German v. Chinese engineering

If engineering is a science, what is the difference? If people are referring to culture, how does German culture and Chinese culture affect the engineering in their respective countries?

• The German are more meticulous in their design, and they also treat their workers with more respect. This is how the culture of a place can affect something so empirical as engineering.

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• And the willingness to spend more on the materials and labor to see your project finished.

• Don't the Chinese just reverse engineer stuff they've bought from other countries? Are they capable of creating innovative products like the Germans, Japanese, Americans, etc?

• The Chinese stole Siemen's engine technology for their high speed trains. Buy, examine closely, copy.

• R4, I would think the example you give is quite likely just one of many. But overall, wouldn't that be true of any nation's industry that realizes it's got a lot of technological catching up to do? After all, didn't Japan earlier undergo a similar pattern in their industrial and mass consumption manufacturing development?

• I honestly don't know, R5. What I've read is that the Chinese regularly violate patents and copyrights and seem to escape consequences. (Some "entrepreneur" put out a sixth Harry Potter book there before [italic]Order of the Phoenix[/italic], the fifth, was published in the U.K. and U.S.!) Internet hacking and spying from China with the intent of intellectual property theft has become a major security concern for many corporations. It's a shady M.O.. How am I to know it's not their primary source of ideas of and development? Of course, I've just started a countdown to being called racist. [quote]For at least five years, a high-level hacking campaign—dubbed Operation Shady rat—has infiltrated the computer systems of national governments, global corporations, nonprofits, and other organizations, with more than 70 victims in 14 countries. Lifted from these highly secure servers, among other sensitive property: countless government secrets, e-mail archives, legal contracts, and design schematics. Here, Vanity Fair’s Michael Joseph Gross breaks the news of Operation Shady rat’s existence—and speaks to the McAfee cyber-security expert who discovered it. Related: “Enter the Cyber-dragon”.

  http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/09/operation-shady-rat-201109

• The Chinese are still ticked at the West for nicking porcelain and gunpowder w/o paying a licensing fee. So perhaps turn-about is ….

• What happened to the Chinese? We used to admire their philosophy, art, creativity, dynasties, etc,. Now they're associated with cheap goods, lead paint and piracy.

• [quote]Now they're associated with cheap goods So were the Japanese and Koreans in the middle of last century. Give the Chinese time.

• Right now, the Chinese are not intellectual property creators. Neither was the US initially.

• Absolute Polar Opposites. German Engineering is the worlds best. Chinese Engineering is the worlds worst. .....also, all Chinese "engineering" today is stolen technology from others like Germany, England and the USA, poorly built, because the Chinese still don't understand truly how it all works. The last thing the Chinese invented was paper. This was their engineering glory days. A graduate from a Chinese University is near US grade school quality. This is why nobody takes Chinese degrees seriously.

• Is cheating not stigmatized in China? I'm thinking of those child gymnasts passed off as 16-year-olds.

• Engineering is not a science. It is applied science.

• [quote]A graduate from a Chinese University is near US grade school quality How can we possibly take anything you said seriously after this?

• My cousin has studied and worked in China for decades. He says there simply is no tradition of fair play in business. It's caveat emptor and anything you can get away with is an acceptable tactic.

• China is the intellectual theft capital of the Universe.

• The Chinese JAC F150.

  http://blogs.cars.com/.a/6a00d83451b3c669e20168e7839308970c-800wi

• [quote]What happened to the Chinese? We used to admire their philosophy, art, creativity, dynasties, etc,. The Cultural Revolution. How long will it take for China to recover from its effects? It seems that its primary objective was stamp out any glimmer of creativity or forward thinking. Intellectuals and artists were primary targets. I don't know what the state of scientific advancement was like before the Cultural Revolution, but I'm sure their elite was targetted, as well. Mao and the rulers were intent to create some huge peasantry. A whole generation of individuals who had the intellect and wherewithall to advance a country were put in to labor camps or put in peasant collectives. There were accusations, trials, renunciations by colleagues and family, and finally their punishment. Many died. Many and their families suffered horrendous traumas that aren't easily wiped from a collective conscience. They were broken. This was also a generation that was going to produce future generations of innovators. Pol Pot did the same thing in Cambodia. And this wasn't even half the Cultural Revolution. I'm not sure how it reverberated among the masses.

• Chinese engineering students are the most humorless people you will ever meet. They're like sociopaths analysing some new ways to bring about slow and painful death.

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• [r19]: seconded.

• Memorization is not intelligence. China does not understand the difference.

• Wasn't the guy who Luka Whatshisname killed and dismemebered in Montreal an engineering student? He was described as quite nice.

• R22, he lived on the second floor.

• German = Good quality but more expensive. Chinese = Crap quality but cheap. I'd rather pay for good quality.

• Well that is actually an illusion R24. The Made in China can opener breaks every year, but the Made in Germany can opener last 30 years, so even at 5 times the price, the Made in Germany can opener is the better financial value.

• Lets just say that a certain brand of American Auto manufacturer is now using Made in China brake pads in its new cars. So if you buy American, please hit the brakes, very softly.

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• I work with a number of Chinese engineers at my government job. They don't make any effort to learn proper English and are very risk-averse. They make perfect government employees, unfortunately.

• Companies who hire these type of "engineers" just won't be able to keep up and will eventually go bankrupt.

• The Chinese are not engineers, they are thieves. The Germans actually engineer original ideas.

• There was a radio program on in the UK over the holidays discussing just this topic. A professor who had worked in UK, US and China was asked the difference between the students of engineering. UK - Bolshie, questioning. Quick. US - Interested, flexible. Good networkers. China - meticulous. Very little imagination - too reverent towards teachers. He had also taught in India (briefly) but found the student's sense of superiority and disinclination to listen profoundly irritating ...

• Whenever these topics come up l watch to see if the '50 cent' brigade will make an appearance - the army of English speaking Chinese bloggers who are reputedly paid this amount per posting on a site where negative Chinese vews are discussed. Guess thet have yet to find Datalounge

• New Product Development has little time for political correctness. That area is taken care of by Marketing & PR or Legal.

  Reality

• [quote]What happened to the Chinese? Mao happened. [quote]there simply is no tradition of fair play in business. It's caveat emptor and anything you can get away with is an acceptable tactic. Absolutely true. Check out this link. THIS is the Chinese business culture. The bubble is beginning to burst. Western money, on which the Chinese economy was built, is starting to flee for friendlier shores. Manufacturers have had enough of the endless bullshit. When that bubble does finally burst, it's going to get ugly.

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6962490/Come-back-Not-for-all-the-scooters-in-China.html

• Germans are known for their meticulousness and emphasis on quality, whereas the Chinese are all about faster and cheaper.

• Cheaper, yes. Faster, not so much. Check out the link at R33 In China it's all about doing the barest possible minimum.

• From R33's link. This is comical. Victor, BTW, is the Chinese contact at the factory. Initially I went back to the UK while they were making the prototype. Victor sent me email updates with pictures of the bike and when it looked like it was finished I returned to China," says Chris. "What I found when I got to the factory was no prototype, just a wooden frame with an engine in the middle." Across the courtyard from the main factory floor, Victor works in Bright Mountain's sales office. He is in charge of foreign orders, but the only two other orders from abroad that Bright Mountain has had so far have gone disastrously wrong. One, a shipment of 3,000 motorcycles to Germany, ended in acrimony when the Germans found that Bright Mountain had substituted the specified parts for cheaper ones, causing the engines to explode. The second order, a monthly shipment of 1,000 scooters to India, was terminated after the first container was opened and all the bikes were found to be rusty. Victor is frank. "I would not buy my wife a bike from Bright Mountain," he says, shaking his head cheerily. "They are too dangerous. Of course, that's just the domestic models. Export ones are OK." When asked what had happened during the making of the prototype he freely confessed to having lied to Chris. "During all those months, I did nothing. Nothing at all. He asked what was happening, so I emailed him to say everything was fine and sent him photographs from a friend's factory," he says. "Victor is the most dishonest man I have met in my entire life," says Chris, tersely. "But the problem is that no one takes any direct responsibility. The workers lie to their bosses. The bosses lie to the salesmen, the salesmen are our point of contact, but they don't know what is going on," he adds. Other mishaps seemed to occur randomly. When Chris asked for the prototype to be made in black, he received one in bright pink. The workers managed to scratch a large number of the bikes and had not ordered enough spare parts to replace the damaged panels.

• When Western Companies flee China for cheaper labor, China is going to lose the Western technology base, which it has been stealing from for decades. Is China going back into retro limbo again?

• It is not considered improper in Chinese culture to get what you want by subterfuge; in fact it is admired. There are a lot of heros in Chinese literature who are underdogs who vanquish the mightier opposition by stealth and cunning. The Brer Rabbit meme, you might call it. Westerners would often see the same behaviour as sneaky and fraudulent. The Chinese see it differently.

• We had a Chinese programmer who claimed to have a PhD in artificial intelligence who was baffled by Microsoft Access.

• R33 reminds me of this movie

  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Made_In_China.jpg

• R25, I think that's the point r24 was making.

• China is the Intellectual Theft Center of the Universe. Everything is stolen without remorse.

• When I was in law school, a classmate with a masters in engineering wrote a paper about differences in intellectual property laws and customs between China and the west. He said that in Confucianism the belief was that someone who had invented a new process or product was supposed to share it with the community for the public good. There was no tradition of rewarding inventors. Add that to the need to catch up after decades of Communism preceded by civil war preceded by the imperial system and you have a little more understanding of why they're so shameless about stealing intellectual property.

• China can produce good engineers. It just takes practice (see the USA in the nineteenth century: abysmal quality, horrible accidents....) Germany's engineers are not uni-trained. They succeed through apprenticeship and very detailed practical knowledge in-field. America's engineers today have some competence but not that much. In fact, many of them have lost the core understanding needed for safety. They rely too much on what has been done before without really understanding the materials they work with. China and India both have a laughable education system that they think is especially good. But good engineering doesn't come from education: it comes from practice. That's why Chinese can now build high rises faster and more efficiently than any place else. A fifty story building inside of two months. True, they aren't the best fifty story buildings. But they stand for now.

• Thank you. R13. That was bugging me.

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• R45 = Sheldon Cooper.

• Current Chinese culture (as it has not always been case) expends more energy stealing other ideas and mass producing than actually creating a product. Many of their buildings and large projects are riddled with problems as a result. Current Chinese culture (at least for the last 50-70 years) values conformity and rigid ideological doctrine over facts (something valued by tbaggers).

• Chinese "engineering" kills more people.

• R47, "tbaggers" have fuck-all to do with the Chinese, asswipe.

• China is 1 big Dollar Tree Store.

• Chinese Engineering is kind of like Pakistani Polka Music or Hawaiian Snow Boarding.

• "Germany's engineers are not uni-trained. They succeed through apprenticeship and very detailed practical knowledge in-field." German engineers ARE university-trained and degreed.

• R43, Confucius died 2500 years ago, what role does he really play today? At the moment the Chinese sign up to intellectual property laws they should stick to them.

• Westerners would often see the same behaviour as sneaky and fraudulent. The Chinese see it differently. True. They see it as clever. Hell, anybody can steal and lie, but it's the Chinese who see it as an admirable trait... as long as you're not doing it to them. Then you're just a dirty thief. Afterall, lying and stealing is easier than thinking and effort.

• Yes, that's it R54. And as stated in the article, this is how you feel after you have experienced that over and over: "My natural instinct is to trust people and I have learned not to do that in China."

• "Poorly Made in China" is an interesting read. The author has spent years helping western businesses negotiate contracts with Chinese manufacturers, and finally decided to write about the crap that goes on. The final straw, if I recall correctly, was the issue of lead-poisoned toys that received widespread media coverage. Ultimately, the CEO of Mattel visited the Chinese manufacturers TO APOLOGIZE TO THEM[!] for the unwanted publicity. I'm still gobsmacked over that one. I'd always assumed that western manufacturers insisted on the lowest price, and quality be damned, but it's more often the case that Chinese manufacturers refuse to follow the standards they agreed to.

  http://www.amazon.com/Poorly-Made-China-Insiders-Production/dp/0470928077/ref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26ie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1368325337%26sr%3D1-1%26keywords%3Dpoorly+made+china

• Chinese business management theory put to practice.... A picture is worth 1.4 billion words.

  http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/pictures/chinese-company-employees-crawl-in-public-training-exercise.html

• But at least the comments from Chinese Weibo users are heartening. They took the pics and publicized the event as dehumanizing. They even pointed out the irony of doing this around the city's Liberation Monument. Good for them.

• Yes, R58 I agree. But, that this was even possible in the first place, that anyone would believe this to be a good idea and that anyone would go along with it is frightening. What a relief to read the comments. Sadly, though, there is a deeply ingrained caste system in Chinese business culture. Employees are subordinate in every way and management is never questioned or second-guessed. In Chinese business anyone below you on the ladder is shit, and anyone above you is feared.

• Regardless of terrible manufacturing quality control in China made worse by Corrupt Americas CEOS like those who run Mattel, which is an entire other tread..... Engineering is all about designing original things at the conceptual level, which is something Chinese university graduates just can't do. They only know how to copy others ideas.

• [quote]Engineering is all about designing original things at the conceptual level, which is something Chinese university graduates just can't do. That's possibly true because critical thinking is unheard of throughout every level of Chinese education. The system is based on rote learning, nothing else. And that's only applicable when students aren't asleep at their desks.

• r49 Teabaggers worship corporations and the rich and powerful, so I would say they have some similarity to the Chinese.

• The comparison of Britain and the US of pre-1920 to today's China is wrong. Britain and the US were creating new things and laying the foundation of the modern world. China is just following it. Likewise there is no comparison between German and Chinese engineering now or in the past. China is now attempting to rework what China of the past was. Many of the oldest buildings in China are of European design. Almost all the Chinese designed buildings are recontructions within the last 120 years (most being in the last 40 years) using Western engineering. Chinese buildings were not built to last with most falling apart within 40 years. Roofs were made first. There were no foundation instead stones were placed on the ground where the pillars would be. The pillars would be placed on top of the stones then the roof would be placed on top. The roofs would be heavy and wide to create stability. Few buildings were over one story tall. All buildings in China today made the Western (European) way.

• [quote]Chinese engineering students are the most humorless people you will ever meet. That's because the Chinese students in the West are sponsored by their government and the cost of failure is very high for them. I've seen some of them freak out at the prospect of being called home and destined for a menial life of drudgery because they couldn't handle school. German engineering tends to be overrated. Part of German vehicle expense is due to penalties paid for lack of engineering.

• R26, "Made in China" does not mean designed or engineered in China or by the Chinese.

• YouTube is full of frightening videos of Chinese car crash tests. But this one actually shows somewhat similar German vs. Chinese cars. Yikes! BMW is in a joint venture with Brilliance, but there sure seems to have been little transfer of BMW safety technology. Both cars were going 56 km/hr or about 35 mph. Another Chinese maker, Geely, is the new owner of Volvo, one of the safest cars ever, so perhaps there's hope for our Communist / Capitalist corporate brothers. China wants to get these cars into YOUR driveway in due time.

  http://youtu.be/_ULm6QrC428

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• "Made in China" means made from stolen Western Technology with poor quality materials and abysmal manufacturing standards.

• [quote]"Made in China" means minimum investment, maximum return.

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• [quote]German engineering tends to be overrated. Part of German vehicle expense is due to penalties paid for lack of engineering. Not lack of engineering, as much as engineering by Germans for Germans. General Motors designs an engine, and they tell you to change the oil every 3500 miles. They know and expect people will change it somewhere between 3000 and 6000 miles and design accordingly. Germans tell you to change the oil at 3500 miles and they actually expect you to do it. Not at 3000 and not at 4000--at 3500 like the manual says. That is what Germans do, so that is how German engineers design. It baffles them that people don't follow instructions.

• German Music v Chinese Music

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• [quote]Part of German vehicle expense is due to penalties paid for lack of engineering. I have no idea what this means.

• R71,penalties paid for not meeting mandated US standards, particularly mpg requirements, is merely passed on to the consumer.

• I would say the difference is the poles of the engineering world. German Engineering is the high mark to beat and Chinese Engineering is accusation to avoid.

• Thanks, R72.

  R71

• Made in China has its own network

  http://madeinchinacrap.net/

• At least the Japanese have world leading build quality, even if it is using Euro Engineering.