How lame has the United States become? You’ve only got to look at its strategy towards China to work that out. Rather than stepping up and competing in innovation and technology, President Donald Trump and his advisers have opted to contain and cripple.
But
tariffs, bans and threats are no way to deal with a nation that is increasingly a world leader in inventiveness. Look at the
spending and research, the quest for answers and solutions, the hunger to improve: the Chinese are on the march and won’t be stopped.
This is not a statement resulting from brainwashing; it is based on reality. Realism isn’t something Trump and his team are strong on. They prefer to live in a world of spies and enemies, a Hollywood-inspired place of “them and us”, where there are good guys and bad guys, where others are
“either with us or against us”. They have
lumped China together with Russia, and adopted a strategy to weaken and neutralise both rivals.
There was a time when the US just shrugged off rivals and got on with the business of being better. Sure, where the Soviet Union was concerned, there was an arms race, military posturing, spying, sanctions and recalls of diplomats, but at the same time, the US also reached milestones in space exploration and made leaps forward in telecommunications and computing. Now the US is fat and comfortable, and its spark of creativity has dimmed. It will only worsen as Trump freezes out Chinese and other foreign scientists, researchers and
students, who have been so important to helping the US innovate.
If Trump and his team had taken the time to understand, they would have seen that China is just doing what their own country did in decades past; improve lives and boost economic growth by giving bright minds the best possible environment to create and innovate. President Xi Jinping articulated the approach in 2016, outlining a vision for China to become a leading innovator in science and technology by 2030.
Yes, there has been
copying and forcing of technology transfers as part of business deals, but the basics have been learned and the nation is now moving down the path of scientific trailblazing. It is the result of education focused on producing researchers, scientists and engineers, an economy that blends state capitalism and free enterprise to great effect, and a government that supports entrepreneurship.
Chinese leadership in
robotics, artificial intelligence and supercomputing is what troubles the Trump team the most. That isn’t all that is coming out of China’s laboratories, though. The landing of the
Chang’e-4 probe on the far side of the moon, a space flight first, is proof of how far Chinese space research has come.
Then there is an impressive and ever-growing list of other global firsts, including: a
quantum communications satellite (China is also developing an unhackable quantum network that will use photons to send data); an
autonomous passenger-carrying drone called the Ehang 184 that is in an advanced testing stage and can fly at speeds of
up to 130km/h; an
artificial moon planned for Chengdu next year that would be eight times as bright as the actual moon and could dramatically reduce power bills; a fully-automated trackless train system in Zhuzhou, Hunan province that could make bus and tram systems a thing of the past; a deep-sea mining vessel that can work at depths of up to 2,500 metres; and
3D-printed cars and houses.
China is not to blame for the US slipping in global innovation rankings while it is on the rise, or for Americans being less than stellar when it comes to maths and science competency. The Chinese are resourceful and their circumstances have made them resilient, while the nation’s four decades of rapid growth has led to bountiful optimism. They are everything the Americans, in the era of Trump, are not.
Peter Kammerer is a senior writer at the Post
