The current plethora of tiny production companies "federated" to big companies is based on that past: by the time a film using Edison's patents was spotted and the law sent to California to bring them to justice, the company folded afte
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How come you whine about them pretending they invented stuff when you did it first
I have never pretended to invent anything.
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Because it otherwise makes no sense. Either you know what "you did it first" means your moronic bunch of merkins OR you know that *China* isn't claiming anything. Contries have no vocal chords and can say nothing to humans.
But I guess your butthurt needed distracting.
I'm not American and regardless you should probably double check grammar when calling someone a moron.
It doesn't really matter if they INVENTED them... (Score:3, Interesting)
...they have the resources and the drive to perfect them and make them a part of daily life for their citizens, thereby changing the current paradigm and effectively OWNING the idea for the foreseeable future as they infect those around them with the same new minimum "standards of living".
Gee, I wonder where they learned THAT from?!?
mnem
I am not my pants. No, I am not your pants either.
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"perfect them"
hahahahahaha, you've got to be kidding. it might seem that way, but it's only because any negative criticism is censored. rofl
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Yes, I do fully understand that this is known as "cultural imperialism". And yes, I do also understand the irony as I type this from the comfort of my air-conditioned home in the heartland of America on a PC built from 99% China-manufactured components.
mnem
" "(Holy Testicle Tuesday!)
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[1] Somewhat debatable, depending on what you regard as the original railway, but mostly true.
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Being the inventor and first to implement has problems, much as you point out with UK railways. As soon as the first implementation goes into use, other countries get to learn from what the first one did and improve their copies.
Exactly. The first British railways were built for carrying coal short distances and made too small for the long term as a result, both in the gauge between rails and the overall loading gauge. George Stephenson has a lot to answer for. Even British engineers building railways elsewhere built bigger (usually except the track gauge as it was hard to source wider wheelsets).
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Real questions (not rhetorical, I don't know the answer).
How have they perfected e-commerce beyond what I do in the US?
How have they perfected bike sharing beyond dozens of European cities?
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The easier thing to answer the first one would be to go around it the opposite way. They have almost nothing that is worse than what you do in US when it comes to e-commerce, and almost everything better. Wechat payments are universal and easy, deliveries are extremely fast taking hours rather than days within major cities, availability is "everything you see on aliexpress, amazon, etc and then some" and prices are excellent.
It's economy of scale, and China has incredible megacities and produce most of the
Mass Surveillance, Reef Construction, MitE, (Score:5, Insightful)
Bike sharing? Come on China. I know I want my country to import facial recognition technology so I can be tracked all day. I also think my country is falling behind in turning coral reefs into mini-military bases to secure oil rights. I also like how you've managed to build out an internet that allows Man in the Everywhere attacks.
Don't be ashamed of who you are. Be proud of your accomplishments. You have a huge fan base in the 'I'm a citizen of the World but have yet to leave my own country' crowd.
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I also think my country is falling behind in turning coral reefs into mini-military bases to secure oil rights.
Oh please, Shah of Iran? Iraq invasion? Blind eye to "good buddy" Saudis?...and that's just off the top of my head.
This is like Hitler calling out jaywalkers.
I also like how you've managed to build out an internet that allows Man in the Everywhere attacks.
Definitely China bullshit on this invention.
Patent goes to NSA, GCHQ and company.
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If they were good Communists it would be 400 million shared bikes. So yeah...I'll give them "we invented bike sharing" unless the Soviets want that honor.
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They are good communists. That's why they need to share bikes rather then producing enough for everyone to have one cheaply. This is changing...as they stray from communism.
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Yeah, it's changing. But what are they about anyway?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ph... [theatlantic.com]
I'm not sure just what this says about where China is or is going but at least they put some muscle into it.
Think of it as splitting the difference. (Score:4)
How many companies (or countries) shoot themselves in the foot, denying themselves the benefit of an idea because it was "not invented here"?
If vanity stands in the way of doing the sensible thing, you can either learn to be humble, or you can confabulate a rationalization. Maybe America should do the same thing; we can even claim it's our own idea.
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The problem is nationalism. Everyone is trying to show that they are superior to the other because of X.
However most innovations are not made in a bubble.
Ford didn't invent the Automobile, he mass produced that automobile better then the others at the time. The automobile was made and perfected and changed over hundreds of years, across many countries. Then other countries had picked up Fords ideas and made it better for their needs.
Today with a more global environment it is even harder to say someone inv
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The problem is nationalism. Everyone is trying to show that they are superior to the other because of X.
That's not nationalism.
Re:Think of it as splitting the difference. (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan is a counter-example. Nationalism never stopped them from adopting something foreign if they think it's good.
Take ramen -- we think of it as quintessentially Japanese food, but in fact it's actually Chinese -- or at least the all-important noodle is. The Chinese in the 1500s developed an alkaline noodle that remains chewy in hot broth rather than falling apart. These only started to appear in Japan about a hundred years ago, and it was only about thirty years ago that it reached its current status as an iconic national dish.
This is something I really admire about Japan: it's ability to adopt things from elsewhere and make them their own. Ramen are Japanese because the Japanese took Chinese lamian and transformed it into something new through their mania for refinement. It's a lesson other cultures could learn.
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How convenient, but in what way exactly is that different from refusing something foreign you do not like?
Japan used to be extremely isolated and wary of outside influences pre-1850s, many novels till 1970s exhibit hostility towards other cultures/races, extremely tough asylum conditions exist as of today.
Assimilate I can agree, Japanese society rarely accepts foreign customs and you make it s
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The history of ramen is pretty well documented; wikipedia has a good article on it. Ramen started out being served in Chinese restaurants -- yes, Chinese restaurants have been popular in Japan for centuries, the oldest continually operating Chinese restaurant is over a 130 years old. But it really took off with Japanese soldiers returning from WW2.
Anyhow, Japan did the same thing with curry -- an unspeakable British take on the various sauced dishes found around the Indian subcontinent. It's now the Japa
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Oh, and by the way "ra-men" is the Japanese transliteration of the Chinese la mian -- note the characteristic Japanese consonant shift. Chinese languages have "r" and "l" sounds which are precisely equivalent to their English counterparts. Japanese has a single consonant that's in between, which is why Japanese English speakers often have difficulty with these two sounds in English. Chinese speakers (despite what you've heard in movies) do not.
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The automobile was made and perfected over hundreds of years? Errr....I presume you intend to include yer basic ox-drawn cart as an automobile. Hell, why stop there, go back to chariots and Egyptians...although they probably stole the idea from Assyrians...who stole it from the Persians who stole it from...what do you know, the Chinese.
uh (Score:3)
Communist dictatorship lies, bigly.
Some people shocked, oddly.
Next you'll be telling me that "republic" doesn't mean real voting and stuff there ...
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Actually republic does not mean real voting. ...
Only some small group is voting on stuff that matters
We are not in a fucking democracy, you should have noticed that by now.
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"Republic" only means there's some alternative to a king or emperor. It does not mean there's a representative democracy. You know how there's often political partisian strife and people argue over things? At one point the debate was "Should we have a king? Should the nation be his, with everything in it being his property?" Now, any sort of alternative is going to have the power a little bit more spread out that one guy, and to that effect it'll be a little more democratic. But an alternative system where
Apple and America Invented... (Score:1, Interesting)
Apple invented the mp3 player, the smartphone, music production on computers, the tablet computer
America of course saved everyone's ass in world war 2, invented the computer, won the space race, founded a nation based on freedom (black slaves, ethnic cleansing of native americans?) , invented free speech, invented american food like Pizza, Hamburgers and French fries.
Oh wait they didn't...
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won the space race
Why is this in the list? If the "winner" isn't the U.S., who is?
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The Klingons?
USA in WWII (Score:2)
Without lend-lease, it's possible that England would have fallen and doubtful the Soviets would have blunted the Nazi invasion of Russia as quickly as they did.
Without the Marshall plan, it's possible that WWIII would already have taken place.
Still, haters gotta hate.
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By the time lend-lease was providing significant materiel to Britain, Hitler had changed his focus, and Britain was not seriously threatened with defeat.
Similarly, the Soviets resisted the most dangerous offensives without significant equipment from the West. The Soviet counteroffensives would have been much less effective without Lend-Lease. Providing that stuff to the Soviet Union saved lots and lots of Western lives.
The Marshall Plan did a tremendous amount of good.
No face (Score:1)
China in the invention of High-Speed Rail (Score:2)
The article states "According to the Worldwide Rail Organisation (UIC), the first high-speed train service began in 1964 - Japan's Shinkansen or bullet train. There had been significant speed records set before in Europe "
However, invention is not the same as regular service. And while most of the development happened in Europe (such as the 210 km/h German EMU record in 1903, the 1930s German and British steam records, the 1950s electrical engine records in France), the South Manchuria Railway was the fa
But, to the citizens OF China (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well,
in eastern germany we had this kind of joke:
A customer is entering a department store, looking around he is approaching a clerk and asks: "Do you have no shirts?"
The clerk answers: "Oh, Sir, you are completely wrong here. Here we have no shoes. No shirts you can find on second floor upstairs"
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Good joke, but kind of difficult to tell in English. It is easier in German ?
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Yeah, I guess in german it makes more sense as looking at an empty shelf and asking a clerk "Habt Ihr kein Brot mehr?" (You have no bread anymore?) is a kind of idiom. Obviously not very smart when you look at a empty shelf in a bakery.
Bicycles (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been to Shanghai recently. They have bicycle sharing on a scale that is vast. They are incredibly popular, to the point that there are large heaps of bikes --- heaps, not neat rows --- at the front gates of factories where workers have left them as they report in the mornings to their job. The bikes are everywhere. Two years ago, when I visited the same location, this was not the case.
In my home town in the US, we have bike sharing as well. Nice neat rows of locking stands that are prissy in comparison. The stand across from our apartment seems to have a service truck pull up to it each week, so they appear to need frequent maintenance, too. With the Chinese version of the system, you scan a QR code on each bike and off you go. The bikes in China are basic, utilitarian kinds. Sure, you could steal one, disable the locking mechanism (a simple angle grinder would suffice) and try to keep it as personal property, but then you'd have to go to significant measures to prevent someone else from taking yours as a rental. The place is saturated with them, at least in the part of Shanghai where I was.
Did they invent bike sharing? No, clearly not. But they figured out how to do it on such an immense scale that it has changed society there.
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Did they invent bike sharing? No, clearly not. But they figured out how to do it on such an immense scale that it has changed society there.
I don't believe china figured out a magical formula for it - its more that its filling a void that no longer exists in the west. Our societies are already heavily setup for cars and public transport which has left limited need for bicycle sharing. Probably would have been great for my grandfather 80-years ago.
For bicycles in particular we also have an issue with drivers not being used to having bicycles on the road and often believe they don't have a right to be there making it dangerous.
Lame choice of rip offs... (Score:3)
Still way behind us (Score:2)
They haven't caught on to the trick of patenting prior art by appending "using the Internet" yet.
Did we have it backwards? (Score:2)
Do the re-writers of history do so first and then later become victorious because of that?
Neurodevelopment and Culture (Score:2)
Given my experience working with Asian and Indian colleagues, I have noticed certain "differences" in language and logic/reasoning skills that I can only attribute to neuro-development (aka: how the brain develops while learning specific language mechanics and cultural normatives). So I have to ask, not knowing a Chinese-language: how does "invent" and "invention" translate between actual Western languages?
Because I've seen a lot of empirical evidence to the effect that Asian peoples (Oh, boy, here comes th
any chance this is a mistranslatin? (Score:2)
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That's comforting (Score:3)
It's comforting to know that while we may have a clusterfuck on our hands with our political system in shambles, partisan conflict tearing the nation apart, clusterfucks of healthcare, retirement, and education... other nations have their own problems and are generally just as fucked up as we are.
China certainly had "The Bad Old Days" of dictators leading to starvation and cultural purging. I thought they were passed all that. They were growing like mad once they finally accepted capitalism. But with Winnie the Pooh now having a president-for-life position, it looks like the nation is starting to rot. And wow is it fast. To sustain this level of delusion that they're re-writing RECENT history... they'll simply have to silence not only the intellectuals who know better, but god-damn near anyone who looks outside their borders. Hopefully they won't force the intellectuals to the western farms. Again. If so, hey, there's a post-doc position waiting for you over here.
Or is this just all propaganda?
FIVE great inventions (Score:2)
You forgot about quatro-triticale.
Left off the list? (Score:2)
I expected to see "small Pacific islands" on the list too.
Citations needed!!! (Score:2)
I read Chinese news everyday. I do not recall the state media or social media there claim these four technologies were invented in China. They did claim there are numerous improvements to high-speed train such as laying high-speed tracks on hash terrain and that's likely true too.
Even the example cited in this story, I do not see that they were claiming the tech is invented in China. It is like nothing wrong that people would want to bring back rocket tech from the US even though (rudimentary form of) rocke [wikipedia.org]
Technologies Actually Invented In China (Score:2)
Email, Bitcoin, XOR, ...
Antikythera Mechanism (Score:2)
Same as the old list (Score:2)
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China may be big, but not as big as the level they reached in those technologies might suggest.
China has more than twice the length of high-speed rail lines than the rest of the world combined.