China’s technological advances have catapulted the nation to the forefront of the global tech race, boosting its transformation into a superpower in the field and fostering deeper connectivity among nations. Luo Weiteng reports.
Sophisticated stealth jet fighters flying overhead, drones and other technological gadgets boasting civilian and military capabilities were among the highlights of the 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition held in Zhuhai in November, offering a visual and audio feast.
The centerpiece of the world’s biggest aerobatics show and display of China’s technological might attracted 1,022 companies from 47 countries and regions, as well as nearly 600,000 visitors, including those engaged in the Belt and Road Initiative. Behind the dazzling scene lies the nation’s awe-inspiring transformation into a technological superpower within decades — the fastest sustained expansion by a major world economy in history.
Such a technological advance can be seen through the lens of a series of national initiatives, especially the broad-ranging Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative and technology transfer policy. Unveiled in 2015 and promoted as a stand-alone initiative at the second Belt and Road Forum in 2019, the umbrella project has promoted China’s digital aspirations worldwide.
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With the DSR’s 10th anniversary around the corner, its achievements both in “hard and soft connectivity” have come under the spotlight.
In the past decade, more than 3,000 cooperative projects have got underway in BRI partner countries and regions, with 70 percent focused on “hard connectivity” in infrastructure, according to Li Yan, professor of Digital Transformation in the Department of Information Systems, Decision Science and Statistics at ESSEC Business School Asia-Pacific.
She says this embraces a vast array of tech projects, including a comprehensive terrestrial fiber optic cable network linking Russia with neighboring countries to Europe, and the 15,000-kilometer PEACE (Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe) subsea communication cable, spearheaded by China Mobile.
China’s growing digital presence set up the world’s largest 5G and gigabit broadband networks, with nearly 1.9 million 5G base stations covering 3.3 billion people, including BRI residents, says Li.
The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, with which 137 countries signed cooperation pacts in 2020, serves more than one billion users in over 100 countries as an alternative to the American Global Positioning System, Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System and Europe’s Galileo, Li notes.
The other part of the unfolding story involves “soft connectivity”, where China has given the initiative relevance by signing e-commerce memorandums of understanding with more than 30 countries and digital economy investment cooperation agreements with over 18 countries and regions, as official data show.
Capitalizing on the way a new breed of homegrown e-commerce giants is making technological norms and standards on the global stage, the DSR has given the ancient trade route a digital makeup via “Silk Road E-commerce” with a soft touch. The meteoric rise of these cross-border e-commerce platforms has added a meaningful footnote to a structural shift in global trade flows.
Citing the “Access to Satellite TV for 10,000 African Villages” project, Li stresses the pursuit of addressing the inequalities of a digital divide that makes “the DSR a powerful enabler of public benefit projects in education, healthcare, agriculture, and social services” in addition to commercial achievements. The project has been implemented across 21 African nations, delivering satellite digital TV signals to 9,512 villages and connecting millions of Africans to global information. Further examples can be found across the developing world — from Central Asia to the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Two sides of the coin
Amid rising protectionist and anti-trade rhetoric, the DSR, however, could easily fall into the narrative of the race for global technological supremacy. At stake is the future of technologies that will reshape the world in flux.
Geopolitical storms continue to flag mounting concerns over data security, cyber sovereignty, and espionage, “leading some economies to approach Chinese technology with caution”, Li warns. Regulatory differences and varying data protection laws also make it challenging to navigate the intricate world of compliance, says Zou Shujun, executive president of the National Eastern Tech-Transfer Center (NETC).
While addressing gaps in infrastructure and digital literacy remains a lofty goal of the initiative, Zou says it will not be an easy task to help BRI economies with underdeveloped digital infrastructure and limited access to terminal equipment.
Li sees such challenges as two sides of the same coin. On the flip side, “geopolitical pressures can serve as a catalyst for domestic innovation, pushing China toward breakthroughs in critical technologies,” she reckons. “Additionally, escalating geopolitical tensions incentivize China to diversify its global partnerships by engaging with a broader range of countries.”
Li and Zou point to stronger protection of intellectual property rights as a policy trend, a pressing issue and a new way to foster international trust.
China’s leading role in innovative fields, such as telecommunication, high-speed rail, renewable energy, electric vehicles and battery, and drone technology is what fundamentally positions the nation as “a central player in global technology networks”, Li notes.
Collaboration remains the name of the game, says Zou, who sees opportunities arising from expansion of the digital economy along BRI countries and strategic partnerships in life sciences and renewable energy.
At a critical historic juncture, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has all the elements needed to be major contributing factors, more significant than ever before.
The southern China tech powerhouse, home to a constellation of prominent tech companies in the world’s second-largest economy, is known for possessing the finest minds and impeccable strengths in research and development. Li highlights the region’s unique combination of different legal and tax systems, currencies, and customs regulations that presents a complex environment for policy implementation, capital flow, talent exchange, and business operations.
“This diversity enables the GBA to serve as a large-scale testing ground where regulatory bodies can collaboratively develop policies and measures to minimize cross-border friction,” she says. “In this sense, the GBA acts as a practical laboratory for addressing the cross-border business challenges that are likely to arise on an even larger scale along the DSR.”
Hong Kong, the digital gateway of the DSR, sits at the center of the region’s tech success, Zou says, betting on the city’s financial hub status to support digital finance and cross-border transactions for the DSR, and its capability of enhancing regional connectivity with smart logistics and infrastructure.
The 11-city cluster Greater Bay Area has been a witness and contributor to, as well as a participant in China’s technology transfer that has come a long way since humble beginnings in the 1980s. “Leveraging foreign technology was a major characteristic during the initial phase,” Li says.
This learning process contributed to the long-held stereotype that once saw China derisively dubbed a copycat, notes Li, citing jokes in those days suggesting that “B2C” meant “Bring to China” and “C2C” meant “Copy to China”.
Embracing innovation
China has charted its course of commercializing scientific and technological achievements, and fostering closer collaboration between academia and industry in the 1990s.
But, it wasn’t until the 2000s that the country embraced the longed-for strategic shift to indigenous innovation, placing strategic emphasis on domestic research and development and technology transfer within its borders, Li recalls.
Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai’s Pudong district, Zou says, stands as testament to regional innovation efforts at the time.
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The next turning point came with an innovation-driven strategy calling for a fundamental shift from manufacturing to high-tech and innovative industries in the 2010s, according to Zou. The turnover in technology transfer in Shanghai, where NETC is based, hit 485 billion yuan ($66.8 billion) last year, accounting for more than 10 percent of the financial hub’s gross domestic product.
With the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–25) outlining ambitious technological goals and a burning desire for greater self-reliance, especially in key areas like AI and quantum computing, semiconductors, and biopharmaceuticals and health tech, innovation has been recognized as a core economic driver of national strategic importance.
Contact the writer at sophialuo@chinadailyhk.com
