National Academies Press: OpenBook
« Previous: 1 India and China in the Global Economy
Suggested Citation:"2 What is the United States' Interest?." National Research Council. 2010. The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India: Summary of a Conference. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12873.
×

2
What is the United States’ Interest?

No one disputes that the rise of China and India as technological powers with huge populations and internal markets, more highly educated scientists and engineers than any other country in the world, and sophisticated military forces will profoundly affect American interests. But exactly how? What U.S. interests are at stake? How do national interests diverge from those of U.S.-headquartered global companies? Questions such as these must be addressed before we can consider how the United States should respond to the growing challenge from these countries.

Norman Neuriter, former State Department science adviser, co-chair of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, and scholar with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, moderated a conference session devoted to these questions. Other contributors to the discussion included Tony Hey, chief of Microsoft Research, Kent Hughes of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Da Hsuan Feng of the University of Texas at Dallas and the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.

Tony Hey described Microsoft’s investment in research in Central and South Asia, first in China in November 1998 then India in January 2005. The Microsoft unit in China has seen 50 percent growth, hiring 120+ staff members in FY 2006 and creating links with universities, including nine joint laboratories. Total employment of locals with technical qualifications is more than 300. Although smaller,—employing 50 full-time staff and 100 interns—the company’s Indian operation builds on that country’s tradition of education and set of research challenges. Both operations have become integral parts of the company’s worldwide research and development activities.

Kent Hughes compared the challenge of China and India to the Russian launch of the Sputnik satellite, 50 years to the week earlier. Sputnik was seen as a challenge to U.S. technological dominance, particularly in the military sphere. It helped spur investment in science and engineering education and private sector innovation. Will the challenge of China and India’s growing economic strength and technological capacity prompt a similar U.S. response? “Innovation has gone global,” said Hughes, forcing the United States to change its role to one of adapter as well as lead innovator.

Hughes observed that the United States has long enjoyed a pool of domestic technical talent and an inflow of foreign talent. The emergence of a global skilled labor pool able to cooperate and compete at a distance as well as migrate from one location to another have benefited the United States and other countries enormously. They also present a conundrum, however, as low salaries in India and China bring competition. In this context, India and China could define wage rates for professionals everywhere, creating disincentives for native-born students to pursue careers in science and engineering.

The global talent pool represents a particular challenge for U.S. national security agencies, which are restricted in their ability to engage world talent. In recent years, growing difficulties in getting U.S. visas for scientists from abroad to attend conferences have driven some U.S. growth abroad. The United States should consider the emergence of a global talent pool as a positive competitive challenge and catalyst. Fifty years after Sputnik, are we meeting our next Sputnik challenge? In Hughes’ view, emerging capacity in China and India underscore a need to reevaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our innovation system anew.

Suggested Citation:"2 What is the United States' Interest?." National Research Council. 2010. The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India: Summary of a Conference. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12873.
×

Da Hsuan Feng, University of Texas at Dallas and Senior Executive Vice President for Research at the National Cheng Kung University at Tainan, Taiwan, outlined a future scenario based not on triadic competition among China, India, and the United States but rather envisioning a political and economic convergence of China and India. In his talk, “Googling My Late Father,” he described his long connection to India, having been born in New Delhi in the 1940s to a journalist based there. Many years later, he came across a published interview between India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his father, in which Nehru voiced his hope that India and China would move forward together. The rift between the two countries in the 1950s was a great disappointment to Nehru. Now, the increase in international commercial activity and the growing middle class in both countries will drive demand for better health care, environmental quality, and quality of life.

A European Union was scarcely imaginable amid the ruins after World War II, said Feng. In the same way we may be surprised by a convergence of interests in Asia. He posited a future train ride from Seoul to Mumbai that would not require passport checks, just as Europeans now travel from Helsinki to Rome, the result of increasingly shared interests.

Suggested Citation:"2 What is the United States' Interest?." National Research Council. 2010. The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India: Summary of a Conference. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12873.
×
Page 11
Suggested Citation:"2 What is the United States' Interest?." National Research Council. 2010. The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India: Summary of a Conference. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12873.
×
Page 12
Next: 3 Human Capital Development »
The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India: Summary of a Conference Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $29.00 Buy Ebook | $23.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

The return of the once-dormant economies of China and India to dynamism and growth is one of the most remarkable stories in recent history. The two countries are home to nearly 40 percent of the world's population, but until recently neither had played an influential role in the contemporary global economy.

In the past two decades, China and India have liberalized internal economic policy, treatment of foreign investment, and trade, and have experienced economic growth at sustained high rates. From the point of view of the United States, however, the most important development in the Chinese and Indian economies in the long term may be the strides they are making in developing their own domestic innovation capacities. After a long period of underinvestment, both countries have committed to growing their science and education systems to bolster research and further economic expansion.

Some observers of the recent growth have said that both countries are surging in their efforts to spur innovation; others have emphasized the potential of one country over the other; and still others have suggested that both China and India have a long way to go before achieving innovation-driven growth. With such a range of views, The National Academies set out to describe developments in both countries, in relation to each other and the rest of the world, by organizing a conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, summarized in this volume, discussed recent changes at both the macroeconomic level and also in selected industries, and explored the causes and implications of those changes.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!