Innovation in China
China has the largest population in the world, and beside EEUU, is one of the strongest countries nowadays where the innovation, the topic I will speak about, is the key of the economy and the way of the growth of this enormous country.
When I arrived to Shanghai, I was really surprised about the differences of culture and lifestyle, but also about the huge change the country has suffered in the lasts years. 20 years ago, China was out of the world in terms of economy and politics, but yearly this country has done a big effort to locate between the strongest potential forces in the world. As I said, the innovation, the way of doing things during these years has been one of the main reasons why China nowadays has one of the strongest markets in terms of competition. Apart from these, the fact that china work as a unit in comparison to Europe for instance, really help them to develop a strong economy.
As we saw during the session, really good session from my point of view, much better speeches than some I have taken in Spain what I really appreciate (thanks to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University), is that from a long time ago, China has been established a 5 year plan. In this plan, which is the 13th 5 years plan, year by year, the main points that China is concerned to grow as a strong country are established. Currently the innovation is one of those points apart from others such as greening, balancing, opening up and sharing. But sincerely, innovation nowadays, from my point of view at least, is the most important and the one china must focus on to develop and continue growing itself.
I felt a little bit “scared” when I realised that thanks to innovation, China has passed from been a really cheap manufacturing country, where the economy were focused on low prices to nowadays been a country where the quality is taking part in a really really strong way. What China is offering in the market is low cost product for an amazing price, but of course these products are medium-high quality. This has to be a deep threat worldwide, cause they are entering in a market where they can be one of the strongest one. One clear example is the Xiaomi brand, offering a good quality product for a really reasonable price, copying the Apple style.
In the past, the economy of this country were focused mainly in low manufacturing labour force, offering in the market low cost product, where the copying mind was the one, but nowadays, the innovation is changing the way of doing things, and this change is a quite positive change for them which is making China one of the strongest countries in the world.