Economical
Sciencies/14. Economical Theory
T. Shysho
National University of Food
Technology
The USA and China’s Ways of Development.
In an article in the latest New York Times Sunday Review, Eamonn
Fingleton challenge a fundamental assumption underlying Washington’s embrace of
globalism: the idea that no matter how fast American technologies leak abroad,
an abundance of new production methods and new industries will keep bubbling up
to take their place. This assumption is wrong because America has no particular
“cultural” advantage in innovation. Its record hitherto of enormous creativity
has been driven by money, not a special culture of freedom.
Thus in an era when information travels at light speed, the essence of
America’s problem is that its corporations almost instantaneously transfer
their most advanced new production technologies to foreign subsidiaries.
Meanwhile leading-edge corporations in nations like Japan, South Korea, and
Germany do NOT reciprocate (these nations explicitly discourage leakages of
their most advanced production technologies). Where productivity is concerned,
the American economy is racing up a down-escalator — and that escalator is
moving at light speed!
In the face of an ever-burgeoning Chinese economic challenge, Americans
of all political stripes have drawn comfort from one thing: America’s seemingly
impregnable lead in high technology. Thanks to a unique culture of freedom,
America is said to be equipped with an enduring, world-beating edge in
inventiveness – something an authoritarian China can never hope to match.
Here, for instance, is how Mitt Romney put it at a presidential campaign
appearance last summer: “While the Chinese may be able to make a television set
at less cost than we can, they cannot invent the television set like we can …
America leads the world in technology and innovation and creativity … and that
will allow us to have the economic might which is necessary to finance the
military might which provides [our] world power.”
It is past time such thinking was challenged. As a growing number of
prominent observers are now arguing, it is a dangerous mistake to assume that
America’s future as an “innovation superpower” is assured. Although such
observers – they include IBM’s former director of research Ralph Gomory, the
economist Pat Choate, and the British political scientist James Wilsdon – do
not concur on all the details, in aggregate their concerns paint a disturbing
picture.
Of course, no one disputes that twentieth century America made a giant
contribution to the history of technology. On a rough guess, between one-fifth
and one-third of all technological innovations that have shaped our modern
world originated in America. The problem is that the past may not be a guide to
the future.
Certainly any considered view of the relationship between political
freedom, technology, and economic leadership suggests conclusions sharply at
odds with the received wisdom: 1. The role of political freedom as a source of
technological creativity is tenuous at best. 2. A capacity for superior
inventiveness is not a guarantee of national economic leadership. 3. Despite
their reputed difficulty in “thinking outside the box,” East Asian scientists
and engineers are moving rapidly to the fore in innovation.
The central question here is where technological creativity comes from.
For those who insist that political freedom is a fundamental precondition, the
historical evidence is disappointing. Few of the most creative societies of the
ancient world, after all, were free. Certainly not Mesopotamia or Egypt. Even
ancient Greece, with an economy based on slave labor and an early Athenian
legal system that gave us the word “draconian,” was hardly a model of human
rights. Of special relevance to the current debate is China, which for centuries
ranked as probably the world’s most inventive society, yet its citizens were
never free.
Nothing illustrates America’s erstwhile scientific underperformance more
clearly than the race to discover the chemical elements. Of the roughly 120
known elements, about three-quarters were identified by Europeans.
The rise of U.S. research and development is merely a special case of a
more general phenomenon. Down through history, rich nations have gotten to the
future first. They can afford to equip their tinkerers and visionaries with the
most advanced materials, instruments, and knowledge, and the result has often
been a superior capacity for innovation.
This raises an epochal question: as China becomes richer, is it destined
to pass the United States as the world’s most inventive nation? The question is
all the more pertinent for the fact that many experts contend that America’s
inventive spirit is already flagging. In the view of the Silicon Valley venture
capitalist Peter Thiel, for instance, American inventiveness has been rendered
increasingly “sclerotic” lately, a development attributable in part to a
failure of vision in corporate America and in part to government gridlock.
“American innovation in recent decades has been remarkably narrowly based,” he
says. “It has been confined largely to information technology and financial
services. By contrast in transportation, for instance, we are hardly more
advanced today than we were 40 years ago. The story is similar in treating
cancer.”
Of course, the United States still boasts far more researchers than
China, but the gap is narrowing rapidly. The Columbus-based Battelle Institute
predicts that China could pass the United States in R & D spending by 2023.
For the United States, a major additional concern is that American
corporations have increasingly been moving their R & D operations offshore.
According to the National Science Foundation, fully 27 percent of all employees
in U.S. multinational corporation’s research departments were based abroad as
of 2009, up from 16 percent in 2004.
1.
Evans L. China v America: how do the
two countries compare? // [Electronic
resource]. – Access mode: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/19/china-social-media
2.
China vs United States: A Visual
Comparison [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/china-vs-united-states-a-visual-comparison/