The NYTimes has a good data-driven piece on How China Went From Clean Energy Copycat to Global Innovator, the upshot of which is that the old view of China as simply copying (“stealing” in some eyes) no longer describes reality. In some fields, including solar, batteries and hydrogen, China is now the leading innovator as measured by high-quality patents and scientific citations. None of this should surprise anyone. China employs roughly 2.6 million full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers versus ...