China must boost research and education to ‘break US-imposed technology containment’, academic warns
- Chinese companies including Huawei and ZTE have been targeted by the United States as the trade war has spread to other areas
- Xiang Songzuo, an outspoken economist at the Renmin University of China, believes change is essential to create a new driver for economic growth
China must pay greater attention to basic research and education to “break the US-imposed technology containment” that has become part of the ongoing tensions between Beijing and Washington and engulfed technology companies including Huawei and ZTE, according an outspoken Chinese economist.
Xiang Songzuo, an economist at the Renmin University of China, has joined what has become a nationwide debate that has led to many to call for a thorough overhaul of how China supports and conducts basic research.
Xiang, a former chief economist of the state-owned Agricultural Bank of China, believes this is essential in attempts to tackle US efforts to contain China’s technological advancement and to create a new driver for economic growth.
“Can we resort to industrial policy, business model innovation, property or peer-to-peer lending to break [US-imposed] technology containment?” Xiang said this week. “The only solution is to pay greater attention to basic research and education.”
China has tried for more than a decade to answer the question posed by Qian Xuesen, the late aerospace engineer deported by the US in the 1950s, on why the nation’s schools have failed to nurture outstanding talent and why so few home-grown scientists have won a Nobel Prize.