India, China not a threat: Gates

BERKELEY: The United States has nothing to fear from rapidly growing technology markets in China and India, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp. said.

"China and India are the big change agents for the years ahead," Gates told students at the University of California Berkeley. "We have to go into the risky new areas. That's what's going to allow the United States to stay at the forefront."

Outsourcing of manufacturing and high technology jobs outside the United States has become a key issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

"It's a little scary to me that people are thinking of this as a zero sum game," Gates said, referring to criticism of outsourcing and growing overseas tech markets.

"We're at the start of a process where the whole world is getting into this virtuous cycle," Gates said.

Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, the world's largest software company, predicted the biggest breakthroughs in the future will be in computer science and biological sciences.

The world's richest man, Gates said the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a $27 billion endowment, has been giving grants for global health issues.

"I was stunned to find that 95 percent of research money goes to 5 percent of the disease burden," Gates said.