"America’s Advantages: Contending with China’s Tech Rise" - by CWP alum Andrew Kennedy
Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has led the world in science, technology and innovation—leadership that has been evident across a range of dimensions. The country has traditionally been the world’s leading investor in research and development (R&D), spending nearly $900 billion on R&D in 2022.Footnote1 US high-tech firms have become global juggernauts, and US universities are unrivaled in the breadth of their expertise across the sciences. Moreover, world-leading clusters in places like Silicon Valley and Boston-Cambridge foster close collaboration between these leading firms and universities. In 2023, in fact, the Global Innovation Index gave the United States a score of 99.9/100 for R&D collaboration between industry and academia.Footnote2 The United States’ multi-faceted leadership in technological innovation, in turn, has underpinned the country’s economic vitality, military might, and global prestige for decades.
While the United States remains an impressive leader in many regards, China’s emergence as a technology power in recent years is nothing short of remarkable. China’s R&D spending continues to rise, having reached 83 percent of the US figure in 2021.Footnote3 More and more Chinese high-tech firms not named Huawei have become global leaders, including BYD in electric vehicles, DJI in drones, and CATL in batteries. Chinese scientists publish more research than those of any other country, and the impact of this research is increasingly impressive.Footnote4 The Chinese government is actively fostering closer collaboration between the country’s scientists and its technology firms, and hundreds of new “innovation consortia” are focusing such cooperation on specific challenges. China still faces serious impediments to its progress, ranging from its deficient financial system to an increasingly unfriendly international environment. Even so, the challenges China faces make its progress all the more striking, and it would be foolish to underestimate the country’s potential.
Thus far, the United States has failed to craft an adequate response to China’s emergence as a technology power. To be sure, Washington has hardly ignored it. On the defensive side, US policymakers have adopted a range of measures, from tighter investment screening to export controls on advanced computer chips, to limit China’s access to critical technologies.Footnote5 Such measures are important, and the United States could certainly invest in a broader technology denial effort vis-à-vis China.Footnote6 Recent research indicates that the impact of technology controls is complex, however, and that it depends on a range of different factors including the nature of the technology and the global market landscape.Footnote7 In addition, wider technology controls could require more cooperation from US allies, but some allies are less enthusiastic about controlling technology than Washington appears to be.Footnote8 Technology controls are also vulnerable to evasion, and US technology controls focused on China have hardly proven airtight in recent years.Footnote9
The difficulty of playing defense underscores the importance of playing offense: pro-actively investing in US technological leadership. However, recent US policies on this front range from inadequate to self-defeating. Offensive measures under the Biden administration included a striking embrace of industrial policy, one that targeted semiconductors and green tech in particular, through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet industrial policy is easier to imagine than to implement, and it is not evident that the US government has sufficient capacity to assess high-tech opportunities or supply chains and to make appropriate decisions about them.Footnote10 It is also unclear whether the United States has sufficient workers with the right technical skills to make these initiatives work, particularly in the critical semiconductor industry.Footnote11 Washington has also failed to fully fund its initiatives: even during the Biden administration, actual appropriations for federal research agencies fell well short of what was authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act.Footnote12
America’s Advantages: Contending with China’s Tech Rise
Pages 135-151 | Published online: 07 Jul 2025
Andrew Kennedy specializes in international and comparative politics, with particular interest in China, India, and the United States. His recent work has focused primarily on the politics and policymaking surrounding science, technology, and innovation. This work has focused on several distinct themes, including China’s rise as a technology power, U.S.-China high-tech rivalry, and the (de)globalization of innovation. He has also published widely on the foreign policies of China and India in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods.
Andrew Kennedy is the author of three book manuscripts, including:
• Rebellious Follower: China's Search for Science, Technology, and Innovation (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).
• The Conflicted Superpower: America’s Collaboration with China and India in Global Innovation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). Published as a Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Warren I. Cohen Book on American–East Asian Relations. Reviewed in Perspectives on Politics, Public Administration Review, Political Science Quarterly, and Kirkus Reviews. Translated into Chinese and published as 全球科技创新与大国博弈by CITIC Press Group in 2021. Received the Kirkus Star Award for books of exceptional merit in 2018.
• The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru: National Efficacy Beliefs and the Making of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Reviewed in Perspectives on Politics, The China Quarterly, Journal of Cold War Studies, The China Journal, Asian Security, Pacific Affairs, Contemporary South Asia, Strategic Analysis, China Report, The Book Review, Canadian Foreign Policy, and The Hindu.
Photo Credit: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0163660X.2025.2516976
