As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Vincent Chow looks at how China challenges core American assumptions about innovation and technology, and the historical stakes of their competition in artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
In 1969, the renowned British sinologist Joseph Needham posed a series of questions about China so influential that they became known as the \u201cNeedham Question\u201d.<\/p>\n
At its core, Needham was trying to reconcile China\u2019s past glories with what he saw in the China of the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n
Namely, why did the 18th-century Industrial Revolution happen in Europe and not China, a country that had led the world in technological innovation up until the 15th century, and what were the reasons for technology and science in China stagnating for centuries thereafter?<\/p>\n
Like Needham, Erik Baark \u2013 professor emeritus at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology \u2013 also spent much of his decades-long career researching Chinese innovation and technology. But at a guest lecture at the Hong Kong Baptist University last month, Baark proposed a fundamentally different question \u2013 an inversion of the original.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe central question is now this,\u201d said Baark, author of Innovation and China\u2019s Global Emergence. \u201cWhy is China now able to contribute to global science and innovation? More than that, why does there even seem to be an alternative dynamism in Chinese innovation?\u201d<\/p>\n
For decades, the West questioned China\u2019s ability to innovate and to invent truly original technologies. China can only copy Western technology or be reliant on fat government subsidies, the critics claimed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,48214,53,934,25,2699,580,387,6010,48211,2832,48213,926,46623,26032,48212],"class_list":["post-91615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-alexander-hamilton","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-beijing","tag-chatgpt","tag-china","tag-deepseek","tag-dong-jielin","tag-epoch-ai","tag-erik-baark","tag-glm","tag-hong-kong-university-of-science-and-technology","tag-industrial-revolution","tag-joseph-needham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}