Don’t look now, but Blair House has a rather important guest staying there now. That’s “Blair House” – 1651 Pennsylvania Ave. – namely the official guest house for the President of the United States, and it is currently hosting a delegation from the People’s Republic of China headed by no less than President Hu Jintao. His four-day visit to the US presumably means important face-to-face discussions with President Obama and other US business and political leaders on such topics as East Asian security, the valuation of the Renminbi, and maybe even human rights in China (and possibly in the US, too).

In the background to all this, though, is China’s growing economic power and influence. You might be surprised, but much of that actually stems from a growing Chinese superiority in certain key modern technologies, and in R&D generally, if we are to believe the “MONEY editor” of the German newsmagazine Focus, Christian Bieker, who today offers a quite informative three (Internet-)page article entitled From Dwarf to Giant. Check out the lede:

From workshop to technology mecca: China is about to have a development-leap – and is already at the top in solar energy, electric autos, and mobile telecommunications.

Keep in mind that US Defense Secretary Bill Gates actually was in China just last week, obviously on a sort of preparatory visit there, and much was made of the Chinese military using the occasion to launch the first test-flight of their latest “stealth” technology fighter, the J-20. That provided a suitable foretaste of China’s growing technical skill, but things really go much further than that. As Bieker goes on to mention:

• China is now – from the turn of the year 2010/11 – actually a net exporter of R&D to the EU;
• One-eighth of all the world’s R&D spending takes place there;
• In 2010 it overtook the US in number of patents awarded. (This raises the question of how that relates to the Middle Kingdom’s notorious laxness when it comes to observing patents and copyrights issued from the outside!)

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So today is the day: the G20 summit in London. I’m pleased to report delightfully sunny, warm, no-need-for-overcoats spring weather here in NW Europe to aid the assembled world leaders in their deliberations, even though we all realize that as a practical matter that will do little but boost the ranks of protestors out on London’s streets – for today, especially, the lives of a world leader and his/her staff are bounded by conference rooms and the climate-controlled cocoons of limousines.

Belgium’s La Libre Belgique has a good run-down (Re-start more, regulate better) of the task these leaders face. The lede:

The stakes of the “Twenty,” industrialized and developing countries, are at minimum double. Consolidate the chances of economic recovery and avoid new skidding from the financial markets. The G20 will have to convince in both registers.

As La Libre reporter Pierre-François Lovens notes, Barack Obama himself has gone on record as refusing to be satisfied with leaving London having achieved only “half measures.” Yet as Lovens also writes, “Four hours, maybe five . . . That’s the time – a priori derisory enough in view of the stakes – that the heads of state and of government of the G20 will devote on Thursday, in London, to the multiple dossiers” before them at the summit. Furthermore, the basic outlines of disagreement have not changed: the US wants greater spending on stimulus packages from other governments, especially those in Europe, while for their part the Europeans reject this idea while making it clear that they are after an expanded system of international financial regulation in which “no place, no financial product and no institution can exist anymore without supervision or transparency.” (more…)