Innovation-driven tech is key to growth

I visited China for the first time in 1994 and was awed by the level of development in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, in particular their large modernized highways, transportation and buildings. In those years, many of China's friends in the West were worried that China was "allowing" Western financial oligarchs to loot its workforce by establishing labor intensive industries and operating in the many de-taxed industrial parks.

My husband and I had the opportunity to meet with a high-level representative of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai, and in the discussion we had on the issue, he firmly said that China cannot "export the products of cheaper labor forever", intimating that the government had other plans in mind.

Later in the day, he proudly offered to accompany us to a print shop in the city. As we entered a sizable warehouse, our view was blocked by the largest and latest model of the best rotary press Germany had produced in those days. The workers had to climb up on ladders to reach the top of the machine, whose length seemed to disappear in the farther end of the work floor. It took that machine only two hours a day to print all the materials required.