As I researched global innovation over the past four years, the more I looked into China’s amazing ascent as a technological power—amid growing U.S. angst and anti-China anger—the more one puzzling question constantly jumped out at me: Why has there been no “Sputnik moment” with China, as occurred early in the Cold War when the Soviet Union launched a satellite into space in 1957? Then, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower elevated science and technology to a national mission, creating NASA and dramatically ramping up support for research and development.
True, there’s been no single Chinese achievement that made headlines—save perhaps Beijing’s recent victory over the coronavirus, muted by having helped spread the virus in the first place. The fields where China is ahead of the United States, such as financial technology, are largely matters of everyday life, not grand and singular achievements. But for all the febrile fear and loathing of China, a panoply of tariffs, tech bans, and an unraveling U.S.-China relationship, the United States has done far more whining about China than competing with it. Huawei as a national security threat, intellectual property theft, bans on Chinese apps—America’s (mostly legitimate) grievances against predatory Chinese industrial policies seem to mount by the day. Yet beyond sanctions and tariffs, there has been little idea how the United States would meet the challenge.
