Chinese firms pour money into U.S. R&D in shift to innovation Reuters June 21, 2015 9:17 AM
By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON(Reuters) - Surging investment by Chinese companies in U.S. research labs is yielding a fast-growing trove of patents, part of a push to mine America for ideas to help China shift from being the world's factory floor to a driver of innovation.
Largely absent from American research hubs a decade ago, Chinese firms including Huawei Technologies (HWT.UL) and ZTE Corp are now using U.S. researchers to create patents ranging from new software to internet infrastructure, according to an analysis of Thomson Reuters' global intellectual property database.
The rapid growth in China's U.S. investments will be a key topic at economic and security talks on Tuesday and Wednesday between top U.S. and Chinese officials in Washington.
They are negotiating a bilateral investment treaty that could deepen ties between the world's two largest economies even amid tensions over China's military assertiveness.
Why the sudden concern for Central Asia rights abuses?
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In post-Ukraine mode, the European Union and United States are sharpening their efforts to address the human rights situation in Central Asia as the region becomes a new front-line in the fight against militant Islamism and a new border for the rivalry between Russia and the West in their new Cold War games. The US and its allies are changing their policy on Central Asia as Russia begins to close the doors.
The US has finalised a review of its interagency policy for Central Asia, and the EU foreign ministers will be discussing their upgraded strategy in a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, with both paying special attention to human rights. Details of the new plans are sketchy but what has been confirmed by all international rights groups is that over the past decade, the EU/US policies of "dialogue" and "bilateral engagement" have done almost nothing to affect the behaviour of Central Asian autocratic rulers or improve the situation on the ground.