US 'should deregulate tech export controls'

By Cai Hong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-27 08:46

WASHINGTON: The United States must reassess its control over hi-tech exports, University of Oregon professor emeritus Richard P. Suttmeier told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Tuesday.

Whether the controls strike the right balance between promoting trade in industries in which it enjoys comparative advantages and protecting strategic technologies is questionable, the professor said at the commission's hearing on China's industrial policy and its impact on the US economy.

He called for special attention to "deemed exports", or the movement of technology developed by foreign researchers working with US companies, universities or government laboratories.

"Chinese industrial policy need not lead us into a zero-sum game," Suttmeier said, "especially if we recognize that the challenges from China have less to do with Chinese industrial policy than with our failures to solve chronic problems keeping our nation from reaching its potential."

Because of US export controls, China either seeks technology from other suppliers or employs a policy of developing its own technology.

The businesspeople, scholars and journalists at the hearing found fault with China's economic strategy of nurturing indigenous innovation and called for more government involvement to revive the US' hi-tech economy.

In February, China unveiled plans to bolster 10 pillar industries most severely impacted by the economic crisis. They are the automobile, steel, shipbuilding, machinery-manufacturing, electronics, information, textile and petrochemical sectors.