EU strategy for beating China in Agricultural Marketing - by Dominique Patton
China’s R&D capabilities still lag those of the west. Their international patent applications, though growing, are less than 1 per cent of the total filed in the US and Europe. And low margins offer little surplus for research and product development. China’s cost advantage will decline as the WTO makes its influence felt on currency. But if food ingredients are ever to recover previous levels of growth, and food makers are to protect against the ambitions of Chinese consumer goods firms on their own home turf they need to inject some Chinese pace and urgency to their old, rusty model. Deng Xiaoping, the man credited with opening up China’s economy in the 70’s to the international market, liked to say: “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” If western industry wants to keep catching mice, it needs to find a safer place than a defence built on either protectionism or marketing. This is one strategic battle that rests on science. The kind of science that is simply hard to replicate, with or without patent protection. The kind of science that is not a defense, but an advance. In sum, the way for western firms to make one great big patch of business out of the reach of Chinese competition is by being first – again.
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