Photo courtesy of flickr/Chrystian Guy

While much of the sturm and drang of the “big” issues in U.S.-China relations–Tibet, North Korea, Iran, and RMB revaluation among others–seems to have dissipated in the intense summer heat wave we have been enjoying here on the East Coast, a number of conflicts over technology continue to bubble along.

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Photo courtesy of flickr/sa_ku_ra

The reported adjustment of Chinese procurement policy is good news for U.S. and other foreign technology companies, as far as it goes. Published in 2009, though not formally announced, the policy said that all products included in the government’s procurement catalog must have Chinese intellectual property and that the IPR should be completely independent of the IPR of foreign owners. Given how much R&D is now collaborative and global, it is hard to imagine how any product could be deemed completely independent of technology from outside of China. For foreign technology companies, the worries were clear–more demands for technology transfer and more difficulties in operating in the Chinese market. Read more »

With Rob Knake, I have a new piece up on Yale Global Online about the race between innovation and security.

We use the hacking of Google not to focus on human rights or cyberwar, but rather to show a growing tension between a globalized model of innovation, based on ever-quickening times to market and geographically disbursed R&D and manufacturing, and the need for greater reliability and security. In the end, we come to a slightly heretical conclusion: if we want greater security, we probably have to sacrifice the pace of innovation. Read more »

We have seen a lot of stories recently about China’s emergence as a science super power–“China’s scientists lead world in research growth” in the Financial Times, blog posts at the New Yorker, and the New Scientist warning us to “Get Ready for China’s Domination of Science”–and that’s not even counting the story on how China is going to lead the world in clean energy that the New York Times seems to run every other week. Read more »

Following his excellent article on energy and innovation, Evan Osnos has a blog post on China as a science superpower.  While the post points to some of the markers many have seen as signs of China’s rise and America’s relative decline, every sign of strength comes with some underlying weakness. Read more »

Two good new articles–Evan Osnos in the New Yorker and Shai Oster in Wall Street Journal– address the question of China’s innovative capabilities in green technologies. Both come out at about the same point, one that I am highly sympathetic to (and, shameless plug, make in my forthcoming book). Essentially, China is excelling at bringing the price down of a number of important technologies used for solar, coal, and wind, but breakthrough, cutting-edge innovations are rare. Read more »

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that China has announced new rules for the government procurement of high technology products. According to the rules, posted on a website in October but not publicized, if a high tech product is to be included in the government catalog, it must be certified to include “indigenous innovation.”  The government is a massive customer for high tech products in China so this is no idle threat. The WSJ quotes Bryan Ma of IDC as saying that government procurement is responsible for 14 percent of the forty million PCs sold in China annually, for example. Read more »