Is China Out-Innovating America?

Whenever we denounce Chinese culture and educational methods for producing generations of mindless automatons, we point to America's superior technological innovation. We believe that our more free wheeling, creative, individualistic culture will out-innovate any other culture on earth. And that Chinese automatons will never be able to compete.

Now, the president of MIT, Rafael Reif offers us a sobering assessment of the innovation derby. As it happens, America seems to be falling behind China.

I cannot claim anything resembling competence in assessing these issues, so I will report Reif’s observation and analysis:

China is not an innovation also-ran that prospers mainly by copying other people’s ideas and producing them quickly at low cost. The country is advancing aggressively to assert technological supremacy in critical fields of science and technology.

In quantum computing, China’s Alibaba is battling Google to achieve the technical milestone of “quantum supremacy.” In 5G technology, the three largest global players are Nokia of Finland, Ericsson of Sweden — and Huawei of China, which is spending more than two and a half times as much on research and development as its two rivals. The Fuxing bullet train, designed and built in China, is the world’s fastest in regular operation.

China is also a world leader in fields like mobile payment and facial and spoken language recognition, where Chinese companies have made the most of their advanced algorithms and their advantages in scale and data access. It is also making bold national investments in key areas of research like biotechnology and space, and directly supporting start-ups and recruiting talent from around the world. And China has unrivaled capacity to rapidly ramp up large-scale production of advanced technology products and quickly bring innovation to market.

The United States still has an opportunity to catch up here. It’s strength,the president of MIT tells us, lies in its university system. We have more intellectual freedom than China, and therefore, the argument goes, we should be producing more innovators:

But China’s technological dominance is not inevitable. The United States has tremendous assets, including the immense global strength of our technology sector. This partly depends on a unique formula no other country has been able to copy: the large number of first-rate American universities pursuing advanced research with long-term federal support. This relationship is rooted in a national culture of opportunity and entrepreneurship, inspired by an atmosphere of intellectual freedom, supported by the rule of law and, crucially, pushed to new creative heights by uniting brilliant talent from every sector of our society and every corner of the world. For decades, these factors have helped make our nation the most powerful scientific and technological engine on Earth.

America has notably attracted talent from all over the world. But, as you and I know and as the president of MIT does not mention, that talent most often comes from Asia. Ph. D. programs in science and engineering are dominated by Asian students. They even outperform white American students.

Unfortunately, after they receive their degrees, these students are increasingly returning to their home countries.

Reif is surely correct to recommend a national strategy, directed by government and corporations:

While China is moving forward rapidly with a unified strategy called Made in China 2025 to become the world leader in manufacturing and technology, the United States has not made technological pre-eminence a matter of broad national focus.

But, ask  yourself this, how well will this university system work if it sets the goal of diversity ahead of the goal of technological superiority? Which matters more, diversity or excellence? As the student body becomes more diverse, will coursework need to be dumbed down?

And also, consider the fact that the radical leftists who work at Google have forced the company to withdraw from an artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon. Googlers do not want to sully their hands working on drone technology.

If American corporations are going to limit their research to areas where they can assert ideological purity we are going to continue to fall behind China. After all, artificial intelligence has many applications. If you shut down research because it applies to America’s national defense, you are going to miss out on other technological advances. Besides, wasn’t the internet, that mammoth engine of marketing and sales, developed by the very same Pentagon?

[Addendum: See also this article from CNNtech.]