FRC in China discussion thread

[stufflikethat]

Originally Posted by Dale

I'd be interested in the community's opinion about expanding FRC to China in a big way.

On one hand it's a good way to build transnational relations with one of the biggest economies on the planet. Increasing communication and ties between our counties is a good thing, much like having Chinese students come to western universities is positive.

The contrary view is that China is significant competition to the west. FIRST was originally founded on the idea that we needed to step our game in order to compete. The URL is usfirst.org, after all. Having a huge China FRC presence would consume FIRST resources and donations not to mention slots at championships.

Well reasoned thoughts would be interesting to hear.

This is an extremely valid point to me. There are certainly valid arguments both ways. My biggest point which I'm sure many will consider controversial is that they will not speak english at champs. To me it is totally unfair for FIRST to start bringing teams from other countries to Champs especially when there is a game like Aerial Assist. Example: my team had a match with one of the Mexican teams. Awesome people for sure, but we couldn't work together when the game was all about assists. This blatantly caused us to lose.

In all I understand FIRST's desire to expand, but let's focus on expanding in North America before we go across the world. We don't even have a standard model figured out yet (districts vs regional).