Inventing with the Enemy? U.S. Policy toward Chinese and Indian Human Capital

Abstract

While much scholarship has studied trade between political rivals, collaboration in the realm of technological innovation remains largely unexplored. This paper seeks to explain variation in U.S. openness to collaboration with China and India in this sphere, focusing on an understudied aspect of foreign economic policy: immigration. A growing number of highly-educated scientists, engineers, programmers, and graduate students travel between the U.S. and China and India every year, resulting in an unprecedented level of “brain circulation” between these countries, yet the U.S. is more open to some human capital flows than to others. To explain this variation, the paper highlights the role that domestic interest groups, particularly capital and labor, play in shaping U.S. policy in this realm. In doing so, it advances a novel explanation for economic openness toward rival states, while also shedding new light on the political economy of power transitions.