China is in pole position to overtake the United States as the premier nation for scientific and technological innovation, and will do so if Americans fail to raise their game, President Barrack Obama’s own science adviser has told The Independent on Sunday.

John Holdren, the director of the White House office of science and technology policy, explained that the US faces a similar technological challenge to the one it faced half a century ago when the USSR launched the world’s first satellite – to the surprise of the Americans.

He warned that the United States faces another ‘Sputnik moment’, but this time the adversary is China, which is investing heavily in scientific research and development. Chinese schoolchildren are now consistently outperforming USpupils in science and mathematics.

‘Everybody is looking at China and saying, if we don’t lift our game, China is going to eat our lunch economically because the amount they are investing in science, technology and innovation, while it has not yet reached anything like our level, is rising very quickly,’ Dr Holdren said.

President Obama said in his State of the Union address last month that Americans today face their own ‘Sputnik moment’ and that the US needs to reach a level […]