It has long been a tenet of faith that both America’s economy and its national security depend to a significant extent on superiority in science and technology.
Increasingly, however, the U.S. is losing its leadership in the areas so crucial to its prosperity and defense. A number of factors are responsible. U.S. schools, despite high rates of spending, are not producing students who are even on a par with their counterparts in many nations in science and math skills. There has been a reduced emphasis during the Obama Administration on high tech efforts such as the manned space program and certain aspects of military technology.
Kimberly Amadeo, writing in About.com reports that “China has the world’s fastest supercomputer, the National University of Defense Technology’s Tianhe-2. It has 109 of these high-performance systems, up from 37 just six months ago. The United States has 200, its lowest level since 1993.”
Amadeo also notes that the math skills of American students lag behind that of pupils in a number of nations across the planet. “U.S. students…are falling behind many other countries, such as Japan, Poland and Ireland, which have greatly improved. In fact, U.S. test scores are now below the global average. The U.S. scored at 481, below the average of 494. That’s well below the scores of the top five, all of which are Asian: Shanghai (613), Singapore (573), Hong Kong (561) South Korea (554) and Japan (536). In fact, U.S. scores are closer to the bottom six: Sweden (478), Turkey (448), Mexico (413), Brazil (391), Indonesia (375) and Peru (368). American students also slipped in science (from 20th to 24th), and reading (11th to 21st). These low scores means U.S. students aren’t as prepared to take high-paying computer and engineering jobs, which often go to foreign workers. Ironically, Silicon Valley is America’s high tech innovation center…An economist from the Hoover Institution, Eric A. Hanushek, estimated that the U.S. economy would grow 4.5% more in the next 20 years if our students’ math and science skills were as good as the rest of the world’s. [China] graduate[s] 200,000 engineers per year, compared to 60,000 in the U.S.”
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China’s extraordinary rise in economic prowess and military-related technology is a particularly worrisome factor. Part of the reason for Beijing’s success can be traced back to the Clinton Administration. In 1993, the Baltimore Sun reported, “In a good-will gesture toward China, the Clinton administration has agreed to sell it a sophisticated $8 million supercomputer, senior administration officials said yesterday. The decision is part of the administration’s strategy to embrace, rather than isolate, China despite disagreements over human rights, weapons proliferation and trade…Even more significant for American business, the administration has also decided to lift the ban on important components for China’s nuclear power plants, such as generators, senior Commerce Department officials said. That could mean billions of dollars in sales for General Electric Co., which has begun to break into the burgeoning nuclear power market in China. But the decision to go forward with the supercomputer sale is strategically more important because it signals the willingness of the Clinton administration to sell high-technology equipment to Beijing.”
The decision continued to raise suspicions long afterwards, particularly when it was revealed that China had contributed funds to Democrat campaigns. The New York Times reported in 1998 that “Johnny Chung, the former fund-raiser, had told Federal investigators that a large part of the nearly $100,000 he gave the Democrats in the 1996 campaign came from China’s People’s Liberation Army through Liu Chaoying, a Chinese lieutenant colonel and aerospace executive. The Democratic National Committee subsequently returned the money to Mr. Chung, who began cooperating with investigators after he pleaded guilty in March to campaign-related bank and tax fraud…”
The incident raised the question of whether the funds influenced President Clinton to ease sanctions on technology transfer to China. The Times reported that “The Administration’s decision to waive sanctions and ease the export control process allowed Loral and another aerospace company, the Hughes Electronic Corporation, to export satellites to be launched atop Chinese rockets…Mr. Clinton did not directly mention the policy on satellites. But he suggested that the decision to move the authority for exporting the devices from the State Department to the Commerce Department was unanimous within his Administration.”
The Report continues Monday