告别制造时代的中国不再山寨了?

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?

中国能否通过创新走出长期经济增长放缓的困境？中国市场研究集团(China Market Research)的董事总经理雷小山(Shaun Rein)相信可以。在他的新书《山寨中国的终结：亚洲创造力、创新力和个人主义的崛起》(The End of Copycat China – The Rise of Creativity, Innovation and Individualism in Asia)中，雷小山认为，中国如今将开启创新之路，因为它不得不如此，而过去之所以没这么做，也仅仅是因为还不需要。这是种有趣的理论，但他说得对吗？

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 2017. 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”.

雷小山先是反驳了中国政治体制或文化限制其创新能力的普遍看法。他称，中国企业没有创造力，并非因为中国是共产党领导、个人自由有限的国家。他表示，像学者普诺斯•莫杜库塔斯(Panos Mourdoukoutas) 2017年在《福布斯》(Forbes)上的主张一样，认为中国无法创新只是因为一些人眼中的“尊孔”，也是不对的。对雷小山来说，如此说法从历史的角度来看是错误的，因为哪怕在孔子影响最盛之时，这个国家也出现了伟大的创新，比如“火药、多级火箭和指南针”。

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.

之所以我们看到中国最近几十年中释放出的创新力不足而模仿有余，真正的原因仅仅是这种方式最适合该国直至今日的经济状况。

In a country where common products have often been under-supplied, there was little motivation to strive to create the most sophisticated technologies. Better not to reinvent the wheel; rather make as many wheels as cheaply as you can with the technology provided by those who invented it in the first place. That’s exactly what many Chinese companies did in the last few decades, whether in manufacturing washing machines, computers, mobile phones, or online marketplaces.

在一个普通商品经常供应不足的国家，努力发展最先进技术的动机不足。最好不要重新发明车轮；而是采用最先发明车轮的人提供的技术，尽可能多地以低廉的成本来制造车轮。这正是很多中国企业在过去几十年里所做的，无论是制造洗衣机、电脑、手机，还是建立网上市场。

It is not until the next phase of development that we would expect to see some innovation. As companies such as Haier, Lenovo, Xiaomi and Alibaba faced internal competition to their cheap and relatively straightforward products, they responded not by aspiring to the cutting edge of global technology, but by upgrading their existing technologies and producing them more efficiently.

直到下一个发展阶段，我们才有望看见一些创新。如海尔(Haier)、联想(Lenovo)、小米(Xiaomi)和阿里巴巴(Alibaba)这类公司，在其廉价且相对简单的产品遭遇内部竞争时，他们过去的应对方式不是追求全球尖端技术，而是升级其现有技术，并更有效率地制造产品。

Having won the battle to provide the most basic goods to domestic consumers, Chinese companies are now increasingly, and often for the first time, forced to turn to product innovation, Rein writes. They either have to start climbing the value chain abroad or in China, as the low hanging fruit of supplying basic goods has gone. They won’t fail. Why? Because they didn’t when faced with the previous challenges.

雷小山在书中写道，在赢得向国内消费者提供最基本商品的战役后，如今中国企业越来越被迫——常常是首次——转向产品创新。由于供应基本商品这颗“低垂的果实”已经被采摘，这些企业不得不开始在中国或国外市场攀爬价值链。他们不会失败。为什么？因为他们在面对之前的挑战时从未失败过。

As examples, Rein points to companies like Alibaba. Through its subsidiary, TMall, it made consumers trust small and even unknown sellers of branded goods online. Through AliPay, a third party online payments system that is equivalent to PayPal, it addressed China’s weak consumer protection environment by collecting personal details from vendors that allow them to be tracked down if they sell substandard products. It seemed to work; Alibaba raised $21.8bn in its recent debut on the US stock exchange.

作为范例，雷小山提到了像阿里巴巴这样的公司。通过其子公司天猫(TMall)，阿里巴巴让消费者信任在网上销售品牌商品的小商家，甚至是无人知晓的商家。通过支付宝(AliPay)，即相当于PayPal的第三方在线支付系统，它以收集卖家个人信息的方式改善了中国脆弱的消费者保护环境，如果卖家销售未达标的商品，他们可被追查到底。这招似乎很管用；阿里巴巴在美国的证券交易市场首次公开募股便完成了218亿美元的融资。

Such cases – for which Rein gives a few more examples from companies such as Tencent, Huawei or Xiaomi – have to show that a communist or developing country background can be as fertile of a ground for innovation as any other. Indeed, the innovations Rein puts forward use the flaws of communist China to their advantage, rather than to be paralyzed by them.

雷小山还列举了一些腾讯(Tencent)、华为(Huawei)和小米等公司的例子。这些案例都表明，共产主义也好，发展中国家背景也罢，同样可以为创新提供肥沃的土壤。事实上，雷小山所提出的创新范例，都是把共产主义中国的缺陷为己所用，而非受困其中。

For sure, Rein is not alone in his view that Chinese companies are getting to the innovation phase. Consulting firm BCG this year put four Chinese companies (Lenovo, Xiami, Tencent and Huawei) in its annual list of the world’s most 50 innovative companies.

毫无疑问，雷小山并不是唯一认为中国企业正步入创新阶段的人。今年，波士顿咨询集团(BCG)把4家中国企业（联想、小米、腾讯和华为）纳入其年度全球最具创新力的50家企业榜单。

In the later chapters of his book Rein comes up with a number of fields in which we can expect to see Chinese innovation, such as health care, healthy living, or tourism. In each of the fields, Rein shows that with increasing demand from Chinese consumers, innovative solutions are likely.

在该书的之后几个章节中，雷小山提出了一些我们有望看到中国创新的领域，比如医疗、保健或旅游。雷小山表明，在以上各个领域中，随着中国消费者的需求不断增长，都可能出现创新性方案。

But are the examples of a handful of companies enough to prove the bigger picture? Or is innovation in China still the exception, rather than the rule? After being convinced by Rein’s appealing storyline in the first few chapters, the reader is left wondering just that. While we are prepared to accept that some Chinese companies have innovated to a significant extent, we are less ready to believe that this means that the longstanding habit of copying is dead, as the title of the book suggests.

不过，少数几家企业的创新例子足以证明全局吗？或者，中国的创新是否仍属个例，而非定式？在被雷小山最初几章中有趣的故事说服后，读者就会思考这些问题。尽管我们准备好接受一些中国企业已大举创新的事实，但我们还不准备相信这意味着长期存在的模仿习惯已经像该书书名暗示的那样终结。

Yet Rein’s is an intriguing book, with many interesting anecdotes, mini-case studies, and interviews. If you discount the author’s obvious self-interest in writing it (he is, after all, the founder of a consulting group helping Chinese and foreign companies succeed in the Chinese market), you will be pleasantly surprised by the author’s fluency, and the “teachable moments” that arise from his writings.

话虽如此，雷小山的书中选入了很多有趣轶事、迷你案例研究和采访，确实引人入胜。如果不理会作者著书明显的私心的话（雷小山毕竟是一家帮助中国及外国企业取胜于中国市场的咨询集团的创始人），你将会惊喜于作者的雄辩之才，以及他笔下的“教学时间”。

“The End of Copycat China – The Rise of Creativity, Innovation and Individualism in Asia”, (227p) by Shaun Rein, and published by Wiley, will be available as of November 14, 2017 in the UK for £15.39. It is already on sale in the US ($25.00).

《山寨中国的终结：亚洲创造力、创新力和个人主义的崛起》（227页），作者雷小山，约翰威立出版社(John Wiley)，2017年11月14日起在英国上架，建议零售价15.39英镑。该书已在美国上架（定价25美元）。