Technological change marches on, and it doesn’t matter if the US was a leader in various parts of this change in the past. What matters is who is leading the change today, and tomorrow. Present conditions in China are increasingly making it hard for US to dominate tech innovation as it did previously. Four big factors support rapid tech development in China.
- The size of the regional market, in this case, 1.3 Billion Chinese. (includes a lot of farmers though)
- China is awash in cash accumulated from trade with US and Europe, and needs to continue to find ways to invest these enormous sums.
- China graduates large numbers of engineers every year, as they have a much larger base from which to draw engineering talent with a population approx 4x US.
- Chinese government is hand in glove with business and industry providing all sorts of subsidies and infrastructure help, workers towns near plants, freight expediting highways, etc. Often the government sits on BOD, or shares leadership with state organizations like the Chinese Army etc.
This is not to say the US is doomed, but it is to say, we can’t afford dysfunctional government; we need to change and adapt to the world as it changes. A working democracy should adapt to change with more stability than a brittle one party system, but do we fully have a working democracy presently in US? Kudos to Gary for link.
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