CPPCC Rep: The Chinese Government Can’t Manufacture Steve Jobs

Xu Guanhua is a CPPCC representative, and the former head of China’s department of Science and Technology. In a recent interview, Xu addressed the question of Steve Jobs and China’s creativity deficit. It’s fairly interesting, so I’ve just directly translated the relevant bit below:

Beijing News: You often table about how China needs to increase its innovativeness. Last year the Ningbo government proposed a plan to invest 50 million RMB and five years to produce ten Steve Jobses. What do you think of this?

Xu Guanhua: The government manufacturing Steve Jobs: this idea itself is unscientific. How could Steve Jobs be manufactured? The government cannot manufacture him. He was created by the market environment. In working in science and technology, the government must not spoil things by being too enthusiastic. I advocate following the “mushroom theory”: the government creates an environment, and with the right air, moisture levels, and humidity, mushrooms will grow by themselves. The government doesn’t need to go plant mushrooms, or choose specific mushrooms, just create an environment, an ecology.

Beijing News: But there are people who believe there is nothing the government can’t accomplish.

Xu Guanhua: This theory [the “mushroom theory”] is applicable in science and technology and in economics. In the non-market economy sphere, the government can do many things. That’s one of China’s advantages. But in a competitive market economy, if one puts too much emphasis on the government’s role and the government gets too involved, I think it’s very difficult to have success.

Beijing News: But money and power are often connected, giving up the authority [over technology or the economy] is difficult.

Xu Guanhua: So there’s reform. The government needs to implement thorough reforms from the fundamental level of its economic management model, they need to manage it like a market economy. Today we’ve made great advances, but all in all we still have not totally completed the move from a planned economy to an open one.

The reader comments on this article are also somewhat interesting, although also decidedly more profane. To put it mildly, commenters on Sina are quite skeptical of the idea that the government might be able to manufacture a Steve Jobs. Some of them also think the Ningbo government’s figure for one Steve Jobs was quite low:

Five million for one Jobs, do you think it’s like paying for a mistress? What’s next, spend 500 million to buy an Einstein?

[Beijing News via Sina Tech]