A common assessment of China's labor force is that its strength lies in highly repetitive manufacturing processes that require large amounts of manual human labor. As for more service-oriented knowledge tasks, the reigning perception is that, on the whole, China's workforce is not innovative, creative or – exible enough in its thinking to compete. China's top-down approach to government, policymaking and social constructs, combined with a rote learning system that is heavily focused on test-taking rather than teamwork and problem solving are regularly cited as reasons for this deficiency. In addition, rampant disregard for intellectual property rights may dampen incentives for innovation.
Even today, many Chinese companies find it far easier to copy or reverse engineering existing technologies. Times are changing, though. With approximately four million engineers graduating each year from Chinese universities and technical institutes. And increasing numbers of multinational corporations moving their research and development (R&D) centers to China. The pace of innovation in China is picking up rapidly.
China was historically a center of innovation with gunpowder, the abacus, porcelain and countless other inventions originating from ancient China.
Now that the country is breaking free from its Sovietstyle production processes, a new dawn of innovation may be just around the corner.
Today, China benefits from a highly-educated, low-cost work force that can experiment on an enormous scale because of the size of their home market and strong government support. Moreover, given the dynamic and highly competitive nature of the China's increasingly market-based economy, companies are being forced to innovate in order to survive.
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