May 13, 2020
The United States Can’t Afford to Turn Away Chinese Talent
Intellectual property theft is a real concern, and China has been the world’s foremost infringer. But a blanket exclusion of Chinese students from U.S. academic and scientific research is not a reasonable response—and risks harming America’s critical comparative advantage: the strength and vitality of its research enterprise and innovation ecosystem. Implementing such a blunt cudgel would undermine the very engine of innovation that it seeks to protect, at a time when the United States is engaged in an ongoing and intensifying competition for global talent.
Certainly, both Republican and Democratic U.S. policymakers are right to be exploring options to take action against technology transfer. China’s party-state has undertaken extensive campaigns of industrial espionage over decades to enable the transfer of critical technologies and the theft of intellectual property from the United States. Such efforts have corresponded with Beijing’s strategic priorities, including self-driving cars and semiconductors. Among a range of tactics, academic exchanges and research partnerships can be leveraged to those ends. Such efforts can bolster China’s military modernization or facilitate party-state coercive capabilities that enable human rights atrocities, thus threatening U.S. security and principles.
Read the full article in Foreign Policy.
More from CNAS
-
Sharper: Axis of Upheaval
Commentary
A loose but growing coalition between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea demonstrates that their combined strategic interests have the potential to pose significant economic...
By Anna Pederson
-
The Will and the Power: China’s Plan to Undermine Pax Americana
Commentary
From Washington’s Farewell Address to Biden’s national security strategy, the core U.S. national interest, unsurprisingly, has not changed: to ensure the fundamental security ...
By Richard Fontaine & Robert Blackwill
-
Beyond China's Black Box
Reports
China’s foreign and security policymaking apparatus is often described as a metaphorical black box about which analysts know little. That is true to an extent, but at the same...
By Jacob Stokes
-
Sharper: Maritime Security
Commentary
The importance of securing the maritime domain is rapidly increasing. From the South China Sea to the Red Sea, the U.S. and its allies are experiencing escalating challenges t...
By Anna Pederson & Charles Horn
