Competitiveness
The Washington Post covered China’s rising scientific prowess today, revealing both impressive gains and some weak spots.
China is steadily accumulating bragging points:
- China has the world’s second-fastest supercomputer.
- China has gone from 14th place in 1995 in publications in scientific and technical journals to 2nd now, behind the US.
- A Chinese institute made the largest-ever purchase of high-tech genome-sequencing machines, and with them “could very well surpass the entire gene-sequencing output of the United States.”
- More Chinese researchers are being lured back to their homeland after training in the US (raising issues around the risks and rewards of hosting so many Chinese students).
Chinese weaknesses are apparent too:
- Government bureaucrats “mandate discoveries,” completely missing the nature of innovation (and likely promoting shoddy work).
- China engages in huge amounts of junk science–the articles cites dubious stem cell therapies–and junk patents.
- Plagiarism and doctored results are commonplace — which should give Western researchers, especially those in health and pharma, pause.
Perhaps most interesting are indications that Chinese researchers are less constrained by ethical concerns than Western scientists. One Chinese geneticist mentioned in the article is studying the genomes of his most adept peers in school, comparing them to “normal kids.” If something is too controversial for the West — cloning, human enhancement, or genetic interventions, for instance — it could well end up happening in China.
International system
Pei suggested that there will not be an “Asian century” in the same way that the 20th century was the American century: Asia will lack the capabilities and skills to remake the world in the way the United States did. Moreover, the region is too divided, and intraregional rivalries will cancel the individual powers out, for no net effect.
Martinez agreed that, in the short term, the narrative of American decline due to the financial crisis was overblown. He emphasized that the US and China are now in a position of mutual dependence, a relationship could actually help the US perpetuate the American century. He does not see any innovative ideological worldview motivating China: no great ideological challenge is coming out of Asia.
Japan does not want to be second to China in Asia, Pei noted.
Asian economies
Continued growth in the 7-9% range should not be assumed, Pei asserted, given the challenges countries face in as little as 10-15 years. He suggested that Asia lacks an ecosystem for innovation, and that such a system is obstructed by the entire Asian “way of life.”
China’s domestic evolution
China will become a democracy at some point, Pei said. It will come from the top down, when members of the political elite choose to use popular discontent to further their personal goals. This could actually undercut its economic performance, he added.
He said that the Communist Party has successfully whitewashed history, and Chinese know little of the repressions from the 1950s to Tiananmen. As a result, the Party’s legitimacy could be threatened when it all comes out, as happened to the Party in Russia during glasnost.
Martinez forecast that, if economic growth falters, the Party would need an alternative rationale for its continued dominance, and might turn to nationalism, for instance on the Taiwan issue. He noted that even young, educated, cosmopolitan Chinese are in full agreement with the government on nationalistic issues such as Tibet and Taiwan.
Pei said that the financial crisis has not disillusioned Chinese about Western capitalism, but it has provided an “aha” moment, as they have watched the US make serious mistakes.
The discussion is at the NAF site on video.
Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link.
The Boston Consulting Group has released a report on 100 emerging-market companies with global competetive potential, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Firms from China (44 companies), India (21), Brazil, and Russia constitute most of the group, with Mexico also making a good showing.
Companies like these will be the shock troops for the redistribution of global economic power. In the process, they will transform their home countries’ global roles and interests.
An emerging market expert points out that the developed world may balk at the process:
“The whole pace of globalisation may have to slow or it could set off a wave of protectionism. So far the West has mostly been losing jobs at the low end, and the process has been mutually beneficial. There is now a big risk of losing jobs at the high end too now that China and India are moving move swiftly up the ladder, as we have already seen in software. This means that incomes in the West may have to adjust downwards, and the workforce is not going to tolerate this.”
[Via Social Technologies; image: Social Technologies]
The June 2006 Scientific American notes the 50th anniversary of the resignation of Trofim Lysenko from his position overseeing the Soviet Union’s agricultural science.
Lysenko famously set back Soviet science by rejecting Mendelian genetics — the science of genetics — in favor of the idea that organisms could acquire characteristics during their lifetimes, as the latter was seen as more compatible with Soviet Marxism and its pursuit of the new human.
Real damage was done; Soviet farms apparently did not even plant ideologically incorrect hybrid corn until Lysenko was out of the way.
Holden Thorpe points out in “Evolution’s Bottom Line” in the NYT that creationists could do similar harm in the United States.
Creationism, he notes, has no commercial applications, while evolution does. An understanding of evolutionary relationships enables us to use animal genomes to study human health problems, and the knowledge that evolution continues equips us to fight deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Humans and bacteria share many genes, making antibacterial treatments trickier; Thorp suggests that most people would rather use antibiotics developed by someone who understood how this sharing came to be, rather than by a Biblical literalist ignorant of this relationship.
How will American students, and American competitiveness, fare when American kids are learning an ideologically distorted version of science, while Indians and Chinese students are learning the real thing, Thorp asks?
The Soviet Union suffered when ideologues suppressed science that disturbed their religious world view; the United States will suffer if the same thing occurs here.
The Economist Intelligence Unit released its 2006 e-readiness rankings yesterday. The index is a measure of a country’s readiness for e-business, judged by Internet access, broadband penetration, innovation, information security, and other factors. More telling than the ranking is the country’s distance from a score of 10.
The ratings are a good indicator of general abilities in IT, and thus an important component of present and future competitiveness.
The top countries
Rank. Country — score out of 10 (2005 rank)
1. Denmark — 9.00 (1)
2. US — 8.88 (2)
3. Switzerland — 8.81 (4)
4. Sweden — 8.74 (3)
5. UK — 8.64 (5)
6. Netherlands — 8.60 (8)
7. Finland — 8.55 (6)
8. Australia — 8.50 (10)
9. Canada — 8.37 (12)
10. Hong Kong — 8.36 (6)
11. Norway — 8.35 (9)
12. Germany — 8.34 (12)
13. Singapore — 8.24 (11)
14. New Zealand — 8.19 (16)
14. Austria — 8.19 (14)
16. Ireland — 8.09 (15)
17. Belgium — 7.99 (17)
18. South Korea — 7.90 (18)
19. France — 7.86 (19)
Other countries of interest
Rank. Country — score out of 10 (2005 rank)
21. Japan — 7.77 (21)
22. Israel — 7.59 (20)
23. Taiwan — 7.51 (22)
25. Italy — 7.14 (24)
30. United Arab Emirates — 6.32 (X)
31. Chile — 6.19 (31)
35. South Africa — 5.74 (32)
37. Malaysia — 5.60 (35)
39. Mexico — 5.30 (36)
41. Brazil — 5.29 (38)
42. Argentina — 5.27 (39)
45. Turkey — 4.77 (43)
46. Saudi Arabia — 4.67 (46)
48. Venezuela — 4.47 (45)
49. Romania — 4.44 (47)
51. Colombia — 4.41 (48)
52. Russia — 4.30 (52)
53. India — 4.25 (49)
55. Egypt — 4.14 (53)
56. Philippines — 4.04 (51)
57. China — 4.02 (54)
60. Nigeria — 3.69 (58)
61. Ukraine — 3.62 (57)
62. Indonesia — 3.39 (60)
64. Kazakhstan — 3.22 (62)
65. Iran — 3.15 (59)
67. Pakistan — 3.03 (64)
Regional standouts in the developing world are Chile, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. The low scores of some countries, notably India, China, and Russia, disguise significant specialized capabilities in infotech.
The World Economic Forum has released its new report on Latin American competitiveness.
Twenty-one countries are evaluated on the basis of macroeconomy, institutions, infrastructure, health, education, market efficiency, tech readiness, “business sophistication, and innovation. The rankings say a lot about the prospects of these countries — and 20 of the 21 rank poorly.
Country (global rank out of 117 countries)
1. Chile (27)
2. Argentina (54)
3. Costa Rica (56)
4. Brazil (57)
5. Colombia (58)
6. Mexico (59)
7. El Salvador (60)
8. Jamaica (63)
9. Panama (65)
10. Trinidad and Tobago (66)
11. Uruguay (70)
12. Peru (77)
13. Venezuela (84)
14. Ecuador (87)
15. Dominican Rep. (91)
16. Guatemala (95)
17. Nicaragua (96)
18. Honduras (97)
19. Bolivia (101)
20. Paraguay (102)
21. Guyana (108)
Chile is highly competitive, surpassing 13 of the EU’s 25 members.
The rest of the region lags. Despite some improvements
Latin America still suffers from one of the most inequitable income distributions worldwide, social tensions and an increasing sense of reform fatigue. Moreover, the region seems to be losing ground as foreign direct investment and trade shares shift to other developing regions, notably Asia and Eastern Europe.
Still, Latin America had its highest growth since 1980 in 2005, and many structural factors are in better shape than in previous decades.