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中国-为什么中国缺乏创新?

Why China Can’t Innovate

And What It’s Doing About It

by Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby, and F. Warren McFarlan

The Globe

T he Chinese invented gunpowder, the compass, the waterwheel, pa-per money, long-distance banking,

the civil service, and merit promotion. Un-til the early 19th century, China’s economy was more open and market driven than the economies of Europe. Today, though, many believe that the West is home to creative business thinkers and innovators, and that China is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners—a place where R&D is diligently pursued but breakthroughs are rare.

When we ask why, the answers vary. Some people blame the engineers. “Most Chinese start-ups are not founded by de-signers or artists, but by engineers who don’t have the creativity to think of new ideas or designs,” argues Jason Lim, an edi-tor at the website TechNode.

Others blame the government for the unprecedented scale of its failure to pro-tect intellectual property rights. Apple’s products have been pirated the world over, they point out, but only China has opened

P h o t o g r a P h y : g e t t y I m a g e s

ABOVE Freshmen line up to register at tsinghua University, in Beijing.

https://www.sodocs.net/doc/266040109.html,

March 2014?harvard Business review?107

ing sectors,” among them biotechnology, energy-efficient technologies, equipment manufacturing, information technology, and advanced materials. To that end, the Chinese government introduced export sub-sidies for Chinese frms and a policy requir-ing government ministries and state-owned businesses to procure goods, when feasible, from Chinese-owned companies. Despite objections that those moves violate the terms of China’s membership in the World

Trade Organization, few international frms have left, instead resigning themselves to

supporting innovation within China.

In fact, whereas in 2004 there were some 600 foreign R&D centers in China, by

2010 that number had more than doubled, and their scale and strategic importance had increased. Pfzer moved its Asia head-quarters to Shanghai that year. In 2011 Microsoft opened its Asia Pacifc R&D cen-ter in Beijing, and General Motors opened an Advanced Technical Center compris-ing several engineering and design labs. Merck’s Asia R&D headquarters in Beijing is scheduled to become operational in 2014.

There is perhaps no more potent dem-onstration of China’s ability to set, and of-ten realize, ambitious goals than the gov-ernment’s backing of high-speed rail and eforts to put humans on the moon, both massive projects that require funding on a scale seemingly impossible in the West and an ability to invent and adapt numerous technologies. We believe such ambitions could jump-start innovation in much the same way that government-funded pro-grams did in the United States in the sec-ond half of the 20th century. Innovation from the Bottom Up There are limits, though, to what even so muscular and motivated a government as China’s can mandate when it comes to in-novation. Against the government’s inten-tions and national resources run powerful currents that originate in China’s Commu-nist system and ancient culture. Consider how those forces can constrain the entrepreneurial creativity bubbling up in China. In the early 1990s Edward Tian

entirely fake Apple stores filled with em-ployees who think they work for the U.S. company.

Still others blame the Chinese educa-tion system, with its modernized version of what the Japanese scholar Ichisada Miyazaki calls “China’s examination hell.” How can students so completely focused on test scores possibly be innovators?

From our decades of field experience and research in China, and the dozens of case studies we have collectively produced, we see some merit in all those views (but we must point out that many of the most innovative Western frms were founded by engineers). Those criticisms don’t tell the entire story, however. China has no lack of entrepreneurs or market demand. And given the government’s enormous wealth and political will, China has the potential to set the kind of economic policies and build the kind of education and research institu-tions that propelled the U.S. to technologi-cal dominance. But will that potential be realized? We see considerable challenges.A look at how innovation is happening in China—from the top down, from the bot-tom up, through acquisition, and through education—sheds light on the complexities of the issue, highlighting the promise and the problems China faces in its quest to be-come the world’s innovation leader.

Innovation from the Top Down

In its 2006 “Medium- to Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Tech-nology” (MLP), the Chinese government declared its intention to transform China into “an innovative society” by 2020 and a world leader in science and technology by 2050. That was not empty talk. Beijing has a solid track record of setting policies and incentives, and then watching citizens and local government officials, right down to the village level, fall in line with them.

For nearly 40 years, in fact, the Chinese government has been using its wealth of funds and political will to stimulate inno-vation from the top. In the 1980s and 1990s, China created the National Natural Science Foundation and the State Key Laboratory program, and revamped its Soviet-style Chinese Academy of Sciences to fund pre-commercial university research on a peer-reviewed (rather than a political) basis, in much the same way that the National Sci-ence Foundation does in the United States. At the same time, the state, with support from regional governments, fnanced the development of high-tech zones to further innovation commercialization. Since 1985, when the first such zone was developed, in Shenzhen, they have proliferated to the point where they are a common stop on of-fcial tours of any major Chinese city.

The power of the government to shape nascent innovative industries can be seen in the effects of its policies on the wind turbine industry. In 2002 the government launched an open bidding process for wind farm projects to encourage competition among turbine makers. Foreign imports soon fooded China’s fedgling market. In a pattern that it would repeat in other in-dustries, the government then required state-owned enterprises to source 70% of their components from domestic firms. Foreign frms continued to invest directly

in China, but by 2009 six of the top 10 wind turbine firms were Chinese. This capped of a remarkable growth spurt in domestic frms’ share of total sales, from 51% in 2006 to 93% in 2010. The aim of the 2006 MLP was to reduce China’s reliance on imported technology to no more than 30% within a few years, to increase domestic R&D funding, and to leapfrog foreign rivals in what the gov-ernment identified as “strategic emerg-Fewer than 30

600

More than

1,200

2004

1999

2010

SourceS Beijing Review , AsiA Times , PeoPle’s Daily online

108 Harvard Business Review?march 2014

The gloBe

(Tian Suning), a U.S.-educated entrepre-neur, founded the telecom start-up AsiaInfo (now AsiaInfo-Linkage), which within three years grew into a thriving company of 320 people with revenue of $45 million.

In 1996, frustrated with the slow pace of technological change in China’s telecom-munications industry, then–vice premier Zhu Rongji convinced Tian that it was his duty to leave AsiaInfo in order to lead a new company, China Netcom, as it set out to build a fber-optic network linking some 300 cities. When one of us (McFarlan) vis-ited the company, in 2001, it was an inno-vative frm with an open, creative culture, despite the fact that it was jointly owned by four government agencies.

In 2002, when the telecommunications giant China Telecom was broken apart by the government, its 10 northern provincial markets were integrated into China Net-com. Overnight, Tian became responsible for an organization of 230,000.

The culture clash between the two orga-nizations was extraordinary. Tian was seen by many China Telecom employees as an American outsider trying to reform a state-owned enterprise in unacceptable ways. Six months after the merger, McFarlan presented our case study on China Netcom to 70 senior Chinese executives, including 20 from the telecom industry. Rather than draw lessons from the case about the rela-tionship between organizational change and business success, the group attacked Tian for his “un-Chinese” ways of man-aging—and then charged McFarlan with incompetence for presenting Silicon Val-ley culture in China in such a positive light. Tian soon stepped down from his CEO role and later from the China Netcom board. To outsiders, China Netcom eventually looked like a modern telecom firm, with

Consider the B2B portal Alibaba, which in 2001 was so shaky that we feared it would go bankrupt. But by creatively adapting for-eign technologies to the needs of develop-ing markets, Alibaba now serves 80 million customers in nearly 250 countries. The suc-cess of its auction website, Taobao, eventu-ally forced eBay out of China. Or take Baidu, the Chinese search engine leader, which has grown massively in its home market with an ofering that breaks no technologi-cal ground and does not challenge politi-cal orthodoxy. Having tailored its product, organization, and processes to the needs of China’s patchwork of regional markets, Baidu now has an 80% share of what has become the world’s largest search market. Just as Japan caught up with the United States technologically in many industries during the three decades after World War II, China is now doing the same through incre-mental innovations. Adapting technology has become a standard and highly lucrative practice. Getting that technology through acquisitions, though, is an important new trend.

innovation by acquisition

Much has been written about the current wave of Chinese overseas direct invest-ment, most of which has focused on com-modity resources, particularly in Africa and Latin America. The turn toward the United States and Europe for technology, however, is no less signifcant. Tired of paying licens-ing fees and royalties, Chinese frms have increasingly, and with their government’s

the governance structures needed to be listed on international stock exchanges. But it remained at heart a state-owned en-terprise. When we teach our current case on China Netcom, we ask MBA students to scour the company’s board for the real boss. Where, we ask, is the party secretary? The Communist Party requires a representative to be present in every company with more than 50 employees. Every frm with more than 100 employees must have a party cell, whose leader reports directly to the party in the municipality or province. These re-quirements compromise the proprietary nature of a firm’s strategic direction, op-erations, and competitive advantage, thus constraining normal competitive behavior, not to mention the incentives that drive founders to grow their own businesses. But even if the government were to dis-band party cells and instead redouble its eforts to encourage breakthrough innova-tion, there remains an even stronger disin-centive: the economic realities of the mar-kets in which Chinese companies operate. Why go to the trouble to pioneer innovative offerings when the rewards and growth prospects for incremental improvements are so vast, both at home and abroad?

…But More are also ChoosinG to study in the united states.

63,211

194,029

2011

2001

More and More

Chinese are enrollinG in ColleGe in China...

50 employees.

SourceS China enrollment: PhiliP G. altbaCh, Qi WanG, Yinmei Wan, China’s ministrY of eduCation. u.s. enrollment: national Center for eduCation statistiCs, u.s. Census bureau.

data for Chinese students in the u.s. are from the institute of international eduCation.

1978

1998

2012

China united states 19.9m

3.4m

14.5m

8.3m

860,https://www.sodocs.net/doc/266040109.html,

March 2014?harvard business review?109

encouragement, sought to buy, rather than rent (or steal), breakthrough innovation capabilities through acquisitions of both technology and talent.

Take the case of Huawei. William Plum-mer, the company’s Washington, DC–based vice president for external afairs and a for-mer U.S. diplomat, once portrayed the tele-com powerhouse as “the biggest company you’ve never heard of,” a claim few would make today, especially given its 16 R&D centers around the world and the contro-versies regarding its acquisition attempts in the United States.

Haier, a leading Chinese appliance and consumer electronics manufacturer, has a similarly wide network of global design and R&D centers in the United States, Japan, Korea, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. For Chinese auto manufacturers, Turin, Italy, is the place to be, with JAC, FAW, and Chang’an operating R&D centers there.

Anti-Western cultural currents may be strong at home, but private Chinese frms operating overseas have embraced local se-nior talent. Plummer, for example, is hardly the only high-ranking Westerner who has worked at Huawei. In 2010 the company re-cruited John Roese, the former chief tech-nology officer of Nortel, to lead the com-pany’s North American R&D efforts, and a year earlier former British Telecom CTO Matt Bross was brought in to oversee Hua-wei’s entire $2.5 billion R&D budget and op-erations. Both had reported directly to Hua-wei’s founder and chairman, Ren Zhengfei, a former Chinese military ofcer. Similarly, turbine manufacturer Goldwind recruited American Tim Rosenzweig, an established fgure in the clean-energy feld, to serve as

the first CEO of its U.S. operations. He in

turn brought in executives with records

distinguished by cross-cultural experience

and industrial expertise.

Machinery manufacturer Sany, whose

main international competitors include

Caterpillar and Komatsu, initially at-

tempted to succeed in the European and

U.S. markets by relying on homegrown

talent and technology. But a few missteps

encouraged the frm to establish R&D cen-

ters closely tied to its European and U.S.

regional headquarters and to staff them

with professionals from those countries.

And Sany’s 2012 acquisition of Putzmeister,

Germany’s leading cement pump maker,

gave the company access to a onetime com-

petitor’s technology.

In short, we see Chinese frms making

a concerted—and effective—effort to fill

major gaps in their innovation capacity

through increasingly widespread foreign

acquisitions and partnerships.

Still, to become a leading force for inno-

vation in the 21st century, the Chinese need

to be nurturing the innovators of the future.

That is the job of Chinese universities.

Innovation Through the

Next Generation

In the frst half of the 20th century, China

developed strong state-run institutions

(Peking University, Jiao Tong University,

National Central University, and, at the

apogee of research, the Academia Sinica).

These were accompanied by a creative

set of private colleges and universities

(Yenching University, St. John’s University,

and Peking Union Medical College, to name

but a few). All were Sovietized in the 1950s

and destroyed in the political turmoil of the

Cultural Revolution.

Now Chinese universities are back.

Take Tsinghua University. It was founded

in 1911 with American-returned funds from

the Boxer Indemnity as a two-year liberal

arts college to prepare students for study in

the United States. It became a comprehen-

sive university in Nationalist times (John

Fairbank, the founder of modern Chinese

studies in the United States, learned his

Chinese history there in the 1930s) and a

Soviet-style polytechnic university in the

1950s. It is now reclaiming its place as a

great comprehensive university—more

difficult to get into than Harvard or Yale.

In 2016 Tsinghua will open its first truly

international college—Schwarzman Col-

lege, named for the U.S. donor Stephen A.

Schwarzman—to 200 postgraduate stu-

dents annually from around the world. The

Schwarzman Scholars who reside there

will, Tsinghua believes, be the Rhodes

Scholars of the 21st century.

Simply in terms of the number of stu-

dents educated, the recent changes in

China’s postsecondary education system

are more dramatic than even the great

postwar expansion of higher education in

the United States or the growth of mass-

enrollment universities in Europe in the

1970s and 1980s. After a decade in which

most were shuttered, in 1978 Chinese uni-

versities opened their doors to fewer than

1 million students. By 1998 enrollment

had reached 3.4 million, far short of the

14.5 million attending in the United States

The Chinese have come to believe the mantra of many American colleges that the best leaders are those with the broadest education in

the liberal arts. The goal of a liberal education is not to train specialists but to educate the whole person to be curious, thoughtful, and skeptical. Today all Peking University students, even in its Guanghua School of Management, take

multiple courses in the liberal

arts, including literature,

philosophy, and history. The

university also boasts an elite

liberal arts curriculum in the

Yuanpei Program, named for

Peking University’s famous

German-educated chancel-

lor of the early 20th century,

the philosopher Cai Yuanpei.

Across the street, Tsinghua’s

School of Economics and

Management has implemented

what is perhaps the most

imaginative program in liberal

arts and general education in

any Chinese university.

The most important revolu-

tion in Chinese higher educa-

tion today may not be its size

and scope but the fact that

even under the leadership of

engineers, top institutions

have come to understand that

an education in the absence of

the humanities is incomplete.

Perhaps this is because educa-

tion leaders in China know

better than anyone what can

happen when a society loses

its cultural foundations. This is

an education revolution within

a revolution, the outcome of

which is not yet clear.

110?Harvard Business Review?March 2014 The Globe

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at the time. In 2012 23.9 million students attended institutions of higher learning in China—some 4 million more than the en-rollment at U.S. colleges and universities. Private colleges and universities now ac-count for more than a quarter of all higher education institutions in China, and they are growing at a faster rate than public ones. Large companies are also getting involved. Alibaba’s Taobao unit, for instance, has es-tablished Taobao University , initially to train e-business owners, managers, and sales-people. In time it will ofer business educa-tion to more than a million online students. China will soon turn out more PhDs each year than any other country in the world, as Chinese universities aim to be cradles of high-level, creative research and forces capable of transforming research and innovation into higher productivity. The Chinese government and many other sources are pumping enormous revenues into the leading institutions. Within 10 years, the research budgets of China’s elite universities will approach those of their U.S. and European peers. And in engineering and science, Chinese universities will be among the world’s leaders.

Will Chinese universities set glob al standards in the 21st century? It is pos-sible (even though none currently ranks in the global top 50) simply because of the resources they are likely to have. But the more important question is whether China has a good institutional framework for innovation.

Our answer at present is no. The gov-ernance structures of China’s state-owned universities still leave too many decisions to too few, too self-important, people. Chinese universities, like state-owned enterprises, are plagued with party com-mittees, and the university party secretary normally outranks the president. While a few extraordinary party secretaries are central to their universities’ success, as a rule this system of parallel governance lim-its rather than enhances the fow of ideas. The freedom to pursue ideas wherever they may lead is a precondition for innova-tion in universities. But by any comparative

gence of what Schumpeter called the true spirit of entrepreneurship? On this we have our doubts.

The problem, we think, is not the in-novative or intellectual capacity of the Chinese people, which is boundless, but the political world in which their schools, universities, and businesses need to oper-ate, which is very much bounded.

HBR Reprint R1403J measure, faculty members in Chinese insti-tutions have little or no role in governance. Indeed, it was not a good sign when China’s then–vice president (now president), Xi Jinping, visited China’s leading universi-ties in June 2012 to call for increased party supervision of higher education.

PeRHaPs aBsolute innovation, like abso-lute leadership and power, is overvalued. In industry, as in education, China can en-joy for some time what Joseph Schumpeter called the latecomer’s advantage: the abil-ity to learn from and improve on the work of one’s immediate predecessors.

Certainly, China has shown innovation through creative adaptation in recent de-cades, and it now has the capacity to do much more. But can China lead? Will the Chinese state have the wisdom to lighten up and the patience to allow the full emer-

Regina M. abrami is a senior fellow at the Wharton School, the director of the Global Program at the Lauder Institute, and a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. William C. Kirby is the Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University. F. Warren McFarlan is the Baker Foundation Professor and the Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. They are the authors of Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).

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