Unequal Partners: U.S. Collaboration with China and India in Research and Development ANDREW B. KENNEDY FOR MORE THAN SEVEN DECADES, leadership in technological innovation has sustained the unique position of the United States in the international system. From nuclear energy to the Internet, U.S. preemi- nence in pioneering new technologies has been an important source of the country’s economic affluence and military might. In this context, it is not surprising that scholars now debate how rapidly emerging powers— particularly China and India—are developing their own capacities for innovation. Thus far, this debate has reached no consensus. Some scholars are impressed with the Asian giants’ innovation trajectories, others criticize various weaknesses in their national innovation systems, and still others remain essentially undecided. 1 While this debate has featured impressive scholarship, it has left a critical question unaddressed: how important have China and India ANDREW B. KENNEDY is Senior Lecturer in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He is the author of The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru: National Efficacy Beliefs and the Making of Foreign Policy, as well as various articles on the foreign relations of China and India in leading journals. 1 Andrew B. Kennedy, “Powerhouses or Pretenders? Debating China’s and India’s Emergence as Techno- logical Powers,” Pacific Review 28 (January 2015): 281–302; Adam Segal, Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011); Carl J. Dahlman, “Innovation Strategies in Brazil, China and India: From Imitation to Deepening Technological Capability in the South,” in Xiaolan Fu and Luc Soete, eds., The Rise of Technological Power in the South (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 15–48; and Tilman Altenburg, Hubert Schmitz, and Andreas Stamm, “Break- through? China’s and India’s Transition from Production to Innovation,” World Development 36 (February 2008): 325–344. POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY | Volume 132 Number 1 2017 | www.psqonline.org # 2017 Academy of Political Science DOI: 10.1002/polq.12573 63