And they might call it prophetic....(well, not really) I just had a conversation with a friend where I expounded on my idea that the West's long term rival is China. My opinion is that because the Han people tend not to be encumbered by the same ethical limitations due to individual rights they will make great advances in human genetic engineering. I even think they'll tailor soldiers-and create something of an army of clones [1]. What can the West do to respond? I believe that the liberal order always has more potential for innovation and creative energy, but the means do not justify the ends. We will never equal the Chinese on the level of manipulating human biology via the brute force methods we have now, and so they'll have a head start. But, we don't suffer the same limitations in the field of non-biological technologies. I suspect that if humanity will evolve to the "next level," cybernetics will play a crucial role. Because of our qualms with manipulating the germ line and/or experimenting on post-fetal human beings, Chinese and Western progress in the fields of transhumanism will diverge. In the end, it might be the clone army vs. the borgs. Kind of funny in a creepy way. Update: Futurepundit responds, I'll address his points later tonight. Response to Futurepundit

The first economic consideration is the higher living standards in America. Initial technologies for genetically enhancing progeny will be very expensive...So the first businesses that start up to offer progeny genetic engineering services will probably be started in the USA. Of course higher US regulatory barriers could easily cancel out that advantage.

I agree, the US has more potential in this area, but the Chinese government simply has more scientific opportunity. For instance, cloning is now possible in theory. But what would it require? Hundreds of women likely who would have to be impregnated with full knowledge that they would most likely miscarry, and if they do carry the child to term it will almost certainly have serious genetic defects. Who would voluntarily involve themselves in such a project? Who would subject their own children, or any children, to this sort of life? The Chinese government might I think. Our own dear government has done work on disease using marginal populations or exposed soldiers to nuclear weapons. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Chinese government could for instance offer a pardon for female prisoners, many probably imprisoned on "political" grounds. In exchange, these individuals would would have to serve as surrogates. What choice would you make in this scenario? By trial and error they might be able to advance this sort of brute force cloning technology. Once cloning does become safe, I suspect that individuals would willingly start to utilize it. But what if the Chinese reach only 50% rates of non-defective pregnancies? What if one can't test for whether or not the child's genome is not a "perfect" replica (and god knows what epigenetic factors play into this)? What is the threshold? Again, the Chinese government, and their corporations might be willing to take such risks on human cattle. Western values though rule this out, cloning technology and the like will only be used when it is safe-which might be never.

At first glance the regulatory advantage appears to be in China's court. The Chinese government probably will not stand in the way of initial attempts to provide genetic enhancement for higher IQ children. But there is one reason why this may not turn out to be the case: High IQ people are harder to politically control. Also, if Chinese parents decide they want to have children with more aggressive personalities the mainland Chinese regime may see these personality types as an additional threat to autocratic regime stability. By contrast, higher IQs and more assertive personalities pose less of a threat to the US political system (anyone want to speculate about what the US political system would be like with higher IQ and more assertive people?). So will the Chinese regime choose stability over competitive edge? It is possible.

Is this true? Are the Russians, Chinese and Germans low IQ peoples? And yet these are peoples who have lived longest under the yoke of totalitarian terror in our age. The Japanese and South Koreans have higher IQs than Americans, or European nations like the Irish or Greeks (see Lynn & Vanhanen). Are they more restive? I think the empirical evidence on this is very mixed. I don't think high IQ people are more aggressive or assertive. I think they are more rational. In fact, that might make them more susceptible to the enticements of amoral behavior. While low IQ individuals commit crimes because of impulsive needs, high IQ individuals tend to break the law in their own long-term enrichment or exploration of personal perversions (white collar crime and serial killing). IQ is certainly one factor, but whether a polity is stable and subservient is caused by many variables. Hubris has no bounds, I think the Chinese oligarchy would be willing to roll the dice, so long as they always had the best treatments. Unlike African kleptocrats, the Chinese ruling class has a sense of race and nationhood that overlays their personal greed and aggrandizement.

The competitive forces in the US favor the choice to genetically engineer at the personal level. Once suburbanite competitive urges come to the fore only one overwhelming Congressional vote could dissolve the regulatory obstacles. You can bet that the US national security establishment will line up with the ambitious suburbanites. Then the American per capita GDP advantage will do the rest.

Well, this is the "age of princes" in China because of the one-child policy. To spoil and lavish attention on a child is human, to have the income to carry out one's wishes is American. Very true. On the other hand, when I speak of "genetic treatments," I don't speak of something so benign as gene therapy to aid those that may have cystic fibrosis or a predisposition toward cancers. What can the negative consequences be of preventing the expression of a dangerous homozygous recessive? The costs are minimal, the possible benefits accrue for a lifetime. On the other hand, what about "positive" enhancement? Take IQ for instance. I think most of us would agree there is a genetic component, and almost certainly g is a phenotype that is the product of multiple regions of the genome. How many? We don't know. Murtaugh & Orwin are skeptical we'll ever been able to untie this scientific knot. godless and I have a higher opinion of the progress of science in this area. Tinkering with regions of the genome that are found to effect IQ might be a rather risky enterprise. In fact, let me take this further, and assert that many high IQ individuals are the products of the fetal environment as much as genetics. Almost surely many of the factors that cause high IQ probably would also increase the risk for other problems that parents might not be particularly excited about (Matt Ridley notes that mathematically precocious boys have many immune deficiencies in Genome). These costs would probably make any individual parent cautious about the risks. Chinese parents would be just as intimidated as American ones. On the other hand, the Chinese government might not be so intimidated. The cost for a nation is not the same as an individual. They could kill any unwanted children produced in their experiments, and since it had government sanction, who would stop them? Though I hope you're right Randall! I fear you aren't.... P.S.: I don't mean to imply that Chinese are a diabolical people. The line between good and evil is crossed by all peoples in all times. I simply believe that this is the time and place for the Han to shine in such a dubious fashion. [1] Orson Scott Card has ridiculed the idea of a clone army, but genetic uniformity might lend an advantage in the military arena where individual self-sacrifice is important and communication is crucial.