“The commercial and military distinction is eroded in China’s case,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who co-sponsored several bills that have been folded into the legislation. The Chinese government announced its initiative six years ago. The result, many experts say, is that the bill may accelerate the decoupling of the world’s largest and second-largest economies, even as each worries about how dependent it is on the other. And that has created concerns that the legislation, a classic Washington mash-up of other bills that has grown to more than 2,400 pages, may be longer on cash than real strategy. “When the government invests in pure forms of research, down the road it creates millions of jobs,” he said, citing investments in the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Source: International New York Times June 07, 2021 06:56 UTC