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OPENING REMARKS
Alan Wm. Wolff
Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP
Ambassador Wolff welcomed the delegation from China and
American participants on behalf of the Science, Technology and
Economic Policy Board of the National Academies.
The United States and China have cooperated in science for at least
70 years, noted Ambassador Wolff, a prominent trade attorney who
chairs the STEP Board’s Committee on Comparative National
Innovation Policies. Prior to World War II, he noted, the United States
allocated precious air cargo space to ferrying scientific instruments,
materials, and current treatises over the Himalayas from India to
Chongqing so that Chinese scientists in exile could continue their work
during Japan’s occupation of China.
The modern history of Sino-U.S. science and technology cooperation
began on June 5, 1965, in the same National Academy of Sciences
building that was the site of this symposium. On that date, the Academy
decided to create a committee to foster academic communication and
exchanges with China.1 The Council stated: “We hopefully believe the
U.S. scientific community can contribute to a lessening of tensions
between peoples and nations by endeavoring to create the basis for
scientific discourse between Chinese and American scientists.”
That move was important, given the historical context. “You have to
remember what great difficulties there had been in the recent past,”
Ambassador Wolff recalled. American and Chinese troops had fought in
1
For historical background on Sino-U.S. cooperation in the 1960s and 1970s, see
Kathlin Smith, The Role of Scientists in Normalizing U.S.-China Relations:
1965-1979, Council on Library and Information Resources (
38 BUILDING THE 21ST CENTURY: U.S.-CHINA COOPERATION
the Korean Peninsula, and anti-People’s Republic of China attitudes
among some in Congress were strong. “So it was a difficult period for
this academy to begin to reach out to colleagues in the Chinese sciences
to build bridges,” he said.
The Cultural Revolution soon intervened, however, and it wasn’t until
the 1970s that small numbers of U.S. scientists began to visit again.
There was strong American interest in China’s studies of botany and
seismology, areas in which China was advanced, Ambassador Wolff
noted. The Chinese scientific community, meanwhile, was interested in
topics related to the nation’s industrial and agricultural priorities, such as
computer science, petrochemical engineering, mineral extraction,
telecommunications, mechanized agriculture, and industrial automation.
Exchanges resumed in earnest after the Nixon-Zhou Enlai 1972
Shanghai Communiqué. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping suggested there was
potential for expanding bilateral exchanges. Ambassador Wolff, who
served as U.S. deputy special representative for trade negotiations at the
time, noted that the first high-level science delegation to China that year
was led by a colleague of his, Frank Press, then President Jimmy Carter’s
science advisor and later president of the National Academies.2 That trip,
he said, “provided the foundation for the formal bilateral understandings
to foster science and technology cooperation that followed.” Soon
afterward, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and America’s
National Science Foundation resumed formal cooperation.
The Sino-U.S. partnership in science and technology played an
important role in helping China’s scientific community recover “from the
dislocations of the Cultural Revolution,” Ambassador Wolff said.
Meanwhile, “American universities were and are an enormous source of
education for Chinese students. Investment in China by American and
other foreign corporations was and is an important source of technology
for China.”
Now, the United States is starting to benefit. “We may be on the
threshold of some reverse flow of investment, from China to the United
States, and China’s graduate students enrich the research environment of
American universities,” Ambassador Wolff observed. “The fruits of
major research activity that will take place in China will be available to
other countries as well.” One recent sign of this trend, he noted, is that
Applied Materials Corp.’s chief technology officer is moving to China to
improve production of solar-panel equipment.
2
Frank Press served as presidential science advisor from 1977 through 1980 and
as president of the National Academies from 1981 to 1993.
39
OPENING REMARKS
Perhaps just as important as the flow of scientific knowledge is the
exchange of ideas on science and technology policy, Ambassador Wolff
said. He recalled a comment made at a 2006 conference in Beijing by
Richard C. Atkinson, the former director of the National Science
Foundation. Mr. Atkinson explained that in the 1970s “there was very
little economic theory or data about investments in R&D and economic
development [to make] the case to the Congress for federal support of
research.” The NSF, therefore, initiated a study exploring that link.
Decades later, Dr. Atkinson noted, a report by the President’s Council of
Economic Advisors concluded that half of the growth in the American
economy in the previous 40 years had been due to investments in
research and development.3 “The private sector is a major driver of
R&D, but federally funded research at universities plays a key role,” Dr.
Atkinson said in his 2006 speech.
Atkinson’s message to his Chinese counterparts was that he believed
government funding of university research “was a core need of scientific
progress and innovation in this country,” Ambassador Wolff explained.
In the United States, supporters of science and technology are in “a battle
right now to make sure that government funding of basic research and
development is sufficient,” he noted. “Many people around this room and
in the American scientific and technology community are currently
trying to get through Congress a very important level of funding for
university research and other research in this country. So the struggle
continues and hasn’t changed that much in 40 years.”
The scientific communities of China and the United States can benefit
from sharing views on best practices for national policies, he said.
“Today is another step in that process of mutual exchange and—I trust—
mutual benefit.”
Ambassador Wolff then explained America’s innovation system. A
2006 National Academies publication defined the National Innovation
System, a term popularized by President Richard Nixon, as “a network of
institutions in the public and private sectors, whose activities and
interactions initiate, develop, modify, and commercialize new
technologies.” This National Innovation System, the publication
explained, involves flows of knowledge among complex, inter-linked,
and overlapping “innovation eco-systems” at universities, government
research laboratories, large and small businesses, and other
organizations.4
3
Council of Economic Advisors, Economic Report to the President, 1995.
4
This definition is cited in National Research Council, India’s Changing
Innovation System: Achievements, Challenges, and Opportunities for
40 BUILDING THE 21ST CENTURY: U.S.-CHINA COOPERATION
China also has an immensely rich history of innovation. “For many
centuries, if not millennia, China led the West in innovation,”
Ambassador Wolff observed. “Not only were remarkable things
invented, but they also were put into circulation for practical use.” In the
West, schoolchildren learn that the world is indebted to China for
inventing porcelain in the 7th century AD; gunpowder, fireworks, and
rockets in the 4th century AD; paper and tea in the second century BC;
kites in the 5th century BC, and silk in 3600 BC. “But I don’t think many
outside China know that the invention of noodles dates back at least
4,000 years,” he said.
Ambassador Wolff then presented an extensive sampling of other,
less-heralded Chinese inventions:
Magnetic Compass 200 BC
Movable Type 1050 AD
Wrought Iron 5th Century BC
Blast Furnace 250 BC
Paper Money 700 AD
Paddle Wheel Boats 650 AD
Metal Bells 200 BC
Fork (preceded chopsticks) 2400 BC
Lacquer Ware 5000 BC
Stone Plowshares 3500 BC
Toxic Gas for War 400 BC
Use of Chromium (for weapon tips; first used in 210 BC
West around 1797)
Golf 1000 AD
Crossbow 200 BC
Use of Vitamin-Rich Foods (as disease treatment) 200 BC
Diagnosis of Diabetes 200 BC
Dietary Treatment of Diabetes 650 AD
Isolation of Hormones (used for medical 1110 AD
treatments)
Fishing Reel 4th Century BC
Cooperation, Charles W. Wessner, ed., Washington, DC: The National
Academies Press, 2007.
41
OPENING REMARKS
Manned Flight With Kites (1891 in Europe) 6th Century AD
Standardized Lumber Dimensions 1100 AD
Natural Gas Use for Heat and Light 4th Century BC
Negative Numbers (also in Greece, but not used 3rd Century AD
widely in Europe until 1550)
Pinhole Camera (a century before discovery by 450 BC
Aristotle)
Raised Relief Maps 3rd Century BC
Rotary Cooling Fan (first used in West in 16th 200 BC
Century)
Seismometer 132 AD
Steel 2nd Century BC
Iodine Treatment for Goiter (1860 in France) 7th Century AD
Chain Suspension Bridge 15th Century
Toilet Paper 589 AD
Tune Bells 8th Century BC
Underwater Salvage 1065 AD
Only in more modern times has the technology flow begun to reverse
from West to East, Ambassador Wolff noted. The flow began with
innovations like the windmill from the Middle East and telescope from
Europe, and continued with a “cascade of inventions borne of the
industrial and information technology revolutions,” he said.
For the past decade, Chinese leaders have stressed that innovation is
vital to the nation’s future. In 1999, Ambassador Wolff noted, General
Secretary Jiang Zemin said in a speech at a conference on innovation: “In
today's world, the core of each country's competitive strength is
intellectual innovation, technological innovation and high-tech
industrialization.5
Six years later, Party General Secretary Hu Jintao introduced a new
objective, when he said that the government should “give priority to
indigenous innovation” in science and technology work. Mr. Hu also said
the country should “increase core competitiveness and strive to make
science and technology innovation with Chinese characteristics a
5
Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central
Committee, keynote speech to the National Technological Innovation
Conference, August 23, 1999.
42 BUILDING THE 21ST CENTURY: U.S.-CHINA COOPERATION
6
reality.” He also said the government must “create a policy environment
beneficial to technological innovation.”
The United States also has grown increasingly concerned about
advancing innovation. Ambassador Wolff cited the landmark 2007 report
titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm,7 produced by a committee of
the National Academies. The report said the government should design
science and technology policy to:
“…ensure that the United States is the premier place in
the world to innovate; invest in downstream activities
such as manufacturing and marketing; and create high-
paying jobs based on innovation by such actions as
modernizing the patent system, realigning tax policies to
encourage innovation, and ensuring affordable
broadband access.”
There are many similarities between the innovation goals and policies
of the United States and China, Ambassador Wolff said. “Each wishes to
enhance the prospects for successfully initiating, developing, modifying,
and commercializing new technologies.” Both countries also “want a
substantial part of all stages of the innovation system to be located within
their own national boundaries.” This does not necessarily mean each
product must be developed locally, “but at least a healthy share of the
spectrum for products in general” so that a large number of high-quality
jobs are created to bring economic benefits.
The focus is different, however. Chinese leaders seem to be more
concerned with the “front end of this process, initiating and developing
new technologies,” he said. The United States is more concerned with
the “back end, the commercialization of new technologies.”
There also are some similarities and differences when it comes to
policy. “We should learn something from each other by comparing these
two sets of national policies,” he said. Both the United States and China
recognize the need to support science, technology, engineering, and math
education from the primary school level to advanced degrees, he said.
They also both “recognize the importance of supporting university
6
Speech by Hu Jintao, General-Secretary of the CPC Central Committee,
November 27, 2005.
7
National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering/Institute of
Medicine, Rising Above the Gathering Strom: Energizing and Employing
America for a Brighter Future, Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press, 2007.
43
OPENING REMARKS
research, which has not been true of every leading trading country,” he
said. The United States and China both support research parks, regard
protection of intellectual property as important, and “see a global interest
and a national interest in creating renewable energy technologies and
associated equipment industries and utilities,” he said.
Policy differences between China and the United States, however,
“require examination,” Ambassador Wolff said. One is U.S. immigration
policy. As a result of tougher American immigration and work-visa
policies, he said, the United States is having a harder time retaining
highly trained, foreign-born talent with advanced degrees in science and
technology.
Another issue is U.S. defense spending. Early investment by the
military was instrumental in the commercial success of integrated
circuits, the Internet, large aircraft, and GPS navigation systems,
Ambassador Wolff pointed out. Government demand, which does not
move as quickly as private commercial demand, can also be a drag on the
pace of technological evolution. Today, for the bulk of products that are
not exclusively used by the military, commercial demand is a powerful
catalyst for development. The government can help launch technology,
not guarantee widespread adoption. “The involvement of government is
something like booster rockets for the Space Shuttle, which must not
remain attached after initial thrust,” Ambassador Wolff said. If attached,
“they would make getting into orbit impossible.”
The United States is closely watching a number of developing
policies in China. For example, it is interested in whether China’s heavy
investments in infrastructure will present market opportunities for
foreign companies. “There will be global commercial benefits for China
from the creation of its high-speed rail industry and photo-voltaic cells,
among other industrial policy programs,” he said.
The United States also is watching China’s policies with respect to
intellectual property and whether it is adopting national rather than
international industrial standards. The evolution of China’s National
Indigenous Innovation Policy is another major issue. The question is
whether, “on balance, these policies are helpful or harmful to China,”
Ambassador Wolff said.
The two nations are interested in the policy tools each other are using
to promote innovation. One question, for example, is how China’s
financial support for renewable-energy projects compares with those of
others. Another topic of mutual interest is the role venture capital will
play in both countries compared to other sources of capital. The related
issues include “what is needed, at what stage, and is it forthcoming?”
Ambassador Wolff observed. Other topics include the optimum role of
44 BUILDING THE 21ST CENTURY: U.S.-CHINA COOPERATION
large corporations, including state-owned enterprises in China, as
compared with small and medium enterprises. Yet another is future role
of foreign direct investment in promoting innovation. “Each of these
topics and many others will emerge from our discussions and invite
further exploration,” he said.
Conferences such as this one help stimulate thinking on ways to
improve both nations’ science and technology policies, Ambassador
Wolff said. Among the fundamental questions: “Which policies promote
innovation and which may retard or distort the process?” he said. “Where
are there areas for future cooperation and collaboration? Where can we
find areas where working together would have the potential for creating a
major benefit for other countries as well – such as finding solutions to
the challenges of carbon sequestration, cheap energy-efficient bio-fuels
and batteries?”
In his own view, Ambassador Wolff said, government support is
“vitally important for progress in science, technology, and innovation.”
However, government should play a supporting role, “like that of a proud
mother or father watching a high school or college graduate.”
Government direction that is “warranted and truly useful after that
graduation is limited,” he said. “As much harm as good can come from
such interventions. That is our national experience and our bias. So
interventions must be very careful so as not to be counterproductive.”
The market drives perhaps as much as 85 percent of innovation,
Ambassador Wolff said. “If we were clever enough to figure out where
the market was headed, we would all be billionaires.”
Ambassador Wolff also challenged the notion of indigenous
innovation as a useful path. “In this globalized world, there is no
indigenous innovation,” he said. Before the rise of fast and easy
international communication, local innovation was more common.
Ambassador Wolff noted that in his books on science and innovation in
China, the eminent historian Joseph Needham8 credited China with
invention of the stirrup, which allowed warriors to stay in the saddle at a
full gallop. “But the Hittites, my wife tells me, invented the stirrup about
two millennia earlier,” Ambassador Wolff said. “What the Hittites and
the Chinese inventors lacked was access to Internet cafés to cross-
fertilize their innovations for their mutual benefit.”
8
Joseph Needham (1900-1995) edited a series of volumes on Science and
Innovation in China published by Cambridge University Press. The first of 27
volumes was published in 1954. The project continues under the Needham
Research Institute.
45
OPENING REMARKS
New technologies will make such cross-fertilization even easier.
Ambassador Wolff noted that Cisco has a great video-conferencing
system that makes individuals at a meeting feel like they are in the same
room as those across the table from them, even though they actually are
on different continents. The next step will be use of holograms, which
will enable people to feel the presence of others located far way and to
conduct “truly virtual meetings,” he said. That will save money not only
on tea and pastries but also airfare, he noted.
Science, technology, and economic policy usually catch up with
progress, Ambassador Wolff observed. “But policy often lags invention.
It does not very often precede it.” He noted that the integrated circuit and
Internet “were great enablers of this new world, but the applications that
add the next very large layers of value are the products of individual and
private corporate achievements.”
Each country and industry needs to find best practices to support
innovation and inform each other of these findings, Ambassador Wolff
said. “This is a secret recipe for progress. When we discover it and share
it, we enrich the world.” He said the United States and China have much
to learn from each other and added that he hopes the two nations will
follow up on this conference with another conference in China so that the
dialogue can continue.
