雅思阅读材料：the Innovation of Ameirica_雅思英语阅读

雅思阅读材料：the Innovation of Ameirica

　　Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think-tank backed by the technology industry, acknowledges that America starts from an impressive level, but says other countries are catching up as their growth in RD and the number of their scientists and engineers gradually approaches, or overtakes, Americas. China has doubled the share of its GDP devoted to RD, although it remains below Americas. In 2000 Americans filed six times as many patent applications as Chinese residents did. By 2009, however, China had surpassed the American total.

　　American companies have begun to build more RD facilities in emerging countries, both in response to local government pressure and to be closer to customers. General Electric, which already has research centres in China, India and Germany, announced last year that it would put one in Brazil. This, it says, has not come at Americas expense: GE plans to add two more research centres in the United States to the one it runs in upstate New York. Mark Little, the head of GE Global Research, the companys in-house research division, says putting scientists and researchers into other countries enables GE to come up with products it would not have thought of before. For rural Chinese hospitals, more used to doing things manually than in America and Europe, GE designed less-automated MRI machines.

　　Adam Segal, author of Advantage: How American Innovation can Overcome the Asian Challenge, says Asias threat to American technological leadership is overstated. Chinas research output is soaring, but much of it is poor-quality or based on plagiarism. Chinese companies are seizing market share in solar panels and wind turbines largely because of low manufacturing wages, says Mr Segal: They have made no major breakthroughs in any of the underlying technologies. RD spending in India is minuscule.