Hong Kong article

I’m afraid I can’t post it, since I’m now on the payroll of the South China Morning Post and they’ve chosen to make these articles available for subscribers only. It’s from Sunday, May 22, 2011.

But the title they gave it is: “Does China have the smarts to plumb IQ?”

The subheading says: “Free from the ghost of the Nazis, and with a cheap supply of scientists, an undemocratic state is heading into genetic territory the West cannot tread”

The bold-faced money quote they chose to highlight is: “To generate intellectual property where minds are cheap and sell it where knowledge is costly is crafty arbitrage.”

The topic of the article is a gigantic new genetics lab in Hong Kong where they’re trying to discover the “IQ gene.” The sheer scale of the operation would be unaffordable in the West, but qualified Chinese scientists are available within a much lower budget. Among other problems with this project, the “high IQ” pool they are using for their DNA samples seems to me like nothing but a herd of docile teachers’ pets: it’s basically straight A students, and let’s face it– many straight A students are unimaginative bores. Then again, capable but unimaginative bores may be exactly what the state apparatus most wishes to produce.