AT tells Le Figaro why China is winning the tech war

[Klaralven]

...

LM: The Americans acquiesced to technology transfers and welcomed 350,000 Chinese students at their universities, without particularly controlling what they were doing there. Was it naiveté, geopolitical blindness or rapaciousness that led to such a relaxed approach?

DG: Nearly four-fifths of doctoral candidates in electrical engineering and computer science at US universities are foreign students, and the Chinese are by far the largest contingent. We trained world-class faculty for Chinese universities, who now are among the world’s best. Asians now comprise half of the professional staff of US tech firms. The United States can’t do without Asian immigrants.

In hindsight, we should have recruited the students who we wanted to keep in the United States, and retained the best of them. The dirty secret is that foreign students usually pay full tuition, or 40% above the average tuition, so the universities want a lot of them. We were naive about technology transfer, and careless about theft of intellectual property. But it is an exaggeration to blame China’s rise on IP theft. Some Chinese companies, notably Huawei, have been more innovative than their Western competitors.

Now China graduates six times as many engineers and computer scientists as the US. Twenty years ago the quality of Chinese graduates was poor, but it has improved a great deal and is close to Western standards.

https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/at-tells-le-figaro-why-china-is-winning-the-tech-war/

[malaise]

1. FFS China has its own world class universities

Western arrogance is a serious problem.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Math and science

Just can't believe how far our primary and secondary schools have fallen behind in math and science. A good deal of our engineering work gets farmed out to India now, and you know what, they do excellent work for less money.

Foreign exchange students are not the problem, not pushing American kids into math and science is. We want to global economy to push forward with innovative technology, whether that innovation comes from China or India shouldn't matter. But a good deal of it needs to continue to come from the US.

[Klaralven]

3. Math and science are hard, and some kids get left behind

Can't have anything but uniform mediocrity in our primary and secondary schools.

[JCMach1]

5. It gets farmed out there because labor is cheap

Most of the engineers from India, China and MENA received below average training compared to their American counterparts.

Companies instead, can throw numbers at the problem until something works.

Having worked in Universities in the region, you come to understand 2/3 of most engineering students are forced into this education because of family pressure... It's a different world. Chances are your Uber driver has an engineering degree there because engineers don't make enough $$$.

[Johnny2X2X]

7. I've had different experiences

We contract engineering work to India all the time at my work in the aerospace industry. I have direct interface with these engineers, they consistently exceed expectations and surpass what I see from American software engineers.

[JCMach1]

8. You are most likely dealing with graduates of the elite Indian schools

There are huge quality differences that you might never see.

I worked for an elite American University with a US accredited engineering program for both graduate and undergraduate students. I was there for nearly 15 years.

I worked directly with students who were having academic difficulties in their programs.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. Maybe so

But the price is still amazing. $35 an hour vs $90 to $150 an hour here, and $170 an hour to keep in house.

And I've worked with some American Engineers who are total zeroes too.

[JCMach1]

10. We can't compete because of the numbers India, China and MENA

All will produce almost1M engineers per year at all levels. By 2030.

The US produces about 70K

[Johnny2X2X]

11. This is true

But it's not as much a competition as it is an effort to share in the spoils of innovation. India and China innovating and growing economically because of it can be good for the US, but only if we have the expertise to capitalize on it.

[malaise]

12. You nailed it

Ignorance and idiocy are now promoted over math and science. The really good US students are ostracized by their peers and called nerds. Being dumb is way too cool.

[TheBlackAdder]

4. Why else? We outsource technical development to China/India, thinking the IP will be protected.

.

Both software design and hardware design and manufacturing.

2 years later, the shit is all up and down the Pacific Rim.

.

[Klaralven]

6. China is now enthusiastic about IP protections. They file 3 times the patent applications as we do.

Since they are now graduating far more engineers and scientist than we, the Chinese dominance of intellectual property will only grow.