China Seeking to Dominate Fourth Industrial Revolution: Expert

An employee observes chip production at a factory in Nantong in eastern China's Jiangsu Province, on March 17, 2021. STR/AFP via Getty Images

China is striving to dominate the Fourth Industrial revolution, according to David Goldman, Spengler columnist for Asia Times and PJ Media.

Although the concept of a science, data, and technology-driven “Fourth Industrial Revolution“ first stemmed from the World Economic Forum in 2015, it has since been adopted by the Chinese Communist Party.

“From the mechanization of the first industrial revolution in the 18th century, to the electrification of the second industrial revolution in the 19th century, to the informationization of the third industrial revolution in the 20th century, each round of ‘disruptive technological innovation’ has shaped history,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in a 2018 speech.

According to Xi, the next decade will largely determine who leads the next industrial revolution. “The next ten years will be a key decade,” Xi said, stating that “a new round of technological revolution and industrial change—artificial intelligence, big data, quantum information, and biotechnology—are gathering strength.”

Goldman cited Chinese government-controlled media, which stated that “China ‘is a leader in 4th industrial revolution’” to illustrate the Chinese regime’s ambitions.

“China says it wants to be the leader in the fourth industrial revolution. That’s the application of artificial intelligence to information technology, which makes it possible not just to stream videos or play games, but to drive cars, unload freighters, run factories and so forth,” Goldman told “China in Focus” on NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

“If China dominates the Fourth Industrial Revolution, then you will have an autocracy allied to other autocracies being the dominant economic power in the world to the detriment of the democracies,” he noted.

In this case, Goldman argued, “we will be poor, we‘ll be less secure, we’ll be more beholden to other countries, our children will have a much dimmer future.”

In his opinion, China lags far behind the United States in terms of microchip fabrication. “In terms of the production of the actual semiconductors that do the data processing and storage, it’s 10 to 20 years behind us,” he said.

“However, in many of the applications to which you apply chips, China is much more advanced—particularly when it concerns 5G broadband and its application to things like autonomous vehicles, factories, ports, and so forth. So it’s a very unbalanced situation,” he added.

Consequently, he said, the global economy could end up with “two semiconductor worlds that compete with each other. And that will simply make life a great deal more expensive. That will hold China back for some period of time, but not forever.”

Advancing US Industry Vs. Holding Back China

Last October, the U.S. government issued new export controls (pdf) that block U.S. companies from selling advanced semiconductors—and the equipment used to manufacture them—to certain Chinese manufacturers unless a special license is obtained. In December, the government expanded these restrictions to 36 additional Chinese chip makers.

Washington has also effectively prohibited U.S. citizens from supporting the production or development of chips covered under the restrictions. U.S. nationals participating in Chinese chip-related companies will either have to quit their jobs or relinquish their citizenship.

On March 21, the U.S. Commerce Department went a step further by releasing proposed rules to prevent billions of dollars in semiconductor manufacturing and research funding from being used by China and other countries deemed of concern.

These approaches, Goldman said, can hold back Chinese chip manufacturing for some time, but would not work in the long run.

“Denying access to China—not only to very fast chips, but the equipment you need to make fast chips—will eventually require China ... to build its own industry,” he noted.

“China has a very large skilled manpower pool, it has lots of engineers, and if it puts enough effort into it, it will eventually come up to speed, and we will face a formidable competitor that will try to knock our companies out of the market,” he said, “just as China destroyed the American solar-panel industry.”

As a result, the expert suggested that the United States should advance its own industry, which he deemed a more effective strategy.

“I really think we need to focus more on the industrial and productivity applications of 5G. The CHIPS Act was a good thing. Semiconductors are a critical resource, we need to be able to produce them at home as a matter of national security,” he said.

Alex Wu contributed to this report.