‘Made in China 2025’: is Beijing’s plan for hi-tech dominance as big a threat as the West thinks it is?
2018-09-11 09:23:25 source：South China Morning Post
September 10, 2018
In August, a little-known mainland Chinese start-up proudly announced it had “broken the American monopoly” with the development of an original web browser. But Beijing-based Redcore’s claim to fame was short-lived – its software was quickly found to have traces of Google’s Chrome.
Redcore was forced into a swift public climbdown, in an incident that underscored the West’s long-standing grievances over what it sees as Beijing’s strong-arm tactics for technology transfers and intellectual property theft. It was also a reality check for China on the gap it faces with the US in its quest to become a tech superpower.
The origin of Redcore’s ambition, and that of many Chinese tech firms, can be found in the state-driven “Made in China 2025” (MIC2025) plan unveiled in 2015 that aims to lift the country’s industries – from robotics, aerospace and new materials to new energy vehicles – up the value chain, replacing imports with local products and building global champions able to take on the Western tech giants in cutting-edge technologies.
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