Ping Fu - CEO, Geomagic HARDtalk

stand down on April 30th. Now it is time for HARDtalk. My guest today

is fast becoming one of America's most celebrated female

entrepreneurs. It is not just because the company she founded is

revolutionising many factoring in the digital age, but also because

her own life story represents a triumph over long odds. Ping Fu was

just eight years old when her life was turned upside-down by a

chairman now's Cultural Revolution. She was thrown out of China. Now

she is an adviser to President Obama on innovation. What lessons

lie behind this extraordinary Ping Fu, welcome to HARDtalk. You

grew up in China. Your life was turned upside-down by the Cultural

Revolution. I wonder if the sort of disruption experienced prepared you

to thrive in a business sector, the tech industry, which is constantly

disrupted. The roles are constantly changing. When I grow up, with the

life Jenia had, I had a lot of practice in self-loathing. I had

the ability to change. -- Self learning. I was resilient in

difficult times. Those were the skills I needed. I suppose it gives

you an awful lot of perspective when you have had such a difficult

upbringing. My life had been turned upside down, from a loving family

with a nice big house in Shanghai, to a ghetto in managing -- Nanjing.

I lost both sets of my parents. I became a surrogate mother to my

middle sister. We're talking about the early 1960s. You were grabbed

by Red Guards working for the Cultural Revolution. Because your

family was regarded as intellectual they were relatively privileged.

You had to be taken away and re- educated, reprogrammed. They said

we did not need formal education. We needed to be educated by workers,

farmers and soldiers. We had to work in factories, farm rice and

learn how to march in the military. You have described how in the early

days there was a lot of hate in you as much in the souls of the UN

guards looking after you. You were forced to eat animal dung. You were

brought close to death. We were fed better meals and raped by a dozen

teenage boys. I was left on a soccer field to die. It was very

hard. It was a long time ago. Does the power of the memories you have

still live with you? It does from time to time. I learned for a long

time to put it away. I wrote a book that just came out. I learnt how to

heal those wounds. Your birth parents were not the parents to

raise two. You had two sets of parents. Is there any way in which

either were able to reach you at this terrible time when you and

your sister were living the most dreadful and hard life? Not during

the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. My birth mother came

back when I was 13. She was put away when I was eight. All of the

other parents were sent to remote areas of China. What was it that

you found within yourself that allowed you, enabled you, to cope

with what she went through? mother anticipated the trouble

coming to my life. They taught me. Before I was told -- taken away

from the family, they told me to be bamboo, in the prevailing wind and

never breaking. It is a mental space in my mind. It is interesting

that idea of bending and never breaking? The two ever come close

to breaking? Several times. My journal was burned when I was 12

years old. I thought about dying. I wanted to jump into a fire. You had

written your innermost thoughts and kept a sense of yourself? I did not

have anyone to talk to. I could not talk to my parents. I kept a

journal on the back of the Communist propaganda for years. It

was the only place I could express my innermost thoughts and emotions.

It amazes me that you were so resilient. You're so resilient that

when the Cultural Revolution came to an end you were able to resume

studies. You make contact with your family and you ended up going to

university. That is right. It was not the end of your problems, was

at? Right before I graduated from college I was doing research. I

thought Alice picking a humanitarian topic. I heard that

the one-child policy in China caused farmers to kill baby girls

because they wanted boys. I did not realise how widespread the killing

was. When I went to do the research I saw babies being tossed into

rivers with their umbilical cords still fresh. I was a mother since

there was eight. Because he raised to assist the? It strikes me in a

way, knowing what happened to you, I am beginning to feel that there

was something about you that refuses to bow down to authority.

You refuse to accept the received wisdom. Otherwise you would not

have embarked on this challenging university dissertation about the

terrible impact of the one-child policy. That is quite insightful.

Looking back, I realised that even though I was brainwashed that I was

nobody, I never really believed it. I always wanted to be somebody. It

was not specific. I never knew how to stop it. I kept travelling and

wanting to be somebody. You talk about brainwashing. What do you

really mean by that? It is a phrase that is used often, but how were

you brainwashed? We did not study anything in a normal academic field.

We always studied Communist propaganda for the Red Book. I was

told that I was nobody. I was told that my parents were criminals.

You're in a black file, Would you? I wonder if you, having been

dismissed by the system, Would you angry with the party? -- were you

angry. Had he decided that communism was damaging to the

Country? I believed some of the concept of what they taught me.

Helping others and being good. At the same time, I did not believe

much of what they said. They said to grow Communist wheat rather than

capitalist rise. In the end, he was forced out of the country. Some

people may wonder how you had the great fortune to leave China and

make your way to the US. So many other people who were put on

blacklists ended up in the most hard and difficult lives or

imprisoned. How come you were allowed out? I did not speak any

English, I had no idea what American life was like. At the time

I was running from trouble. I thought anything was better than

death or being exile. I did not have a future in China. The future

was unknown to me when I came to the letter states. Back then, I did

not know it would be a good future. I was told to leave. You had no

family in the US, and you had no family there. There you were, on a

plane from Shanghai to California. It must have been daunting. It was

very scary. No family, no friends, I did not speak the language, I did

not know what life was ahead of me. At that time, the unknown was

better then trouble. When I pity you as a young woman in New Mexico,

with no language, money or contacts, then I think about how quickly you

got on. Within a few years you were a specialist within computing and

software. What was it within you that allowed you to get on so

quickly? One part of it is that America is a wonderful place for

immigrants. Many people helped me when I first landed in the US. The

other part is that I've always learn how to do things by myself.

When I grow up there were no teachers or parents around. I

learnt to cook quickly. I learned how to work in the factory. I had

an ability to learn. I never thought I could not do anything.

Life would throw many things at me. Coming to the United States was not

as hard as the life I had up until I was 18. You were arriving and

studying science at a time when the digital era was just beginning.

Computing was taking off. What drew you to that? I wanted to study

comparative literature. I could not do it because it did not have

English skills. I asked what I could study because it did not have

a science background. Somebody told me to look a computer science. I

asked where was. They told me it was a man-made language that is

used to make things. I thought to myself, I'm good with language and

know how to make things. The interesting thing is, even this

experience taught me that behind every closed door there is an open

space. Every time life slams the door at me, I end up picking up a

By the mid-to-late Nineties, you had alighted on an area of software

development and computer technology which frankly over the last ten

years has become the absolute cutting edge of where many people

think the next phase of the digital revolution is going. Perhaps we

should in simple terms explain to people that your interest in 3D

printing, in a sense shaping Things by computer and then turning those

shapes into actual products in a new way, it's potentially

revolutionary, isn't it? That's the next big thing. It's as big as

steam engine, Henry Ford, assembly- line or the internet. That's a big

claim, can you justified it for me? When I was at Super Computing

Centre I hired a student called Andrew, we started in San Jose, and

that became internet Explorer and Netscape. After that success I went

out to start my own company called Geomagic. That was 15 years ago. I

thought about combining the internet with manufacturing. In

order to create an internet of things. That was of course way

ahead of its time. I went out and I saw this machine, which is a 3D

Printer from 3D systems, and I was just totally amazed by this machine.

It can literally print a 3D product from a machine. Not just paper.

of this machine comes a tangible product? Yes. It prints layer by

layer. If you print on paper you just grinned one liar. The best way

we can make sense of this at least visually is to look at your shoes.

-- just print one layer. You have come in today to the studio with a

pair of shoes that were printed. That's right, this is the three

design -- 3D design and 3D printed shoes moulded to the shape of my

feet. In the future, the product design will be in the software code.

The fabrication can be locally next to you. The product will start with

the person. We have got Mass Customisation of personal factories.

If you think of a shoe company that wants to make its products by

producing millions of pairs of shoes for the mass market, they

can't use this technology, can they? Aren't you talking about

something very local and small scale. We will never be able to

with this be able to compete in cost with the traditional

production line? That's not true. The traditional shoe, the most cost

is not in the material and the making of the shoes, it is the

infantry, shooting across the seas, retail shops and shoes that nobody

wants. 90% of the cost is in that. Less than 10% of the cost is the

material in making the issue. In this case the material and the

making of the shoe is not more expensive because the machine is

making it. You can make it locally so you don't have to share across

the sea, which is not only cheaper but less that print. In a sense it

is the end of globalisation, it is the end of things being shipped to

the United States. -- footprint. It is bringing manufacturing back

home? Absolutely. In 2006 When Thomas Friedman wrote a book, "The"

World Is Flat ", we were sharing a stage, and I said globalisation is

passing, it is now about localisation. We live on one earth,

we watched one moon, we inhale the same air. Localisation is very

interesting. We will get to that but I want to stick with the shoes

are a little bit more. The material, what are they made of? In this case

it is a natural fibre, linen. are linen shoes? Yes. The idea of

3D printing, could you make things out of metal? Yes. Obviously

plastic would be amenable? Yes, plastic, metal, rather, linen,

ceramic. There's more than 100 materials. -- Letter. Could you

make a mix of materials? Could you make a car, let's think ambitious,

via a printer? Not today, but some of the car parts can be made via a

printer, and even better, because you can design geometry inside of

the metal to make it lighter, stronger on impact, and you can use

material to make new material, which is there interesting.

what ifs that apply to this technology seemed to run in

different directions, one is a dangerous direction. We have

already seen the notion of a Wiki weapon aired on the internet, and

there's one particular student and some associates of his in Texas who

are determined to use 3D printing to make a home-made gun. All you

need is the software and a 3D Printer and he believes you can

make all the necessary components for a working weapon. It does Grail

raised real questions about where this idea of home made assembly and

production ends up, doesn't it? but I always believe in our human

history it always goes against evil. The gun doesn't shoot itself, it is

the human that takes the gun to shoot. Technology itself is not

evil. Right? But technology can play to our worst instincts. One of

the things that seems to me a danger with the spread of three the

printing is that it enabled piracy, copyright infringement, to become

even easier. -- 3D printing. Maybe but it could generate more

innovation. If you make one of a kind, not one in a million, why

would you care about piracy? care about piracy and Copyright for

lots of reasons. The one story that intrigued me, a German man saw a

picture of a Dutch policemen carrying his handcuffs. He took a

picture of those handcuffs, blew it up, looked at it in great detail,

stand it, and he was able to make a key through a 3D Printer to fit the

handcuffs. That's the sort of danger that you could never

anticipate that might come with the technology? That's true. But

innovation is also going to create so many more solutions that counter

those bad intentions. It's interesting, in human history, when

good against evil happens, there's always more good and evil otherwise

we would have been erased from Earth already. The reason we

evolved is that we are always able to make solution. That's a very

optimistic view. I want to reflect again on your background in China,

you've been appointed to the US National Advisory Council on

entrepreneurship and innovation, but there are people in the US

saying that they are losing their innovative edge, especially

compared with China. You have got a unique insight into both cultures,

is there some merit to that argument? The US has been a very

inventive society. We invented very many technologies that have been

adopted by other countries. Innovation is about invention made

real. Our US or developed Western countries have this issue of not

adopting our own invention. We need to look at that more. When Peter, I

don't know if you have met him, the sound of Payi Pelle, he said

innovation in America is somewhere between dire Straits and debt. You

don't share that view? I'm not that pessimistic. -- dead. The United

States is still quite an innovative country. I don't share that.

Especially in your field, information technology, and other

economists, Robert Gordon, he said the benefits of information

technology have largely run their course, which suggests he is not as

thrilled with 3D printing as you are. Let's wait for ten years and

see what happens. I think he would have a lot of 3D printed things at

his home. Do you ever go back to China and perhaps think about

launching your business, that's done so well in the US, enshrine as

well? I do have a subsidiary in China. I don't think China needs to

be a dumping ground. It has 1.3 billion people, 1.3 billion

consumers. Competition between the US and China and the rest of the