China has four times the population of the US. The only way the US can consistently stay ahead in technology is attracting the best scientists and engineers from other parts of the world. The arms race of trying to produce more domestic engineers faster is one that China will win.
I mean, China has had a far larger population than the US for many decades and yet somehow the US had a lead for a large part of the 20th century.
How did US leadership _ever_ happen?
Other factors beyond population and human talent are important: how does each country educate its people, organize its research facilities and personnel, its industry, its economy, etc? Did a country encounter misfortune, war, pestilence, political instability, etc.?
I don't disagree with you though. China has created a method of economic decision making and industrial growth which is amazingly powerful. The US seems to be struggling, paralyzed, stagnant.
> mean, China has had a far larger population than the US for many decades and yet somehow the US had a lead for a large part of the 20th century.
How did US leadership _ever_ happen?
I just gave a reasonable explanation. The US has always been a comparatively immigration friendly nation. We used to attract the best and the brightest.
Nikola Telsa, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Segei Brin - do those names sound familiar? They were all foreign immigrants to the United States. If they all stayed home or picked another country, the US would be weaker.
ok. i see the case you're making, but i still think the explanation for a nation's power and leadership depends upon much more than how many highly talented people it has.
i say that because all countries have highly talented people. and some countries (e.g. Nigeria, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil, Philipines, India) have large populations and thus large numbers of highly talented people. but that isn't enough to explain the big differences between nations as technological innovators, military powers, per capita wealth, etc.
for example, when i look at the war that led up to Britain's acquisition of Hong Kong in the 1841, i don't think i can explain much of the outcome by looking at how many highly talented people there were on each side. in 1841 China had a population of roughly 400 million while Britain had less than 30 million. China had a HUGE pool of highly intelligent, highly talented people. i see the same thing in Britain's colonialism in India. India had a VAST number of highly intelligent people.
does anyone doubt that China and India had more highly gifted people than Britain in the 1800s?
i guess i just don't see as much explanatory power in that one variable as you seem to see.
> i guess i just don't see as much explanatory power in that one variable as you seem to see.
I respect your skepticism, but at least I have an explanation. You point out problems but no solutions.
Immigration policy if not the entire answer is at least very plausibly a big part of the answer. Relatively open borders means that your nation draws upon the entire population of the world to attract the best and the brightest.
US can also stay ahead if China's party dictatorship continues to ignore the wellbeing of its people in favor of enriching Communist Party members, and the US stops dumbing down education.
The USSR was bigger than the US, and the USSR even invested heavily in education, but the US still won out.
China has four times the population of the US. The only way the US can consistently stay ahead in technology is attracting the best scientists and engineers from other parts of the world. The arms race of trying to produce more domestic engineers faster is one that China will win.