The Atlantic Council's Wen-Ti Sung joins TaiwanPlus to discuss how the Chinese leadership is signaling a tech revival in the private sector following a meeting between Xi Jinping and tech industry leaders, including the previously-ostracized Jack Ma.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Yesterday, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Jack Ma and other tech entrepreneurs
00:04in China as an apparent signal to the private industry that the tech crackdown is over.
00:10What exactly is the Chinese leadership signaling right now?
00:13I think the Chinese state now is having a much more keener understanding that the vitality,
00:21the dynamism of the Chinese economy cannot be entirely state-led.
00:26And that is why you are seeing the Chinese state now showing much more interest and
00:30openness towards re-engaging the civilian and the private sector again.
00:35Hopefully that they will be able to, in the process of engagement, fairly elicit that
00:40level of innovation and energy out of the private sector economy, especially in tech
00:45and innovation-heavy sectors.
00:46I think that's the hope right now for China.
00:49And certainly at the moment, we're having a Trumpian transition with much more uncertain
00:53relationship between the US and other liberal democratic society partners, many of whom
01:00may be thinking about potential for retooling into who they go to for technology and research
01:07cooperation going forward.
01:09I think China is seeing a certain window of opening at this juncture.
01:13And so I think the Chinese state engaging with China's own domestic technology entrepreneurs
01:19is a signal that China sent to other foreign research institutions, foreign businesses
01:24and foreign tech startups as well.
01:27And that signal is that China is open for business again, including in previously sensitive
01:32areas of technology.
01:34So is this something that China really needs to do in order to get ahead or try to get
01:40ahead of Trump's coming trade war?
01:44Where China feels it may struggle quantitatively with Trump's coming trade war, China is trying
01:51to find the edge wherever it can into regaining that qualitative advantage through technology.
01:58We hear talks about DeepSea, for example.
02:01We hear talks also about China's pushing forward the BYD, for example, at a time that Tesla
02:08may be running into more headwinds in terms of market access and market share expansion
02:15in Western countries.
02:19So another element of this is that the domestic audience in China has not necessarily had
02:24strong faith in the domestic economy.
02:27Is this signal meeting between tech leaders and the government a signal strong enough
02:35to encourage China's domestic audience to maybe spend and invest more into their own economy?
02:41The actual efficacy remains to be seen, but I think what Chinese state is doing now is
02:46making the first step, at least reassuring domestic investors that it's not going to
02:53be all politics every day.
02:55And if you're willing to put forward your capital investments, they will be embraced
03:00with more open arms than they have been for a few years.
03:04Rather than risking having them confiscated or otherwise being challenged or run into
03:09problems with the regulators.