Gongban

= 'public board' in Chinese, used by firms participating in 'shared source' (Shanzhai) manufacturing in China

Description

SILVIA LINDTNER, ANNA GREENSPAN, AND DAVID LI :

"World Peace Industrial (WPI), a Taiwanese electronic sourcing company located in Shenzhen ... spends millions annually to develop reference circuit boards, called gongban 公板 (“public board”). A gongban can be used by a variety of different companies, who either incorporate it in their products directly or build atop it as they please via modifications. ATU develops 130 gongbans annually in areas ranging from smart phones, tablets, smart watches, smart homes, and industrial controls—and distributes the designs for free. WPI then makes money by trading in the boards’ components.

"We call this shanzhai in Shenzhen. It’s a mass production artwork,” explains Lawrence Lin head of the Application Technology Unit at WPI. Thirty some companies in Shenzhen are shipping their own smart watches with gongban from ATU and gongmo (‘public case’) sourced from the massive shanzhai ecosystem, which consists of tens of thousands of companies that manufacture and distribute goods." (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/chinas-mass-production-system/370898/)