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High-Tech Research Moving From US To China

Posted by timothy on from the viewing-the-world-as-a-zero-sum-game dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs in China after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels by the end of this year and their chief technology officer, Mark R. Pinto, is the first CTO of a major American tech company to move to China. 'We're obviously not giving up on the US,' says Pinto. 'China needs more electricity. It's as simple as that.' Western companies are also attracted to China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies. Applied Materials decided to build their new $250 million research facility in Xi'an after the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years."

1 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Western and Eastern educations are not equivale by topcoder · · Score: 5, Informative
    Trying to put a little objectivity to this comment i will add this:

    Consider the science contests from high school called science olympiads, where big scientists like Grigori Perelman and Terence Tao have competed, contests where things like the ones you mentioned (innovation, creativity, etc.) play a huge part for the results, let's say the two most relevant subjects for computer science (informatics and mathematics):

    Historic results for all countries on the IMO (mathematics):

    http://imo-official.org/results.aspx

    Last results for gold medal on the 2009 IOI (informatics):

    http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp?id=414&ln=2

    As you can see, at least in these competitions, China DOES seem to be better than USA (than all countries in fact), while India seems a more mediocre country like you comment.