Thomas L. Friedman / Their moon shot and ours: China invests in the future while we invest in Afghanistan
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China is doing moon shots. Plural. When I say "moon shots" I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments.
China has at least four going now: One is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers -- from America -- giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country's leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities.
Not to worry. America has a multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot, too: fixing Afghanistan.
This contrast is not good. I recently was at a Washington Nationals baseball game, where I overheard a management consultant for a big national firm telling his colleagues that his job was to "market products to the Department of Homeland Security." I thought: "Oh, my! Inventing studies about terrorist threats and selling them to the U.S. government, is that an industry now?"
We need to be in a race with China, not just al-Qaida. Let's start with electric cars.
The electric car industry is pivotal for three reasons, argues Shai Agassi, the CEO of Better Place, a global electric car company that next year will begin operating national electric car networks in Israel and Denmark. First, the auto industry was the foundation for America's manufacturing middle class. Second, the country that replaces gasoline-powered vehicles with electric-powered vehicles -- in an age of steadily rising oil prices and steadily falling battery prices -- will have a huge cost advantage and independence from imported oil. Third, electric cars are full of power electronics and software. "Think of the applications industry that will be spun out from electric cars," says Mr. Agassi. It will be the iPhone on steroids.
Europe is using $7-a-gallon gasoline to stimulate the market for electric cars; China is using $5-a-gallon gasoline and naming electric cars as one of the industrial pillars. And America? President Barack Obama has directed stimulus money at electric cars, but he is unwilling to do the one thing that would create the sustained consumer pull required to grow an electric car industry: raise taxes on gasoline.
First Published September 28, 2010 12:00 am
