Has China Prompted U.S. Tech Innovation and Funding?

Hopefully, recent developments are much like the U.S. space program thwarted Sputnik threats in the 1950s 

 

While China depends heavily on commodity imports to fuel its economy, the country has developed a strategic advantage in technology with serious implications for U.S. security. And as Google has learned, China has cybersecurity issues.

China has surpassed the U.S. as a provider of technology information and products. China has also cornered the market in minerals known as “rare earths,” which are needed for production of technology products, such as computer disk drives and missile guidance systems.

Aside from dominance in the rare-earth sector worth about $1 billion, such developments have serious implications for the U.S. in commercial and military development. The minerals include cerium, dysprosium, lanthanum, and neodymium. China has invested in its rare-earths mines. But it now has gained control of processing technology and has underwritten the largest system of rare-earth research and development in the world.

Helping to fuel its growth, many U.S. companies have moved sophisticated facilities for manufacturing and research and development to China. The companies include Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Motorola and Nokia. That was 10 years after two Chinese companies, with the help of U.S. partners, reportedly bought an Indiana company, Magnequench. Magnequench was responsible for 85 percent of minerals used in the production of “smart bombs” for the U.S. armed forces.

That meant the U.S. military no longer has such a domestic manufacturer using rare earth technology.

In addition, you might remember the China-Unocal controversy in which the oil company was eventually acquired by Chevron. It’s now theorized that the state-run Cnooc also coveted Unocal because its subsidiary, Molycorp, owns the only rare earth mine in the U.S., but it isn’t operational for economic and environmental reasons.

China’s Partners

China has made global friends by initiating other global information-technology inroads:

It  inked an agreement with Kenya to provide low cost wireless e-mail and telephone services. Kenya is in an 800-million person continent where such technology has been unfathomable in many areas.

A Chinese company also built a major telecommunications facility in Angola. Surprisingly, the Chinese company will forego revenue opportunities to service Angola’s new telecommunications system.

China is also making inroads in radar and remote sensing technology in the use of microwaves for high-resolution aerial pictures. Scientists can now take aerial photos that have greater clarity even under difficult inclement conditions, day or night, even to photograph underground objects. The new system is called Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR.

The applications for aircraft and satellites are enormous – from agriculture to defense.

China has developed another global ally in economics and politics – Spain. Ostensibly, hoping for economic favor, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – the socialist Prime Minister of Spain – lobbied to remove the U.N. arms embargo of China.

Senor Zapatero was also instrumental in the sale of 20 Airbus A330 jets to Air China. Spain, Germany, France and the UK help underwrite Airbus. The jets were worth $3.1 billion.

The socialist is reportedly a devotee of the late Chinese Premier Mao Tse-tung, who was a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.

Possibly prompted by such developments involving China, a bipartisan series of bills were introduced in the U.S. Senate to step up spending for domestic scientific education and research. Co-sponsors are also citing competition from India.

A package of legislation known by the acronym PACE, or Protect America’s Competitive Edge, was prompted by 20 recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. The organization called for job creation and innovation.

PACE doubled funding for research, provided scholarships to entice new math and science teachers, and extended the credit for research and development. It would alter the visa process to encourage foreign students to remain in the U.S. after they complete their educations.

The minimum price tag for the first year: $9.5 billion. It received support, for example, from the Institute of Electrical and Electrical Engineers – U.S.A. The public-policy group was formed in 1973 and has 235,000 members.

PACE captured headlines abroad. A headline in The Indian Express read: “U.S. tech bill: Boost our team but retain foreign talent.”

Competition from China and India and the resulting Senate bill and a wave of patriotism are reminiscent of a major event nearly 50 years ago during the Eisenhower presidency. Those were simpler times when manual typewriters were widely used, many Americans used a party-line telephone with their neighbors, and there was no Super Bowl.

Suddenly, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I into space in the fall of 1957. Just weeks later, Sputnik II was launched carrying a dog. That was powerful stuff just before America was to celebrate Thanksgiving. Americans were caught off-guard and they went on alert.

Those two colossal events were the catalysts that prompted the U.S. to massively promote science and technology.

It marked the launch of the space age and the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which deepened the perceived threat to Americans at the height of the Cold War. I was very young, but I remember the bold headlines and elementary-classroom safety drills, as Americans were fearful of the implication that Soviet nuclear-armed missiles would be capable of demolishing the U.S.

The difference between then and now is that relatively few Americans today seem to notice the threat to this nation from abroad in science and technology.

While the PACE Act never passed, and with the nagging federal deficit, deeper problems persist. High school dropout rates are enormous. Even with the current resurgence in MBA school enrollments, it’s still troubling that only about 25 percent of young Americans are interested in obtaining an undergraduate degree.

In 1956, President Eisenhower was sufficiently liked by a majority of voters who enabled him to easily ride to re-election on an “I like Ike” theme. He couldn’t acknowledge that the U.S. already had significant knowledge about the Soviet military and space buildup, as a result of the CIA’s reconnaissance U-2 spy plane built by Lockheed. But the Soviet threat was widely acknowledged in this country and it was easy to rally Americans.

That’s not the case now.

While a significant number of Americans are wringing their hands about job outsourcing, many parents aren’t stressing education to their children. They aren’t connecting the dots between quality jobs and education.

PACE would have been a good start but it won’t solve the underlying cultural issue – nonchalant American attitudes toward education. PACE will need a well-orchestrated, bipartisan promotional effort to motivate parents and children about the benefits of higher education. We can’t afford not to get it done.

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You’ll need to enter the city or zip code where you’ll be traveling at this Web site: http://www.technewsworld.com/hotspot-locator/. (Caution: Even if your system is encrypted, you risk the security of sensitive data by using such hotspots.)