Made in China 2025

Beijing issued an official warning on Monday for people seeking to study in the United States, amid heightened tensions between the two countries. China’s Ministry of Education urged students and academics to “raise their risk assessment” after an increase in visa delays and denials for those who had applied to study in the US. “For a period of time now, some Chinese students in the US have faced situations where their visas were restricted, the visa review period was extended, the period of validity was shortened, or [their applications] were rejected,” it said in a statement, relayed by the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. “The ministry wants to remind students and scholars to raise their r

When Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stood up in the Great Hall of the People last month to deliver his annual work report, he spoke for more than an hour and a half. Yet he was notably silent about one high-profile government policy. Not once did he mention Beijing’s flagship “Made In China 2025” industrial strategy, unveiled with such fanfare back in 2015. Since then, of course, MIC2025 has attracted intense criticism internationally. Beijing’s plan to pour vast state resources into seizing a dominant position in emerging high-tech industries was one of the main complaints in the US Section 301 report that last year led Washington to impose punitive tariffs on imports from China. And MIC2025 w

There are fast computers, and then there are “exascale” computers, machines so quick on their (rubber) feet that they boggle the mind. To be exact, they are supercomputers size of a room capable of carrying out a quintillion, or a billion billion, calculations every second. They don’t exist just yet, but once they do they will be able to take on complex tasks such as climate change modeling, as well as speeding up the development of demanding technologies like artificial intelligence. Amid an intensifying US-China technological rivalry, the US government said Monday it is spending $500 million to build one such machine, to be delivered in 2021. But that would be a year later than the exasca

Donald Trump has found a rare supporter within the Chinese administration – one who joins him in opposing Beijing's ambitious industrial upgrade plan. China’s former finance minister Lou Jiwei has called “Made in China 2025” a waste of taxpayers’ money, in a bold attack on the industrial program that has become a flashpoint in the US-China trade war. “[Made in China] 2025 has been a lot of talking but very little was done,” Lou Jiwei, who was finance minister from 2013 to 2016, said on Wednesday on the sidelines of Beijing’s annual “two sessions” parliamentary meetings. “There was no need to talk about the year 2025 in the first place,” Lou said. “[The government] wants industries to be at t

The two most innovative companies in the world aren’t Apple and Google, or Facebook and Twitter. Instead, for the first time ever, they’re two Asian startups – Chinese on-demand delivery service Meituan Dianping and Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab. That’s according to US business magazine Fast Company’s 2019 ranking of the world’s 50 most innovative companies, a rare recognition of innovation that happened beyond Silicon Valley. And the accolade for the Chinese start-up is likely to please Beijing as it seeks aggressively to build an innovation and high-tech-driven economy. The 2019 ranking is the first time a non-US company has been chosen as the world’s most innovative company s

“America will dominate the industries of the future.” US tech policy is pretty succinctly embodied in the title of a statement the Trump administration released last week. But of these industries of the future, few things loom as large as artificial intelligence. And by signing an executive order on Monday to promote the technology, President Trump effectively declared a new “space race” with China, industry watchers say. The executive order, which Trump described as his “American AI initiative,” directs federal agencies to prioritize investment in the research and development of AI. The executive order did not mention China specifically. It also provided few details on its implementation an

It looks like the US-China trade war is having an effect – in the one area China doesn’t want it to. China’s growth rate has slowed overall, but taking a particular hit is Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” plan to dominate high-tech industries in the next decade. A number of advanced manufacturing sectors which China had counted on to upgrade its industry have experienced weakening demand. In December, growth in the new-energy car sector slowed to 15.5% compared to 24.6% in November, while production of industrial robots fell by 12.1% compared to a year earlier and the production of integrated circuits and high-end industrial and military products fell 2.1%, also compared to a year earlier, acc

As China prepares to send its economic czar to Washington late this month to hash out a deal to end the US-China trade war, there are few things more likely to make or break an agreement than Beijing’s high-tech industry push. While Beijing has insisted that the plan, called Made in China 2025, comes out of a legitimate need to move up the value chain in global manufacturing, the Trump administration has labeled it a threat to the American economy and an example of China’s allegedly unfair trade practices. The debate over “Made in China 2025” underscores a fundamental rift between market-led growth in the West and China’s state-led innovation approach.  Driven by state First introduced in 2

What’s the justification for tariffs on $100 billion of Chinese imports to the US? An arcane piece of legislation, specifically Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. Last April, the US Trade Representative (USTR), Robert Lighthizer, produced a long report initiated under Section 301, claiming China had been engaging in unfair trade practices. China objected, saying the unilateral initiation of a trade war had no international legal basis. The report read like a charge sheet and accused the Communist Party of orchestrating an onslaught against American businesses to weaken the economic and high-tech advances enjoyed by the US. The WTO is not clear enough on these issues Craig Allen, president, U

A “smart city” in Shanghai has unveiled its latest hi-tech attraction: a 50-foot long 3D-printed footbridge that is the first of its kind in the country. The span, which opened for business on Friday, was created by Shanghai Machinery Construction Group, using materials made by 3D printing company Polymaker, the state-run China News Service reported. The footbridge, which engineers said should last about 30 years, was installed over a narrow creek at the Taopu Smart City complex in Shanghai’s western Putuo district, the news report said. “Many people have never touched a 3D printed object and they still think of it as part fantasy and part future tech, so projects like this do a lot of good