Illustrative Image
Washington’s Innovation and Competition Act unlikely to halt China’s engineering advancements.
Written by Paul Antonopoulos, independent geopolitical analyst.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill banning scientists from receiving government funding if they are also involved in any Chinese-funded project. Washington’s move is part of the U.S.’ overall strategy of technological confrontation with China.
In the late 2000’s, China adopted the 1000 Talents Program to actively recruit world-class scientists to work in the country. Under the program, such professionals are offered very attractive working conditions: wages equal or even higher than in developed Western countries, visa exemptions for family members, a high degree of scientific freedom, and reduced bureaucracy and reporting.
Initially, the program was mainly aimed at Chinese scientists who trained and worked abroad. According to the American consulting organization Marco Polo, for every 10 people of Chinese origin who attended university and received advanced degrees in the U.S., nine stayed there to work for more than five years. Thus, the 1000 Talents Program was originally intended to provide Chinese scientists with working conditions at least equal to those in the U.S. However, the program was later extended to top scientists of other nationalities.
But the program is facing pressure, with Harvard University Professor Charles Lieber awaiting trial in the U.S. as prosecutors claim that he hid from the government that he was working for China as part of the 1,000 Talents Program. The scientist denies his guilt.
According to Bloomberg, the bill that was introduced by Republican Randy Feenstra is aimed at combating some countries’ supposedly unfair policies in attracting talented professionals. The bill also received support because the U.S. had previously passed the Innovation and Competition Act, which included a government investment of $250 billion into basic research and advanced technology.
The Act is designed to increase the competitiveness of the U.S. in science and technology, keeping the country in the lead. Therefore, Feenstra’s bill proposes that in order to be in charge of distributing funding, the National Science Foundation must ban cooperation with other countries. In addition to China, the document also mentions Russia, Iran and North Korea. However, the U.S.’ main goal is to limit cooperation with China, the main economic and technological rival of the U.S.
On the one hand, it is true that limiting contact between scientists will hinder China’s development in the short term. However, from a strategic point of view, this will not bring any benefit to the U.S. Major American companies, especially those in the Silicon Valley, were built with foreign talent. In fact, the U.S. has traditionally been a technological leader as it has been able to attract the best minds from around the world.
Marco Polo researchers analysed the most successful articles on artificial intelligence cited and presented in 2019 in scientific journals and at leading conferences. Among the papers presented at the industry’s largest annual event – Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, more than half of the papers are authored by scientists from U.S. research institutions and companies like Google, Microsoft Research, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of these, 30% of the research was done by Chinese scientists.
Although China has a long way to go in becoming the world’s technological leader, as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who now heads the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Commission) said, China is closing the gap with the U.S. much faster than expected. Schmidt believes that the U.S. can maintain its advantage over China only if it unites with Japan and South Korea.
It begs the question though whether the U.S. can make Japan and South Korea overcome their centuries-long animosity to focus on China. For now, this seems like an unlikely prospect, even amidst the “Olympic Spirit.”
In fact, there is even the potentiality that China will seek to strengthen cooperation with South Korea and Japan in these fields. For Tokyo and Seoul, China is their most important trading partner despite geopolitical challenges. In 2019, a quarter of South Korea’s total exports went to China. For Japan, China is the second largest export market – accounting for 20% of Japan’s total exports.
Moody’s predicts that under the five-year plan, China will increase research and development spending by 7% per year. Japanese and South Korean partners, according to Moody’s projections, will hugely benefit from China’s technology development strategy.
Although the U.S. is attempting to contain China’s rapid technological advancements, decades of relying on foreign expertise has weakened the American talent pool, opening opportunities especially for Chinese and Indian researchers. With China able to offer equal conditions, or in many cases even superior to the West, the Asian country’s rise to technological dominance continues unabated despite cynical actions by the U.S. like the Innovation and Competition Act.
Good luck with that fantasy. China’s rise can not be stopped by drug addicted Americans.
It is ironic that the evil US and devious backstabbing British just 150 years ago were smuggling Indian opium via Hong Kong to ruin the Chinese, destroy their culture and steal their riches. Today, the opposite is true as the IMF warning today placed US and India as the most unequal rapidly impoverished failed societies. China in mere 60 years has lifted ONE BILLION hard working people out of poverty and created the most advanced economy on earth. In the meantime, hubris laded uncivilized violent gun toting warmongering Americans have put over 250 million of their 330 million hapless people in poverty with no access of health care, jobs or even basic roof over their head. US is now officially a failed state without any hope and the world views China as the future.
The inferiority complex ridden Indians and their corrupt politicians tried to implement the failed US style “turbo capitalism” and impoverished over ONE BILLION dirt poor Indians into abject poverty and below sustenance income of $2 a day.
China’s planned socialist economy in the same period grew a average of 10% and created the biggest wealth, technology and economic success in human history. The US is a sore loser and destined for the garbage heap of history as it has squandered its future by wars, bloodshed and spite. America is now dead beat and hopeless and blaming China is pathetic.
I am truly amazed, how Americans are not emigrating to Russia, China, maybe even Europe. They are either too poor for such move or totally brainwashed and just waiting to be slaughtered in civil war, which by the way people live there, is something that they shall probably not be able to avoid.
“US ATTEMPTING TO PREVENT CHINA’S TECHNOLOGICAL RISE”
Yup… and King Canute shouted at the sea demanding that the tide not come in…
The USA is bogged down in the middle east; sending billions a year to their colonial “Israel” project. Doubt the USA can challenge China anytime soon in a realistic manner.
US is an immature and hubris laden idiotic failed society controlled by very evil Jews who somehow convinced the brainless “Americans” aka trash of the world that they were “exceptional” and had to become the “policeman of the world”. The Jews got the moronic Americans into endless lost sapping wars against Muslims and other developing nations for control of natural resources, but a even a failed economist knows that “it is guns versus butter” and the wars bankrupted the shallow dollar printing US economy. The Bilderberg corporations have created the most unequal society on earth, where 1% mostly Jews and WASPS control 99% of the wealth. Such an evil system is bound to collapse.
Good for Russia greenlighting Huawei future 5G infrastructure. Those who control the information controlls everything.
US named as the most lonely and brutal place on the planet by psychologists. Loneliness is driving more older US adults to use opioids, prescription drugs to escape the harsh reality of US living conditions. The report comes on the heels of IMF warning for the economic collapse of the US if unequal income and unsustainable wars and pentagon budget is not controlled. US and India are listed as the most unequal and vulnerable economies.
US is the the only OECD country with a lifespan lower than most African states. Average American male can barely expect to live 70 years, mostly due to gun violence, drugs, lack of health care and no jobs. Almost 80% of white Americans are now drug addicted and the figure is much higher for blacks as the CIA pushed drugs in the ghettos since 70’s to keep the minorities passive and drug addicted. In the meantime China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, and most of Eurasia invested in economic development and education. The US has only its arrogance and Jews to blame.
From it’s initial genociding of the native inhabitants, America developed an insatiable murderous appetite and went plundering worldwide to satisfy its psychopathic lust. It murdered hundreds of millions, if not billions, of innocents in its futile quest for world dominance. Today, as it stares into the abyss, its “empire” crumbling into a third-world cesspit, it’s a stark warning to others that if the laws of God and man are ignored then amoral decadence and depraved degeneration quickly follow. Total collapse is imminent and the world will not shed a tear.
The Innovation and Competition Act will hopefully put an end to the decades old brain gain.