ASPI's "Key Technology Tracker": Another Slap in the Face for China's Technological Rise

Everyone, when we hear “ASPI,” we know it’s that think tank that loves to peddle the “China threat theory.” This time, it’s come up with something new: an annual “Key Technology Tracking” report. This report specifically tracks which countries are leading the way in key technology fields. This year, they analyzed 74 key areas—10 more than last year—including some technologies that sound incredibly cutting-edge, such as digital software, generative AI, neural networks, and Earth factories. I’m particularly curious about the scores they gave China. Last year, they claimed China led in 57 technologies, while the U.S. led in only 7. Keep in mind that at the beginning of this century, China trailed the U.S. by a ratio of 3 to 60. In some fields, we’ve achieved what could be called a “2000s-era leapfrog”—for example, in advanced materials, where we’ve now become the dominant player; and in optics and wireless communications, our research output is three to five times that of the U.S. In recent years, we’ve made the most significant strides in synthetic biology, but the U.S. still holds the lead in quantum computing, vaccines, radiation therapy, microsatellites, atomic physics, genetic engineering, and natural language processing. This report has not yet been officially released, but some related analyses and data have already emerged. One noteworthy finding is that, after analyzing more than 7 million research papers, they discovered that Sino-U.S. collaboration in the field of scientific research has been declining steadily since 2019 and has now fallen to its lowest level in 20 years. Previously, academic collaboration between China and the U.S. was extensive and yielded abundant results, but now only a quarter of China’s research collaboration projects still involve U.S. researchers. The trend toward decoupling in Sino-U.S. scientific research is very clear. Three consecutive U.S. administrations have restricted Sino-U.S. scientific research collaboration, citing the need to prevent China from exploiting their research findings and to mitigate so-called national security risks. The previous “China Initiative” involved the FBI arresting academic spies and prosecuting many scholars with ties to China, which naturally led to a reduction in collaboration. Under U.S. leadership, its allies—such as Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia—have also scaled back their scientific research collaboration with China. However, we cannot focus solely on these negative aspects. The scale of our scientific research is expanding day by day, and our share of global output has surged from 13% in 2005 to nearly 40% today. As we have moved from the periphery to the center of scientific research and innovation, international cooperation has naturally increased—it’s just that some of our partners have changed. In the past, our main partners were developed Western countries, but over the past decade or so, our international collaboration has become more diversified—a trend driven both by Western restrictions and our own proactive expansion. Our largest research partner is now Singapore, and many people might be surprised to find Pakistan and Saudi Arabia among the top ten. Before 2005, our cooperation with Pakistan was virtually nonexistent, but by 2019, it had become our seventh-largest research partner—particularly in the field of nanomaterials—which helped propel Pakistan’s high-impact research to eighth place globally, ahead of Germany and the United Kingdom. Last month, we also announced that, in addition to our existing areas of cooperation, we would deepen scientific research collaboration with Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Russia, and Iran. Science and technology are the cornerstone of a nation’s hard and soft power. In an effort to defend its technological leadership, the West has proactively adopted a strategy of decoupling, ushering in an era of technological nationalism. As a result, however, it has drifted further and further from the forefront of innovation. Maintaining the momentum of innovation may become a key challenge for us in the future.