Japan is still in an economic straitjacket. Its traditional culture causes market inertia by drastically slowing the restructuring initiatives sorely needed to adjust to the new globalism.
However, Japan has one great advantage that stems from a particular cultural and ethnic proclivity. The Japanese mind seldom innovates, but it is the world’s expert in taking Western inventions, improving them markedly and selling them back to the innovator as products far superior in nature and quality to the original product. Witness the quality of a Lexus automobile compared to a Cadillac. (Ron Fraser, Rising in the East, August 2002.)What a ridiculous and racist thing to say. It is terrible that Ron Fraser chose to denigrate Japanese people in this manner.
It is shameful that PCG's leaders allowed a man who could shamelessly state such bigoted things as this to be given as much power and responsibility within PCG as he was.
Common Redfox.
ReplyDeleteEveryone with business background knows that Asian business leaders themselves admit to hierarchical culture, respect for elders, adjust and adapt rather than challenge, submit individuality to the group. Chinese soccer coaches are having a hard time teaching their pupils to think individually and creatively with president XI's goal of having China participate in the World Cup according to their status as a dominant world power.
It is not racist. Asian culture is very adapt in copying inventions, take them apart and improve the concept.
Of course statistically among billions there must be individual minds and inventors, but culture does not stimulate the behavior that engenders the passing of boundaries where no man has gone before.
Wasn't it Cheng Ho who reached the coast of California and Arabia, but decided to burn the entire fleet after his pursuits.
nck
btw
ReplyDeleteIn that light isn't it interesting that one of Japan's former secretaries of industry and education also studied at Ambassador College as an exchange student.
nck
And Joe Biden asked students in Beijing to name "one innovative product that has come out of China". Both countries have been innovative as well as value-adding to existing products. In the case of Japan, I've seen many innovative products that I'd have no use for, and some that were considered ridiculous, but still creative and original.
ReplyDeleteI'd consider the remarks of Fraser and Biden to be national, cultural, and racial slurs.
They are! The days of reverse engineering have long since passed. The equipment I rep is Japanese. The manufacturer is cutting edge, and the equipment is original. We had an exclusive for years on machines and processes that nobody else offered, and manufacturers in other countries are just now catching up. I’ve got some equipment right now that would totally blow COGlodyte minds! These ACOG splinters really need this equipment to take their work to the next level, but since PCG and other splinters are such racists, I’ll be darned if I so much as give out the brand name on any public blog where they might see it!
DeleteBB