Explanation of the Game Theory of shanzhai culture

Shanzhai, in short, refers to plagiarism, imitation, and replication of the aliases of classic methods and policies. It originated from the economic field and is now ubiquitous in China. The phenomenon of shanzhai in various fields, versions, and methods has emerged one after another. Speaking of the origins of shanzhai, the "shanzhai" is derived from Hong Kong. Hong Kong's economic recovery in the 1970s s entered a rapid development stage, and many family-style workshops for manufacturing light industry products emerged. Because the simple wooden houses are built along the hillsides, Hong Kong people call these workshops "shanzhai factory ". In the future, small-scale factories or small family workshops in Hong Kong will be called "shanzhai factory", and their products will also be ridiculed by Hong Kong people as "shanzhai goods ". In Cantonese, the word "shanzhai" also contains the meaning of "unformal" or "unorthodox. Because many of the products produced by the "shanzhai factory" are imitation and counterfeit products, the "shanzhai" is extended to the meaning of "Imitation", "flip", and "fake.

From the perspective of its origin and its early development, "shanzhai" is a derogatory term. However, with the popularization of the word "shanzhai" in various fields, the meaning of "shanzhai" has also been generalized. Today's "shanzhai" is a cultural phenomenon, and a culture should be analyzed and viewed in a dialectical manner. We fully agree with and affirm a culture, it is not a scientific attitude towards culture and a correct logic, but a self-styled and blind expression. completely denying and criticizing a culture is not a dialectical understanding and objective analysis of culture, however, the subjective consciousness of machism is at odds. Cultural phenomena are naturally a mixture of dregs and essence, and wisdom and petabytes coexist. The correct attitude should be to use wise eyes to extract the essence, while correcting the bad part of the bad thinking.

It's time to get into the topic when I talk so much about it. The impulse to write this article comes from a flash of the eye. I don't want to justify some low-level shanzhai behaviors, I just want to share with you the angle of consideration and the method of problem analysis. I hope this article will resonate with everyone, and I hope that my point of view will be able to get everyone's axe through discussion. The book is back to the beginning. Since shanzhai originated from the economic field, I used economics to analyze the reasons for the phenomenon. Some friends with common knowledge in economics should know that the basic theory of contemporary economics is called the game theory. Today I will use the game theory to interpret the shanzhai culture.

First, let us imagine a scenario where you are participating in a game of BET size. In the end, the game will be judged by a large number of chips. Now is the last game. You have ten chips, and your opponent has nine chips. Start to place a bet. What should you do if your opponent has put down all nine chips? It is not difficult to draw a conclusion from a rational analysis. There are only two final results in this game: big or small. If you open your opponent, you have 18 chips, but if you open it, you have nothing. If you want to win the game, you should also put nine chips on the small one. In this way, if you open the big game, you will have one chip left, and at this time your opponent has nothing, so you are the final winner; if your opponent has 18 chips but you have 19, you will still win with one chip. Similarly, if your opponent holds a large bet in the last game, you should also hold a large bet. The key to this game is that you must let the opponent first and then copy the opponent's strategy, this is your advantage strategy. Although this scene is extremely simple, he has a good explanation: in a game, if one party is at an advantage, the best strategy is to wait and wait for the opponent to take action and then copy the opponent's strategy. According to this principle, it seems that we should come to the conclusion that in a free-will market, large companies should be cautious and not take easy actions, waiting for small companies to innovate in small groups, then they directly copy their products or technologies and even swallow them. It must be admitted that such a thing has indeed happened and has been tried and tested. However, in reality, more situations are the opposite. It is the products and technologies of small-sized companies, but large companies are constantly innovating. Why is that? Is there a problem with game theory or a problem with my analysis? Don't worry. Let's make further analysis.

Game theory belongs to the category of traditional economics. That is to say, the premise of analyzing problems is that game participants are absolutely rational. Every participant analyzes the problem in the same way, and knows that the other party is using this method for analysis, and the other party also knows how I analyze the problem. This is a loop. I know that the other party knows that I know ...... This cycle also forms a basic analysis method of Game Theory-forward and backward reasoning. The question is, what kind of results will this cycle bring to the fore, will it bring both sides into the vortex of thinking? Let's take a look at the analysis. We have analyzed the advantages and strategies of large companies. Now, small companies know that large companies will wait for them to take actions first and then copy their actions. Therefore, for small companies, there are two options: Innovation and No. Neither of them looks so good. What should I do? Game theory tells us that if we do not have an advantage strategy, we will analyze it from the perspective of the other party. If the other party has an advantage strategy, we believe that the other party will adopt it, at the same time, the game becomes a succession of moves, and we should take actions against the opponent's strategy. Since we know that taking innovative actions is exactly what big companies want, we should know that small companies should adopt strategies without moving them. At this time, large companies can naturally analyze the thoughts of small companies, but they should still stick to their own advantageous strategies and continue to wait for small companies to make moves. After analysis, we seem to be in a deadlock. Both types of economic entities seem to be watching and no one wants to take action. Is that true?

In fact, this is the edge Strategy in game theory. Every small step forward in the face of a smooth slope is a major threat to your opponent, if he does not return to the safe zone and chooses to go farther than you, he may fall down the slope. In our analysis, if neither party takes any action, this is not an ideal result for both parties. At this time, who can stick to it for a longer period of time will be more advantageous, the other party will definitely take action first and will not wait for the collapse. At this time, we found that small and medium-sized companies have obvious advantages in the waiting process, because the Organization is small, the operation cost is low, and it is no big deal to disband members at any time. For large companies, the more they have, the less courage they have to give up. Therefore, they will definitely drop the smooth slope for large companies. From this analysis, we can know that in the deadlocked process, companies will take the lead in taking action and continue to apply forward-looking and backward reasoning. Since people in large companies know that they will take action first, in the beginning, we should not wait and see without causing unnecessary losses. This explains why large companies are constantly developing new products and technologies to occupy and expand the market. At this time, for small companies and small groups, they will naturally analyze the behaviors of large companies and adopt appropriate strategies, that is, they will not innovate, but the products and technologies of large companies, survive in a market gap that is missed or ignored by a large company, and constantly enrich and develop itself, so that you can one day become one of the largest companies and stand out from the former overlord.

From the analysis, we can see that the appearance of shanzhai culture has profound theoretical origins and can be said to be reasonable, it is even a dominant strategy in the face of market competition-whether for large companies or small groups. For this conclusion, we may say that innovation is the soul of a nation and the inexhaustible motive force behind the flourishing development of a country. How can we become helpless choices for specific economic participants? In fact, this situation is the famous prisoner's dilemma in game theory. Each participant in the game chooses their own advantage strategy. After balancing, it is not the optimal solution of the game. This article does not want to expand too much on how to get out of the prisoner's dilemma about shanzhai. It just wants to remind you of more subcontracting and understanding, less criticism and complaints. To treat a phenomenon and a culture, we should try to analyze its underlying causes, not just its superficial and cloud.

However, I sincerely hope that one day the system will be able to ensure that our ideas will change. We can work together to get out of the prisoner's predicament and embrace an innovative era with open arms.