[jijiglobe]

SUPER DISCLAIMER

THE IDEAS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS POST DO NOT REPRESENT THOSE OF MY TEAM, AND ARE NOT IN ANY WAY MEANT TO BE ANYTHING EXCEPT OBSERVATION ON THE PART OF SOMEONE WHO HAS PARTICIPATED SIGNIFICANTLY IN THE CHINA ROBOTICS CHALLENGE

I would further like to preface this by explaining that most of what I say is based off of word of mouth, and my Chinese is mediocre a best (most of the students I talked to spoke English but as a second language).

First a little bit of background to the situation of FRC in China. All of the currently competing Chinese FRC teams operate under an organization called CUYRA (the Chinese Urban Youth Robotics Alliance) which is sponsored heavily by an organization called DADALELE. Which, to my knowledge is a roboticsy toys company (think lego).

Teams in China do not do their own fund raising, but instead, each student pays an application fee to be on their team, and the money is redistributed among all the teams. Some CUYRA affiliates (sponsors like DADALELE) also act as the primary redistributors of FRC products in China (things ranging from motors, to wheels and the like). I can't exactly tell you which items are sold by these redistributors but I do know from talking to Chinese teams that ordering from AndyMark is not really an option in many cases giving that the shipping will not leave them enough time to finish their robots. Because there is no regional in China, teams are often forced to bag their robots before bag and tag day (week 5 or 6) in order for the robot to be shipped to their regional in time.

To my understanding, and I must reiterate that I don't know any of this to be fact, the big problem that teams in China have with CUYRA is that their associated redistributors tend to put huge markups on their products. I also assume that CURYA takes some cut of the money given to them to pay for operational costs (like hosting CRC) Obviously FRC isn't cheap anywhere in the world, but in China it's extremely difficult to become part of FRC, and I would speculate that most of the participating students come from at least somewhat affluent families.

The linked FaceBook post (to my understanding) is not an official representative of FIRST in China. The language used in the post implies something darker than what I just described, but I suspect that these issues are what the poster was referring to.

I would like to mention that, although I don't like the fact that FRC is limited to certain people, I think that it's a good thing that FRC in China is even possible, and I like to think that, over time, China will expand it's robotics infrastructure to remove these limitations. It's important to remember that before CUYRA was founded, there was no FRC representation in China. I feel that the current problems with CRC are simply an expression of market forces, and as more teams are created in China, the market will grow, and competition will drive down prices.

I also think that, although it may bother people that CUYRA might be in a position to organize a regional in China, it would allow FRC to grow even faster, as well as ease time constraints on teams so they can buy parts from overseas. CRC also gets tons of press coverage in China, and I imagine a regional would get even more coverage, which can only be a good thing.

I am also open to the possibility that there is simply something I don't know about.

*trigger warning*
I also think that what CUYRA does is not so different than what distributors like AndyMark and Vex do, marking up prices because there is so little competition (just ask the guys at REV)