'Made in China 2025'

[Randy W]

from the SCMP - this article focuses on the 'state planning' aspect. We've seen results already in the areas of Guiness Book of World Records performances of synchronized dancing robots and drones.

 

‘Made in China 2025’ is only following the path beaten by the US and its allies

Winston Mok says the US, Japan and Korea are among the many countries that industrialised successfully on the back of government support. So why does the prospect of a Chinese industrial policy provoke outrage?

 

Robotics is one of the focus areas under the Made in China 2025 plan.

Without US government-funded innovations, Apple would not be where it is today. Without the huge research funding of the National Institutes of Health, the US pharmaceutical industry would not have attained and maintained its global leadership position. The US military-industrial complex is another key element in its system of innovation.

 

Inspired by Germany’s Industry 4.0, Made in China 2025’s chances of success are uncertain at best. Unlike Germany, China does not have an effective banking system supportive of private companies with long-term financing. The country also lacks the business culture of quality, precision and long-term orientation.

 

[Randy W]

But this article from Wired may be a little more pertinent

 

HOW THE US FORCED CHINA TO QUIT STEALING—USING A CHINESE SPY

For years, China has systematically looted American trade secrets. Here's the messy inside story of how DC got Beijing to clean up its act for a while.

 

 

Over the ensuing three decades, the couple would watch as China hurtled from eighth-largest economy in the world to second-largest, powered, famously, by mass migrations of people into new industrial cities and the erection of a vast manufacturing and export sector. But especially in the later years of the Garratts’ career as expats, the country’s growth was also propelled by a more invisible force: a truly epic amount of cheating.

China has become one of the world’s most advanced economies overnight in no small part through the rampant, state-sponsored theft of intellectual property from other countries. This extended campaign of commercial espionage has raided almost every highly developed economy.

. . .

Each theft has allowed Chinese companies to bypass untold years of precious time and R&D, effectively dropping them into the marathon of global competition at the 20th mile. China’s military has gotten a leg up too. Coordinated campaigns by China’s Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army have helped steal the design details of countless pieces of American military hardware, from fighter jets to ground vehicles to robots.

. . .

On March 22, 2016, Su Bin pleaded guilty. His 35-page agreement was perhaps the most detailed firsthand explanation of China’s spying apparatus ever released in public. “It was the first time we’d had that kind of success—the first time we’d had someone owning their part in an intrusion like this,” Vallese says. Su Bin declined to speak publicly, though, in court: “I lost my words now,” he said at his sentencing, where a judge handed him 46 months in federal prison and ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine. With time served, he was released in October 2017.

. . .

Donald Trump’s trade war against China has largely been couched as a way to punish China for its years of rampant intellectual property theft. And the official documents that make a case for that war have made scant mention of the progress that the Obama administration made. “After years of unsuccessful US-China dialogs, the United States is taking action to confront China,” wrote the US Trade Representative’s office, disregarding the quite successful dialog that took place at the Omni Shoreham hotel in 2015. If the US isn’t going to acknowledge that things ever got better, what incentive does China have to keep on good behavior?

At the same time, Chinese hacking may be on the rise again for reasons that are quite internal to Beijing. Between 2005 and 2014, the main force behind China’s campaign of cybertheft was the People’s Liberation Army. In turn, after the outing of the five PLA soldiers in 2014, that agency bore most of the embarrassment and blame for China’s weakened hand in negotiations with the US. Since 2016, for a host of reasons, the army has had its wings clipped politically by President Xi, both through a reorganization and through anticorruption drives that have seen numerous government officials sidelined, imprisoned, and, in at least one case, even sentenced to death.

 

[Randy W]

from Inkstone

 

Is China really giving up on ‘Made in China 2025’

 

 

 

But now Beijing appears to be wary of invoking the initiative, at least by name, thanks to its status as a flashpoint in its trade war with the US.

The “Made in China 2025” plan, introduced to promote manufacturing in key industries like robotics and new energy vehicles, was dropped this week from a directive issued to local governments on their working priorities.

The amendment was made to the previous document released in 2016, when the State Council – China’s cabinet – pledged to allocate more funds to cities that made progress implementing the plan.

Under the initiative, China seeks to revamp its manufacturing industry and reduce the country’s reliance on foreign technology.

. . .

When the Trump administration threatened to slap billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese goods in March, it specifically cited “Made in China 2025” as an unfair economic policy.

. . .

According to the Wall Street Journal, Beijing is now drafting a replacement to the policy that promises foreign companies greater access to the Chinese market.

However, a simply change in rhetoric is unlikely to to convince Washington to back out from the trade war.

 

[Randy W]

The Global Times has this to say about that . . .

 

How should China adjust its industrial policy?

The "Made in China 2025" plan emphasizes support to State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the investment of huge amounts of capital. China's private enterprises have faced difficulties for quite some time and there has been talk of a trend known as "the State advances while the private sector retreats." Therefore, it has become necessary and urgent to create an environment that provides fairer competition between SOEs and private firms.

The objections to the "Made in China 2025" plan made by the US have been beyond China's expectations.

Drafting the plan is a matter of China's sovereign right and China can totally ignore the attitude of the US and focus on its own decision. But China is now deeply intertwined with the world and there are practical reasons to mutually coordinate China's interest and those of Western countries including the US. Expanding areas of common interest is an important way that China has adopted to continuously move forward its reform and opening-up.

China will likely adjust its future industrial plan and policies accordingly while insisting on its right to develop the country's high technology sector.