While the U.S. is pushing its allies to rally against China and cracking down on China's tech rise, Chinese high-tech firms are now reaching a “silent consensus” and speeding up efforts to break the reliance on the U.S., and drive localization efforts along the industrial chain from chips, operating systems and supercomputers to robots. During the fifth World Intelligence Congress (WIC) in Tianjin last week, products marked “Made in China” and “researched and developed in China” were especially popular. Almost all industry giants from private firms like Huawei and Tencent, to state-owned companies like China Electronics Corp (CEC) and rolling stock manufacturer CRRC Corp have exhibited their latest products featuring self-developed core technology “grasped in its own hands.” Staff from these firms said the U.S.' continuous crackdown on China is adding fuel to the self-reliance drive. Chinese firms, led by high-tech ones, are trying to source homegrown parts and shift to domestic suppliers even if they might be more expensive compared with some foreign counterparts.
A staff surnamed Jin at the SIASUN Robot and Automation Co, told the Global Times during the Congress the company was trying to break the foreign monopoly in the industrial robot market, adding that the localization drive gives them more confidence to invest and march forward. Shi Yixuan at Kylinsoft under the CEC, echoed Jin, saying that the Huawei ban has pushed more firms to use self-developed operating systems – a market that was dominated by foreign giants. The firm's self-developed operating system Kylinsoft V10 was officially launched on August 13 last year. The system is similar to Microsoft's Windows, and can also support China's self-made CPUs, including those from Phytium Information Technology Co, which was added to the U.S. Entity List in April this year. China's own CPUs and operating systems are being used in state-owned enterprises and important key industries, which will protect the country's core data to the greatest extent and fundamentally protect China's national security, Shi told the Global Times. He believes that in the future, China's collective breakthroughs in core technologies in various fields will have important strategic significance in the current complex international situation.
However, industry analysts and company representatives told the Global Times that despite the rapid development and rising self-sufficiency, strength in the high-tech field takes a long time to develop. For instance, in the CNC machine sector, the overall performance of China's high-end CNC machine tools still lags behind compared to the world's top level, and China still relies on others in core technology in the field, Yu Xubo, Chairman of China General Technology (Group) Holding Co (Genertec), said in a keynote speech of the Congress.
In the past, due to geopolitical reasons, we found that we've been strangled in many key technologies. What is the most important way for Chinese companies to catch up in a short period of time, or even exceed the international advanced level is the most important problem, Li Jun, President of Dawning Information Industry Co (Sugon) told a forum during the Congress. Li suggested China focus more resources in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector to shorten the time it would take to surpass others. According to the Artificial Intelligence Development Report 2020 of the Tsinghua University Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and other departments, in the past decade, the number of global AI patent applications exceeded 520,000, and the number of patent applications in China was 389,571, ranking first in the world, accounting for 74.7% of the global total, the Global Times reports.
