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Bill Bishop's avatar

the can't innovate canard drives me a bit nuts...I was on a CNN show in 2015 arguing that just because there was internet censorship in China people should not assume there would be no innovation https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/asia/china-internet-censorship-kristie-lu-stout/index.html "“I haven’t really come across anybody who would say that yes, because we don’t have a free Internet, therefore we can’t innovate,” says Bishop." it struck me then and strikes me now as wishful thinking

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钟建英's avatar

I recently heard a US based researcher (Singaporean I think) praise China’s research output (overtaken the US) but saying the one area where the US still leads is the “going from zero to one”. The concept here is that once an idea becomes known, Chinese researchers will work on it and improve it, but it’s still the Americans who have an edge in coming up with a truly innovative idea in the first place.

I think it’s something that Chinese researchers themselves acknowledge and you also seem to have that view (I think) as you once commented that there are no “Elon Musks” in China (or something to that effect).

Just passing along an interesting observation. My own view is that China is fast catching up, and there is no reason why Chinese innovators won’t go from “zero-to-one” one day.

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