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China Plans to Surpass the U.S. in Nanotech Development
SoyChemist writes "Sociologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting have reported that China is making major investments in nanotechnology. Their aim is to 'leapfrog' past the United States in technological development by focusing on long-ranging scientific goals. So far, the Chinese government has poured about $400 million into the young field of research. Considering the low cost of equipment and labor over there, that is a very large sum of money, and China's investment is expected to 'rise considerably.'"
I don't know if the equipment is much cheaper. A lot of precision scientific equipment comes from Germany, Japan and America still -- which China does not make (yet).
What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us (for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there).
In some ways, other than the cheap doo-dads, it seems like a one sided relationship and that in the long term only China will benefit from it.
In the end, all great countries have declined. This has happened to China as well in the past. From what I see in history, it's usually when a people, as a whole, want to live for today with no thought of tomorrow.
It can be achieved by living off the riches of their past instead of working/producing themselves which got their predecessors to where they were. It's seen in our media companies who can't bear the thought of letting go of old systems or even 80 year old cartoons (Steamboat Willy), songs, etcetera. It's seen in many rich families too - the 1st generation works hard and brings in the billions, the second generation generally doesn't have to work quite as hard but enough to keep the empire afloat, and the 3rd generation tends to squander the luxury they grew up with. You can see the same trend in successful immigrant families as well.
Nationwide -- just look at the deficits being run up this year (3 trillion dollar budget!) -- the politicians are directly mortgaging our and our children's future for some frivolous spending today -- and there will be consequences even though they seem distant -- extremely high taxes or high inflation wiping out the middle class.
America isn't falling behind because of China's size. Switzerland never really looked America enviously and wistfully wondered if only they had our size and population, what great things they could achieve technologically - they are the leaders in many technological areas of the world. And China only surpassed Germany as top exporter recently even though Germany has less than 1/15 the population.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/11/23/wto.germany.role/index.html
It's generally in the attitude of the leaders and people as a whole. Not the size of the country.