Just a quick comments on the data.  The Western media
always like to look at the figures, and indeed they
seem very exciting (or threatening?).  The recent
Design Education Conference that I attended in Hong
Kong, speakers from Korea and Taiwan acknowledge
quantity does not mean quality, and they address the
concerns. 

With my ongoing research on Chinese graphic design
history that I started about  7 years ago, I once
worry about the impact of high volume of not so good
"design" for the design development in China.  Some
people I talked with believed that a small percentage
of good design will eventually come out from the high
volume of work, and this quantity of small percentage
of work will be still very impressive.  I am still not
sure about that.  

Then, I started to think the local design from China
for its local market is indeed reflecting the quality
of living and soceity in contemporary China.  I should
not judge the "quality" of the design produced in
China from the "good design" standard that commonly
agree in the West.  It is indeed more interesting to
see those "bad" design artifacts rather than look at
those out-of-context awards winning design that you
can find in the design magazines.  


Wendy Siuyi Wong    

 

--- "Prof. Bernhard E. Buerdek"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> You are right,
> but the official statement is, that China will hire
> until the end of this 
> decade 200.000 designers.
> 
> By the way:
> The leading German Designmagazine "designreport"
> just dedicaded his first 
> issue to the "Futuremarket Asia".
> 
> More then 30 pages with very good articels about:
> 
> - Design in China
>    (Furniture, Public Design, Lenovo, Brands etc).
> 
> - Design in Korea
>    The Gwangju Design Biennale, Education and
> Research in Asia etc.
>     (Taiwan is producing 20.000 designers per year,
> Korea 30.000 und Japan 
> might be similar)
> 
> Excellent reading, but unfortunately only in German.
> 
> B.E.B.____