L. Rafael Reif
In June 2024, at a national science and technology conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the high-tech sector had become “the frontline and main battlefield of international competition, profoundly reshaping the global order and the pattern of development.” He is, of course, absolutely right. The United States and China compete for economic, military, and diplomatic dominance through the development of new technologies, including those with both military and civilian applications.
China is an increasingly formidable rival on this front. Since announcing the “Made in China 2025” plan in 2015, Beijing has invested in a whole-of-government focus on advancing critical emerging technologies. Now, China is giving the United States a run for its money. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Tesla in sales of battery electric vehicles. In addition to being bigger than Tesla, BYD is arguably more inventive, with vehicles that can slide sideways into parking spots and float during emergencies, and chargers that can replenish up to 250 miles of range in a mere five minutes—several times faster than Tesla superchargers. The state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China also intends to rival U.S. leaders in the aerospace manufacturing field; this March, the company released plans for a long-range supersonic jet that produces supersonic booms no louder than a hairdryer. Also in March, Beijing sent quantum-encrypted images to South Africa using a small, cheap satellite—an enormous advance in quantum communications. Chinese biotech companies are competing with their U.S. counterparts in creating new drugs. And as the energy demands of artificial intelligence make fusion power—a potentially massive source of carbon-free electricity—even more desirable, China has more new public fusion projects, fusion patents, and fusion Ph.D.s than any other country.
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