"The West chronically underestimates Asians"

Daniel Goldman asks in PJ Media,

Why do Chinese companies invest while American companies hoard?

...The Asian model treats capital-intensive industry as infrastructure. It supports chip foundries with public funds the way we Americans subsidize airports or sports arenas.

...China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan subsidize capital-intensive industry, with the result that virtually all of the high-tech products invented in America are now manufactured in Asia. Liquid-crystal displays, light-emitting diodes, semiconductor lasers, and solid-state sensors are produced almost exclusively in Asia. America’s share of semiconductor manufacturing fell from 25% in 2011, to less than 10% in 2018. Silicon is to the weapons of the 21st century what steel was to the 19th century. A country that cannot produce its own integrated circuits cannot defend itself.

China’s investment in education parallels its investment in the high-tech industry. Today China graduates four times as many STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) bachelor’s degrees as the U.S. and twice as many doctoral degrees, and China continues to gain. A third of Chinese students major in engineering, vs 7% in the U.S. Eighty percent of U.S. doctoral candidates in computer science and electrical engineering are foreign students, of whom Chinese are the largest contingent. Most return to China. The best U.S. universities have trained top-level faculty for Chinese universities. American STEM graduate programs reported a sharp fall in foreign applications starting in 2017, partly because Chinese students no longer have to come to the U.S. for a world-class education.

It is fanciful to believe that any kind of American pressure can destabilize, let alone dislodge, the present regime within any calculable time horizon. But we can regain technological leadership and prove the superiority of our way of life, and degrade the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party over time. China can innovate, but we can innovate much better. We need to return with a vengeance to the strategies that won the Cold War.

Solutions include:

Forcing key high-tech industries onshore using defense subsidies/tax breaks

Placing export controls on high tech (no more Boeing satellites to help China surveil its citizens)

Change Defense Department budget priorities to emphasize war-winning advance technologies rather than legacy systems

A new National Defense Education Act

Create an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative with Japan, South Korea, India and others
Engineer a brain drain of China’s most talented scientific cadre.

Read more here.