Big Ideas Wanted

Wu Lulu was once a rancher with no grave education. He built low-tech robots done out of any throw he could obtain his hands on.

It did not always go smoothly. On a occasion, Mr Wu, 50, mistook detonators for batteries, floating up his residence and on fire his face.

But after more than two decades, his stability paid off.

He entered a TV contest for inventors - winning initial prize, that enclosed a money purse.

His success finished the critique of his neighbours who think he should outlay more time given his crops and reduction time on his contraptions.

And now, Mr Wu has substituted his fields for a assembly lines where he - and his group of 50 employees - pattern robots to order.

"I'm spooky by office building them," he says.

Mr Wu has written about 50 robots, that he names after himself.

His many renouned model is the Wu 32 - a life-sized drudge pulling a rickshaw. It has lips done out of sponge, eyes that roll, and ears that flap.

The drudge moreover speaks, saying: "Hello everyone, Mr Wu is my father."

The creations have brought Mr Wu a grade of fame. He is often asked by schools and universities to give lectures.

"Young people today are really meddlesome in robots," he says. "I'm cheerful to learn them my skills and minister to the economy."

It is his suggestion of creativity that the Chinese authorities wish to foster.

They are spending billions of dollars developing the country's hi-tech industries, desiring that higher-paid jobs will upgrade standards of living.

In the past 3 decades, China has copied technology created in other countries.

That has authorised the nation to turn the world's factory, producing inexpensive exports that have driven its noteworthy mercantile growth.

But right away the supervision not usually wants to make products, it wants China to pattern them as well.

"Until right away we've focused on manufacturing," says Gao Xudong, a highbrow of administration at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

"But is to next step, you must be outlay more money on science, developing more knowledge, and contributing more to the world," he said.

At a solar row assembly lines on the suburbs of Beijing you can see how enhancement is being encouraged.

There is a investigate and growth laboratory where the panels are tested to make them more efficient. But eventually the investigate group wants to emanate its own product.

The authorities here wish to enlarge the number of patents purebred by Chinese companies and individuals.

The factory's manager, Tian Jiang, says that the firm is reception taxation breaks to search for its research. He believes that the usually way to sojourn aggressive is to keep developing.

But critics say that enhancement needs more than just supervision and taxation breaks.

It moreover requires an sky in that creativity is encouraged.

China is an peremptory state. And sufficient of the training in the nation is by rote-learning.

"One of the phrases that's often used in China is the spike that sticks up gets beaten down or the bird that flies initial gets shot down," says Patrick Chovanec, an American economist formed in Beijing.

"This is not an perspective that's going to obtain people to think differently. You have a the public that's geared towards conformity, stability and predictably."

Back at Mr Wu's workshop, he is hard at work.

He says his mental condition is to erect a drudge that can do all the housework.

It might appear similar to an unfit charge but the authorities here wish people to think big.

They believe the suggestion of Mr Wu - and others similar to him - can change China.