In official party terminology, the term “key core technologies” refers to all existing or emerging technologies that promise critical strategic advantages to nations that control their production, distribution, or use. The phrase is used most often when Party leaders and state planning documents discuss technologies that Chinese firms lack the ability to manufacture, or that they can only manufacture by relying on foreign suppliers for parts or expertise. The term is intended as a call to action. When a Chinese leader identifies a specific field or product as a “key core technology” he is urging cadres, scientists, and industrialists to build the academic, financial, industrial, or legal infrastructure China needs to engineer this technology with Chinese resources alone.

The phrase key core technologies first appeared in mid-2010s, but its antecedents predate Xi Jinping. Economic planning and science policy documents produced by the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government in the early 2000s reference “core technologies in key areas” [关键领域核心技术]. The “National Medium and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan Outline,” a communique published by the State Council in 2006, provides a typical example. The communique argues that “in key areas related to the lifeline of the national economy and national security, real core technologies cannot be bought.” (State Council 2006). The communique presents the indigenous development of these “core technologies” as a prerequisite for sovereign control of Chinese economic development. To secure Chinese economic growth on the long run, the communique directs officials to build a National Innovation System [国家创新体系] focused on achieving Chinese self-sufficiency in eleven “important fields and priority topics,” eight “cutting-edge fields,” and four “fields of basic research,” including renewable energy, materials science, and protein research.

These documents largely operate in a market-friendly frame. The core technologies in key fields were presented as essential to the modernization of the Chinese economy. Chinese firms would learn to engineer these technologies not by isolating themselves from the global economy, but by integrating with it. This reflected the consensus of the times: China faced a rare PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY where foreign capital and know-how could safely serve the REJUVENATION OF THE CHINESE NATION. 

This consensus eroded in the 2010s. Over this decade Chinese science and technology policy became more ambitious, more security-oriented, and more state-directed. These changes are reflected in the highest level guidance offered by Xi Jinping. Indigenous innovation is a central component of his NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT [新发展理念], a framework for reorienting Chinese economic planning towards what Xi Jinping calls “high quality development.” During the reform era Chinese economic growth was largely driven by investments in fixed assets and cheap foreign exports. Xi’s New Development Concept, in contrast, calls for a growth model anchored in high end manufacturing at the edge of the technological frontier. 

Under the aegis of the NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT the phrase “key core technologies” entered top-level economic planning documents. The State Council published an “Innovation-Driven Development Strategy Outline” in 2016 which highlighted China’s inability to produce several key core technologies: 

We must also note that certain industries in our country are still at the mid- and low-end of the global value chain, and certain key core technologies are under others’ control. Developed countries still have a clear lead in [advancing] the scientific frontier and high-tech fields (State Council 2016, emphasis added).

To mitigate China’s relative weakness in the global value chain, the outline proposes a three-stage plan: first, the Chinese state must construct a functioning national innovation system and a MODERATELY PROSPEROUS SOCIETY by 2020; then, it must achieve a leading position in the global science and technology ecosystem by 2030; finally, it must become a “strong techno-scientific power” and achieve NATIONAL REJUVENATION by 2050. 

The outline provides specific directions for which fields of technology must see progress, and by which dates progress must be made. The list is a useful portrait of what sort of technologies are considered “key” and “core.” By 2020, the outline instructs, the Chinese party-state must construct national research-industrial complexes for:  

• High-end general-purpose chips
• High-end CNC machine tools
• Integrated circuit equipment
• Broadband mobile communications
• Oil and gas field technology
• Nuclear power
• Water pollution control
• Genetically modified crops
• New pharmaceutical drugs
• Infectious disease prevention and control.

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By 2030 the same should be accomplished for:

• Aero-engine and gas turbines
• Quantum communications
• Novel information network technology
• Intelligent manufacturing and robotics
• Deep space and deep-sea exploration
• Materials science 
• Emerging energy sources
• Brain science
• Medical systems and care (State Council 2016). 

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While many of these technologies have military applications, the drive to establish “technological self-sufficiency and self-empowerment” [科技自立自强] in these fields had more to do with economic security than military power. Dependence on foreign technology, the theory went, means that China’s future economic growth might be held hostage by HOSTILE FORCES outside of China.

These fears were soon vindicated by American export controls. Beijing could no longer trust that it would have access to key technologies on the global marketplace. If China was to successfully construct a NEW DEVELOPMENT PATTERN that relied on Chinese resources to power Chinese growth, then China must possess the ability to produce cutting edge innovations independent of the West. “Breakthroughs in key core technologies,” Xi Jinping concluded in 2020, are a “significant question” in the success or failure of “our state’s development pattern and the key to forming [a development pattern] with our domestic large-scale cycle [of goods and services] as the mainstay [of our economy]” (People’s Daily 2020). 

Assessing the progress of this program is difficult. After the key core technologies schema was codified in the Fourteenth Five Year Plan in 2020, China’s central government ministries and provincial governments began publishing lists of research complexes and megaprojects that they have funded to accelerate technological self-sufficiency. Economists who have studied these lists note that funding is concentrated in sectors where Chinese firms currently have competitive advantages or where there are reasonable prospects of developing such an advantage on the short term. In other words, investment is being channeled to technologies where Chinese firms have the potential to leap-frog over current market leaders, allowing China to pass developed nations “on the curve” [弯道超车] (Naughton et al 2023). However, these efforts are tied to benchmarks that lie many years in the future. Their success or failure may not be apparent for years to come.     

See also:  NEW DEVELOPMENT PATTERN; NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT; ADVANCING TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE; NEW ROUND OF TECHNO-SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION

In 2018 Yang Jiechi, then the POLITBURO member responsible for Chinese foreign policy, declared that  “Building a Community of Common Destiny for Mankind is the overall goal of China’s foreign affairs work in the New Era.” (Yang 2018). This “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind” (also commonly translated as “Community With a Shared Future for Mankind”) refers to the central leadership’s vision for the future of the international order. At its core, building a “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind” means leveraging globalization and other types of global interdependence to reshape the international order in China’s favor. Party officials and party-affiliated intellectuals have long expressed frustration with the norms and structures of the post-Cold War order, which they believe are neither conducive to their continued rule nor fully compatible with China’s ADVANCE TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE. This slogan signals their determination to build something better. 

Though the slogan is strongly associated with the NEW ERA of Xi Jiping, most of the tenets of the “Community of Common Destiny” predate him. The substance of the CPC’s critique of the existing order, as well as a tentative vision for what might replace it, were laid out by Hu Jintao in a 2003 address at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where he declared that the aim of Chinese foreign policy was a “HARMONIOUS WORLD” (和谐世界). Hu argued that this “HARMONIOUS WORLD” would improve on existing arrangements for global governance in five specific arenas: politics, security, economic development, culture, and the environment. On multiple occasions Xi has reiterated the importance of these five categories, whose scope reflects both the scale of Beijing’s ambitions and the depth of its dissatisfaction with the existing order, to his own  “Community of Common Destiny” formulation.  

The thrust of the “Common Destiny” critique goes as follows: the existing international order was created by Western powers for Western powers. The legacy organizations at the core of this order speak for the world but are controlled by the West. The “universal values” enshrined in these institutions  are imperialistic impositions of Western concepts on other civilizations. This is just as true of the political institutions and development models pioneered by the West and now seen as normative in international society. Some of these ideas and institutions are useful advances suitable for all peoples; others are simply relics that would have long disappeared were they not upheld by the illegitimate American HEGEMONISM.

The Community of Common Destiny will have no hegemons (in Chinese the word hegemon describes a state whose predominance depends on coercive power). After the defensive blocs and security treaties that make American hegemony possible crumble, bilateral trade will become the central organizing principle of the new order. China will be the center hub of this global community. New international institutions will be founded; existing ones will be altered. All will give China a central role in global governance. None of these institutions will honor dangerous concepts like “human rights” or “universal values.” In light of Chinese wealth and power, the human community will view liberal institutions as the parochial tradition of a few Western nations, not as the default model for development. At this point, as one Xinhua backgrounder explains, humanity will finally enjoy an “open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity” (Xinhua 2018).

‍See also: ADVANCING TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE; HEGEMONISM

The Total National Security Paradigm is a set of interlinked concepts that party sources describe as Xi Jinping’s signature contribution to Chinese security theory. Xi introduced the paradigm in a 2014 address where he instructed cadres to “pay attention to both traditional and non-traditional security, and build a national security system that integrates such elements as political, military, economic, cultural, social, science and technology, information, ecological, resource, and nuclear security” (Xi 2014, p. 221-222).  This distinction between traditional [传统] and non-traditional [非传统] security is key to Xi’s paradigm. “Traditional security” is oriented around threats to China’s territorial integrity and threats from foreign military powers. The Total National Security Paradigm guides cadres to place equal emphasis on “non-traditional security” threats which cannot be resolved with military tools, but which are potentially as dangerous as military defeat.

Variously translated as the Holistic Approach to National Security, the Comprehensive National Security Concept, or the Overall National Security Outlook, the core of Xi's security paradigm is a maximalist conception of security. This intellectual framework blurs the lines between hard and soft power, internal and external threats, and traditional distinctions between the worlds of economics, culture, and diplomacy. China’s accounting of its security must be “total” [总体].

Though the Total National Security Paradigm is the most forceful and systematic presentation of this idea, it is not new to Party thought. Mao introduced the phrase PEACEFUL EVOLUTION into the party lexicon to describe the threat posed by Western powers who hoped to overthrow communist regimes by instigating revolution from within. The collapse of the Soviet Union vividly demonstrated what happened to a party who ignored this threat. From that moment to the present day, party leaders and state intellectuals have portrayed the Communist Party of China as safeguarding a system under siege. Be they faced with economic coercion and political isolation or friendly offers to integrate into the international order, party authorities consistently describe their country as the object of hostile stratagems designed to subvert China’s domestic stability and the Party’s unquestioned rule.

Xi Jinping’s solution to this problem differs from its predecessors more in scale than concept. Officials in the Jiang and Hu eras offered regular warnings about the danger that ideological dissent, social protest, online media, and official corruption posed to the Party’s hold on power. The Total National Security Paradigm formalized these warnings into a more systematic conceptual framework. In Leninist systems theoretical frameworks like these are the necessary prerequisite of bureaucratic overhaul. If this was the concept’s purpose it seems to have accomplished its aim: by the 20th Congress, the Chinese government was spending more on its internal security budget than on military power, the state security apparatus saw fresh expansion down to lower levels of government, and new national bodies like the Central National Security Commission (CNSC) [中央国家安全委员会] were coordinating state security functions across China’s bureaucratic labyrinth.

See also: CORE INTERESTS; HOSTILE FORCES; PEACEFUL EVOLUTION; SOFT BONE DISEASE; COMPOSITE NATIONAL POWER

The phrase “great changes unseen in a century,” sometimes translated by official party media as “profound changes unseen in a century,” was first used by Chinese academics following the Great Recession. The phrase is associated with the dangers and opportunities posed by American decline, and has been adopted by THE CENTER as a programmatic assessment of the trajectory of the current world order. The trends which can be feasibly linked to this trajectory are diverse. Commentators have described everything from the rise of populist political parties to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence as falling under the "great changes" label. What unites these different trends is the perception that they pose a mortal threat to Western leadership of the international order.

“Great changes” was officially elevated into the party lexicon in 2017, when then-State Councilor Yang Jiechi described it as a guiding tenet of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy. Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy was formally adopted by the Party in a 2018 Central Foreign Affairs Work Conference, where Xi informed the collected leadership of the Chinese diplomatic corp and state security apparatus that

China now finds itself in the best period for development it has seen since the advent of the modern era; [simultaneously], the world faces great changes unseen in a century. These two [trends] are interwoven, advancing in lockstep; each stimulates the other. Now, and in the years to come, many advantageous international conditions exist for success in foreign affairs (Xi 2020).

Xi’s comments followed a tradition laid out in innumerable Party documents, speeches, and regulations, which present declarations of  policy, especially foreign policy, as following from an assessment of the “overall landscape” [全局] “inherent tendencies” [大势], or “the great trends” [大趋势] of the historical moment in which the Party finds itself. “Great changes unseen in a century” is a shorthand for the central leadership’s current assessment of the future trajectory of the international order.

The slogan invokes a slew of great changes that shook global politics one century ago: the collapse of British hegemony and the European imperial system following WWI and the concurrent rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as the predominant powers of world politics. The slogan implies that a similar power transition is now underway, with America playing the role of faltering hegemon, and China the rising  power.  

More substantive discussions of the slogan by Chinese academics and state affiliated scholars trace this power transition to myriad causes: the growing wealth of the developing world, the rise of right-wing populism in Western countries, the debilitating effects that neoliberalism and identity politics have on American power, the resurgence of nationalism across the globe, advances in novel technologies not pioneered by the West, and the proliferation of non-traditional security threats (such as pandemics and terrorist attacks) are all common explanations for the crumbling of the American-led international order. 

Though the phrase was introduced in a rather triumphal tone, the slogan has taken on a darker valence as Sino-American relations have worsened and China has grown more isolated in the international arena. Party propagandists and Chinese academics alike now pair the phrase “great changes unforeseen in a century” with increasingly dire warnings about the unique risks and dangers China faces in the final stage of NATIONAL REJUVENATION. Thus the slogan has come to also signify a warning that China sails into uncharted waters. As Xi Jinping reported in his address to the 20th Congress:

Great changes unseen in a century are accelerating across the world… the once-in-a-century pandemic has had far-reaching effects; a backlash against globalization is rising; and unilateralism and protectionism are mounting… The world has entered a new period of turbulence and change… [where] external attempts to suppress and contain China may escalate at any time.

Our country has entered a period of development in which strategic opportunities, risks, and challenges are concurrent and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising... We must therefore be more mindful of potential dangers, be prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios, and be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms (Xi 2022).

‍See also: ADVANCING TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE; COMMUNITY OF COMMON DESTINY FOR ALL MANKIND; GREAT REJUVENATION OF THE CHINESE NATION;  NEW ROUND OF TECHNO-SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIAL UPGRADING; PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY.

The new development pattern—sometimes translated by Chinese state media as the new development dynamic—describes a proposed structure for the Chinese economy that was first introduced to the Party in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequently adopted as a guiding principle in the China’s Fourteenth Five Year Plan (2021-2025). As a blueprint for China’s future development, the new development pattern imagines a country whose economic growth and technological progress is not dependent on fickle global markets or foreign HOSTILE FORCES. While urging China towards self-reliance, the new development pattern is not a call for autarky. Instead, Xi Jinping instructs cadres to engineer a pattern of growth where “the domestic cycle is the mainstay, with the domestic cycle and international cycle providing mutual reinforcement.” (Xi 2022, p. 178).  Under this “dual cycle” or “dual circulation” [双循环] formula, China is expected to contribute to and benefit from global markets even as it transitions towards an economic model whose near-term growth primarily flows from domestic demand for Chinese goods and whose long term promise rests on China’s indigenous capacity for scientific and technological innovation. 

Chinese economists first began characterizing China’s economic development in terms of  “large scale cycles” [大循环] in the era of Deng Xiaoping. In 1987 Wang Jian, an economist then working for the State Planning Commission, proposed that China’s future growth could be best guaranteed by securing a place in the “large-scale international cycle” of trade and capital. Burdened with decaying heavy industry and a surplus pool of labor, Wang argued that China could reverse these trends by developing light industries like textiles and consumer appliances. The slogan “two ends extending abroad, with a high-volume of  imports and exports” [两头在外, 大进大出] captured the logic of the proposed development pattern. Under this schema, Chinese firms would first purchase raw materials for production from foreign markets (one of the two “ends extending abroad”), exploit China’s surplus labor to manufacture goods at low cost, and then sell the finished products in the global marketplace (the other “end” of the slogan). Trade would occur at volumes high enough to accumulate foreign exchange, which in turn could be used to purchase the new machinery needed to revitalize China’s out-of-date heavy industries. Enmeshing China in the “large-scale international cycle” of trade and capital flows outside of China would thus create a virtuous cycle of climbing wealth and growing industry inside China.     

This strategy was openly endorsed by General Secretary Zhao Ziyang; under his successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao the integration of the Chinese economy with the global market would continue apace. There was a quiet geopolitical calculation behind this development strategy. The “two ends extending abroad” approach took economic interdependence as a prerequisite for China’s continued growth. This required a period of time where China could safely leverage the gains of integration without provoking opposition from foreign powers alarmed by its growing strength and wealth. Party leaders concluded that globalization would offer China such a PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY—a period they predicted would last through the first two decades of the 21st century.

These predictions proved prescient: globalization's assigned role in Chinese economic growth was downgraded as the 2010s came to a close. Two developments would undermine the choice position of global integration in Chinese development planning. The first was a waning commitment to economic growth as the be-all and end-all of the Party’s work. When Xi Jinping came to power, the negative consequences of the Party’s growth-at-all-costs mindset were apparent: noxious pollution, rising class tensions, regional wealth disparities, massive debt on local government ledgers, and a ubiquitous culture of corruption all undermined the Party’s quest for national rejuvenation. To address these problems Xi Jinping incorporated a new intellectual framework for economic development inside the Thirteenth Five Year Plan (2016-2020). This framework, dubbed the NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT, instructed cadres to prioritize “high quality development” [高质量发展] over narrower metrics of GDP growth. The concept called for the Party to achieve these aims by transitioning away from growth driven by fixed asset investments and cheap foreign exports to growth driven by domestic consumption and high end manufacturing at the edge of the technological frontier.

Parallel to these changes in development philosophy was the transformation of Chinese security theory. Under the auspices of Xi Jinping’s TOTAL NATIONAL SECURITY PARADIGM, Chinese security officially began to blur existing distinctions between hard and soft power, internal and external threats, and traditional dividing lines between the worlds of economics, culture, and diplomacy. From this viewpoint, emerging problems in any of these domains might threaten the Party’s hold on power and thus must be viewed through the lens of regime security. Viewed from this perspective, the economic gains that international integration promised must be balanced against increased exposure to hostile forces from the outside world.

These two streams—economic planning and security strategy—began to merge as American export controls and tariffs placed pressure on the Chinese economy. The high-tech development strategy envisioned by the New Development Concept assumes access to crucial technological components that Chinese firms do not yet have the capacity to manufacture. Party leaders began to worry that without the capacity to manufacture these components at home, China’s ADVANCE TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE might be held hostage by hostile foreign powers. These anxieties were only reinforced by the dramatic drop in global demand for Chinese goods and equally dramatic rise in global anti-China sentiment caused by the 2020 pandemic. The lesson was clear: the PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY was closing. Chinese development was dangerously dependent on foreign powers. In this environment China could no longer afford a development pattern that prioritized economic growth and global integration over self-reliance. 

“We have become more aware that security is a prerequisite for development and development guarantees security,” Xi concluded in a Politburo study session in October 2020. “Our country is exposed to the risk of various problems and dangers now and in the future, and risks – both foreseeable and unforeseeable – are on the increase” (Xi 2022, p. 133). To mitigate these risks, China needed to “integrate the planning of security and development” [统筹发展和安全]. 

In April 2020 Xi Jinping laid out what a “secure” development pattern must look like. Chinese development can no longer take the  “large-scale international cycle” as its foundation. Instead, the Party must construct a “large-scale domestic cycle” [国内大循环] to serve as the mainstay of future growth, with the “international cycle” [国际循环] serving as a supplement. As much as possible, planners should locate both the materials used as inputs for Chinese manufacturing and the consumers of China’s manufactured goods (the “two ends extending abroad” in the old slogan) within China’s own borders.

This development strategy has both macroeconomic and security rationales. Chinese observers note that from a macroeconomic standpoint, raising domestic consumption promises to right an economy that has long been described as “unbalanced.” As Chinese wages rise and the labor supply shrinks, China can no longer maintain a growth model premised on low-end manufacturing for the global market. Intentional investment in emerging technologies and key strategic industries is one route around the feared “middle income trap.” It is also a way to escape technological dependence on hostile foreign powers. Xi Jinping describes the drive for technological self-sufficiency as “vital to the survival and development of [the] nation” (Xi 2021, p. 204). By reshoring technological supply chains, as well as key economic inputs like food and energy, the new development pattern promises to secure China against sanction or blockade.

However, the new development pattern is less a bid for autarky than a plan for “hedged integration” with the global economy (Blanchette and Polk 2020). Chinese economists expect that rising Chinese consumer demand will fuel economic growth for exporters across the globe; if China successfully pushes forward the technological frontier, Chinese firms expect to export their new products to every corner of the earth. As one manual designed to teach cadres about the strategy concludes: “Constructing a new development pattern is... a forward-looking gambit for seizing the initiative of future growth.” The ultimate goal of self-reliance is not to cut China off from the world, but to make China more central to it. If realized, the new development pattern will “allow us to attract essential resources from across the globe, become powerful competitors in a fierce international competition, and become a powerful driving force in the allocation of the world’s natural resources” (Office of the Central National Security Commission 2023). 

See also: ADVANCING TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE; GREAT REJUVENATION OF THE CHINESE NATION; INITIAL STAGE OF SOCIALISM; NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT; SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS; TOTAL NATIONAL SECURITY PARADIGM;

When Chinese leaders speak of a “new round of techno-scientific revolution and industrial transformation” they envision a suite of new technologies whose development will have an economic impact comparable to the invention of steam power, electricity, or the computer. The leadership of the Communist Party of China believes the world has already entered the first stages of this scientific revolution. Just as steam power and the other inventions of the industrial revolution reshaped the global balance of power in the 19^th century, China’s communist leaders predict that the newest round of technological change has the potential to subvert the existing global order. The aim of science, technology, and industrial policy under Xi Jinping is to make China a leading force in this revolution, thereby securing China’s ADVANCE TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE.

Historians of science often divide the technological innovations of the last three centuries into three waves. The first wave, also called the “first industrial revolution,” began in Great Britain during the mid-18^th century with the invention of the steam engine and subsequent application of steam power to transportation and industry. The second industrial revolution, which began in the mid-19th century in Europe and the United States, saw the invention of modern steel production, fossil fuels, industrial chemicals, and electrification. The third revolution in industry followed the 20^th century invention of transistors, modern computing, and the internet. Chinese statesmen and technologists predict that the 21^st century will witness a fourth wave of transformative technology—in other words, a “new round of techno-scientific revolution and industrial transformation.” 

This hope is not unique to China. The idea of “Fourth Industrial Revolution” was popularized by the founder of the World Economic Forum in the mid-2010s (Schwab 2015; Schwab 2016) and in Chinese political rhetoric the phrase “Fourth Industrial Revolution” [第四次工业革命] and “a new round of techno-scientific revolution” are often linked. However, Chinese leaders were dreaming of transformative technology long before these buzzwords spread among the Davos set. From the days of Mao Zedong China has sought to catch up with the west by leap-frogging traditional models of development. In the 1980s many Chinese intellectuals hoped that China could leverage emerging information technologies to power its economic rise (Gerwitz 2022). As the Chinese economy boomed in the 2000s these hopes grew into an earnest expectation that China might one day lead global technological development. Xi Jinping was one of these expectants. As General Secretary one of the very first POLITBURO study sessions that he organized was on the importance of an innovation-driven development strategy. It was in this study session the phrase “new round of techno-scientific revolution and industrial transformation” officially entered China’s communist lexicon (People’s Daily 2013).  

There is both a geopolitical and economic logic behind this fixation with novel technology. Chinese leaders often blame the eclipse of traditional China on its failure to industrialize; they are also acutely aware that the two geopolitical hegemons of the last three hundred years were also the leading innovators in the last three techno-scientific revolutions. The lesson is clear and has been reduced to a saying taught to Chinese school children: in times of trouble “the backward will be beaten” [落后就要挨打]. If the GREAT REJUVENATION OF THE CHINESE NATION is to be secured, China must find its way to the techno-scientific frontier. 

This quest is also seen as increasingly central to Chinese economic growth. When Xi Jinping introduced the NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT he acknowledged that China’s existing economic model was no longer an adequate engine for the Chinese economy. Imminent breakthroughs in clean energy, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, materials science, and quantum computing could, if aggressively pursued, become the foundation for a new model of growth. Thus beginning in 2016 the Communist Party of China began orienting its industrial policy around the needs of China’s high technology industries (Naughton 2021).

This task is pursued with great urgency. Just as the globalizing forces of the nineties and aughts presented China with a PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY to catch up with its global rivals, Chinese statesmen believe that the new round of industrial transformation presents China with a rare window of opportunity. For the first time in many centuries China has the chance to get in on the ground floor of a new technological revolution. As Xi Jinping instructed his cadres in a 2021 essay:

Since the beginning of the 21st century, global scientific and technological innovation has entered a period of unprecedented intensity and activity. A new round of techno-scientific revolution and industrial transformation is reshaping the global innovation landscape and economic structure… Never before had science and technology had such a profound impact on the future and destiny of the country… If China wants to be strong and rejuvenated, it must vigorously develop science and technology and strive to become the world's major science center and innovation highland. We are closer to the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation than at any time in history, and we need to build a world power in science and technology more than at any time in history! (Xi 2021)  

See also: ADVANCING TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE; GREAT CHANGES UNSEEN IN A CENTURY; KEY CORE TECHNOLOGIES; NEW DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT

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