Virtual Memories

It’s stories like this one that keep me from taking China seriously. A U.S.-educated Chinese researcher returns to his homeland to develop innovative DSP chips for China’s internal market, in hopes of breaking China’s stereotype of a being a great at manufacturing and crap at innovating. He ‘develops’ a line of DSP chips called Hanxin, and gets regarded as a national hero.

What happens?

But late last year, according to these reports, the whistle-blowers came forward. Some colleagues who had a dispute with Mr. Chen began contacting the government. They claimed, according to the news reports, that migrant workers had simply scratched away the name Motorola from a chip and replaced it with Hanxin. Presumably, that early version of Hanxin was a foreign company’s chip, the specifications of which Mr. Chen or an associate could give to manufacturers to mass-produce under the Hanxin name.

Repeat: He hired migrants to scratch out “Motorola” and write in “Hanxin”.

Update: Looks like BusinessWeek is with me on this one.