China’s vision of the future is a nightmare for the US 

President Xi Jinping revealed the shape of things to come at the National People’s Congress in Beijing this month. Buried in a drab blueprint known as the 15th Five-Year Plan, it outlined China’s bid for global high-tech supremacy.

Forget the lifeless language of “industrial upgrading” and “new quality productive forces.” This was a declaration of economic intent, based on the technology of today and tomorrow.

Stunningly broad in scale, Xi’s vision was “breathtaking.” It was also a wake-up call to the United States and its global allies. Innovate or lose the digital and scientific war.

“The document translates into something straight out of Elon Musk’s fever dream. Skies [will be] dotted with delivery drones and flying taxis, [while] fusion and hydrogen power plants [will fuel] factories manned by humanoid robots,” The Economist reported this week.

Tomorrow’s world:

• “Unstoppable quantum computers” and “6G mobile devices plugged directly into people’s brains” also illustrated the scope of the project, the London-based magazine pointed out.
• In short, this is Xi’s gamble on driving economic growth, with androids running China’s factories, supervised by a team of human technicians.

The focus is on achieving breakthroughs in key technologies.

Yue Su, Economist Intelligence Unit

Delve deeper: “If the last Five-Year Plan’s innovation policy was largely defensive, this one is much more proactive,” Yue Su, the principal economist for China at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said, as reported by the CNN network this week.

Between the lines: “The focus is on achieving breakthroughs and accelerating the integration of technology and industry,” she added. Yet, it will come at a massive price.

Big picture: Another round of government funding will only add to ballooning debt, which is close to US$19 trillion. The boom-to-bust property years have evaporated household wealth, shrinking consumer spending and derailing economic growth. Unemployment is spiraling.

Bottom line: Still, tech executives in the US are concerned about China’s push into “frontier fields,” such as the quantum space race, according to the Semafor news site.

China Factor comment: At the same time, political flip-flopping in Washington has allowed Beijing to cruise ahead in the electric vehicles sector and the green energy industry. What the US needs now is a man with a plan in the White House before it is too late.