Re: china question again

[ravi <gadfly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At around 20/4/06 6:37 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
> michael perelman wrote:
>
>> I have asked this quesiton several times before, always receiving
>> excellent answers. So here is the NY Times saying that China will be
>> moving up the value chain to compete with the more advanced economies.
>> How feasable will that be?
>
> I was surprised to hear Elizabeth Economy, the CFR's China expert,
> say <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#060413> that
> they're going to have a hard time doing this - their workforce just
> isn't skilled enough. She says that only a fraction of their
> engineers are up to world standards.
>

I heard that too on your programme, but I have two thoughts: (a) she
mentioned a six-figure per year graduation rate from engineering
colleges and that 10% of them were up to "world standards" (whatever
that means). Assuming the U.S has say 60%, how many graduates do we
have? The difference may not be significant. (b) Aren't many of the
students graduating from U.S engineering colleges (especially graduate
level) from China, India, etc? ;-) I spent a good two years
collaborating with engineers in China on a project to build a high
capacity Internet router. The least I can say is that these guys were
competent enough for the job. They also demonstrated a level of
sophistication in terms of understanding technologies, concepts,
processes and in particular, bringing a wide range of tools together to
speed up a project.

        --ravi