Years of Restrictions Didn't Slow China's Quest for Tech Dominance

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

Joe, do you realize it's almost the end of 2024?

Joe Weisenthal (0:30)

Well, yeah, it's crazy. It's been a really warm month in October in New York. So I feel like we got this free month of summer. And so yeah, we're basically almost here, and we sort of got one less month of winter, it feels like.

Tracy Alloway (0:42)

I feel like the warm weather is also throwing everyone's sense of time off. But anyway, we're almost done with 2024 Who knows what the rest of the year is going to look like, but that means that 2025 is coming up. And you know what I think of when I think of 2025

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

You and I think of the same thing. And we're the only two journalists in America that don't think of Project 2025

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

Yeah, of course. Okay, so Joe and I are thinking of Made In China 2025, which of course was the big program that China launched 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago now, back in 2015, to bulk out strategically important advanced technology sectors. And so I'm kind of curious what exactly happens in 2025, how much progress China has made on this front. You know, next year, are they suddenly going to like declare victory in advanced technology, and that'll be the end of it? What criteria are they actually using to judge its success? I have a bunch of questions.

Joe Weisenthal (1:44)

You know, I just have to say that I appreciate things like Made In 2025 initiatives, or even like, you know, five-year plans, or 10-year plans, or whatever, just because they provide a very convenient spot to go back and look, did the goals get hit or not? It's one thing to talk about moonshots and like, oh, we're going to lead all this, but unless you put a date on when you want to achieve it by, you don't really know whether you're successful, right? Because you never really know where you are in sort of the arc of progress. But if you have a system that puts dates on where you want to be, at least you can go back and judge, well, were we successful or not? And so now we're on the verge of being able to look at the start of that initiative and the end of that initiative and sort of say whether it worked or not.

Tracy Alloway (2:29)

Is that your pitch for Odd Lots World Domination 2025?

Joe Weisenthal (2:33)

Well, we'd have maybe 2035

And we need some very specific metrics. We have to really know what that means in advance. And then yeah, we'll see if we hit it or not.

Tracy Alloway (2:43)

Okay. You're right, though. Deadlines are very important. So speaking of deadlines, why don't I go ahead and bring in our very perfect guests for this particular episode? We're speaking with Gerard DiPippo, senior geoeconomics analyst over at Bloomberg Economics, as well as Rebecca Choong Wilkins, senior correspondent for the government and economy team Asia. I knew her back when I was in Hong Kong and she covered China credit and she was so good at it. So who better to kind of draw the connection between technology and finance and economics than these two. So Gerard and Rebecca, thank you so much for coming back on Odd Lots.

Gerard DiPippo (3:22)

Thank you for having me.

Rebecca Choong Wilkins (3:22)

Such a pleasure to be here.

Tracy Alloway (3:24)

Let's start with the beginning, I guess. 2015, China decides to launch this Made In China 2025 program. What was the thinking behind it? What were the goals?

Rebecca Choong Wilkins (3:35)

Well, I think one thing to remember is this sort of a whole Made In China industrial policy. This comes just a couple of years into President Xi Jinping getting his leadership underway in China. So this is also very much President Xi's vision for the Chinese economy. His idea that these key sectors, these key industries are essentially going to underpin the national development. So this is not sort of, I suppose, just a discussion about China's strategic ambitions, but also specifically Xi's own vision for the direction for China.

Gerard DiPippo (4:09)

I'll also add that in the context of Chinese industrial policy, so Made In China 25 is an example of an iterative process and also sort of a reflective process with the rest of the world. So there obviously were other industrial policies before, and that would include something like the Medium Long Term Plan from 2005, which is a 15 year plan. There are, of course, five year plans.