The transfer of energy technologies from the United States to
China will help the world's two biggest energy consumers reduce
their impacts on the global environment, a Harvard professor in
Beijing said yesterday.
Nuclear, wind and solar energy technologies are being
transferred, and US enterprises are playing a major role in the
process, but worries about intellectual property rights are
hindering their actions, Richard Vietor the senior associate dean
of Harvard Business School (HBS) told China Daily in an
exclusive interview yesterday.
He was in Beijing as part of the HBS' China Immersion Experience
program at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and
Management.
The professor of environmental management noted that the
US-based Westinghouse Electric Company had recently signed a deal
to help China build five nuclear reactors. Other US companies, like
General Electric and Chevron, have also had commercial success in
transferring solar and wind power and also coal gasification
technologies to China.
In the future, hydrogen technologies, which the US is
researching, could also be transferred, he said.
In the energy sector, the US Government bars only the transfer
of defense-related technologies to China, he said.
"I can't think of an area where we (the two countries) compete
more than we cooperate," he said in reference to energy
technology.
The two countries must cooperate because they are the world's
largest energy consumers and importers, and also pump the most
carbon dioxide into the air, he said.
The biggest problem to emerge for the American side has been
intellectual property rights, he said.
"I have talked with a lot of American companies that are not
willing to invest here because they are afraid that their
technologies will be stolen.
"I have also talked with firms here that are organizing their
production so that their core technology is only accessible to a
non-Chinese employee," he said. "It shouldn't have happened, but
just imagine how terrible things can be if you have some great
technology and it shows up at another company two blocks away."
The greatest fear of US companies has been the possibility that
senior Chinese employees who understand the core technology could
take their knowledge over to a competitor, he said.
(China Daily January 5, 2007)