Core77

China's industrial design boom

By Rain Noe - March 10, 2010

in Design Business

A newscast released today by CCTV discusses China's industrial design boom. Unfortunately the newscast is poorly produced, poorly written ("industrial design" is written "industries design," for instance) and laden with good ol' Commie propaganda-speak (i.e. "highest levels of achievement," etc.), although, if the figures are to be believed, there are some interesting takeaways:

Chen Dongliang, Director, Beijing Industrial Design Center, said, "The output value of industrial design in Beijing reached 80 billion yuan in 2008. Now around 250-thousand employees are working for nearly 20-thousand design companies in the city. Beijing is also expanding technology service and high-end manufacturing industries, both of them can help boost the industrial design sector."

...The global financial crisis has made more and more companies realize that it's not sustainable to depend on cheap and low-end products. They must think more about added value. The central government has also called for more attention on industrial design, pledging to change "Made in China" to "Invented in China".

Chen said, "Industrial design is the key point of the value chain. Figures show that in Britain, 100 pounds of investment in design can yield 225 pounds of output. According to our survey, in China, one yuan investment could bring 13 yuan of output...."

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Simon Blanchard

14 years ago

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Regarding your criticism of the writing: this was probably written in Chinese first. It may have lost something in the translation... How's your Chinese?
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xxx

14 years ago

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you see , the news from cctv.
in china , cctv always mean the information from government.It could be understood as a beautiful wishs.

practically,most designers make a lot of works eveyday and lower salaries (about USD 350 pre month ).Counterfeit products erery where in maket,like Yiwu in zhejiang.
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abeeofchina

14 years ago

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Anyway, China is rising, harmoniously and peacefully, not only in the field of industrial design. China is not a threat to the strongs. She wants a win-win situation. Admittedly, the design in China now may be poor and immature. China still is and will be a student in a long term in many design areas, following her teachers. But fundamental principles of design which can be learned by all designers are just the same and simple: design is for life, for good living, for all truth, kindness and beauty, and for fighting against prejudice, cheat and ignorance.
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Simon

14 years ago

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this somewhat reinforces my idea to head over there and start up my own design consultancy, everybody loves a bit of the "french touch".
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Tanuki

14 years ago

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250,000 CAD monkeys at 250,000 CAD stations... They will create the greatest product known to mankind! Muhahahahahaha.

seriously, that may be full of communist speak, but no doubt they will get there and probably take dominance of the market. Lets just hope they make nicer stuff than shown in those pictures :P
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iab

14 years ago

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"... nearly 20,000 (ID) design companies in the city."

I doubt that there are that many total in North America, let alone 1 city.
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