Made in China 2025

China faces another embarrassment in its drive to build home-grown technology after one of the country’s leading research institutes suspended a senior computer scientist for making false claims. The prestigious Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing said it had suspended lab scientist Liu Lei after his false claim that a programming language he helped develop was made entirely in China. The school said it would investigate Liu. The scandal adds to a series of blows to China’s ambition to reduce its dependence on imported technology, including software and computer chips.  The prospect of state funding for domestic innovation has led to a number of ex

China and the United States reached an agreement that would help fend off talk of a decoupling between the world’s two largest economies, a top Chinese official said. The countries signed an initial trade deal on Wednesday to put the brakes on their 18-month war of tariffs that roiled global markets and shook up supply chains. Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, speaking to reporters after a signing ceremony with US President Donald Trump, said the deal indicated that the two countries are deeply interconnected. “I think it is very unrealistic. A few people without economic backgrounds are talking about decoupling between China and the US, but in reality it is impossible,” Liu was quoted as saying

After the Trump administration showed itself willing and capable of blocking Chinese access to US technology as US-China tensions rose, Beijing may have learned. China is aiming to increase its reliance on domestic production for key components, including chips and control systems, to 75% by 2025, according to a former official. The target reflects Beijing’s determination to reduce its dependence on imports by expanding its national manufacturing innovation centers to 40 from the 15 at the end of 2019. Domestic production currently only provides around a third of the key components required by China, but Li Yizhong, a former industry and information technology minister, said this week that t

The White House and Beijing have reached an agreement on a “phase one” trade deal with most of the last-minute attention focused on agricultural purchases and tariff reductions. Among the key structural issues that may not have been adequately addressed is Washington’s concern about theft of intellectual property rights, which, according to President Donald Trump, costs the nation $600 billion annually, an accusation denied by China. Many in America’s security establishment also see China’s aggressive actions as part of broader efforts to erode America’s great power status. Thus, the transfer of technology to China is viewed not only on its commercial merits but also as a potential national

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