Op-Ed: China’s big tech self-reliance push – How realistic can it possibly be, but let’s not underrate it

Technological self-reliance is China’s major strategic driving motif these days. China is trying to free itself from dependence on external technologies. A fairly simple objective, you’d think. Like the whole of Chinese history, it’s anything but simple and reacts upon itself regularly.

This image is part of a much bigger, anything-but-clear, picture. The chaotic image China presents to the world is like a mix of facial expressions with no clear context. Consistency is also usually lacking. When it comes to big tech, however, the face is often a mix of (usually justifiable) pride in achievements and very strange, almost unnatural, aggression.

Technological self-reliance is a simple idea, but the idea comes from the distant, pre-globalization, past. China did a lot to drive globalization. As the “world’s factory”, it simplified global trade. It also made vast amounts of money.

China is also routinely, monotonously, linked to rampant cyber espionage and technological theft. It’s the usual suspect in state actor cyberattacks. If you think about it, that’s rather odd.

In the ancient old days of just a few years ago, before China was picking fights with anyone and everyone, things were very different. China was picking up good valuable tech without even having to steal anything. China benefited directly from this more or less constant input of new tech.

Yet the undercurrent of cyberwar was there from the beginning. Like some idiot ghost of the Cold War, Chinese hackers, government agencies, and similar entities, official or otherwise, were in play from the start. This is “self-reliance” the old-fashioned way. All you need to do is create a hostile environment, then use that as your justification for being hostile.

It’s fair to say China has convinced the world of that hostility. The cyberwars are vicious, mindless and brutal. It’s hard to imagine a more utterly counterproductive form of international relations than round-the-clock hacking of virtually everyone.

This is also an “enforced” view of China, largely created by China. It’s very hard to avoid perspective and it’s a major negative in the world’s understanding of China. Ironically, one of the main reasons for this is China’s legitimate but questionably practical, view of history. China’s abuse in the 19^th and 20^th centuries are still very much unfinished business issues in China. The very ugly past is trying to dictate the present.   

Creating a need for self-reliance

This very half-ass, half-witted, half-baked, totally unnecessary narcissistic perspective, however, didn’t interfere with doing business until recently. Things were irritating but not really a problem for anyone. Now, this mindset intrudes on all aspects of China’s relations with the world, particularly trade and especially tech trade. China wants to be free of the need to rely on foreign tech.  

This view goes well with the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party. As usual with any political rationale, you create an image and then prove how right it is – to yourself and people who have to agree with you. It’s as old as Goebbels and Stalin.

Some necessary caution here:

1. China is perfectly capable of doing its own good in-house tech at just about any level. China’s space program is a good example. They’re getting it right. They’ve caught up 70 years in 10 years.
2. Research across a broad spectrum of sciences is big in China. The money behind it is big, too, and the core political drive is to generate visible achievements. That degree of initiative must be taken very seriously.  
3. Cyberwars and tech theft can also be slightly and possibly deliberately misleading. These things are “currency” in espionage. You can steal something utterly useless and turn it into cash, contacts, or system intrusions. China isn’t necessarily desperate for a new singing toaster or a porn mailing list, for example. They may just want access to information streams.

The point is –  China’s real tech needs can’t possibly be as untidy and unfocused as this. There’s only one way to achieve tech self-reliance, and that’s to literally do it yourself.

You can form your own opinions about how this is being done:

• Alibaba has been tasked with creating all-Chinese processor chips. Alibaba isn’t a chip company, but it’s doing the job. It’s a bit like getting Amazon to do the same job.
• Self-reliant IT infrastructure is a truly huge national project. Billions of dollars are being fed into this goal, and that infrastructure is emerging. This is part of the wider framework of “decoupling” China from the world systems. (Rather ironically, this monster of a project began after much of the world blocked Huawei from participation in their networks. China is now doing exactly the same thing it complained about at the time.)

Realistic? Remember the Qing.

There’s a problem with all this in-house theory. The world doesn’t work that way anymore. Tech spreads like a fungus. Just about anything you see on the market has a multi-national, multi-corporate lineage. That’s no accident. Hardware and software naturally generate demands for better tech.

There’s no single stream of tech, is the point. I hope Chinese readers will excuse this irritating but necessary reference – Looking inward without looking outward wasn’t a great move in the past. The old insularity became the most serious critical liability, and quickly. “We have no need of foreign manufactures,” were in so many ways the Famous Last Words of the Qing Dynasty.

Sure, China can, and probably should to a functional level, do its tech for itself. …But outcompete the tech science of the rest of the world and keep up with it? Maybe not.

There’s also a built-in logical fallacy in China’s dogmatic view of this Irish stew of tech around the world. The EU, US, Japan, etc. source their tech from anywhere on Earth. The most basic electronics come from decades of evolution of new ideas built on to the technologies, not nationally derived.

…So what happens next?

China will definitely proceed with the self-reliance trope for some time to come. The Chinese government has yet again talked itself into a high-stakes position as it has on so many other subjects.

This could be a colossal own goal, or a useful if rather overstated, bit of basic technological housekeeping. The risk is an obsessive, obsolescent, self-sustaining mess, much as the USSR managed to do to itself. The USSR did do some good in-house science, but the tech field was just too broad for it.  

Mistakes can always be avoided before they happen; it’s cleaning up the misdirected mess afterward that makes history.