Made In China

For many older Americans, the term “Made in Japan” once signaled shoddy and cheap merchandise; the thought of a quality Japanese car would have been ludicrous half a century ago (the huge Japanese car export business really did not begin until the 1960s). Today, quality surveys generally put Japanese electronics (e.g., Sony, Sharp, JVC, Toshiba, etc.) at the top of the heap, and Japanese cars have generated a solid reputation that makes them coveted, often at the expense of American-made vehicles. When Korea entered the market, folks chuckled at the shoddy LG or Samsung electronics, and titters followed Hyundai cars wherever they went. Not anymore!

We keep hearing that the 21^st century is the time for China resurgence, but for most of us, the Chinese manufacturing machine, which keeps the shelves of Wal*Mart filled with inexpensive goods, is simply the servicing arm of foreign invention; China is the ultimate subcontracting manufacturer to the world. Cheap labor. Cheap manufacturing. Cheap indigenous natural resources. Little originality. Think again! Here comes China like a roaring freight train, pockets filled with cash (and massive foreign currency reserves, particularly U.S. dollars), ready to invest in research, development and invention as the Western world struggles to find a path to recovery.

While the U.S. still outspends China on research and development (we spend 2.7% of our GDP, while China is still at a lower 1.5%), China has one of the highest numbers in the developing world, and remember that that 1.5% is applied against a total GDP that will soon replace that of the United States as the largest on earth. China is accelerating research and fighting to bring its “best and brightest” scientists and engineers – those who left China to be schooled in the West and were captured by American universities and corporations – back to the motherland.

The January 7^th New York Times provides this chilling example of exactly how far China is willing to go to buy back this talent pool: “Scientists in the United States were not overly surprised in 2008 when the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland awarded a $10 million research grant to a Princeton University molecular biologist, Shi Yigong… Dr. Shi’s cell studies had already opened a new line of research into cancer treatment. At Princeton, his laboratory occupied an entire floor and had a $2 million annual budget. … The surprise — shock, actually — came a few months later, when Dr. Shi, a naturalized American citizen and 18-year resident of the United States, announced that he was leaving for good to pursue science in China. He declined the grant, resigned from Princeton’s faculty and became the dean of life sciences at Ts inghua University in Beijing.”

As the number of technology patents filed in the U.S. is falling, so are such applications rising in China. “Chinese scientists are also under more pressure to compete with those abroad, and in the past decade they quadrupled the number of scientific papers they published a year. Their 2007 total was second only to that of the United States. About 5,000 Chinese scientists are engaged in the emerging field of nanotechnology alone… A 2008 study by the Georgia Institute of Technology concluded that within the next decade or two, China would pass the United States in its ability to transform its research and development into products and services that can be marketed to the world.” The Times.

As the endowments of private colleges and universities were slammed in the market fall of 2008 and as states slash and burn their higher education budgets to reflect the harsh economic realities of the recent meltdown (and despite pledges from the federal government, we are truly spending less money on education at virtually every level in this country), we are cutting research and making it vastly more difficult for students to get the advanced degrees we, as a nation, need to remain competitive. We had relied very heavily on importing motivated students with strong financial support from their countries of origin into the highest reaches of academia to fill a technology vacuum in this country – American-born students disproportionately avoided advanced degrees in science, engineering and math – but those countries are luring these top-flight professionals back just as we tighten our immigration and travel restrictions to make it vastly more difficult for such student to study and remain here.

Do we cheer as China hacks into Google, censors blogs without discrimination and generally discourages free access to the Web creating de facto competitive brakes on their own progress? Do we have to rely on their missteps to sustain our waning competitive edge? Can’t we rely on our own efforts, our own inherent spirit, our once strong educational standards and work ethic instead of hoping for the weakness of others?

It never ceases to amaze me how, when we absolutely know we need better educated and skilled people to implement a sustainable economy – we write about it all the time – we’d rather spend that money on prisons and wars we cannot win than on our own children. We have lots of excuses, mostly in the name of “security” and “safety,” but in the end that national identity we are trying so hard to preserve may eventually not be worth preserving as the rest of the world marginalizes our value-added and leaves us behind… a strong wall, protecting a once-great nation that nobody really wants anymore. This cannot be the legacy we leave the next generations. Education has to be the single most important value this nation can espouse!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.