Tech competition should focus on benefiting people

In 1979, when the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement was signed, the preeminence of the United States in science and technology was evident. As such, while China viewed it as a means to bolster its scientific and technological capabilities, for the US it was a tool in pursuit of the diplomatic objective of bringing China into its fold.

However, with the US reducing its support for science and technology due to budget constraints imposed by the costly wars it has waged in Afghanistan and Iraq, and China making rapid progress thanks to its increased spending, the gap has narrowed and it has become clear that the leading role the US has enjoyed for so long may not be a nailed-on certainty in the future.

While China has funneled funds into education, infrastructure and R&D capabilities to significantly upgrade its domestic science, technology and innovation capabilities, the US assumed that it had enough of a head start to maintain its edge without making similar large-scale inputs and that it could maintain its advantage by cruising on the outcomes of its past investments.

That has not been the case, and the belief that China would be an acolyte of the US has proved to be a false assumption.

Thus with a disruptive new digital revolution under way in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, 5G, quantum computing, the internet of things and robotics, along with nanotechnology and biotechnology, which as well as commercial applications also have military uses, anxiety in the US that it might lose the “commanding heights” it has enjoyed since the end of World War II has grown into acute foreboding.

While Chinese 5G leader Huawei has become the very public lightning rod for this unease, concerns in the US about China’s progress in science and technology go well beyond one company.

As highlighted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his speech to US state governors on Feb 8, in which he warned: “What China does in Topeka and Sacramento reverberates in Washington, in Beijing, and far beyond. Competition with China is happening. It’s happening in your state.”

Painting a picture of states-wide infiltration by China across the US, he used as an example China’s “Thousand Talents Plan” which was established by China’s central government in 2008 to recruit high-level scientists and talents from overseas, which he described as a means to “transfer the know-how we have here to China in exchange for enormous paydays”.

But given the transformative potential of science, technology and innovation, both countries — and others — naturally want to attract the “best and brightest” and that means offering attractive packages. If the US wants to claim this talent for itself it will have to offer better enticements than China rather than trying to smear China’s science and technology ambitions as being maliciously inclined, politically subversive competition that threatens the “basic freedoms that every one of us values”.

Until it became obvious that China had narrowed its technology gap with the US, their science and technology relationship was mutually beneficial and helped enhance trust between the two countries and, as Pompeo’s speech indicated, US institutions and researchers have continued to sustain collaborations and the exchange of ideas.

Rather than viewing science and technology as a zero-sum game, the two countries should seek to foster collaboration to avoid a tech race that would focus their science and technology endeavors on military applications rather than ones that are truly beneficial to people.

While that may sound far-fetched, and is certainly easier to say than do, it is not impossible. It merely requires a shared understanding of purpose and the common will.