Can China innovate its way out of a prolonged economic growth slowdown? Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group, believes so. In his new book, “The End of Copycat China – The Rise of Creativity, Innovation and Individualism in Asia”, he argues that China will start innovating now because it has to – and that it didn’t before simply because it didn’t need to. That’s an interesting theory, but is he right?
Rein first does battle with common perceptions that the Chinese political system or culture limits its ability to innovate. It’s not because China is a communist-led country with limited individual freedom, that it does not come up with corporate inventions, he says.It’s also wrong, he says, to think that Chinese are simply unable to innovate because of some perceived “Confucian conformity”, as academic Panos Mourdoukoutas argued in Forbes in 2012. For Rein, such an argument is historically incorrect, as even at the height of Confucianian influence, the country brought about huge innovations such as “gunpowder, multi-stage rockets and the compass”.
The real reason why we saw less innovation – and more imitation – emanating from China in recent decades, has simply been that this approach was best suited to the country’s economic reality until now.