The myth behind China as a high-tech Goliath?

Having become workshop to the world, is China poised to storm the bastions of its high-technology industries? Thanks partly to foreign expansion by Huawei, telecommunications equipment maker, and a few other Chinese companies, the idea is starting to be taken seriously abroad above all in the US, ever jealous of its technological pre-eminence.

Some commentators predict China may rival US information technology leadership in only a decade. Its scientific achievements also provoke awe. Stephen Minger, a stem-cell scientist who led a UK fact-finding mission to China last year, says he was stunned by the sophistication of its medical research and laboratories.

Since the late 1980s, the number of science and engineering doctorates awarded in China has exploded. It now has more researchers than Japan. Its annual research and development spending, though still well below US levels, is rising five times faster, while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says China's biggest exports are now high-tech products. But those dazzling statistics mask an often more mundane reality. The bulk of China's high-tech exports are actually low-margin commodity products such as personal computers and DVD players, assembled from imported components that account for most of their value.

In contrast to the home-grown IT industries of Japan and South Korea, two-thirds or more of those exports are from partly or wholly foreign-owned plants. China's state-owned companies spend relatively little on R&D and have almost no international brands or distribution networks, a drawback acknowledged by Lenovo's purchase of IBM's barely profitable PC business.

Ah, say the China-boosters, but all that is mere prologue. China's abundant cheap brainpower, energy and determination to succeed make it only a matter of time before it grows into a formidable knowledge economy. Again, appearances may deceive. R&D effort is only a rather crude measure of input. Its economic value depends on the quality of output and how it is commercialized. On both counts, China still has much to prove.

Its engineers' high calibre and low cost have spurred western companies such as General Electric and International Business Machines to set up laboratories there. But China's state-owned enterprises seem less adroit at exploiting those assets. The OECD last year gave most SOEs low marks for innovation and for training and organizing researchers. McKinsey, the management consultancy, says China's software industry lags behind India's, because of its fragmented structure and poor management. That may change as more foreign-trained IT engineers with business experience return from abroad. However, they face big barriers to disseminating technology across industry. Not only are foreign companies operating in China increasingly careful to keep core technologies to themselves but Chinese companies collaborate little with each other or with universities.

Weak intellectual property laws, long assailed by western companies, are also a self-inflicted handicap because they provide no rewards for innovation. China's international patent applications, though growing, are still less than 1 percent of the total filed in the US and Europe. And while start-up companies abound in China, they are poorly supported by its financial system. Its bigger banks favour lending to state-owned industries;venture capital is in its infancy, and the country's immature equity market fails to offer the dependable exit route demanded by sophisticated early-stage investors.

That compels many company founders to rely on funds raised from relatives. Some management gurus believe China's model of family-based capitalism is a shaky foundation for enduring corporate structures. Japan's Kenichi Ohmae says his successful Chinese friends care more about getting rich quickly than creating world-beating businesses.

Historians puzzle over why, for 500 years after inventing gunpowder, China invented so little else. No country, of course, is bound to repeat history, and China has shed centuries of insularity to embrace foreign investment, trade and technology. But whether its future is as a high-tech powerhouse in its own right or as the world's biggest branch-plant economy remains an open question.

中国是否将成为高科技巨人

在成为世界工厂之后，中国是否已做好准备对本国的高科技行业发起强攻？部分由于电信设备制造商华为（Huawei）和其它一些中国公司的海外扩张，其它国家已开始认真考虑上述想法，特别是美国，因为它向来唯恐失去自己的科技领先地位。

一些评论家预言，不出10年，中国就能挑战美国在信息技术（IT）领域的领袖地位。中国的科学成就也令人敬畏。干细胞科学家史蒂芬？明格（Stephen Minger）去年曾率领一个英国的实地考察团去中国访问，他说，中国的医学研究和实验室如此先进成熟，令他大吃一惊。

自上世纪80年代以来，中国被授予理工科博士头衔的人数量激增。中国的研究人员数量现已超过日本。中国每年的研发支出仍大大低于美国的水平，但增长速度却比美国快5倍以上，同时经济合作与发展组织（OECD）表示，中国现在出口最多的是高科技产品。但这些耀眼的统计数字掩饰了一个通常不那么出色的现实。中国大部分“高科技”出口品实际上都是低利润率的大宗商品，比如个人电脑和DVD播放机等，它们由进口的零件组装而成，这些零件占据了大部分的产品价值。

与日本及韩国土生土长的IT行业相反，中国三分之二或以上的IT出口品都是外商合资或独资的工厂制造。中国的国有企业在研发方面的支出相当少，而且几乎没有国际品牌和分销网络。联想收购国际商用机器公司（IBM）几乎不盈利的个人电脑业务，就是对这一缺陷的承认。

看好中国的人则说，啊，但这一切只是个开头。中国有着丰富而廉价的人才资源和能源，以及取得成功的决心，因此中国成长为令人生畏的“知识经济体”只是个时间问题。此外，表面现象不足信。研发只是对投入的一个相当粗浅的衡量标准，其经济价值取决于产出的质量和商品化方式。对这两种说法，中国都还需要好好证明。

中国的工程师水平高，成本低，这已促使通用电气（GE）和IBM等西方企业在华设立实验室。但中国的国有企业似乎不那么善于利用这些资产。在创新、培训和组织研究人员方面，经合组织（OECD）去年给大多数中国国有企业的评分都很低。管理咨询公司麦肯锡（McKinsey）表示，中国的软件业落后于印度，原因就是中国软件企业结构松散、管理不善。随着更多受过海外培训、又有实践经验的IT工程师回到中国，这一状况可能会改变。但他们面临巨大的障碍，无法在整个行业传播技术。不仅是在华经营的外国公司越来越小心，对核心技术秘而不宣，中国企业与企业、企业与大学之间也极少进行合作。

中国的知识产权法规薄弱，这点长期遭到西方公司的攻击，也成为中国自我造成的障碍，因为薄弱的法规没有为创新提供回报。中国的国际专利申请数量虽然在增加，但仍不到美国和欧洲专利申请总数的1%.另外，虽然在中国有大量初创企业，但中国的金融体系对这些企业支持不足。在中国，较大的银行喜欢贷款给国有行业，风险投资还处在萌芽阶段，而中国不成熟的股票市场也无法为精明的初期投资者提供可靠的退出渠道。

这迫使许多公司创建者依靠从亲戚那里筹措的资金。一些管理大师认为，在形成持久的公司结构方面，中国的家族式资本主义模式无法充当稳固的基石。日本的大前研一（Kenichi Ohmae）表示，他那些获得成功的中国朋友们更关心快速致富，而不是打造举世无双的企业。

在发明火药后的500年间，中国几乎没有什么新发明，历史学家对此感到困惑不解。当然，没有哪个国家一定要重复历史，并且中国也已摆脱了数个世纪的闭关自守，而向外国投资、贸易和技术展开了怀抱。但中国未来将凭借自身能力成为一个高科技强国，还是会成为全球最大的分支工厂经济体，这仍是个谜。

重点词汇：

1、Goliath n. [圣经]被牧羊人大卫杀死的Philistine的巨人

2、be poised to 随时准备着做

3、preeminence n.卓越

4、rival v.竞争，对抗，相匹敌；n.竞争者，对手

5、provoke vt.激怒，挑拨，煽动，惹起，驱使

6、stun vt.使晕倒，使惊吓，打晕；n.晕眩，打昏，惊倒

7、account for v.占

8、in contrast to 和……形成对比

9、prologue n.序言

10、deceive v.欺骗，行骗

11、spur v.鞭策，刺激，疾驰，驱策

12、disseminate v.散布

13、collaborate with v.合作，与敌人合作，通敌

14、self-inflicted adj.自己造成的

15、venture capital n.风险资本

16、compel vt.强迫，迫使

17、be bound to 一定要

18、shed vt.摆脱

19、embrace vt.拥抱