Until recently, the United States was the global technology and economic leader. Those days are gone. America’s principal geopolitical adversary, China, has a larger advanced technology base than the United States, and has overtaken it in a host of advanced industries, including telecommunications equipment, high-speed rail, solar panels, drones, shipbuilding, and industrial machinery.
As Rob Atkinson writes in Wilson Quarterly, this matters because techno-economic capabilities are increasingly the key to global power. Chinese President Xi Jinping showed that he understands this when he stated: “Technological innovation has become the main battleground of the global playing field, and competition for tech dominance will grow unprecedentedly fierce.” Unless Washington grasps this reality and responds with a coherent, advanced industrial strategy, the US is likely to continue to lose both the global technological advantage and its global leadership standing overall. Both are vital to its competitiveness.
Read the commentary.
