The Chinese government funds an exceptionally large amount of R&D, with direct government subsidies accounting for a quarter of the country’s total R&D spending in 2015. As such, how well the government allocates those funds plays an outsized role in determining how innovative the nation can be.

China
In testimony before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology, Rob Atkinson stated that there are steps Congress should take to help roll back Chinese innovation mercantilism and ensure the United States remains the world leader in technology and innovation.
The practical effect of tariffs on key components used in cloud computing would be to advantage foreign technology competitors, thereby threatening U.S. leadership in both the adoption and provision of cloud computing services, and stunting U.S. growth.
Policymakers are free to question U.S. foreign policy towards China, but they do U.S. interests no favors by attacking U.S. companies that merely follow the course charted out by their own trade policies writes Daniel Castro in Innovation Files.
China is marching toward global technological, economic, and military leadership. Who was responsible for letting this happen? In an opinion piece for National Review, Rob Atkinson explains how pretty much everyone—from successive U.S. administrations and the Washington trade and economics establishment to China itself—is at fault.
The bottom line analysis of China’s recent statement is that part of this trade war, which China launched two decades ago, will be won or lost in the court of global opinion. The media, policymakers and citizens around the world should not fall for the Chinese spin that it is the victim writes Rob Atkinson in Innovation Files.
U.S.-China economic tensions are escalating, raising serious questions. What are the prospects of these tit-for-tat tariff measures escalating into a full-blown trade war? How likely is it that China will make serious concessions, including rolling back some of its most egregious “Made in China 2025” practices? What will be the potential impact on supply chains and U.S. producers? What alternatives to tariffs should the Trump administration use to gain leverage over China? Can we expect our allies to help, or are those bridges already burned?
In testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rob Atkinson stated that taking firm and strategic action against Chinese predatory, mercantilist practices is long overdue.
Trump’s approach to tariffs has drawn widespread criticism, sparking a debate in which partisans have made all sorts of claims and counter-claims. This briefing sets the record straight on 10 important points of fact.
It’s time for all parties—left, right, and center—to focus on the most important thing vis-à-vis Chinese trade policy: rolling back the unfair, mercantilist policies underlying the “Made in China, 2025” strategy. Everything else is just a sideshow writes Rob Atkinson in Innovation Files.
Foreign predatory economic practices harm the U.S. economy. In testimony before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, Rob Atkinson outlines how the U.S. government should respond.
In an op-ed for RealClearPolicy, ITIF’s Stephen Ezell outlines ten alternatives to tariffs that would roll back China’s unfair trade practices.
In commentary for Fortune Magazine, ITIF President Rob Atkinson and Michael Lind write that America’s own antitrust policies perversely encourage the loss of technological leadership to rival nations.
In an article for National Review, ITIF President Rob Atkinson decodes the true meaning behind the official statements from the Chinese government in response to President Trump’s long-anticipated announcement of tough new actions against China’s mercantilist trade and economic policies.
Raising the cost of ICT products by levying tariffs on ICT imports from China would reduce growth in U.S. ICT investments, which would lower productivity growth, and thus economic growth.
In testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, ITIF Director of Telecom Policy Doug Brake encouraged the continued reliance on the competitive private sector to deploy 5G networks and address supply chain security concerns through ongoing review as a component of a broader strategy to guide China to a rule-of-law, market driven framework on trade and intellectual property.
The problem is not that Trump imposed tariffs; it is that he appears to have be motivated purely by a protectionist instinct, not because he recognized a legitimate need to aggressively confront foreign mercantilism, particularly on the part of the world’s worst offender, China.
The innovation mercantilist policies which lie at the heart of China’s model of state-led capitalism have been the central force driving this overcapacity across an ever-growing number of industries.
Perhaps it’s the natural human aversion to bad news—sometimes known as the “ostrich effect”—but few opinion leaders on U.S. economic policy appear willing to take a cold, hard look at the state of U.S. manufacturing. If they did, they wouldn’t be happy.
Brazil, China, Indonesia, Russia, and Vietnam fielded some of the year’s worst innovation mercantilist policies. Their targets included Internet-based services, electric vehicles, biopharmaceuticals, computers and electronics.
Xiaomi wants to join a growing list of companies—including Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei, Lenovo, and ZTE—that are gaining market share, not just in China, but globally. They would enjoy considerably less success if not for the Chinese government’s campaign of innovation mercantilism.
Most private investors don’t have the deep pockets and patience to wait for clean, cheap energy technologies to mature. We need smart public policy to solve the problem.
Rob Atkinson discusses China’s global leadership and the threat it poses to the U.S. on Bloomberg Markets.
China’s objective is to become competitive across virtually all advanced-technology industries—and the techniques it is using pose a direct, and even existential, threat to high-tech industries in the United States and other countries.
After China acceded to the WTO, the trade-creation impact accounted for four-fifths of its manufacturing productivity growth in the next six years, writes John Wu in Innovation Files.