Epilogue
When I first started sharing my ideas for this book, several people challenged me—they did not think Chinese firms had the capability to innovate. They pointed to rampant piracy, a lack of creativity in the education system, and heavy-handed regulation that stifled innovation. One person scoffed, “You will lose credibility for writing there is innovation in China.” Another shrilled I was “just plain wrong” because of something inherently wrong in Chinese culture that prevents innovation.
Others responded less politely.
Yet, just a few months later as I was finishing this manuscript, examples of the new focus on innovation emerging from China seemed to pop up every day, such as Baidu's investments in artificial intelligence or new mobile services Tencent launched. I kept extending my deadline for writing because so many new illustrations popped up until I finally had to put my foot down or else I would never finish.
The world started taking notice of the developments, and Chinese innovation started to become a hot topic rather than relegated to articles of scorn, paralleling America's discourse of Japan's rise in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Charles Riley from CNN wrote a piece criticizing Vice President Joe Biden for saying Chinese innovation did not exist—Riley pointed to handset maker Xiaomi and biotech firm B.G.I., which sequences more DNA than any institution in the ...
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