- For years, with the clash between the United States and China, for the economic moment, since it burned down, above all, with the copla of rare earths on the lips. Both directly (due to the large negotiating capacity that the near-monopoly of its production currently grants to China) and indirectly (due to the decisive value of these chemical elements of peculiar name in the higher technologies).
The latest known avatars related to these have, at times, comeity (thus, the flow of the F-35 aircraft that the Pentagon has had to suspend more than a month earlier at the expense of the Chinese samario-cobalt magnets). And curiosity, on other occasions: one of the first issues that China banned in its dealings with Taiwan in the August tense period was, for example, sand. He is right. In any case, it is clear that the war on high technology, for the time being economic, has only just begun.
However, a component that has hardly been mentioned in previous studies is already being added to this equation. Talent is not one of the rare earths... although it is “rare”, by definition. However, in the sense it is given today, it has a closer affinity with all the components of high-tech.
That’s why we were probably not surprised to hear Xi Jinping, in his report he read before the 20th Congress, “science and technology are our main productive forces, talent is our main raw material and innovation is our main growth guide.”
It will be hard to find something similar in the Congressional reports of the past. But it’s nothing surprising to anyone announcing the particular national conference that the Chinese Communist Party held last week of September last year, with all the formalities, for “crafting talent,” in which Jinping said all that and more.
It is becoming increasingly clear that China, together with India, is one of the largest deposits of this basic talent raw material, if not the largest, whatever the measuring apparatus. I believe that one of the main beneficiaries of this Chinese and Asian raw material, if not the main one, is also undeniable that it is the United States. Less and less “wasp” (or only “was”) is American talent.
That is why someone should read very carefully the report that has just been published in Asia, driven by the American Scholar Forum and produced by experts from Harvard, Princeton and MIT, which explains the terrible fact of hundreds of scientists of Chinese origin returning home from the persecution they are suffering in the United States.
Despite the forgetfulness of civility, what is happening in the United States does not make much sense.