In recent years, Chinese firms have rapidly shifted from assembling foreign-made components to producing their own advanced technologies.. Along with its dominance in renewable energy equipment, China is currently at the forefront of other technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.. And these successes challenge the notion that scientific leadership inevitably leads to industrial leadership..

The publication notes that China used its knowledge of processes, in particular, the ability to scale entire industries, to surpass the United States in the development of strategic technologies..

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For the US and its allies, China's transformation into a powerful tech powerhouse could be an important lesson. Unlike the West, China has built its technology sector not on research and advanced science, but on the less visible task of improving manufacturing capacity.. If Washington is serious about competing with Beijing on technology, it will need to focus on more than science innovation.. It must also learn to use its workforce the way China does, to scale innovation and build products better and more efficiently..

As the newspaper notes, many analysts are skeptical of China's technological leadership.. It cannot boast of a large number of recognizable brands. Unlike Japan and South Korea, China has not been able to create new categories of digital electronics and cannot compete with Europe and the United States in the automotive or aircraft industry.. Instead, Chinese companies have focused on making products they can sell at lower prices in developing countries.. The relative absence of well-known Chinese brands has reinforced the Western image of China as a factory rather than a hotbed of innovation..

In addition, China lags behind the West in a number of critical technologies.. Yes, it has achievements in chip design, but in the production of logic chips - the processors used in all digital products - Chinese firms are at least five years behind TSMC, a Taiwanese company that is a world leader in advanced semiconductors.. Things get even worse when it comes to developing the specialized tools needed to make the chips.. In many ways, China also depends on imports from other countries.. The same is true for the aviation industry..

But China has made rapid progress in other technologies.. Chinese companies are ahead of European and Japanese counterparts in the production of robotic arms, hydraulic pumps and other equipment. In addition, the country now competes with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in the electronics supply chain.. Chinese internet companies compete with American ones (like TikTok and Facebook). China leads the world in building modern infrastructure, including ultra-high-voltage power lines, high-speed rail and 5G networks. In 2019, China became the first country to land a lunar rover on the far side of the moon.; a year later, Chinese scientists achieved the transmission of quantum-encrypted communication via satellite, bringing the country closer to creating an impenetrable quantum communication. This indicates that China is directing efforts to solve more and more complex problems..

One of the main technological achievements of China in recent years has been the production of equipment for renewable energy sources.. Today, Chinese firms dominate almost every segment of the value chain, from processing polysilicon used in solar cells to assembling solar panels.. They also improved the technology itself. Chinese solar panels are not only the cheapest on the market; they are the most efficient. The decline in the cost of solar energy over the past decade has been driven by manufacturing innovation in China.

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Be that as it may, China's technological progress has cost a lot of money.. The publication writes that " And these subsidies have the opposite effect.. A study published in December by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research found that Beijing is poor at picking winners, and government subsidy recipients tend to have lower productivity growth.. According to many critics, China's success has most often been fueled by extreme protectionism and widespread intellectual property theft..

While all of these claims are true, they are not enough to explain China's meteoric rise.. For example, the theft of intellectual property may well have contributed to the development of certain industries. But it doesn't explain China's emergence in areas like batteries, hydrogen, and artificial intelligence..

The most important factor in China's growing tech industry is its manufacturing ecosystem..

Over the past two decades, China has built an unmatched manufacturing capability for knowledge-intensive industries, characterized by an extensive talent pool, dense supplier clusters, and extensive government support..

An example is solar energy.. By showering subsidies on all comers, the government pushed too many firms to enter the market. But it also provoked more entrepreneurial risk, creating a highly competitive industry in which the strong crowd out the weak.. As a result, Chinese firms now dominate a strategic industry on which the rest of the world depends..