China it is not a creative economy

The Chinese have been making cheap copies of other nation’s innovations for the last 50 years. The difference is that they are making more of them now and will continue to dominate the "cheap copy" marketplace. That’s all well and good; but it also means they will have a real hard time turning into an innovation based economy where they research and develop new products which can compete with Western competition.

The tainted food scare from China actually really highlights the delicate nature of their economy. They need to keep quality up because in fact, most consumers in the West will pay a little more for good quality. If their products are so cheap that they are in fact defective, then less and less of the world will use them as the cheapo factory.