Georgia Tech: China Now the No. 1 Tech Nation

Since the mid-1980s, Georgia Tech's researchers have ranked the "technological standing" of different countries, a leading indicator of their success as a technology producer. In this year's study, 33 nations are ranked on four factors: national orientation toward technological competitiveness, socioeconomic infrastructure, technological infrastructure and productive capacity.

Here's what Nils Newman, co-author of the study (which is supported by the National Science Foundation), had to say:

"Since World War II, the United States has been the main driver of the global economy. Now we have a situation in which technology products are going to be appearing in the marketplace that were not developed or commercialized here. We won't have had any involvement with them and may not even know they are coming."

China's rise is nothing short of meteoric. China received a "technological standing" score of 82.8, compared to 76.1 for the United States, 66.8 for Germany and 66 for Japan. Just 11 years ago, China's score was 22.5. The highest score the United States has achieved in the Georgia Tech study was 95.4, back in 1999.

Education is a major factor. According to the study summary, "China's emphasis on training scientists and engineers -- who conduct the research needed to maintain technological competitiveness -- suggests it will continue to grow its ability to innovate. In the United States, the training of scientists and engineers has lagged, and post-9/11 immigration barriers have kept out international scholars who could help fill the gap." (This makes the current debate over IT education and IT textbooks more timely and important; read what others have said and leave your thoughts on the topic here.)

The United States remains ahead on many important indicators, such as technological infrastructure and productive capacity. But China has been improving these scores. Newman's analysis:

"It's like being 40 years old and playing basketball against a competitor who's only 12 years old -- but is already at your height. You are a little better right now and have more experience, but you're not going to squeeze much more performance out. The future clearly doesn't look good for the United States."

That last statement is over the top, in my opinion. But China is certainly going to be an important technology force in coming years, one that anyone interested in the future of technology and business must get to know better. For more on China, see my January 2007 column on the strong personal connection China's IT community has to the United States, and my new column on the state of China's internal IT.

Watch too for an upcoming slideshow of books on China on cioinsight.com. And for Mandarin readers -- or anyone willing to filter the language through translation sites like Google's -- the best source is our Beijing-based publication CIO Insight China, written by Chinese IT journalists for a Chinese audience.

Posted by Allan Alter on January 24, 2008 4:03 PM