I have said this before and I say it now.
Western (especially Neocon) attempts to halt China's research foray into high technology is rather pointless.
They should assist China and collaborate to forge ahead in specialization.
There are certain things the West specializes in and certain things China does. And vice versa.
Current attempt to halt technology transfers are an exercise in futility and will only harm the West more.
This was their strategy until mid 2010s.
The strategy of the west leading up to that era of time was to direct Chinese politics towards general neutrality with relatively cooperative diplomacy from the Chinese. Where China eventually leads up to becoming a western vassal state not too different to South Korea and Japan and eventually China's internal politics adapts to the pliable form of bullshit liberalism and lobbyism that the western elites prefer since that's how any and all powers can be easily controlled by some promise of monopoly money donations. How to achieve this though was in the soft carrot and stick approach. Leverage China's then dependence on western critical technologies (of which there were many more in the 1950s to 2000s period than post 2010) and China's dependence on western institutional framework in which the globalizing world operated under. Access to banking systems, invitation to WTO, ability to trade with western partners and so on.
The second tool then was the military one to enforce some form of cooperation from China re any desires to reunify China and end the Chinese Civil War by either peacefully or militarily creating the reunification of Taiwan island and the dissolution of the government there, ending one aspect of western influence into what is essentially inner China politics and a civilizational question.
They did not expect China's science and technology base to develop so well and translate so quickly and relatively efficiently into industrial returns and leadership within several fields these being telecommunications, computing, software even (shared among many players), shipbuilding, energy and energy storage technologies, materials tech (yes even this particularly new generations of metamaterials and superalloys even the latest and greatest composite materials and ceramics), military ones (e.g. hypersonic gliders, combined cycle engines and so on), with commensurate and even greater progress in the scientific basis (China accounting for some of the highest contributions in more recent years among certain general fields... see IP, citations, adjusted for quality rankings, top innovation cities and universities, Nature and Science rankings of institutions and regions etc etc).
Because XJP took over the power in the 2010s and initiated what the west considered a deviation from that controlled path where their previous strategic planning saw a China that at best could only specialize in few fields with critical dependence on western anythings, the west also shifted its strategy to immediately cut China off from everything critical. Estimating that it would devastate China's scientific and industrial basis. It tripped it up slightly and somewhat but honestly, the last remaining domain of critical dependence is chip fabrication and even in this field China has been able to mass produce 28nm on its own with low rate of production and inefficient means to make 14nm and even 7nm since 2022. Now these aren't enough to compete in the latest personal computers and flagship smartphones but for literally everything else from a fridge to car to satellite and HGV, it is more than enough, in fact 2010 China could supply all that using totally domestic fabrication equipment and processes.
The issue here is China announced it's 2025 initiative for weening itself off critical dependence areas, XJP got more """aggressive""" against the west by putting China on a path towards reduced to zero dependence on west and ANNOUNCED IT ALL PUBLICLY to the worry and concern of the west. That their pet will not cooperate and tread the path laid out by western elites.
Now this post 2010 China is a threat to western hegemony because it is going to be a separate non-western controlled major power that will be bidding and competing with the west for the world's resources. Previous to this, the west could print as much monopoly paper money as it pleases and buy up everything in the world from people to material and everything in between. Now it has to compete with China to bid for the price of talent and material resources.
The west first used the gun to take over the world's people and resources. After it became increasingly inappropriate to do it this way over time, they invented various layers of bullshittery to transfer the world to its pocket. Even NEC and Sumitomo and Nintendo etc etc etc are all still partly all western elite controlled and owned at the very end of the day a few pen to paper contact and everything can be turned to their pocket. China represents a threat to this "rule based order" hence a strategy to contain its ability to threaten it.
What China needs to do is secure itself and its means to prevent the west from totally gaining absolute control of all. The Global South will 100% remain in relative poverty for eternity (due to the fundamental economic problem and diminishing supply of energy resources and critical raw materials). I foresee that once China feels comfortable in its safeguarding of self, it will begin forging important Global South allies in coming decades so at the completion of this century, there are going to be multiple sources of challenges to western hegemony. The most promising contenders for this are the Arab world with their energy resources (convert that to monetary share of global resources and talent pool), Iran (similar reasons + exceptional intellectual abilities), Russia (landmass, intellectual capabilities, energy and material resources). Other players are firmly western controlled or dependent on for one reason or another. India's top talents contribute far more to western empires than they do for India itself as an example of why India is less a contender for a power group. It is considerably more ideologically enslaved by the west than even places like Hong Kong with similar histories of colonialism and ideologically dominated by the west for too long for the people to really have a decent chance of taking off those shackles.
But it's not all such an easy task. Today, China has to essentially try to nearly match the output of USA + western and northern Europe + South Korea + Japan in terms of general scientific basis output and industrial share. It is maybe now around overall about half of those combined at best measure but can nearly sort of do it all good enough or close enough and in certain small areas leading. This isn't good enough over long spans of time since the combined hegemonic west outpaces China alone. All those leading industrialized and wealthy nations all pay the leaders of the hegemonic west and it is all one giant umbrella. Then factor in that China overall loses more talent to working for the west than the west loses to China even if we factor in Chinese experts returning to China and eventually contributing to China and espionage efforts.
What then? I think China's strategic thinkers understand that what is required here is a hail Mary attempt at moonshot projects. The problem here is that the combined west + asian partners have more money, more people, are more developed and for longer, have more resources and access to resources, share everything essentially as it's all owned by the own and same so in terms of revolutionary things, they have advantages. I'm talking science fiction projects basically.
Yes China's trajectory is an upwards and quick paced one where major western components are more downwards, particularly western Europe, norther Europe, and Japan, even the USA is slightly downwards overall or straight lining. But overall it's still a real upward struggle for China. Yes China's science and engineering general top tier talent pool numbers are great and all while the west's are declining but as China's wealth increases, its ability to work the same as previously actually declines too unless appropriate and effective social changes somehow allow it to work as efficiently with fewer people and fewer people doing hard things like science and engineering.
If somehow the Global South organized well and cooperated with the mission of completing a path towards genuine multipolarity and basically take their slice of the pie (at the expense of the west of course since this is a finite pie), then there is only the hail Mary stuff that can potentially see China forge ahead to become a primary (single nation measures) superpower in time which may see current western vassals become increasingly neutral in terms of working against China. The balance at the moment shows that China has been relatively successful in keeping critical nations relatively neutral in stance. Major leverage pieces for China are the KSA group, Iran group, Russia and former CIS, Korean peninsular (keeping Japan and South Korea not aggressively anti-China or at least without serious action or escalation), and the remaining world of currently neutral to pro China nations in African, South America, and South East Asia.
Europe and North America doesn't actually have as much raw resources required for sustained development and living standards as currently enjoyed. Previously these were either stolen by force, colonized and extracted, or simply all bought up for cheap and for nothing considering USA prints money like nothing and exports inflation to every nation that requires reserves of USD and trade in USD. If this were to change, it would genuinely collapse the world order over months which would be the blink of an eye given the weight of China that would surely take advantage immediately and bolster its trade and alliances with an increasing number of nations. What those would be build on is nothing more than what the west gave but a higher degree of sovereignty for all those other nations because these are the gaps in which these deals differ. They are slight but they are still considerable for any smaller nation.
www.telegraph.co.uk
