China: design a “national priority.”
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- i_monk0
Anyone herping and derping about China just copying and not coming up with anything new or successful obviously has no idea that Japan did the same thing when it industrialized. Now your kids watch more anime than cartoons, can name all 45,732 Pokemon, play Nintendo or Playstation on their Toshibas, and so on.
- mydo0
If you grow up with no concept of intellectual property, why should it bother you when you go into business.
The man down the road made bamboo baskets, your father made the same bamboo basket to earn money. Now the guy down the road makes electric bikes, you make the same electric bike in your factory.
Maybe it's the West's problem. Our obsession with ownership. Corporate greed.
- makes senseutopian
- The west's problem, and Japan's, and Korea's and every other modern state's.ThePublics
- scarabin0
sounds great. hope they create some wonderful stuff.
- registe0
- Huh. I honestly thought they were by a British designer 'til just now.
http://www.detterer.…detritus
- Huh. I honestly thought they were by a British designer 'til just now.
- uan0
- nadanada0
"Original / lateral thought is not taught or encouraged in chinese education."
^ this.
there are a few emerging architects/designers from china that really are trying. i worked as an intern in shanghai for an architecture firm that is doing really interesting stuff. the owner (dean of my arch school) was educated at harvard and definitely lead the pack... but you could tell that even though the employees were really bright and well-educated (for local chinese schools) they could not produce a unique thought at all. they kept a copy of the rem koolhaas el croquis issue on its own desk, venerated and blindly copied from.
the owner was frequently frustrated as he kept re-designing everything that looked like it came straight out of rem koolhaas' office, day in and day out. yet - he still subscribed to the blind-copy mentality sometimes. he would look at a sketch or a model and say, "well, in europe this is what they are doing. let's do bold gradient colors." etc.
- it's a culturel thing - they have copied artwork from previous generations for, well, generations.nadanada
- BuddhaHat0
On a practically applied level, I haven't seen very much inspired design here, from architecture to fashion, or anything else for that matter, in the 7 months I've been here. That's after visiting Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Xiamen and a couple of other smaller (in relative terms) cities.
That's not to say I don't expect it in the future. As it stands, I believe that creativity in terms of expressing one's ideas has been intentionally stifled by the government. When one is allowed complete freedom, the inevitable consequence is that one or many individuals will start questioning the status quo, their lot in life, and a great many other things. This terrifies the government no end.
A lot of people I meet here read or hear the news fed to them through government-run channels, and accept it unquestioningly. A quick scan of other news outlets around the world show some of the provided information to be disingenuous, or scant at best. This will change... gradually.
The culture of replication and imitation is strong here, from basic consumer products to buildings. A prime example of this would be one university I visited in Hangzhou, where the library is housed underground, with light introduced to the space via 3 glass pyramids above it. An exact fucking copy of the layout of the Louvre, sans fountains.
Financially speaking, in certain areas, I will accept that fostering creativity will be a boon to society. The simple fact remains though that they are currently experiencing a boom the likes of which have not been seen before, and the government, which controls everything, is intent on controlling inflation and growth, above and beyond anything else.
To stave off a drop in growth after the GFC in '08-'09 (analysts said that a drop below 8% growth of GDP in China would have severe effects locally and globally), the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars on transport, construction, reduced price consumer products for the less wealthy, and many other projects.
These kinds of goals are intent on delivering work and quantity, devoid of any real quality, or creativity. All you have to do is look out across the skyline in any major city to see building after building, seemingly placed there one after another like yet another product from a factory line. They are identical, ugly, and poorly built, like most products from China.
This is the nature of the boom that China is currently experiencing, and that they will continue to experience for some time to come. Do I believe this environment naturally fosters creativity? No. Do I believe that there are countless wonderfully creative minds in China yearning to find a way to express themselves? Absolutely. I genuinely look forward to seeing what they produce.
- kingsteven0
Good article... you should read it.
- ThePublics0
10 years ago people were saying how we'd all need to speak Chinese in 10 years.
30 years ago they said the same thing about the Japanese. And of course we all know how that turned out. But the Japanese are actually capable of designing original, quality products that the world wants - something that China has yet to accomplish ... 53 years after the great leap forward.
- ThePublics0
yeah hey i_monk, you just said absolutely nothing.
- popfodders0
Flawed process.
They copy products and make them, they don't design them. No one wants to buy their shit original designs, regardless of what their delusional human right violating government thinks.
LOL!
- omg0
must learn to speak Chinese soon...
- ukit0
The solution is to move to China...learn to speak Chinese...and become Chinese
- mydo0
The Great Leap forward being the single most rubbish plan in history. Almost 80 million deaths is never good for creativity.
- lowimpakt0
I've been following the development for a few years and I think there will be interesting changes within the next decade.
There has been a rapid explosion in design education and investment.
I don't have recent stats but this article from 2005 shows the sudden and rapid rise
"China has some 400 schools offering design classes that together graduate some 10,000 industrial designers annually, up from just 1,500 or so five years ago. "Design schools are popping up like bamboo shoots," marvels Yan Yang, chairman of Tsinghua's industrial design department.
Design is even seeping ever deeper into Chinese society. Beijing has introduced into the national curriculum a new course called Technology and Design in which students learn about the history of design and what constitutes good design. "Traditionally, Chinese people are very good at design," says He Renke, dean of Hunan University's design school, who helped develop the curriculum. "Now we need a renaissance.""
- i'm not saying it's a bad thing, just different...lowimpakt
- johnny_wobble0
- met this guy after a show at the Cavern. Sweetest guy you'll ever meet.formula
- fresnobob0
I don't know, I think I'm gonna try and call bullshit on what that dude is saying. Not that I don't think the masses of people and manufacturing are going to be important in the future, but what that dudes is saying about the freshness and originality of Chinese design is total nonsense. Whats really going on is that China finally discovered modernism and are desperately trying to catch up to the rest of the world, who have been using such ideas for over 100 years now.
- just look at all the creative names they have come up with for Chinese restaurants... Happy Chinese Design Palace
PlantedMedia
- just look at all the creative names they have come up with for Chinese restaurants... Happy Chinese Design Palace
- utopian0
Now if they would only stopping spamming QBN...
with their cheap shit, made by their child slave labor workforce!
- detritus0
More is more, so it's all good.
The same pifflingly-considered criticisms about copying western tech and culture seen in this thread were levelled at Japan 30 years ago and you'd have to be fairly ignorant or deluded to accuse them of exhibiting a lack of creativity and originality.
There's plenty of capacity for design development in the world and I welcome China's increasing input and output—if the art world is anything to go by, they have a lot to offer.