ChinAI #281: What can China's special project on machine tools tell us about its overall science and tech policy?
Plus, a detailed probe into China's new national system [新型举国体制]
Greetings from a world where…
many newsletters about machine tools are boring, though some are riveting
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Feature Translation: A New-Style Whole-of-Nation Approach to High-end Machine Tools
Context: In 2009, China launched a major national science and technology project (nicknamed “04 Special Project”) to boost capabilities in high-end CNC (computerized numeric control) machine tools. The “Made in China 2025 Key Area Technology Roadmap”, a semi-official document, envisioned an ambitious target (80%) for the market share of domestic products and brands in high-end machine tools. According to this week’s feature translation, China’s machine tool makers now account for one-third of the domestic market share and have realized considerable competitiveness in the international market. In an article (link to original Chinese) for the Economic Herald [经济导刊], Xi Sun, a researcher at the CITIC Foundation for Reform and Development Studies, analyzes a) how this policy has made progress and b) why this progress has been limited.
Key Takeaways: Sun attributes the achievements of China’s machine tool strategy to the gradual formation of a “new national system after 2012: an organizational mechanism for product development characterized by ‘national endorsement, user-led, and process-driven.’”
For Sun, the secret sauce is “user-producer interaction”, or “the matching of supply and demand” [供需对接], which captures the need for machine tool makers to improve their products based on learning from the practical problems encountered by machine tool users.
This new national system [新型举国体制] differs from the previous national system approach in two key ways: 1) A more flexible approach to matching supply and demand through social actors (e.g., industry associations), as opposed to the planned economy of approach of administrative orders and industry ministries; 2) an emphasis on giving full play to market economy conditions. On this point, see this key point about the machine tool initiative: “At this time, there is even a phenomenon that the ‘national team’ enterprises participating in the compilation of the guidelines are overtaken by more suitable private enterprises.”
The implications: “The practical results of these historical experiences in the machine tool industry and the ‘04 Special Project’ are that in the extremely complex and severe international situation, developments in such a ‘persistently difficult’ industry not only did not lend more "weight" to the decoupling and extreme pressure of the United States and the West, but it also cultivated and helped a group of local innovative enterprises.”
Why has this national project on machine tools struggled to achieve its aims? This piece is incredible because it also provides details on a particular Chinese industrial policy’s shortcomings.
Regarding problems with the initial guidelines developed by the specific center under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: “Among the experts, especially those responsible for compiling the special project guidelines, there are more scientific and technological experts and fewer industry experts. As a result, the enterprises charged with tackling the project ‘tiresomely stay home to do the work’ according to the technical indicators stipulated in the guidelines, but ‘no one buys it’ after they are done.”
Relatedly, Sun directly calls for the relevant government unit to be more fair in selecting industrial partners: “This requires the special administrative departments to become specialized institutions with sufficient staff and neutral values (working for the country and the industry, not for specific and designated people and organizations).”
Long-term plans sound great in theory, but they often fail to adapt in practice: “From the perspective of policy implementation, one regret for the Special Project 04’s first decade is that there was no early deployment in the field of new energy vehicles.”
Indeed, the article attributes some of the project’s successes to its ability to get away from nationally-organized initiatives: “An important experience of the “04 Special Project” in the first decade is to break away from the guidelines set in the office many years in advance, based on the overall national security concept, and support the development of a number of significant unplanned products in the aviation, aerospace, military, and other departments.”
FULL TRANSLATION: The Core Logic and Policy Options for Establishing Internal Circulation and Moving Towards Indigenous Innovation
ChinAI Links (Four to Forward)
Must-read: China’s Views on AI Safety are Changing — Quickly
At this point, everything Matt Sheehan writes on China’s AI ecosystem is a must-read for me. I’m just catching up on his latest piece on China’s quickly evolving views on AI safety, which he tracks meticulously using evidence from research papers, government documents, and commitments at international dialogues and summits. Beyond the headline finding — Chinese leaders are taking AI safety concerns more seriously — this piece also highlights some uncertainties and particularities of China’s understanding of the concept.
Should-read: The Dilemma of Intelligent Computing Centers (Chinese)
For Leiphone, Min Hu goes behind the scenes of China’s build-up of intelligent computing centers, highlighting that having Nvidia cards does not equate to computing power. This piece provides further details on the trend of idle compute that we’ve identified in previous ChinAI issues.
Should-read: Made in China 2025
This December 2016 MERICS report (Wübbeke, Meissner, Zenglein, Ives, and Conrad) is evergreen. As I was trying to understand the background context behind this week’s feature translation, it was essential reading.
Should-read: The Will of the Many
Just finished reading this fantasy book by James Islington — haven’t felt this excited about a series since The Name of the Wind.
Thank you for reading and engaging.
These are Jeff Ding's (sometimes) weekly translations of Chinese-language musings on AI and related topics. Jeff is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.
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