USChina TechnoNationalism And The Decoupling Of Innovation
The hybrid cold war between the US and China is spreading to places previously thought to be far from geopolitical ties.
In technology, there has been a steady development of controls over the export of real and hard technology, followed by restrictions on data access and use, and more recently, new controls that will hinder human freedom of movement and development. capital.
All of these restrictions will accelerate the breakdown of China's supply chains, digital platforms and knowledge networks. But recent human resource constraints, especially related to scientific and collaborative activities, will change the way universities and global innovation centers operate.
The main force behind all this is techno-nationalism. trade behavior that links a country's technological and entrepreneurial capabilities with issues of national security, economic prosperity, and social stability.
Going forward, technology will impact the academic and innovation landscape in three ways:
First, the affected institutions will be removed from the blacklist of Chinese universities and academic programs.
Second, an expanding network of export controls and restrictions will increasingly force businesses to comply with increasingly stringent regulations.
Third, new frameworks of rules and indicators of good governance will emerge in the global scientific community and innovation landscape.
It is a necessary response to decades of innovative mercantilism in Beijing and the role of the Chinese state apparatus in the systematic targeting of the strategic assets of intellectual property, technology and human resources in the world's top universities.
This article explores these themes in more detail and explains how technonationalism will affect Sino-US technology cooperation and technological development in general.
Human resources as a strategic asset
Talent pools, educational networks, research and development (R&D) institutions, and innovation networks have been key strategic assets in the hybrid cold war between the United States and China.
A microcosm of this competitive environment has emerged in the semiconductor sector, where two Chinese state-owned companies, Quanxin Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (QXIC) and Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., recently emerged. (HSMC) used an attractive financial incentive paid for by government subsidies to hire 100 engineers from Taiwan's TSMC, the world's leading contract chip maker. The Made in China 2025 initiative alone has attracted nearly 3,000 Taiwanese engineers to the mainland.
The efforts reflect Beijing's urgent need to expand semiconductor production capacity, which lags behind US, Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese firms.
Meanwhile, the Taiwan government is exploring ways to subsidize local company salaries to match the lucrative packages offered by Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) and to impose non-competitive restrictions on Taiwanese engineers moving to mainland companies.
Taiwan's government has stepped up control and enforcement of intellectual property transfers, including monitoring engineers at strategic Taiwanese semiconductor firms where national security officials occupy office space.
The new epicenter is an academic institution
Technotrendism will influence most of the world's leading universities and research institutions, especially in the US, Europe and other liberal democracies. Beijing has made it its mission to maximize access to these institutions to connect with the world's best subject matter experts, research networks and innovation communities.
Thus, policymakers are taking steps to make it more difficult for perceived hostile actors to exploit the openness of the education system, while trying to avoid collateral damage to the human resource pipeline that provides net gains from a technonationalist perspective.
Sharing knowledge network
In June 2020, the United States blacklisted several top Chinese universities, including the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), which has been dubbed the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology of China". The consequences of those restrictions were immediate. HIT faculty and students can no longer access essential American research and modeling software such as MATLAB, which is used extensively in research and development programs around the world.
Other results include ending the exchange program between HIT and the University of Arizona and the University of California. More broadly, the inclusion of HIT as a limited entity identifies other Chinese academic institutions as part of a larger research network funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). This "civil-military" mix of Chinese academic institutions' activities increases the likelihood that others will be blacklisted by Washington.
One of China's leading academic institutions, Tsinghua University plays a central role in China's state-funded semiconductor research and cooperation with Chinese state-owned enterprises. If implemented by the US, it would have a direct impact on a number of the world's leading universities, many of which collaborate and exchange views with Tsinghua.
Meanwhile, India, the world's largest democracy, is seeking to capitalize on the US-China divide by investing in US-Indian educational ties. So while the flow of Chinese scientists and STEM students to the US may be declining, India's techno-nationalist vision includes attracting US universities to India, which will generate more domestic human capital, balancing bilateral innovation. pipe from the US
Beijing's strategic relationship with international universities
China's Thousand Talents program targets high-level scientists and other foreign experts. It provides substantial financial support for moving to China to conduct research in high-tech and future-technology fields, and for participating in major Chinese scientific projects to support China's high-tech development plans, such as Made in China 2025. The program plays an important role in providing Beijing direct access to research and development, strategic intellectual property, and talent pools that took years to develop in American and European institutions.
So, for many China watchers, the Thousand Talents program involves Beijing's alleged attempts to acquire intellectual property, involving the use of bribes, fraud, coercion, and outright theft.
These suspicions are exacerbated by China's national intelligence law, which obliges Chinese citizens and organizations to provide assistance to state security and intelligence agencies when requested. Therefore, justified or not, Chinese scientists and students who work and study at foreign universities are highly suspect.
In January 2020, Charles Lieber, a Harvard nanoscientist and former chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, was arrested for failing to disclose his ties to China's Thousand Talents program.
In Lieber's case, Yanqing Ye, a Chinese graduate student, was also arrested for not disclosing that he was a lieutenant in the People's Liberation Army when he obtained a non-immigrant visa to study physics at Boston University. Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. He was accused of spying for the People's Liberation Army. Devices seized from him showed him accessing US military websites, researching US military projects and gathering information on two US citizens specializing in robotics and computer science for the People's Liberation Army, according to federal documents.
Another such incident underscores the challenges academic institutions and government officials face as they adjust to the Cold War between the United States and China.
More generally, growing calls to ban China's Confucius Institutes in Western universities, arguing that Beijing has used them for campaigns of influence and surveillance of overseas Chinese students, are also increasing pressure to abandon them.
Export Controls and Technical Restrictions
In the future, US export controls will be more accessible to the world's leading academic institutions. They must adapt to an expanded set of regulations and compliance standards, such as:
- control the export of software, digital networks, computer code and other intellectual property;
- inclusion of academic partners (foreign academic institutions) in the restricted access list;
- black list of persons (scientists and students from the target country and educational institutions);
- quota and acceptance threshold of foreign students based on nationality;
- Reduction or prohibition of financing foreign organizations.
Failure to comply with these regulations could subject universities and research institutes to the first fines and penalties previously reserved for oil companies and big banks.
Many of these rules conflict with an open and democratic learning environment. However, China's techno-nationalist agenda and innovative trading system position Beijing as a destroyer. In many ways, the challenges the CCP faces in the global academic community represent the same dilemma that its state-centric economic model has created for the world's multilateral organizations: existing rules and norms are designed to operate around transparency and values. reciprocal. Not adapted to predatory behavior.
The next phase of technonationalism will create tension between public policy and open academic practice in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
Therefore, to remain viable learning sites, these institutions must begin implementing risk management measures that adequately address the complexities of US-China technonationalism and technocracy.
New main structure
The academic community must collaborate with policy makers and law enforcement agencies to confront the challenges of US-China technonationalism. This includes the introduction of a system of administrative rules and practices that can transform an academic community into a strictly regulated service industry.
Examination of third party conflicts of interest and due diligence practices similar to Know Your Customer (KYC) standards in banking will become a necessity. This exam will apply to faculty and graduate students conducting applied and specialized research.
Academic and research institutions will face fines for upholding "research integrity" standards and refusing to disclose links to Chinese institutions and programs for violators (including faculty, students, and entire academic institutions).
Standards of full disclosure and transparency will also be in place, which will also be audited and enforced by independent and accredited third parties, as appropriate, among participating and collaborating academic institutions.
As the technology cold war between the United States and China intensifies, academic and research institutions around the world must learn to adapt. However, in many cases, given the choice between implementing increasingly complex and risky compliance processes or not cooperating with China, many organizations will choose the latter.
Alex Capri is a Heinrich Foundation Fellow, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Business School of the National University of Singapore, and Lecturer at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy .
