China Proved Us Wrong About Innovation
As the TikTok ban looms, the underlying and more arduous challenge is being ignored
From papermaking to woodblock printing, gunpowder, and the compass, from Great Wall to Grand Canal, the Chinese have been innovating steadily across the centuries. So it should have come as no surprise that into the modern era they have flourished in everything from high-speed rail to autonomous vehicles, telecomm, space, ecommerce, AI…
Despite such obvious historical and evolving precedents, the West and especially the US have clung to the erroneous notion that an autocratic, centralized government is anathema to innovation. In principle, the prejudice went, communism destroys individuality, and with it entrepreneurship and the driving engines of initiative and creativity.
The most notable counterexample is the exponential success of TikTok. Less than nine years old, the app has swept the world to the point the US government is poised to take the unprecedented step of banning it this Sunday. A political and legal hot potato, the decision has bounced up to the Supreme Court, and has embroiled both parties in contentious debate.
Yet TikTok is only the high profile tip of the Chinese high tech iceberg, bobbing in a sea of impressive, often trailblazing innovation. The paradox of powerful centralized control is that instead of stifling research, development, and distribution, it has spawned robust state-centered funding, supportive governmental policies, and even private competition.
The result is an impressive array of tech companies making global impact, including Baidu outpacing Tesla, Huawei racing into 5G, Beidou giving SpaceX a run for its satellite money, Tianhe-2 dropping jaws in supercomputing, WeChat and Alipay leading mobile banking, Alibaba pressing Amazon, and Da-Jiang producing the world’s best drones.
So what’s lost in the loud yet narrow TikTok debate is the stark reality that centralized government with heavy controls doesn’t stifle innovation — and can, as it has in other Asian countries — actually be directed to boost investment in burgeoning tech. The message for America, now facing its own internal debate around more or less autocratic governance is clear:
If individual initiative and creativity can flourish within an otherwise rigid, authoritarian governmental system, then the fruits of that technological advancement can, in turn, be used to exert even more controls on the individual citizens throughout that system — think ever-advancing AI, surveillance, and personalized (selective and censored) information.
Where we go from here as a country and as a planet remain to be seen, but the trends toward expanding oligarchy and centralized power are growing. Ironically the biggest risk to America from the Chinese innovation success story isn’t as a counterpoint to democracy, but as a model to be emulated. If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em — or wage war with them for the spoils...
