This may be what’s giving the Biden Administration doubts about its aggressive “decoupling” policy: China leads all “Western democracies” in conducting basic research in the great majority of technological areas “deemed critical for economic growth and military power over the coming decades,” reported an Australian think-tank covered in Japan Times March 3. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a violently anti-China think tank funded by the U.S., while taking a firmly geopolitical view of what is actually a matter of human progress and well-being, gave China a “sometimes stunning lead” in 37 of 44 areas of technological research, including space research, energy R&D, robotics, advanced materials, quantum technology, and others. China often produces more than five times as many highly cited research papers as the United States, which ranks second worldwide (first in cited papers on advanced semiconductors and quantum computing) according to ASPI’s Technology Data Tracker. The Japan Times noted that ASPI’s report “was partly funded by the U.S. State Department.” The complete report published in March 2023 is available from ASPI at https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2023-03/ASPIs%20Critical%20Technology%20Tracker_0.pdf?VersionId=ndm5v4DRMfpLvu.x69Bi_VUdMVLp07jw