Competing with China

Apparently, the United States is falling  behind China in technological innovation. A Wall Street Journal op-ed blames it on diversity hiring and affirmative action programs. The idea has a certain appeal, even if the evidence contradicts the claim.

America’s advanced science courses and its graduate engineering programs have never really jumped on the diversity bandwagon. The truth is, they are filled with Asian, mostly Chinese, candidates. The same is true of Silicon Valley tech shops. Their staff is largely Asian, some two thirds of it. Most of the workers were educated in China. 

So, putting aside the dubious claim that diversity has undermined American technological progress, we can still examine the Journal column, for information about how we are doing in our current competition with China.

Though the U.S. has long ruled those realms, China is catching up fast. Washington has begun to address this problem in recent years. But as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and artificial intelligence expert Yll Bajraktari warned in a Foreign Affairs piece last year, it’s “hard to say with any confidence” that the U.S. is “better positioned or organized for the long-term contest” with China than it was a few years ago. “It is entirely possible to imagine a future where systems designed, built, and based in China dominate world markets, extending Beijing’s sphere of influence and providing it with a military advantage over the United States.”

Do consider the fact that our media has been cheerleading for America. But they have also been skewing the evidence to show us doing better than we have been doing.

How well is China doing? An Australian think tank offers a sobering assessment:

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported this year that China leads the U.S. in research on 37 of 44 critical technologies, including advanced aircraft engines, electric batteries, machine learning and synthetic biology. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Dan Wang, an expert on China’s technology landscape, wrote that “China now rivals Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in its mastery of the electronics supply chain.” In 2007, the Chinese added less than 4% of the value-added costs of iPhones made in that country. Now it’s more than 25%.

If you read the press you will have learned that Apple is moving iPhone manufacturing to India. Apparently, the truth is more nuanced.

As for other technological advance, China is doing rather well indeed:

China leads the world in modern infrastructure such as high-voltage power lines, high-speed rail and 5G telecom networks. It controls most solar-panel production, houses the world’s largest electric-car battery company, CATL, and is racing to catch up with the West in high-end semiconductors. In Mr. Wang’s telling, Shenzhen has come to resemble the San Francisco Bay Area, “where university researchers, entrepreneurs, workers, and investors continually rub elbows.”

The truth remains, as the article suggests, Chinese scientists are less concerned about ideology than are American scientists. And yet, Americans scientists, most of whom are of Asian origin, are not worrying unduly about ideology these days. 

One understands that the Biden administration’s spending plans insist that the funds allocated under the new infrastructure bills must go to union shops and to companies where they hire a sufficient number of females and minorities.

Clearly, these measures will not solve the problem. And they will not save the Uyghurs.

One understands that the media keeps telling us how great we are. One understands that it has bought the therapy culture notion that all we need is inflated self-esteem. Apparently, in this and in a number of other areas, the media is lying to us. 

In the meantime, China has gotten tired of a regimen of sanctions and tariffs. It has now put export controls on germanium and gallium, minerals that are used to produce solar panels and semiconductors. Does the term quid pro quo resonate in our brains?

Obviously, it is not a good idea to be that dependent on China. Clearly the Trump administration tried to rectify the situation with sanctions and tariffs. It failed. David Goldman explains what really went wrong and how we might fix it:

Donald Trump's chief trade official, Robert Lighthizer, devised the 2018 tariffs on many Chinese imports, and now wants to double down on a failed policy. His new book No Trade is Free proposes "strategic de-coupling" from China through even higher tariffs and related measures. This brings to mind H. L. Mencken's crack that "for every complex problem, there is a solution, that is simple, direct, plausible—and wrong."

U.S. imports from China have risen despite Trump's tariffs on a range of Chinese products, as the $6 trillion in COVID stimulus spending created demand that American manufacturers couldn't fill—but China could. U.S. and Chinese data diverge, because (as the Federal Reserve showed in a 2021 study) China counts exports that reach the U.S. via a third country while the U.S. doesn't.

If a policy failed the first time around, why double down on it? It would be better for the U.S. to revise the tax code to favor capital-intensive manufacturing, restore Reagan-level funding for high-tech R&D, build infrastructure, ease up on environmental restrictions, provide apprenticeships for skilled workers, and subsidize industries critical to national security.

I trust you did not believe that a Supreme Court decision, as much as we applaud it, is going to solve the problem of China’s technological advantage. 

And, dare we notice, the American educational system, managed by perfect imbeciles, does not train children to take high tech jobs. Exception given for private and charter schools, the American system has been turning out graduates who are incapable of doing tomorrow’s tech jobs. Heck, in major American cities most schoolchildren are not even proficient in grade level math. Generally speaking, this has more to do with incompetent teachers and with a school culture that does not value learning.

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