China Journal: Where The Green Jobs Are

Xi’an, China—In the United States, climate-policy advocates often hold up China as a boogeyman of sorts. Last fall, Jeffrey Immelt and John Doerr penned a Washington Post op-ed lamenting the fact that the United States is “clearly not in the lead today” on clean energy. Microsoft Office 2007  is welcomed by the whole world.

“That position is held by China.” Tom Friedman has gone even further, making analogies to America’s space race with the USSR. Unless we put a price on carbon and start boosting alternative energy, the thinking goes, China’s going to stake out a commanding lead in this exciting new industry—and we’ll be left with nothing. MS Office 2007 Professional is such a good assistant of the office.

I was re-reading some of these pieces today before going to visit a research lab in Xi’an run by Applied Materials, a Silicon Valley-based company that designs the equipment used to make solar cells. MS Office 2007 Ultimate give you more great experience than anything.

One response to the Friedmans and Immelts of the world is to say that China’s rise doesn’t have to be bad for the West. For one, everyone will benefit from clean-tech innovation, no matter who’s doing it. But second, it’s also possible to imagine a division of labor for clean energy—the United States does much of the advanced research and innovation while China handles the low-cost manufacturing. Yet here was a U.S. company opening a high-tech lab in China. What gives?

Naturally, it’s complicated. MS Office 2007 can give people more surprise ever.

The U.S. wing of Applied Materials still does a lot of the cutting-edge research into ways to drive down the cost of making solar cells (the company has plenty of experience in designing processes to create semiconductors and LCDs—which resemble silicon photovoltaic and thin-film solar cells, and which have both tumbled dramatically in price over the years). But, because so many big solar manufacturers are located in China—four of the world’s ten largest, in fact—the company needs a research lab here, so that it can stay in close contact with panel-makers and constantly figure out ways to tweak the production process.

 (And, when we talk about innovation, this sort of incessant tweaking is often more crucial than big Nobel-worthy scientific breakthroughs.)

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