Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [156]
At the same time, China has found ways to acquire Western know-how from non-Chinese corporate behemoths. For example, dangling the prize of access to China's immense domestic market, the Chinese government conditioned a $900 million turbine-engine deal with General Electric on the latter's agreement to share technology. General Electric is hardly alone. According to a Wall Street Journal article titled “China's Price for Market Entry: Give Us Your Technology, Too”:
[T]o gain easier access to markets in China, Motorola Inc. has poured more than $300 million into 19 technology-research centers in the country. A Microsoft Corp. center in Beijing now employs more than 200 researchers. Siemens AG says it has spent more than $200 million since 1998 working with a Chinese academic institution to develop a mobile-phone technology that the government wants to be the country's standard.
Many other foreign corporations, including Japan's Kawasaki and France's Alstom SA, have agreed to similar technology transfers in exchange for market access.20
In the end, however, these strategies are highly imperfect substitutes for bringing in the world's best talent and know-how. The preferences granted to overseas Chinese in the 1980s and 1990s opened the door to the large-scale corruption mentioned above. For every Shiing-Shen Chern—the brilliant UC Berkeley mathematician who dedicated much of his later life to promoting the study of math and science in China—there are dozens of Chinese businessmen from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia who have made millions in China through bribery and other backdoor techniques. Because of the visibility of powerful overseas Chinese tycoons like Indonesia's James Riady, there is a widespread perception that “personal connections” (guanxi) are everything—that commercial success in China depends on who has the most “old friends” and who can offer local officials the biggest gifts and the most sumptuous banquets. Thus, while the Chinese government may have hoped that overseas Chinese—being “all in the family”—would make loyal and dependable investors, ironically their prominence in China has fueled local resentment and contributed to the sense that there is no level playing field in China.
Meanwhile, China's approach to getting Western technology has clear limits as well. Western firms compelled to share know-how with China (in exchange for market access) have predictably avoided revealing their most cutting-edge technologies. According to GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt, China's engineers remain at least “two generations” behind in turbine engine manufacturing, despite GE's technology-sharing agreement with them. Or as one Chinese official pointedly put it: “The foreigners are now agreeing to tell us how and where to dig a hole, but we still do not know why to dig a hole there.”21
China's ascent to superpower status is practically a foregone conclusion. True, China faces a daunting list of internal challenges, including staggering pollution, corruption, regional wealth disparities, and soulless mass consumerism. Nevertheless, in terms of building on its present successes, China seems to be doing everything right. Keeping an eye on the long term, it is pouring massive sums into infrastructure, research and development, and education at all levels. Few today doubt that China will become one of the great powers of the world within a short time.
But if my thesis is correct, China will not become a hyper-power. Today, more than ever, global dominance depends on the ability to attract and retain the world's top scientific, technological, and creative talent, and China—a quintessential nonimmigrant, ethnically