“There are too many people in China,” said almost everyone I met. Whatever problems that China is facing, that is the favorite answer. My one month immersive tour of China revealed something else – its serious lacking of cooperation between teams.

In China, almost every company has a core team核心团队, and this also applies to non-profit Internet community. The members in the core team worked hard and were highly efficient. They trust each other and knew that they would benefit from the outcome. However, beyond the core team members, almost everyone distrust each other. I found this seriously impeded Chinese creativity.

Every latest and greatest product required a lot of people to support and to develop into a whole new industry, not to mention the other industries that supplied the main knowledge and components. Right now, I don’t see Chinese culture supporting that type of efforts. Most Chinese factories and companies were plugged into an existing foreign industrial ecology by supplying cheap products. Even Chinese producers like Haier had not produced anything new, but lower cost alternative to the existing appliances.

Good news for Americans is that culture is hard to change and therefore US will continue to take the lead in knowledge production for at least 100-200 years. But what should you do if you are a Chinese? That - is another topic too wordy for my little blog..