This is a comment from a discussion about China and semiconductors (specifically memory chips) that has been ongoing on S.A. Interesting comment with links. Most of the links appear not to have carried over to SI, but you can still use them by picking them up and putting them down as URLs.
In 2015, the Economist had an interesting article about manufacturing in China (http://tinyurl.com/pnt6fos). In 1990, China produced less than 3% of the global manufacturing output of the world by value. By 2015, a mere 25 years later, China produces over 80% of the world's air-conditioners, 70% of its mobile phones, and 60% of its shoes. It is hard to ignore a country that makes over half of the products of the world.
China did not become the go-to manufacturer of the world by the dint of cheap labor alone (http://tinyurl.com/jwyd8j3) or by stealing western technology, as many Americans seem to think. China became a manufacturing powerhouse by building massive industrial infrastructure to support manufacturing, making huge investments in education, engineering, and science, and encouraging efficiency-driven innovation. Last year, China manufactured nearly 600 million cell phones, including the highest quality smart phones in the world. China could not have done this without the ability to make, manage, and move mountains of materials and electronic components, organize and train 150 million skilled laborers who could not only run but code robots, and skilled administrators who can rapidly and efficiently execute complex manufacturing projects on a larger scale than ever in history.
We should not underestimate China's manufacturing capability, their capacity for innovation, or their commitment to education. They have come a long way in a very short time. In 2014, Science magazine (http://tinyurl.com/j6zlhpp) published an interesting article that pointed out the number of Chinese coming to U.S. graduate and engineering schools is declining while the number of younger students coming for undergraduate education has jumped. What is going on? The top students in China are apparently choosing to stay in China rather than coming to schools overseas.
This is not to say that a huge number of Chinese graduate and engineering students have left the U.S. In 2014, the number of Chinese graduate and engineering students attending U.S. universities was still substantial at 115,727. That number today is declining, probably falling below 100,000. Please note that many wild numbers are flying around concerning millions of Chinese, Indian, and Russian engineers graduating from universities in their countries. In my opinion, most of the numbers are unreliable. In 2005, after a Fortune magazine article claimed that China is graduating 600,000 engineers per year, compared to the United States graduating only 70,000 engineers, Duke University did a careful analysis and concluded that the U.S. annually produces 137,437 engineers (of which perhaps as many as 40% are of Chinese or Indian origin) compared to 351,537 graduating from China and 112,000 graduating from India (http://tinyurl.com/elgzh). Interestingly, reliable statistics are not available for China or India (http://tinyurl.com/lv6ojxq) and both countries have been omitted from recent studies.
The United States commitment to science and engineering has declined in the past decade. This is apparent from the flat-lining of federal research budgets since 2008. While U.S. public and private spending of R & D still accounts for 29% of the world's total R&D spending, China is catching up and is now spending 27% of the world's R&D. Incidentally, a dollar still buys perhaps twice as much R & D in China than it does in the United States. More important, China's investment in R & D is increasing at the rate of nearly 20% per year while the U.S. investment is declining. The Trump Administration has proposed to cut federal support of R&D by 20% in 2018. It is little wonder that more Chinese science students are turning to graduate and engineering schools in China. The opportunities for doing science and engineering is now beginning to be greater in China than in the United States (http://tinyurl.com/z5f6bdh)
I am not sure that Americans understand the significance of this development. Many of the top science and graduate students from China and India who have come to universities in the United States over the past two decades stayed to contribute to the U.S. economy. Many foreign engineers and scientists who contributed to U.S.'s leadership in physics and energy research, electronics, biomedical research, aeronautics, communications, and computer industries are Chinese and Indian. In the last three years, however, many of the best college graduates in China are no longer coming to the United States for engineering training or graduate school. The top students are staying in China. These students will become the leaders of science and industry in China in the coming decade.
The United States should not be so smug about its current leadership in electronic technology or biomedical fields. Consider the following statistics. The top 10% of college students in China outnumber all the college students in the United States. A majority of Chinese high school student not only have had better STEM educations in high school and outperform American high school students in math and science tests but they have a strong culturally enforced preference to train in science, engineering, and technology. At the present, over 1.5 million scientists are doing research in China (U.S. has 1.3 million) and they now publish 20% of papers in Western journals, more than any other country, apart from the United States (http://tinyurl.com/k465ffu).
Like in the electronic industry, China is aiming to be a global superpower in DNA sequencing. Six years ago, one firm bought 128 of the world's fastest sequencing machines that gave China more than half of the world's capacity for DNA sequencing. They are seeking to sequence the genomes of one million people (including groups of 10,000/disease), one million plants and animals, and one million microbial organisms to provide the base of a 15-year precision-medicine initiative. They have helped drive the cost of sequencing from $1000 per megabase to less than $0.01/megabase. This year, they will open the China National Genebank that will house millions of samples from people, animals, plants, microbial organisms, including all known infectious diseases. This is what China excels in doing, large scale project involving huge populations (http://tinyurl.com/lj6kou7). A country that can do these things will be able to make NAND chips. |
