中国正在与美国的高技术“拔河比赛”中摧城拔寨
2022-06-22 07:16阅读：
作为最具有竞争力的门类之一，2018年中国在包括半导体在内的计算机、电子和光学产品行业的全球市场份额超过美国，位居世界第一，市场份额为25%，美国（23%）位居次席，韩国（11%）排名第三。中国相对表现最弱的行业是其他交通设备，但该报告表示北京正寻求通过对一个国家航空龙头企业——中国商飞——大举投资来改变这种状况。
China gains ground on US in hi-tech 'tug of war', as
Beijing spends billions on national champions
-China's global share of the advanced technology market leapt
from less than 4 per cent in 1995 to 21.5 per cent in 2018, a new
report says
-US market share declined from 24 per cent in 1995 to 22.5 per
cent in 2018, with experts warning its competitive advantage is
under threat
Amanda Lee
China has been gaining global market share in hi-tech industries at
the expense of the Un
ited States, according to a new report, as the race for tech
supremacy between the two countries heats up.
Measured across key seven sectors, China’s share of the advanced
technology market leapt from less than 4 per cent in 1995 to 21.5
per cent in 2018, said the Information Technology & Innovation
Foundation (ITIF) on Wednesday.
The sectors covered in the report include: IT and information
services; computer, electronic and optical products; electrical
equipment; machinery and equipment; motor vehicle equipment; other
transport equipment; and pharmaceutical products.
The US saw its market share in the seven sectors decline from 24
per cent in 1995 to 22.5 per cent in 2018, the Washington-based
think tank said.
Removing IT and other information services, America’s relative
share of advanced industry production globally fell by nearly 16
percentage points from 96.2 in 1995 to 80.4 per cent in 2018,
according to the ITIF’s Hamilton Index of Advanced-Industry
Performance.
Beijing has funnelled huge amounts of money into developing its
hi-tech industries to meet Western standards and loosen its
dependence on imports, an issue that has gained more urgency amid
attempts by Washington to contain China’s technological
advancement.
“We see this tug of war in the fact that there was a strong
correlation between the change in the respective shares of global
output that China and the United States held in advanced industries
from 1995 to 2018,” said the report by ITIF, whose board includes
representatives from US tech companies such as Meta, Amazon, Google
and Intel.
“In other words, the more ground China gained in these industries,
the more the United States lost.”
China’s strongest growth was in electrical equipment, where it
controls more than a third of the global market. Dubbed the world’s
workshop, the country also ranked first in car manufacturing in
2018 with 25 per cent of the international market, while the US had
the lowest share among the economies profiled in the report.
The world’s No 2 economy is also making strides in pharmaceutical
production, ranking third behind the US and Germany, the report
said.
In one of the most competitive categories, China in 2018 surpassed
the US to gain the biggest market share in computer, electronic and
optical products, which includes semiconductors.
It accounted for 25 per cent of the market, while the US at No 2
had about 23 per cent. Korea accounted for 11 per cent.
China’s weakest sector was in the production of other transport
equipment, but Beijing is seeking to change that by spending
billions on a national aviation champion, the Commercial Aircraft
Corporation of China (Comac), the ITIF report said.
Comac is the developer of the C919, a narrow body passenger jet to
compete with Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’s A320.
Robert D. Atkinson, president of ITIF and an author of the new
index, said it was not too late for the US government to reconsider
its policy settings, as there is a big difference between
“producing potato chips and producing computer chips”.
Increasing the share of advanced tech manufacturing in the US
economy – which has been driven to China as a result of its
“mercantilist policies” – would help economic and national
security, especially in production of semiconductors and artificial
intelligence, he said.
The ITIF report said if Washington wanted advanced industries to
constitute the same share of the US economy as the country did of
global gross domestic product (GDP), output would have to expand by
US$99 billion annually. To equal China, output would have to expand
by 42 per cent, or US$679 billion annually.
“Moving the United States from below the global average in
advanced-industry production to at least 15 per cent above the
global average would bring about a big change,” he said.
“It would dramatically reduce America’s trade deficit. It would
significantly weaken America’s dependence on China, while at the
same time slowing China’s advance.
“The reality is that the long-term economic cost of not having
robust hi-tech manufacturing would be much higher than the cost of
reconstituting it.”
China’s industrial policy has long been a point of contention for
the US and other Western nations.
Washington has accused China of unfair trade practices, including
intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, a lack of
market access for American companies and using state subsidies that
create an uneven playing field for foreign firms.
China, meanwhile, has accused the US of trying to restrict its rise
as a global economic power.
China outspends every other country when it comes to supporting
industrial policy, according to a separate study by the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a US think tank.
In 2019, China is estimated to have spent at least 1.73 per cent of
GDP to help its industries, said the report released last
month.
That is more than twice as much as South Korea, the second-largest
spender. In dollar terms, China spends more than twice as much as
the US, the study found.
The research, funded by the US Department of State, defined
industrial policy as any state intervention – whether explicit or
implicit – that aims to reallocate resources to support certain
firms or sectors to achieve one or more policy objectives.
Atkinson said the US could take a leaf out of Germany’s book, which
had seen its output in advanced industries as a proportion of GDP
increase from 27 per cent more than the global average in 1995 to
74 per cent more in 2018, even though its share of global output
declined in all seven industries in the Hamilton Index.
As a share of its economy, Germany’s motor vehicle industry is
three times the global average, and its machinery industry 2.5
times the global average. Germany trails the US in information
services, but it still grew to more than 26 per cent of the global
average in 2018.
“Germany has long been a model of how to succeed in advanced
manufacturing – from its vocational training programmes for workers
to its collaborative model of research and development, with a
clarity of purpose between industry and government.
“So, at least when it comes to policies, America could replicate
German successes. But to date it has chosen not to,” said
Atkinson.
However, if US policymakers continue to dither, the US could very
well “reach a point of no return within this decade”, said
Atkinson, where the country will have permanently lost competitive
advantage in most advanced-industry sectors.
“We only have to look at Russia to see what weakness in advanced
production does to a country’s autonomy,” he said.
The Hamilton Index aggregates data from the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development on value-added production in
these seven advanced-industry sectors. The full data set covers 66
countries over the 24-year period.
