The Economist.
Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Rosie Blau.
Today on the show, the rise of neurotech in China.
And building superhighways for bugs.
But first,
Recently, in the city of Hangzhou, I watched an amputee play the piano.
He was using a bionic arm made by a company called BrainCo, which is a Chinese neurotech company.
Don Weinland is our China business and finance editor.
This bionic hand attaches without surgery.
It reads signals on his arm to communicate to the bionic limb.
I also watched somebody paint my name in classical Chinese calligraphy using a bionic hand.
So these things are quite dexterous.
And BrainCo, the company, is part of a growing industry working on what's called brain-computer interfaces.
These are technologies that read signals from the brain and sometimes send signals to the brain.
When it comes to this technology, no country is more advanced than America,
but China wants to catch up, and quickly.
Don, we talk a lot about the battles between China and America,
but this one over neurotech, why is America so far ahead?
American labs have been working on this for a long time.