There’s been a lot of consternation amongst engineers in the West, especially in the high tech community, about the rise of China and the continued bleeding of well-paying white-collar to that country. Those voices are especially loud in the US, of which I am glad to be an curious but uninvolved nearby observer. It seems some Americans are content to keep their eyes closed, relying on the solace of a glorious past and the strongly held, but ultimately fallacious, belief of an American exceptionalism that will no doubt carry them to victory. The masses, which are mostly aware of the decline in American manufacturing, has yet awoken to the fact that this decline has seeped into the knowledge sector as well. Then there are those that see the potential catastrophe of the current path, such as President Obama, who recently announced his new initiative (with an unfortunate acronym) called WTF — Winning The Future.

History is full of stories of the rise and fall of empires, of the toxic blend of arrogance and ignorance amongst those that had lived at the top for so long that they refuse to see the crumbling foundations under their feet. China, and to a lesser extent India, has been chipping away at that foundation for the last three decades. That the American empire is glorious is not in doubt. That the empire shall continue to lead for the coming decades is not in doubt either. But how big of a lead will that be? And ultimately, how long will that lead last?

Americans need only need to take a closer look at their rival’s history to see some of it being played out at home. Nearly a century before Christopher Columbus discovered “India” somewhere in the Caribbean, the Muslim-Chinese eunuch marine explorer, Zheng He, had sailed his armada of over 200 ships and 30,000 men from China to East Africa. A model of Zheng He’s treasure ships, of which his fleet contained 62, is shown below next to what Columbus used to land on the American continent. It was on the treasure boat that Zheng He brought giraffes, zebras, and ostriches back to the Chinese Imperial Court. China was an empire near its zenith in technological progress at a time when Europe was only starting to struggle out of the Dark Ages.

But it all ended in 1424 as a new emperor took to the throne. Wanting to navel gaze rather than star gaze on the oceans, the new emperor ordered the destruction of the Zheng He’s fleet along with all of the blueprints on building them. The new emperor took a more philosophical approach to governing rather than a more pragmatic approach aided by increasing technological advances. Despite this setback, the technological lead that China had built for itself would sustain the country for another three to four centuries, before the British humbled the Chinese during the two Opium Wars. The foundation had been crumbling under the Chinese for so long, yet, their superiority complex blinded them to the fact that “the barbarians” had long surpassed them technologically. For centuries, the Chinese also thought that they, too, were exceptional.

A similar situation exist today. American technological superiority will continue to reign, for now. But how much longer? While many Americans deride Chinese goods as “junk”, this arrogance has blinded them to the fact that China now produces 600,000 engineering graduates per year (~4x the combined graduates of US and Europe) and has now the ability to send men into space. China has also announced plans to go to the moon and for its own space station. With the speed of information in the 21st century, China is mere decades behind.

But the rise of China isn’t without moderating forces. The wage gap that has made China so attractive for multi-nationals has been shrinking as more and more companies set up shop in China and as the cost of living rises exponentially in Chinese cities. Last year, a spontaneous strike by Honda workers in southern China resulted in an immediate 30% pay increase. The 6-to-1 pay ratio between Silicon Valley and Shanghai EEs is shrinking as well. This isn’t to say the US can rest on its laurels while waiting for China’s wages to catchup. The disparity is simply too great for that.

The historical forces and conditions that give rise to an empire and precipitate its fall are slow, inter-generational, often invisible, but always insistent. America, and indeed the West, needs to take a long term view of the problem and to stop simply arranging deck chairs on the Titanic; that view must involve a continued effort to elevate scientific and technological pursuits as driving forces in maintaining prosperity. It requires the country to ask its citizens to sacrifice their tax dollars for research and development into areas that may not pay off today, or even in this generation, but at least allows the country to have a chance in influencing some of these seemingly immovable historical forces for the betterment of future generations.

In order for this to happen, Western democracies must enact policies that look beyond the very handicap that is the basis for its existence — democracy, and its inefficient short term outlook precipitated by the election cycle. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear political harmony and cooperation is coming to a Congress or Parliament near you anytime soon. If that is the case, perhaps the best that the West can hope for is to see China become democratic itself, so that it too, can become embroiled in self-defeating short-term thinking.