China and the United States in the technology war

In recent days, tensions between China and the United States are similar to prewar. What are the exercises in the South China Sea alone. ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has just published a large report on the exercises of the Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta with three US Navy ships in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

On Twitter, the US Navy confirmed that three of their warships crossed the South China Sea "in support of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region." What is the American intervention for "peace and stability" in the affairs of other continents, the world knows very well. When the US wants peace, get ready for war. “Despite efforts to combat the pandemic, Beijing has not reduced its activity in the South China Sea, the strategic waterway through which a third of global traffic passes,” writes The New York Times. Now it is clear.

In general, this is how the United States reacts to China’s increased geopolitical and technological influence in the world. Formally, the reason to maneuver in the disputed waters was allegedly a response to the fact that Beijing launched two new artificial reef research stations in the territory claimed by the Philippines, and to Vietnam’s complaint that the Chinese coast guard vessel rammed a Vietnamese fishing boat (a Chinese neighbor the communist in the emerging conflict, by the way, takes the pro-American side, abandoning 5G networks so as not to anger Washington).

The National Liberation Army of China itself is also conducting extremely active and large-scale exercises in the East China and South China Seas, and the official account of the PLA East Fighting District published an article on April 15 under the heading “Discard fantasies - be ready for battle!”, Considering the possibility war as absolutely realistic.

If war breaks out between the USA and China, Russia, which has more than 4 thousand km of borders with China, will definitely have a hard time.

But for now, let us leave the pessimistic scenarios and consider another war between the USA and China, in which the winner is already visible. The war of high technology.

In April 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organization (headquartered in Geneva) announced that by the end of 2019, China had surpassed the United States for the first time and became the world leader in international patent applications, and the telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies topped the list of companies for the third consecutive year, in the past. year, increasing investment in research and development by 30%. In the past, the company has invested at least $ 18.6 billion in the development of 5G networks, becoming the undisputed world leader in high-speed Internet in the world. There are no companies investing so much in the development of high technologies in the world today.

Tokyo-based observer Nikkei Asian Review believes the “40-year-old era of US technology leadership in the world is ending”: judging by the number of applications filed last year, China is in the lead in nine out of ten patent categories, including artificial intelligence, blockchain and drones. In addition to Huawei, technology giants Baidu and Alibaba turned out to be the largest innovators.

In general, the situation looks like this: in 2019, the total number of patent applications reached a record high (265,800), with 52% coming from Asia, 23% from Europe and North America. Companies from China, Japan and South Korea account for 60% of those same gold “top 50 leading global companies”, which suggests that Asia is ahead in the technology race of high technologies.

This technological breakthrough in China is also explained by generous subsidies to Chinese manufacturers under the Xi Jinping program “Made in China in 2025”. Thanks to the state strategy for global technological leadership, China has become a leading player in such areas as drones, artificial intelligence and regenerative medicine.

“The rapid growth of China, which has become the leader in international patent applications, shows a long-term shift towards innovation in the East,” said Francis Gurry, WIPO Director General.

China is followed by the United States, which has been an irreplaceable leader since 1978.

In third place is Japan.

Huawei was ahead of the Japanese Mitsubishi Electric, creating applications by two-thirds more. And the Chinese smartphone maker Oppo, for example, made a breakthrough from 17th to fifth place, creating a high-performance smartphone at a low price.

Huawei itself, with which the Trump administration is waging a fierce war, threatened with sanctions even reaching its chip suppliers, was in a difficult situation.

Due to the war of Washington, with its 5G, smartphone sales fell, but she did not lose heart, “regrouping” and betting on an unmanned car controlled by a Huawei phone. And here she again enters into direct competition with the Americans, setting herself the goal of becoming a leading supplier of self-driving platforms (autonomous driving platforms with an integrated electrical system), which serves as the “brain” for independent car movement. Serious competitors in this market are Tesla, Apple, Waymo, Uber, etc.

Last summer, the company created its own computing chip for artificial intelligence Ascend910, which will "teach" driving algorithms and facilitate the development of cars of the future.

It is noteworthy that the head of the company made the formation of a new division engaged in the development of intelligent automotive solutions a few days after Washington blacklisted it in May 2019. Call in response to a call.

“Autonomous driving is indeed a new battlefield for the next generation,” said Chiu Shi-Fan, technical analyst at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. - The smartphone market - the largest driver of the last decade - has slowed significantly. So far, Google, Intel, Nvidia have played a leading role in autonomous driving technologies, but China has an advantage in communication chips and artificial intelligence technologies - keys to autonomous driving. ”

The end of 2019 was marked by the victory of China over the United States in patent applications and on the blockchain. There were twice as many Chinese companies applying for patents as there were American ones. This technology provides access to everything - logistics, financial services and cryptocurrency.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, with 512 applications, topped the ranking of corporate applicants, followed by British company nChain with 468 and IBM with 248 (according to Japanese consulting company NGB based on Innography data).

Blockchain (perhaps the most significant invention since the Internet, allows you to store data in a format protected from unauthorized access) first appeared as a building material for cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin.

National governments have joined the blockchain boom. The People’s Bank of China, for example, and the Central Bank of Sweden are preparing their own digital currencies (by chance or not, Sweden did not participate in the anti-Chinese “coronavirus hysteria” - I leave it up to you).

The Chinese chip industry and the focus on technical self-sufficiency is one of the most important “brackets” of the new Chinese economy under the leadership of Xi Jinping.

That is why only one train went to blocked Wuhan - bringing and taking away engineers and other employees working at the strategic plant for the production of microchips Yangtze Memory Technologies. Production did not stop day or night. Around, as in science fiction films, an epidemic raged and doctors scurried around in spacesuits, the city was empty and sealed, and engineers continued their work, on a rotational basis, leaving the factory in a secret train. (This story deserves a separate column.)

On March 10, Wuhan was visited by Chinese President Xi Jinping. It was his government that made chip manufacturing a key industrial priority for China. Such hard work and speed are of strategic importance for China to survive and win the technological war and get rid of dependency on components not only from the United States, but also from South Korean and Taiwanese market leaders.

“China’s dependence on the United States and foreign technology is not only a matter of national security,” said Alex Capri, a senior fellow at the School of Business, National University of Singapore. - This dependence creates a serious obstacle to the geopolitical ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party as a growing power, since all hard and soft power will depend on technological production. And it's not just about market share. This is techno-nationalism in action. ”

For many years, China, the first world factory and cheap workers working for a cup of rice, is rapidly changing, moving to the big leagues and becoming the leader in high technology. It hardly fits into the head of the stiff representative of the “white world”, who is used to placing orders in a cheap factory and accusing the employee of theft by resorting to a stick. Perhaps this is one of the deepest psychological causes of the impending global conflict between the West (USA, UK, Australia and part of Europe) and China.

While Western media are waging an information war against China, resorting to the power of rats, bats and pangolins, China declares itself to be a high-tech power, and the Supreme Court of China in 2019 forms an appeals tribunal specifically for intellectual property cases.

For the first time in history.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.