WITH COLD WAR tensions deepening and the Soviet Union stealing a march in critical military technologies, then United States president Harry Truman made the pursuit of knowledge a national security priority.
In a pivotal 1948 speech, he committed the US to doubling its spending on research and development from half of one per cent to one per cent of national income, saying: 'If we are to maintain the leadership in science that is essential to national strength, we must vigorously press ahead in research.'
The US, he argued, had a strong tradition in applied technology but needed to push the frontiers of science rather than depend on European professors for its big ideas.
As it turned out, most of the big discoveries in physics underlaying the atomic revolution and electronics industry it later spurred had been made by the mid-1930s and US hegemony relied less on incremental refinements to quantum theory than massive defence programmes.
Ironically, Truman's programme of military-inspired research is today cited in decidedly non-combat-inclined Hong Kong as a model for state-fostered hi-tech development. Last week, Lingnan University president Edward Chen Kwan-yiu argued for increased government-funded research and development and broader involvement in fashioning new industries using the Truman example.
Perhaps no issue so clearly illustrates the divide of economic ideas in Hong Kong. Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa has pinned his colours to hi-tech development by throwing public funds at science parks and start-up firms.
