US shutting doors will impede development of others
By Zhong Sheng
French scientist Louis
Pasteur said that “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to
humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world,” but some U.S.
politicians are running counter to it, with arbitrary attempts to politicize
science and monopolize the fruits of innovation.
A US official claimed on
social media that “I want the United States to win through competition, not by
blocking out currently more advanced technologies.”
However, this message was
quickly followed by a ban of the U.S. administration preventing a Chinese high-tech
company from participating in the construction of U.S. telecommunication
equipment, especially the 5G network in the disguise of “national security”. The
U.S. even added the Chinese company to an “Entity List” of export control.
The US official also
noted that “We welcome Chinese students and scholars to the United States to
conduct legitimate academic activities.” But the U.S. immediately decided to
restrict and impede normal people-to-people and cultural exchanges between
China and the U.S., and even cooked up excuses and fabricated accusations to
fire Chinese scientists and shut down their labs.
The U.S. launched an initiative
for scientific and technological cooperation, saying it is committed to
promoting an international environment that supports AI R&D and will open
markets for American AI industries. But indeed, it is arbitrarily interfering with
the global division of labor.
According to U.S. media, at
the end of the last year, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) under U.S. Department
of Commerce published a list of 14 representative emerging technology
categories for potential export control, and most of the categories were
related to AI technologies.
While boasting “open
innovation” and “free competition”, the U.S. is indeed sabotaging regular academic
exchanges and scientific and technological cooperation both on and under the
desk. It is waging a “technology Cold War” and erecting a “digital Iron Curtain”
by hook or by crook, revealing the nature of some U.S. politicians who think in
one way and behave in another.
It’s common knowledge
that the core of the international order established by the U.S. after the
World War II is to boost free circulation of commodities, personnel, capital,
and technology within systems and rules.
However, the U.S.
politicians have overturned this rule-based international order with their
bald-faced bullying practices. Following the law of the jungle and
“winner-takes-all” approach in the field of science and technology, they allow
no one to challenge their scientific and technological hegemony.
What they are doing is to
try to firmly secure their position at the top of the industrial chain so as to
reap huge profits from technological monopoly and force latecomers to remain at
the bottom.
The U.S. is being a bully
by allowing only its own innovation while stifling the development of other
countries.
Scientific and
technological achievements are common wealth of the mankind, as well as the fruits
of mutual learning and joint efforts of generations and generations of scientists
around the world.
The world needs concerted
efforts of global scientists to find new driving forces of economic development
and cope with major challenges including environment pollution, climate change,
and diseases.
Today, when the world is undergoing
profound development of economic globalization, innovation resources are flowing
rapidly around the world. The economic, scientific, and technological ties
among countries are also becoming closer. It’s impossible for any country to independently
conquer all the challenges of innovation, and the U.S. is no exception.
As a Chinese saying goes,
the ocean is vast because it rejects no rivers. With global support and
concerted efforts, endeavors to boost innovation will deliver great results and
benefit the whole world.
Before and after the
World War II, many European scientists traveled far to the U.S. and made
extraordinary contribution to the innovation and development of the country. The
success of Silicon Valley today could never have been realized without the
untiring efforts of scientific and technological talents from the world.
According to credible
statistics, 38 percent of American scientists and engineers with doctoral
degree were born outside the U.S., and the ratio stands at more than one third for
frontier researchers in the country.
Such point was also
indicated in a report released by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
of the U.S. that said highly educated immigrants who have been working in major
enterprises comprised a large portion of innovators in the U.S.
At present, some
politicians in the U.S. are arbitrarily cutting off technology cooperation,
with a so-called intention to protect their leading status in related fields. However,
such an act is doomed to hurt the country’s own interests, as it hinders free
competition and breaks the close cooperation on the global industrial chain.
China’s tech company Huawei
contributes as high as 30 to 40 percent to the total revenues of some U.S. spare
part companies. These U.S. companies have to work overtime to finish Huawei’s
supply orders before the U.S. ban on the Chinese tech giant comes into effect.
Their approval process, which cost approximately one and a half month, has been
shorted to three hours.
The Wall Street Journal disclosed
that Qualcomm’s share of revenue from China stood at 67 percent, and the
figures for Intel and Apple were 26 and 20 percent respectively. It is
imaginable that to cut off supplies to Chinese tech companies and block the
trade of telecom equipment will definitely backfire and hurt the U.S. itself.
By refusing globalization, the U.S. politicians have not only pulled their
country out of the game, but also hurt the interests of other players. The
ultimate victim will be countries on the global industrial chain.
Stanley Shanapinda, a research fellow at La Trobe University, noted that a
ban on Huawei, a company that has provided network services for over a decade
in Australia, will slow down Australia’s upgrading of national network, and increase the cost of telecom
operators. The spending will be passed on to the consumers.
Openness and cooperation have been an inevitable manner to boost
technological progress and productivity. At present, multi-polarization,
economic globalization, cultural diversity and society informatization are
developing fast, indicating that no country is able to develop with its doors
shut.
Any anti-globalization attempt will turn out to be useless and could never
stop the trend of technological development. Those US politicians who choose
self-seclusion should come back to reality, because such mentality will only
make the U.S. fall behind.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen
name used by People’s Daily to express views on foreign policy.)
US shutting doors will impede development of others
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