Page 76 - IMDR EBOOK 20 OCT 2020

"Pandemic and Beyond: Naviga ng the New Normal" E - Book Year 2020

With lower insistence and compliances related to IPR, it was easy for Chinese to bring
wide range of state of the art technologies through sheer copy-paste route. However,
today China is not just cheap copy master’s country. It is a world leader in all the cutting
edge technologies like AI and its applications. How did it happen? It happened with
sustained efforts over many years. Chinese Govt. invited and employed retired Japanese
professors and experts in the modern technologists. These Japanese experts laid the
foundation of the various test labs and centres of high end technology in Chinese
Universities. Chinese students who go to the US for their studies return back in good
numbers and many of them teach. China has no ideological or cultural reservations
when it comes to learning and adopting new knowledge. Japan and China are historical
enemies but neither China as country nor Chines as people have an iota of reservation in
adopting Japanese knowledge from Japanese. They simply grasp it and take it forward.
According to Prof. Akbar Zaheer who teaches strategic management at University of
Minnisota, grasp and absorption of new technology of a certain level to start business
takes 4.5 years for an Indian engineer, 3 for an American where as it is 18 months for a
Chinese.

A decade long funding of these universities and their association with local industries
has developed unique partnerships that has now made China a world leader in High
Tech industries. Here is an interesting example. A Chinese university required a
particular type of a furnace for its research. It collaborated with a Chinese company to
manufacture it. After a couple of years, the Chinese company got an export customer for
that furnace but the customer wanted some changes. University students did the work
within no time and the company could offer its product as a technologically improved
product – much cheaper than a European product. Now the Chinese manufacturer has a
technologically updated product which he can offer world over at an attractive price with
a back up support for any upgradation required through its association with the
university.

Conclusion
Indian people have many learnings in the Chinese approach and attitude. We must
absorb these and change or modify quickly. India enjoys certain distinct benets. Some
of these are:
• Common man`s prociency in English.
• English being the most common language of government and of judiciary is
majorly to our advantage.
• Democratic and stable government. World values our democracy and very fact of
us being democratic so consistently, is a strong factor in our favour.

• Reliable IPR regime.
• Large pool of educated youngsters.
• Large availability of trainable technical minds.

• Reasonably dependable banking system.
• Stable government with strong control on its armed forces.
All these go strongly in favour of India as a business destination.

What can India do to reposition as a preferred manufacturing destination for those who
are coming out of China? Though its not an easy question to answer, one can consider
following Sort Term and Long Term suggestions as bare minimum ‘sin qua non’.

Short Term (0 – 2 years):
1. Government must work on overhauling its bureaucracy to create a response
mechanism to prospective investors which will be as prompt, effective and pleasant as
the Chinese one they had when they set up their units in China. There is no option to this
as the Chinese response-mechanism is already a bench mark.

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