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November 15, 2005
The next Chinese challenge
We all know about China as a manufacturing power. What most people don't realize is that China is moving rapidly up-market to capture not just cheap manufacturing, but high-end design. (Remember the Japanese rise when "Made in Japan" went from meaning cheap to meaning high-tech and quality?) As Business Week reports - "China Design":
There's a lot of that going on in China these days. As Chinese companies seek to build global brands and foreigners aim to boost sales in the mainland, they're transforming the country's design business. Chinese manufacturers realize they need better products if they want to break out of China and beef up their margins on sales abroad. And foreign companies such as Sony are starting to see that as Chinese consumers get more discriminating, they're no longer content with the tired, designed-somewhere-else models that many overseas-based marketers once sold in China.
This is powering a boom in design on the mainland. The best Chinese companies are building their design staffs or hiring outsiders to help them make more products of their own. Design is one of the most popular majors at Chinese universities today, and hundreds of design consulting firms have sprung up in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. "Large companies [in China] are saying: 'We can't catch up fast enough,"' says Craig M. Vogel, a professor of design at the University of Cincinnati who has worked as a consultant to several companies in China. Even young designers from abroad are flocking to Beijing and Shanghai to try their luck in the world's most dynamic consumer market.
Chinese designers are still behind the curve. But they are moving fast:
Since Hunan University opened China's first school of design in Changsha 23 years ago, the discipline has taken off. Beijing's Tsinghua University is opening a new 60,000-square-meter design building, and in Guangzhou the Academy of Fine Arts just moved to a new eight-story facility with enough space for 3,000 industrial design students -- five times its current capacity. Today, China has some 400 schools offering design classes that together graduate some 10,000 industrial designers annually, up from just 1,500 or so five years ago. "Design schools are popping up like bamboo shoots," marvels Yan Yang, chairman of Tsinghua's industrial design department.
Design is even seeping ever deeper into Chinese society. Beijing has introduced into the national curriculum a new course called Technology and Design in which students learn about the history of design and what constitutes good design. "Traditionally, Chinese people are very good at design," says He Renke, dean of Hunan University's design school, who helped develop the curriculum. "Now we need a renaissance."
The numbers don't yet add up to a comparative advantage in good design - but China is clearly headed in the right direction. While US schools argue about "Intelligent Design," Chinese schools are studying "Technology and Design".
Which of these paths do you think will produce the economic superpower of the I-Cubed Economy?
Posted by Ken Jarboe at November 15, 2005 8:47 AM
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