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【原文标题】When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China
【中文标题】当创新也是“中国制造”时
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【来源地址】http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/business/02unboxed.html?_r=2
【译 者】批一啊pia
【翻译方式】 人工
【声 明】 本翻译供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，不得转载。
【译 文】
AS a national strategy, China is trying to build an economy that relies on innovation rather than imitation. Clearly, its leaders recognize that being the world’s low-cost workshop for assembling the breakthrough products designed elsewhere — think iPads and a host of other high-tech goods — has its limits.
作为一项国家战略，中国在试图打造依靠创新而不是山寨的经济体。很明显，中国领导人意识到了作为廉价的世界工厂为具有突破性的国外产品组装，如iPad和其他高科技产品，是具有局限性的。
So can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.
那么中国能变成一个惊人的发明者吗？事实上，这个答案将在几十年内呈现出来，不仅能决定中国的未来，还会塑造出全球经济的形态。
Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.
最近中国政府文件中显示的中国方式的线索，包含大幅增加国家产品专利的目标。这生动显露出了中国想要设计出一个更具创新能力的社会的意愿。
The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
这份文件由中国国家知识产权局在11月份公布，被称作《国家专利发展战略（2011-2020）》。文件中广泛讨论了经济目标，以及一些在2015年以前实现的特定目标。
In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”
美国专利和商标局的主管David J. Kappos在最近的采访时提到中国在2015年之前实现的目标时称它们是“令人兴奋的数字”。
According to a translation of the document provided by the patent office, China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is two million. That number includes “utility-model patents,” which typically cover items like engineering features in a product and are less ambitious than “invention patents.” In the American system, there are no utility patents.
根据中国专利局提供的文件的翻译版本，中国的目标是在2015年以前每年专利备案数达到两百万件。这个数字包括“实用型专利”，主要涵盖诸如产品中起主要作用的工程部件，“发明型专利”方面更有雄心壮志一些。在美国的专利体系中，是没有实用型专利的。
In 2009, about 300,000 applications for utility patents were filed in China, roughly equal to its total of invention patents, which have been growing slightly faster than utility filings in recent years. But even if just half of China’s total filings in 2015 are for invention patents, the national plan calls for a huge leap, to one million, by 2015. By contrast, patent filings in the United States totaled slightly more than 480,000 in the 12 months ended in September, according to the patent office.
2009年中国大约有三十万项实用型专利申请，差不多与发明型专利的总数持平，发明型专利在近年一直比实用型专利备案要多一点。不过即使中国在2015年专利备案总数中只有一半是发明型专利，国家计划号召在2015年之前将这个数字提高到一百万。而美国的情况是，根据专利局的统计，截止9月份的过去12个月中，美国的专利备案总数也刚过48万件。
China’s patent surge has been evident for years. In October, Thomson Reuters issued a research report, forecasting that China would surpass the United States in patent filings in 2011. “It’s happening even faster than we expected,” said Bob Stembridge, an intellectual-property analyst at Thomson Reuters.
中国的专利激增已经凸显了好几年了。十月份路透社公布了一份研究报告，预言中国将于2011年在专利备案数上超越美国。“这比我们想象中的到来得要快。”路透社的知识产权分析家Bob Stembridge说。
Yet if the trend is not surprising, the ambition of the Chinese plan is striking. The document indicates, for example, that China intends to roughly double its number of patent examiners, to 9,000, by 2015. (The United States has 6,300 examiners.)
即使这个趋势并不让人吃惊，但中国计划的雄心是惊人的。比方说，文件中指出中国将让专利审核人员数量翻倍，到2015年达到9000人。（美国只有6300专利审核员。）
China also wants to double the number of patents that its residents and companies file in other countries. Recent Chinese filings in the United States, Mr. Kappos says, are mainly in fields that China has declared priorities for industrial strategy, including solar and wind energy, information technology and telecommunications, and battery and manufacturing technologies for automobiles.
中国还想让中国居民和中国公司在国外备案的专利数翻倍。Kappos说，最近中国人在美国的专利备案，主要集中的领域都是中国在工业战略中宣布要优先发展的，包括太阳能、风能、信息技术、通信、电池和汽车制造技术。
To lift its patent count, China has introduced an array of incentives. They include cash bonuses, better housing for individual filers and tax breaks for companies that are prolific patent producers.
为了提高专利数量，中国引入了大量的激励措施。包括现金奖励、改善个人专利所有人的住房、给专利多产的公司减税等。
“The leadership in China knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth,” Mr. Kappos says. “They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China’s patent strategy is part of that broader plan.”
“中国的领导层知道创新是他们的未来，是通向更高生活水平和长期增长的关键。”Kappos说。“他们在用一切他们能用的方法去推动创新，中国的专利战略是这个庞大计划的一部分。”
China’s strategy is guided and sponsored by the state. Should that be a source of concern for the United States, and perhaps a trade issue? Or is the plan likely to resemble past efforts by other governments to give their companies an edge in global competition?
中国的战略都是由国家指导和支持的。这会成为让美国担忧的一个来源吗？或者成为一项贸易争端？还说是，中国的计划可能会像其他国家政府在过去做的努力一样，让中国公司在全球竞争中锋芒更厉？
In the 1980s, the Japanese government was widely viewed as the master practitioner of industrial policy, and Japan Inc. seemed poised to overrun one American industry after another, including computers.
20世纪80年代，日本政府被看做是工业政策的执行者，日本公司似乎在很泰然自若地超越美国一个又一个工业，包括计算机。
As we know, it didn’t turn out that way, partly because of steps taken by the American government and industry. A semiconductor trade agreement was intended to pry open the Japanese market, and I.B.M. invested in a crucial but then-struggling supplier, Intel.
不过我们都知道，最终没有沿着这条路走下去，部分因为美国政府和工业采取的行动。一项半导体贸易协定就是要打开日本的市场，I.B.M. 的投资占主要，之后是Intel的介入。
More important, however, Japan never became a force in a particularly unruly, imaginative side of computing: writing software. Generalizations are risky, but it seems that Japan, as a society, has not produced enough of that kind of innovative skill, despite being a formidable patent generator. (In that area, Japan is still slightly ahead of the United States by some measures, though Japan’s patent filing pace is slowing.)
然而更重要的是，日本从没成为推动特别难以驾驭、富有创造力的计算即写软件的一种力量。以一概之是危险的，不过看起来日本作为一个社会没有产生出足够的创新技能，虽然日本是一个强大的专利生产者。（在这个方面，某种程度上，日本仍然稍领先于美国，尽管日本的专利备案步伐很缓慢。）
To call Japan’s industrial policy an outright failure would be simplistic. In some industries — autos, machine tools and consumer electronics, for example — it has done quite well.
如果称日本的工业政策是彻底的失败就太武断了。在某些工业领域，如汽车、机床和家电，日本做得非常好。
“They are still in the game in those industries and going gangbusters — and we are not,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former United States trade negotiator. Still, just how strong a hand government policy had in those successes is open to debate.
“他们仍主导着这些工业领域并表现出现，而我们没有。”经济战略研究所主席、美国前贸易谈判代表Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr.说。政府的政策对于这些成功的推动作用，仍有很大的讨论空间。
The Chinese patent strategy document is filled with metrics, right down to goals for patents owned per million people. It speaks of an innovation-by-the-numbers mentality, much like a student who equates knowledge with scores on standardized tests.
中国的专利战略文件充满了韵律感，接下来就是每百万人拥有的专利数量的目标了。他们谈及用数字衡量创新的心态，非常像一个学生用测试中拿到的分数衡量拥有的知识的心态。
“It is a brute-force approach at this stage, emphasizing the quantity of innovation assets more than the quality,” said John Kao, an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.
“这个阶段还属于蛮力进攻，注重创新资产的数量而非质量。”为政府和企业提供创新咨询的John Kao说。
But it would be a mistake, Mr. Kao said, to assume that China will necessarily follow a path similar to Japan’s. China, he says, is not only much bigger than Japan, but it also has a more individualistic entrepreneurial society, despite its Communist government. Someday, he predicts, China will have its entrepreneurial equivalents of Steven P. Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
不过Kao说假设中国会不可避免地走上与日本相似的道路，这可能是种错误。他说，中国不仅仅比日本要大得多，而且虽然中国是共产党政权，但还是个更加个人主义的创业型社会。他预言，有一天中国会产生出像乔布斯和扎克伯格那样的企业家。
DESPITE China’s inevitable rise, Mr. Kao said, the United States has a comparative advantage because it is the country most open to innovation. “American culture, more than any other, forgives failure, tolerates risk and embraces uncertainty,” Mr. Kao says.
Kao说，虽然中国的崛起不可阻挡，美国还是有相对的优势，因为美国这个国家对创新最开放。“美国文化比其他文化都要更能原谅失败、忍耐危险和不确定性。”
Many innovative products and technologies, he says, will be made elsewhere. “But America’s future lies in being the orchestrator — the systems integrator — of the innovation process,” Mr. Kao said. “Look at Silicon Valley. It is a place where smart people from all nations, all languages and all ethnic groups come together. It’s the capital of innovation assembly.”
他说，很多创新产品和技术将在其他地方制造出来。“但是美国的希望寄于对创新过程的系统整合之上，”Kao说。“看看硅谷，这里汇聚了来自各个国家、各种语言、各族群的高智商人士。这里就是创新集会的大本营。” |
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发表于 2011-1-6 15:59
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