Why is Asia forging ahead in technology?
09/01/2006
While the United States remains a world leader in many areas of technology, it is clear that over the past few decades the lead has been shrinking. Not only is the rest of the world catching up, but the progress of many nations, especially in Asia, suggests that in future decades they may take over technology leadership.
High-tech manufacturing has been shifting like a tide from West to East, and more recently R&D and design have been moving eastward as well. While lower wages and benefits along with less stringent regulation certainly play a part, the shift long ago became much more than just a quest for cheap labor. Modern fabs at TSMC in Taiwan, Samsung in South Korea, and Chartered in Singapore are highly automated with technology on a par with anything in the world. While engineers and scientists in Asia get much lower salaries than those in the West, they could not do world-class work if they were not highly trained and skilled.
This technology migration is not an accident of history. Many Asian countries have governments and elites highly tuned to the tremendous benefits that moving to higher technology levels can bring to a national economy. What is little known is that the US, after World War II, helped to build the foundation that is now leading Asia toward world leadership in technology.
The very successful efforts to rebuild Japan, led by General Douglas MacArthur, have been well chronicled. Less known is a program begun in 1959 through the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) was set up near Bangkok, Thailand, when there were virtually no graduate programs in engineering in South and South East Asia. It offered masters and PhD programs as well as shorter professional development courses in engineering, science, management, and related fields. Students came from some 25 mostly Asian nations, from Iran to China; many enrollees were chosen because of their potential to become future leaders in their native countries. The aim of the program was to stimulate Asian economies by providing a growing network of well-educated engineering and management leaders across Asia, according to Alistair North, a Scotsman who headed the university in the 1980s.
Much of the early funding for the AIT came from the US government and American companies, such as IBM, GE, ITT, and GTE, along with several foundations. The first dean was Thomas Evans, a retired US Army colonel, and five of the initial eight faculty were Americans. All the students not only received a solid grounding in the fundamentals of engineering, science, and management, but they also learned English. Early programs focused on disciplines important to the region, including energy, agriculture, transportation, construction and water resources, but AIT became steadily more high-tech, with programs in computer applications, industrial engineering, and technology management. Contract research programs were also set up with corporations around the world. By 1967, AIT was self sustaining.
Did it work? By 1985, over 90% of AIT’s 3500 graduates were working in Asian nations in R&D, management, consultancy, and teaching, with over 25% in senior engineering or management positions. These were among the elite in their various countries, in positions to influence policies that fostered a steady move up the technology scale. Japan was the first Asian nation to transform itself from a mostly agrarian nation into a world leader in high tech (and other industries, such as automobiles). Nations across the Pacific Rim wanted to emulate Japan’s great success, and efforts like this little-known SEATO program helped give them a boost.
Now that Asia is moving full steam ahead in high tech, with rapidly growing economies and central banks full of US treasury notes as a result of huge trade imbalances, perhaps some nations there will consider setting up a program modeled on the AIT success to help teach future American leaders about the importance of new technology in driving economic growth. Then some of our leaders may finally understand the urgency of rekindling a passion for technology, if they hope to keep the US from continuing on what appears to be an impending decline as oil reserves run down. Perhaps to attract bright young Americans, the proposed Asian-American Technology Institute might be in a very attractive setting (more exciting say, than New Haven, CT, or Cambridge, MA)-Maui perhaps? It’s a thought.
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Robert Haavind
Editorial Director