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China must speed up its science and technology development to ensure greater self-reliance, the country’s leader Xi Jinping has told an annual political meeting, as Beijing becomes more isolated by sanctions and other trade concerns.
China’s technological advancement is facing global competition and increasing constraints from foreign governments such as the US, but the sector has also been hindered by Beijing’s own crackdowns and controls.
In a speech to a closed-door meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Sunday, Xi said greater self-reliance and strength in the science and technology field was the path to advancing “high quality development” and building China into “a great modern socialist country”.
“To open up new areas and new arenas in development and foster new growth drivers and new strengths in face of fierce international competition, China should ultimately rely on scientific and technological innovation,” he said, according to a state media readout.
He called for increased cooperation between Chinese industry, academia and research institutes to support “original and pioneering research”.
The annual political meeting of China’s rubber-stamping parliament began on Sunday and will run until next week. The meeting – which runs concurrently to the annual gathering of the Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) advisory body for an event known as the “two sessions” – is largely held behind closed doors.
So far, the event has added to growing signs of China’s leadership prioritising self-sustainability.
Among its concerns are US restrictions on Chinese access to US semiconductor and AI technology, on national security grounds, as well as foreign sanctions or restrictions on some Chinese companies and officials over issues including the crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and signs of support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing has responded by decrying the use of sanctions.
On Monday, official state media reported what analysts said was a potential new political slogan, “the two must-haves”, citing manufacturing and a dependable grain and food supply that isn’t vulnerable to international markets. Draft budget figures announced on Sunday saw a more than 13% increase in funding for national stockpiling of grain and other base items.
Xi’s comments on Monday were in line with the work report speech delivered the previous day by outgoing premier, Li Keqiang, who called for improvements in national-level mobilisation of resources in the sector.
The finance ministry and state planner also announced modest budget increases for the tech sector, and the acceleration of hard tech infrastructure construction, including in artificial intelligence, 5G and big data.
China’s tech industry has been targeted by a broad government crackdown in recent years, as the CCP sought to rein in the increasingly independent sector and key figures such as Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
Dr Ilaria Carrozza, a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, had previously told the Guardian the crackdown appeared to have eased, or at least been paused, “but I don’t think we should assume they’re going to now let companies do whatever they want”.
The CCP’s challenges in maintaining control over the tech sector and the flow of information more broadly, while also pushing for greater innovation, have been demonstrated in the race to develop AI chatbots. The emergence of the hugely popular US-based ChatGPT – and its subsequent censorship in China – highlighted the difficulties Chinese tech firms are having in developing their own without upsetting the government.
Science and technology minister Wang Zhigang said on Sunday that China would have to “wait and see” if it can develop the same results as ChatGPT, adding that its ability to deliver results in real time was “very difficult to achieve”.
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Reuters contributed to this report
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