Asia, the Pied Piper of global R&D

Researchers at the University of Sheffield and Aston Business School have found that investment in Research and Development (R&D) is rapidly shifting from North America and Europe to Asia, resulting in a small elite club of regions, in both the advanced and developing world, which is dominating the global knowledge economy.

In their findings, which were released today, the researchers found that companies in advanced regions, including the Silicon Valley in the US, Cambridge in the UK, Ottawa in Canada and Helsinki in Finland, are increasingly establishing partnerships and networks with companies and universities in the fast-developing Asian regions.

They found that of the $ 50 billion invested by multinational companies in R&D projects around the world between 2002 and 2005, Asian economies received 58 per cent of the investment, with Europe receiving 22 per cent and North America 14 per cent. The majority of the investment in Asia is concentrated in a very small number of locations, such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai in India and Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai in China.

While Asia was the dominant destination of R&D investment, North America was the primary source, accounting for 50 per cent of R&D investment, followed by Europe with 28 per cent. This resulted in North America having net R&D investment deficit of $ 18 billion and Europe a deficit of $ 3 billion.

According to the authors of 'Competing for Knowledge', Dr Robert Huggins of the University of Sheffield's Management School and Dr Hiro Izushi of Aston Business School, the key impact of this global redistribution of knowledge is that many regions in North America and Europe are losing out and the competitiveness gap between these locations and the elite regions is becoming even wider.

The research also shows that companies in advanced economies are finding it increasingly difficult to create innovations resulting in market-leading goods and services. For example, between 1996 and 2006, productivity growth resulting from innovation in the US amounted to only 1.5 per cent per annum, considerably lower than that achieved in the 1950s or 1960s.

"As the knowledge required to produce innovations becomes more specialised and located in new locations around the world, companies are having to ensure that they are closely linked and aligned with these new sources wherever they may be. Since China is now the second highest research spender, it is increasingly likely that it

You'd better believe it.

I swear Gurav, sometimes you got an complex mind.

I had a hard time understanding what your post, but I'll do my best to answer.

America and Europe are still far ahead of Asia in terms of technological innovation. This is because a large population of Asians are uneducated and unprepared for the knowledge based economy. Furthermore, the educational system in asia are pretty rigid and does not encourage people to think outside the box. Instead, its stresses more on following orders and obedience to higher authority, rather than indepedent thinking and exploring possibilities. Thats why asians still have a long way to go to catch up to american and european technological level.

New doctrines of the western colonisation forces and of course, the new form of slaveries as the consequences of ignorance.

I wonder when will the Asia/far East Asian countries starting to understand the menaces of the western Imperialism. It is all about controlling issues and forcing dependencies ?that would be like currency/exchange/local politics/cultural events/social structures etc.?

Unless its is a ?propaganda issues?, no one in the west gives a damn about the stories of bankrupted farmers committing suicide in India because of mass productions of cheap (imported) goods.

History is right here to study, not just for watching?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_European_colonization_wave_(15th_century-19th_century) "> The First European colonization wave (15th century-19th century)

And then..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_European_colonization_wave_(19th-20th_century) "> The Second European colonization wave (19th-20th century)




"Before, the powerful met behind the backs of the world to scheme their future wars and displacements. Today they have to do it in front of thousands in Cancun and millions around the world.

"That is what this is all about. It is war. A war against humanity. The globalization of those who are above us is nothing more than a global machine that feeds on blood and defecates in dollars."

Subcomandante Marcos, EZLN, 10 September 2003

of=and

Blame it all to one of the most evil organizations of all time.

WTO

In a democratic society, we presume the right to make laws that reflect the deepest values of citizens. But this is no longer the case. With the emergence of the World Trade Organization (WTO), democracy has moved to the back burner.

It no longer matters what democratic societies want; what matters is what global corporations want, as expressed and enforced by global trade bureaucracies in Geneva.

Created in 1994, the WTO is already among the most powerful, secretive, undemocratic and unelected bodies on Earth. It has been granted unprecedented powers that include the right to rule on whether laws of nations - concerning public health, food safety, small business, labor standards, culture, human rights, or anything - are "barriers to trade" by WTO standards. If so, the WTO can demand their abrogation, or enforce very harsh sanctions.

Q, your hatred of the west must be really strong........

Sorry I don't hate, but if telling the truth counted as hate then so be it.

History is in front of you and if you ignoring it then you will suffer.

Here is a small sample of the (friendly west).


India's secret history: 'A holocaust, one where millions disappeared...'

Author says British reprisals involved the killing of 10m, spread over 10 years

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Friday August 24, 2007
The Guardian

A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them.

In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world's superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.

Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra.

The author says he was surprised to find that the "balance book of history" could not say how many Indians were killed in the aftermath of 1857. This is remarkable, he says, given that in an age of empires, nothing less than the fate of the world hung in the balance.

"It was a holocaust, one where millions disappeared. It was a necessary holocaust in the British view because they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. It was simple and brutal. Indians who stood in their way were killed. But its scale has been kept a secret," Misra told the Guardian.

His calculations rest on three principal sources. Two are records pertaining to the number of religious resistance fighters killed - either Islamic mujahideen or Hindu warrior ascetics committed to driving out the British.

The third source involves British labour force records, which show a drop in manpower of between a fifth and a third across vast swaths of India, which as one British official records was "on account of the undisputed display of British power, necessary during those terrible and wretched days - millions of wretches seemed to have died."

continue...

There is a macabre undercurrent in much of the correspondence. In one incident Misra recounts how 2m letters lay unopened in government warehouses, which, according to civil servants, showed "the kind of vengeance our boys must have wreaked on the abject Hindoos and Mohammadens, who killed our women and children."

Misra's casualty claims have been challenged in India and Britain. "It is very difficult to assess the extent of the reprisals simply because we cannot say for sure if some of these populations did not just leave a conflict zone rather than being killed," said Shabi Ahmad, head of the 1857 project at the Indian Council of Historical Research. "It could have been migration rather than murder that depopulated areas."

Many view exaggeration rather than deceit in Misra's calculations. A British historian, Saul David, author of The Indian Mutiny, said it was valid to count the death toll but reckoned that it ran into "hundreds of thousands".

"It looks like an overestimate. There were definitely famines that cost millions of lives, which were exacerbated by British ruthlessness. You don't need these figures or talk of holocausts to hammer imperialism. It has a pretty bad track record."

Others say Misra has done well to unearth anything in that period, when the British assiduously snuffed out Indian versions of history. "There appears a prolonged silence between 1860 and the end of the century where no native voices are heard. It is only now that these stories are being found and there is another side to the story," said Amar Farooqui, history professor at Delhi University. "In many ways books like Misra's and those of [William] Dalrymple show there is lots of material around. But you have to look for it."

What is not in doubt is that in 1857 Britain ruled much of the subcontinent in the name of the Bahadur Shah Zafar, the powerless poet-king improbably descended from Genghis Khan.

Neither is there much dispute over how events began: on May 10 Indian soldiers, both Muslim and Hindu, who were stationed in the central Indian town of Meerut revolted and killed their British officers before marching south to Delhi. The rebels proclaimed Zafar, then 82, emperor of Hindustan and hoisted a saffron flag above the Red Fort.

continue..

What follows in Misra's view was nothing short of the first war of Indian independence, a story of a people rising to throw off the imperial yoke. Critics say the intentions and motives were more muddled: a few sepoys misled into thinking the officers were threatening their religious traditions. In the end British rule prevailed for another 90 years.

Misra's analysis breaks new ground by claiming the fighting stretched across India rather than accepting it was localised around northern India. Misra says there were outbreaks of anti-British violence in southern Tamil Nadu, near the Himalayas, and bordering Burma. "It was a pan-Indian thing. No doubt."

Misra also claims that the uprisings did not die out until years after the original mutiny had fizzled away, countering the widely held view that the recapture of Delhi was the last important battle.

For many the fact that Indian historians debate 1857 from all angles is in itself a sign of a historical maturity. "You have to see this in the context of a new, more confident India," said Jon E Wilson, lecturer in south Asian history at King's College London. "India has a new relationship with 1857. In the 40s and 50s the rebellions were seen as an embarrassment. All that fighting, when Nehru and Gandhi preached nonviolence. But today 1857 is becoming part of the Indian national story. That is a big change."

What they said

Charles Dickens: "I wish I were commander-in-chief in India ... I should proclaim to them that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the race."

Karl Marx: "The question is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton."

L'Estaffette, French newspaper: "Intervene in favour of the Indians, launch all our squadrons on the seas, join our efforts with those of Russia against British India ...such is the only policy truly worthy of the glorious traditions of France."

The Guardian: "We sincerely hope that the terrible lesson thus taught will never be forgotten ... We may rely on native bayonets, but they must be officered by Europeans."

Why should people of the east pay for the westerners political disagreements..??

As you can see clearly in the logics of the goddamn American Bush administration.

It is like the MAFIA blows something up in the US, then American punishing the GREECE because of ITALIAN MAFIA.


Fascinating .. isn't it..?