BEIJING, March 5 (Portal) – China’s science and technology policy should aim to build its strength and self-sufficiency, while making better use of the government’s role in pooling resources for major technological breakthroughs, Premier Li Keqiang said Sunday.
The nation has effectively countered external attempts to stifle and curb China’s development over the past five years by promoting the development of the real economy through innovation and fostering new growth drivers, Li said, without naming countries.
China is under increasing pressure from the United States, which has invoked national security to restrict access to Chinese semiconductors and artificial intelligence technologies.
President Xi Jinping has urged the nation to strengthen its self-sufficiency in science and technology and keep striving to be a global tech powerhouse.
But China’s record suggests that self-sufficiency will be difficult to achieve, despite a “sense of urgency” the work report conveys amid intense technological competition with the US, said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of the China Center in Beijing on the conference council .
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Li, the outgoing premier, said in his working report at the opening of the annual session of the Chinese Parliament, “Science and technology policy should aim to build our country’s strength and self-sufficiency in science and technology.
“The new nationwide resource mobilization system should be improved, we should make better use of the government’s role in pooling resources to achieve major technological breakthroughs, and corporations should be the key players in innovation.”
Li said China should speed up research and development of cutting-edge technologies and promote their application. The development of the platform economy should be supported and regularly monitored, he added.
The platform economy includes China’s largest tech companies such as Alibaba Group (9988.HK) and Tencent Holdings (0700.HK). Such firms have been the target of a long, attritional crackdown that Beijing says is now easing.
China’s finance ministry and its state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), released reports on Sunday underscoring their support for these goals.
The finance ministry said it would increase special funds for the industry and manufacturing sector by 4.4 billion yuan to 13.3 billion yuan ($1.93 billion) this year to support areas such as integrated circuits. It announced 6.5 billion yuan for local-level scientific and technical advances, an increase of 2 billion yuan.
The NDRC said it would accelerate the construction of hard-tech infrastructure, including in artificial intelligence, 5G and big data, and promote the healthy development of online retail with instant delivery and e-commerce live streaming, key marketing channels for China consumer sector.
It said it would cement China’s “leading position” in areas such as electric vehicles and solar panels, where the country holds key positions in the global supply chain.
Still, the state planner warned that China’s supply chains are at risk of numerous bottlenecks and “bottlenecks,” and said the government will plan and implement a series of large-scale science and technology projects to enhance the country’s strength at the “frontiers of international competition.” “ to strengthen.
Analyst Montufar-Helu noted that Made in China 2025, a high-tech industrial development push initiated by Beijing in 2015, failed to meet its target of producing 40% of the chips consumed in domestic value chains by 2020 and 70% in 2025 China’s consumption of microchips was only 16% domestic in 2021.
“This is despite hundreds of billions of yuan of investments poured into the sector in recent years,” he said.
($1 = 6.9048 Chinese renminbi yuan)
Reporting by Brenda Goh, Eduardo Baptista and Josh Horwitz; Adaptation by William Mallard
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