US tech leaders face new challenger as Chinese programmers catch up fast

For years, the United States was the undisputed champion of "geekiness". After all, it was the efforts of great minds like George Lucas and Bill Gates in pushing technology to the forefront of popular imagination and reality that changed the word "geek" from being derogatory to a sought-after compliment on one's technological know-how.

With messy hair, limited social skills and thick-rimmed glasses, American geeks paved the way for the modern world with mobile phones, PCs and the Internet; their imaginations changed the way the US looks at the world and spawned a generation obsessed with the idea of light sabers, warp speed and extra terrestrials.

Seeing the success that geeks created, other nations soon tried to challenge the dominance of the US.

From the ruins of the Iron Curtain came a mass of young Russian programmers. They offered a lot of promise thanks to their lightning-fast typing and new code. Yet, after a few poorly translated video games and a lack of funding, they soon turned their efforts to simply hacking what other greater geeks had done.

Japan came much closer to stealing the US' crown as the "king of the geeks" with its anime and electronics companies. It had the talent, the funding and, most importantly, the country created state-of-the-art products that had an impact worldwide.

However, when Japanese geeks started marrying pillows shaped like their favorite anime characters, the world finally realized they could never take the lead in "geekdom".

Now the US' influence has a new challenger: China.

Computers were rare in China just 20 years ago. Now, not only does the country have the fastest computer in the world, more than 400 million of its citizens are online. Chinese geeks have morphed from creating their own Internet language to communicating through millions of blogs and starting hundreds of new companies.

Their sheer numbers alone have demanded the attention of the world. From his lofty perch in Silicon Valley, even the current guardian of US "geekiness", Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, is learning Chinese as he ponders the immensity of the Chinese world of geeks.

Chinese geeks are quickly closing the gap on their counterparts in the US, and in some ways have already caught up. Last December, a court in Beijing's Shunyi district heard how two young geeks found love through an online game and blissfully slew monsters and went on epic adventures in cyberspace until they found out that their house was turning into a large rubbish bin. Both pointed fingers; one argument led to the next and soon the couple were in divorce court trying to settle how they were going to divide their virtual property. It looks like someone forgot to hit the save button.

Although most Chinese would laugh off the behavior of this couple and attribute it to some far off corner of society, it may be more mainstream than most would like to admit. It's a clear symbol that the Internet has substantially and permanently changed the way Chinese interact with the world. They've reached the point that US geeks did a few years back - they stopped worrying how much technology will change their lives and just let it.

So in the coming years, the challenge is set: can the masses of youths obsessed with micro blogs and online role-playing games overcome the Twitter heads and Facebook junkies of the US? Only time will tell, but at least China has numbers on its side.

In the end, maybe China should learn a lesson from the failed geek usurpers of the past. The Russians had skills but no style; the Japanese got carried away in their own oddness that they forgot the world was watching.

The author teaches English at Beijing Foreign Studies University. To comment, e-mail metrobeijing@chinadaily.com.cn. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of METRO.