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Can China innovate its way out of a prolonged economic growth slowdown? Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group, believes so. In his new book, “The End of Copycat China – The Rise of Creativity, Innovation and Individualism in Asia”, he argues that China will start innovating now because it has to – and that it didn’t before simply because it didn’t need to. That’s an interesting theory, but is he right? 中国能否通过创新走出长期经济增长放缓的困境？中国市场研究集团(China Market Research)的董事总经理雷小山(Shaun Rein)相信可以。在他的新书《山寨中国的终结：亚洲创造力、创新力和个人主义的崛起》(The End of Copycat China – The Rise of Creativity, Innovation and Individualism in Asia)中，雷小山认为，中国如今将开启创新之路，因为它不得不如此，而过去之所以没这么做，也仅仅是因为还不需要。这是种有趣的理论，但他说得对吗？ Rein first does battle with common perceptions that the Chinese political system or culture limits its ability to innovate. It’s not because China is a communist-led country with limited individual freedom, that it does not come up with corporate inventions, he says.It’s also wrong, he says, to think that Chinese are simply unable to innovate because of some perceived “Confucian conformity”, as academic Panos Mourdoukoutas argued in Forbes in 2017. For Rein, such an argument is historically incorrect, as even at the height of Confucianian influence, the country brought about huge innovations such as “gunpowder, multi-stage rockets and the compass”. | 
