Global Business

China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: March 17, 2010

width="190" />XI’AN, China — For years, many of China’s best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge. But Mark R. Pinto is moving in the opposite direction.

Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays…

… NatCore Technology of Red Bank, N.J., recently discovered a way to make solar panels much thinner, reducing the energy and toxic materials required to manufacture them. American companies did not even come look at the technology, so NatCore reached a deal with a consortium of Chinese companies to finish developing its invention and mass-produce it in Changsha, China.

“These other countries — China, Taiwan, Brazil — were all over us,” said Chuck Provini, the company’s chief executive…

For the entire story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/global/18research.html?emc=eta1