How China may Succeed

[Randy W]

While venture capitalists (and the Chinese government) have their heads in the clouds, looking for the next Apple, Google, or self-driving car (or in issuing top-down directives that are very sparse in details), there are ground level efforts underway, showing what's needed in the world of TODAY.

 

I would be VERY interested in coming back in about one or five hundred years to see how all this pans out.

 

from the New York Times

 

THE NEW NEW WORLD

Why Made in China 2025 Will Succeed, Despite Trump

 

 

 

But Made in China 2025 is also being propelled by businesses like Dongguan Mentech Optical & Magnetic Company, the owner of the factory, which are worried about labor costs and their own futures. It comes from local governments looking for ways to stay relevant. It comes from a growing network of private-sector entrepreneurs, academics and local politicians who are increasingly working together to overhaul China’s factories and its future. Other cities — Suzhou, Wenzhou, Xuzhou and the industrial areas around Shanghai are just a few examples — have also drummed up their own automation plans.

The modernization may not happen in 2025. In fact, it may be long after that. But China will get there, mostly because it has to.

“If Made in China 2025 were a car, the engine has started and it’s definitely moving along,” said Zhang Guojun, director of Guangdong Intelligent Robotics Institute in Dongguan, one of several city-supported local research centers helping the factories upgrade. The city was automating well before Made in China 2025 came out in 2015, he said, “but the policy provided us a clear direction.”

A city of eight million people in the Pearl River Delta, Dongguan long relied on making and exporting shoes, toys and electronic parts to the United States and Europe. In many ways, it looks like the factory-dominated China of popular imagination, with whole parts of the city pervaded by rows of rectangular factory buildings, one after another.

. . .

The factory requires 16 workers on a shift, instead of 103 before it was automated. The robotic arms are made in China.

No doubt many Chinese companies will fail in their effort to upgrade. Made in China 2025’s other goals, such as building up world-class microchip industries or self-driving cars, remain out of sight for now.

Yet when it comes to manufacturing, Dongguan suggests Made in China 2025 will succeed partly because the effort is bigger than Beijing. Chinese companies and local government officials are determined to climb the value chain so they will not fall into obsolescence. The best Washington can do is to make sure its policies help American companies stay ahead of the game.

 

[Randy W]

from China Daily - find things that will work NOW

 

Baidu announces volume production of China's first fully autonomous bus

http://img2.chinadaily.com.cn/images/201807/04/5b3c84b1a31033495a587da4.jpeg

 

Apolong can complete driverless operations such as obstacle avoidance, swerving and automatic transshipment. The bus will initially be put to use in last-mile travel scenarios in tourist spots, airports and other enclosed areas.

. . .

"This year marks the first year of commercialization for autonomous driving. From the volume production of Apolong, we can truly see that autonomous driving is making great strides -- taking the industry from zero to one," Li said.

Baidu has also set its sights on overseas markets. The company has teamed up with King Long and SB Drive, the autonomous driving subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank Group, to bring Apolong autonomous minibuses to Japan for operation in cities such as Tokyo in early 2019.