DeepSeek, China and the Japanese art of 'kaizen'

berghem writes: An Article on FT.com (paywalled) reports how behind China’s recent achievements — in LLMs like DeepSeek, electric cars, robotics, electronics, etc — some version of kaizen is at work.

Kaizen is a patient process of iterative improvement of product and process, which Japan made famous in the 70s and 80s.

According to Japanese recruitment agents, China these days employs older and experienced "Japanese semiconductor, railway and robotics engineers as consultants". Japan did not pay these engineers very much, and China has found that they can tempt them away from their own country with better pay and by valuing their expertise. "Kaizen is fundamentally a process of trial and error, and an experienced engineer can impart the invaluable, cost-saving nod on what was tried but didn’t work."