Why China will win an Intellectual Property war in science and engineering

[FarCenter]

There are about 4.2 times more Chinese. Since Chinese IQs average a few points higher than US there are over 5 times more Chinese with IQs over 130. This is a substantially greater supply of raw brainpower.

The Chinese educational system focuses more on math and science and identifies and on providing educational opportunities for the talented students. Proportionately more Chinese student may be left behind, but it is the top few percent of achievers that actually matter for the creation of new intellectual property.

Chinese baccalaureate graduates in STEM courses now outnumber US STEM graduates and the margin is increasing. China is well positioned to scale online and digital approaches to education, since there is less of an institutional establishment to oppose them.

Chinese students and professionals can access both the English and the Chinese language STEM publications, while US students and professionals generally can only access the English STEM publications. Some US students may also know other languages such as Spanish, French or German, but these languages have only minor STEM publications.

[Blue_true]

1. While I am trained as an Engineer.

I don't feel that ingenuity requires a degree. Some of the top inventions in history have been done by people without degrees or training in the field the invention was made it.

In relation to China, I have wondered often why that nation's technical prowess does not match it's academic credentials prowess. In Grad School, close to 100% of technical Masters and Ph.D. Candidates are Chinese or from India, yet the US, particularly Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston continue to dominate hard science based innovation. One thing that I fear about China is that if leaders there focus on internal growth like the US did when it became a world economic power, starting just after the Civil War through to 1970, China will swamp us in a couple of decades. Their numbers alone gives them that power, there are like 5 Chinese for every American, and that stated ratio could be lower than the real ratio.

[Adrahil]

3. I'm in grad school for an engineering Masters right now....

Nowhere NEAR 100% of the students are Indian or Chinese.... more like 25% at my school.

However, the gutting of R&D and basic research is dooming the U.S. to lose it's edge.

[Blue_true]

4. Where do you go to school?

When I was in college, there was 2 American born masters candidates in my engineering department, none that were Ph.D. Candidates. Across the department, there were something like 30-40 candidates total. When I look at Masters and Ph.D. hires, maybe one or two Americans at the masters level come around, none at the Ph.D. level. That is my reality, yours nay be different.

[Adrahil]

2. The Chinese will need to change their STEM culture....

Their engineering culture has been focused on reverse engineering, industrial espionage, and production processes. Very little effort had been focused on actual creative engineering design. They will have to change that. If they REALLY want to lead, they will have to permit a more free-flowing approach to research and design... not something Chinese academia and industry is currently oriented towards.

But with the corporate dolts in this country slashing R&D and the government gutting basic science research, I think it's just a matter of time.

[Blue_true]

5. I agree.

That was the point that I made concerning innovation prowess versus academic prowess. On paper, China should have buried us on innovation two decades ago, but we still outpace China on pure innovation.

I don't agree that budget cuts will hurt innovation, at least in the short term. But long term, we have real problems. The meaningless scientific research that republicans hate, could lead to multiple billion dollar industries when a person finds that obscure research and put it together with pieces drawn from other sources, such is ingenuity.

[FarCenter]

6. China is already making more patent applications than the US, so I think they are changing rapidly

I would expect that they are behind the US in product design, but that they would be extremely competitive in the design of manufacturing and production systems. The design of all the equipment and systems that go into the many factories along the supply chain is more complex than the design of the product itself.