Post a CommentNews and New Products
Welcome to the Silicon Road
By Ed Sperling -- Electronic News, 9/29/2005
There was a time when the primary export out of China was silk. Caravans used to travel the long and dangerous Silk Road overland to bring their goods to market.
That was then. This is now. The main export out of China is manufactured goods and electronics of all sorts -- finished goods and the components to make them. The Silk Road has given way to the Silicon Road, and it’s just as much a mystery to most Westerners -- even those who travel there on a regular basis -- as it was 1,000 years ago.
China has always been a world unto itself, closed off and hidden -- a country with a history of Confucianism and emphasis on relationships, layered with capitalistic spirit along the Eastern coastal regions and overseen by a Communist government. It is a land of opposites that don’t go together and one where communication remains spotty.
Even within China, communication isn’t always easy. The country is vast, with pockets of development that seem to sprout up sometimes in competition with other regions, sometimes totally independently. And all of this is done under a veil of secrecy, which has been placed atop the nation of 1.3 billion people both internally and externally.
Our goal is nothing short of providing a better look inside the world’s most populace nation, one that will play a significant role in electronics in decades to come. We will do this both by increasing our coverage of China from the outside, working with journalists inside of China, and by sending one of our editors into the country for a month to report his findings.
The results should be eye-opening, to say the least. And as we go forward, please remember this is simply a first step toward better coverage of our global community.
--Ed Sperling, Electronic News Editor In Chief
To join Electronic News as we travel the new China, click here.
