Why China Can’t Innovate?

Why Can’t China Innovate?
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Moving Away From Rule-Bound Rote Learning
China is currently the second largest and among the most influential economies in the world after the United States. However, in spite of the country’s relevance in today’s world, China’s educational system is wanting. Chinese’ high performance in learning institutions not only in China but also internationally is evident through high scores in all forms of tests. Nevertheless, China’s learning system plays a significant role in limiting its learners from achieving alternative attainments aside from high scores in their examinations.
Students in China study by rote, a system endorsed and mandated by the Chinese education system. As a result, Chinese learning institutions emphasize more on high scores which make students focus more cramming and memorizing for tests than critical thinking (Staats 2011). Chinese learners, trainers and the government have a common mentality that high score in exams is the only way for improved social mobility and therefore underpins these people’s less stress on the curriculum. Therefore, the first change needs to start with the Chinese government, which oversees all programs that run in organizations throughout the country. The government will require changing its educational policies and instead replace them with ones that match with modern needs (Staats 2011). For instance, instead of having staff supervising learning bodies, the country should allow school boards and faculties to direct and run the schools individually provided they abide by set policies.

Additionally, China needs to be more open to new systems of learning by introducing alternative educational methods that do not necessarily comply with the current traditional system of solely focusing on high scores. For example, the country can change its education system and emphasize on promoting and nurturing talent and a system that allow students to think critically and solve problems. Lastly, Chinese people including parents, instructors, and students need collaborating towards eliminating traditional educational mindset and instead embrace the new methods that stress on curriculum rather than passing tests.
Enforcement Mechanisms for Guarding Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
An amalgamation of economic and cultural aspects is responsible for the current Chinese attitude towards the protection of intellectual property. The country’s fast-paced economic progress has impelled China onto the international stage. Nevertheless, the nation faces external forces such as the U.S. among others and internal pressures between traditional values of the country as well as its aspiration for economic prosperity. These outer and inner tensions have got intellectual property marked down as a primary concern bound to decide China’s political and economic course.
China continues overlooking exclusive infringement rates in the interim. The nation’s persistent economic development and sustenance of the Chinese Communist Party, however, necessitates stern restructurings of China’s intellectual property enforcement. Being efficient instead of perfunctory, it is apparent given China’s political structure and history that suggested reforms should be the natural result of the state’s internal weighing of inducement instead of a reaction to external forces. A study by European Commission (2015) reveals that 7 out of 10 European Union industries present in China still perceive intellectual property as one of the biggest problems for the successful growth of their companies. Additionally, these organizations acknowledged the existence of hindrances to the effective protection of intellectual property, and there is still a lot that needs doing at the sub-central level.
Chinese IPR policy has three mechanisms for enforcing IPR including criminal prosecution enforcement, administrative authority, and public activities for injunctive relief or monetary damages. The Chinese government and its representatives are solely responsible for ineffectiveness in fully enforcing IPR mechanisms due to corruption and non-transparent administrative penalties to offenders. Therefore, the nation needs to be more vigilant by ensuring thorough enforcement of IPS.
Chinese Subsidies Violation of WTO Membership
The World Trade Organization has various rules that all its member countries must adhere to ensure the health and sustenance of international trade. WTO’s “Subsidies and Countervailing Measures” clause include prohibited actions in which the WTO necessitates its associates to attain specific export targets (World Trade Organization n.d). Also, WTO requires its beneficiaries to use locally produced products rather than imported ones. The prohibition exists since these activities distort global business and hence may harm other nation’s trade.
China introduced a long-term plan in 2006 that aimed at reducing the country’s dependence on imported technology to not over 30 percent within several years. This move was meant to raise China’s research and development (R&D) funding as well as to jump ahead of its global rivals. Some of the R&D projects included information tech, equipment manufacturing, energy-efficient tech, and advanced materials. The Chinese government, following its new project, established export subsidies for Chinese companies. Also, the government introduced a rule that required state-owned firms and departments to procure products, whenever possible, from Chinese-owned companies. These moves adopted by the Chinese government violated the subsidies rules set forth by WTO in that China reduced its consumption of imports. Abramy, Kirby, and McFarlan (2014) points out that despite other WTO beneficiary awareness of the threat, Chinese subsidies move posed to their trade, they continued to support China. Additionally, Chinese recorded tremendous growth in R&D developments from 600 in 2004 to about 1200 in 2010 (Abramy et al. 2014).
Effect of Chinese Communist Government on Innovation
For decades, the Chinese Communist regime continues to repress operations by capitalists in which the government dictates and regulates how businesses operate. Kshetri (2007) indicates that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) traditional aspect views entrepreneurial operations as possible threats to the party’s moral standards, ideology, dominance, and administrative authority. Additionally, CCP leaders consider developed legal agencies as possible threats to the legitimacy of the party and resorted to increasing social unrests and income differences to validate actions against entrepreneurship (Kshetri 2007).
Delays in granting entrepreneurs their full rights in the ways they operate their businesses indicate continued ideological inflexibility and institutional sluggishness against progress by CCP. As a result, it is evident that political ideologies negatively impact Chinese businesses as well as the legal systems that represent them. Although China has, in the recent few years encouraged entrepreneurship and privatization of companies, the government still closely monitors their operation by having a representative in most organizations and institutions. This activity hinders business owners and directors from realizing their full potential due to fears the government pose. Additionally, the government’s prevailing ideologies of using tests to measure student’s ability limit learner’s potential to innovate (Staats 2011). As a result, business owners are incapable of critically analyzing their business and identifying necessary steps required to grow or invent since they lack that attribute as their education system failed to provide.
Chinese Economy before the 19th Century
China was among the world’s most powerful and advanced country thousands of years before the onset of the modern era. In fact, Petras (2016) points out that the state performed way better than Europe and produced over 125, 000 tons of steel while Europe did only 76,000 tons. Additionally, Petras (2016) declares that China ranked top in technical innovations the production on textiles about seven hundred years before Britain started its textile revolution in the 18th century. Lin (2012) concurs that China dominated the world’s economy event during the early years of the 19th century.
China ranked as the leading business country making long-distance business transactions to states such as Africa, Europe, and the Middle East and Southern Asia. The nation’s agricultural revolution exceeded that of Western countries by the 18th century. China’s largest inventions include gunpowder, printing, the compass and paper. These products made the state become an industrialized superpower with merchandise transported across the globe using the most sophisticated navigation system of the time (Petras 2016). Petras (2016) suggests that China owned the largest business ships internationally with Chinese ships moving up to 3000 tons whereas English ones moved 300 only. Moreover, Chinese traders used about 130, 000 privately-owned ships by the end of 19th century, a figure many times bigger than British’s (Petras 2016).
However, it is evident that China’s dominance slipped in the early years of the 19th century following European and British emulation of Chinese advanced techs and aspiration to enter China’s profitable market. Also, British imperialism challenged China’s leading world position as it adopted advanced technologies of China and other Asian states. China was, therefore, an economic power before the 19th century.
References
Abrami R., Kirby W. & McFarlan W. (2014). Why China Can’t Innovate and What it’s Doing
About it. The Globe.European Commission. (2015). Report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property
rights in third countries. Retrieved from https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/documents/11370/0/Report+on+the+protection+and+enforcement+of+intellectual+property+rights+in+third+countriesLin, J. Y. (2012). Demystifying the Chinese economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kshetri N. (2007). Institutional Changes Affecting Entrepreneurship in China. Journal of
Developmental Entrepreneurship. 12(4),415–432. Retrieved from https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/N_Kshetri_Institutional_2007.pdfPetras J. (2016). China: Rise, Fall and Re-Emergence as a Global Power. Global Research.
Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-rise-fall-and-re-emergence-as-a-global-power/29644Staats L. (2011). The Cultivation of Creativity in the Chinese Culture—Past, Present,
and Future. Journal of Strategic Leadership. 45-51. Retrieved from http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/jsl/vol3iss1/Staats_V3I1_pp45-53.pdfWorld Trade Organization (n.d). UNDERSTANDING THE WTO: THE AGREEMENTS.
Wto.org. Retrieved from https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm8_e.htm