top of page
InduQin

What China's MIC 2025 means for India?


In the recent past, growing China’s engagement in the Indian sub-continent in particular and its growing footprint in global affairs in general categorically reveals its overarching strategy to expand its global influence. The main force behind this move is, of course, its remarkable economic growth that it has accomplished in the last three decades.


The ongoing decline in the role of the US as a global super power has only afforded China an opportunity to present itself as a reliable alternative model with its own set of values—its “core national interests” namely, territorial integrity, One China policy, and the Chinese party-state governance model. Leveraging on its fiscal strength it has simultaneously funded infrastructure projects in smaller countries located in Africa and the Asian sub-continent, which incidentally minimizes its suffering from any trade disputes—should they arise at a later date—while maximizing its ability to inflict serious economic damage on the host countries.


This strategy has indeed helped China’s political system to fan the nationalist sentiment domestically. And this in turn helped its political leadership to consolidate its party-state governance model that facilitated the leadership to get away with no democratic accountability which incidentally bestowed on its leadership additional strategic options such as faster and quieter mobilization of resources—both men and material with ease unlike in the democratic countries.


Its place in the United Nations Security Council as its permanent member has bestowed on it significant clout which it is using to advance its geo-political interests very shrewdly. Additionally, it is also building up new institutions with a hope to ultimately act as their head. And this cumulative strength is being used by it to offer opportunistic support or to deny it as it suits its strategic options—as for instance offering support to Pakistan on Kashmir issue and blocking a proposal much sought by India at the United Nations to designate Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist four times.


President Xi Jinping has made “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” as his objective and this well reflects in its military build-up, and expansive territorial claims. Against this backdrop, though China claims its initiatives such as Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, ‘Brics Bank’, ‘Belt and Road’ project, etc., as ‘win-win’ meant for “common destiny of mankind”, its neighboring countries perceive them as “self-serving and expansionist”.


In its march towards its goal of national revitalization, China is now spending huge sums to “doubling down on indigenous innovation and developing core technologies” and transform itself from a state of ‘technology seeker’ to a state of ‘technology generator’. According to its MIC 2025 plan, huge investments ranging between $100-150 bn through public and private funds are envisaged in the frontier fields of IT, machine learning, quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Within these sectors, China is according highest priority to develop its capabilities under AI with an objective to become world leader in AI and associated technologies by 2030. Its spending on R&D that has gone up from $13 bn in 1991 to $376 bn by 2015 is in itself an indicator of how committed China is to acquire self-sufficiency in “core technologies” within the prioritized industries. This urge to acquire mastery over core technologies implicitly reveals China’s ambition to surpass and even displace advanced economies as manufacturing super power worldwide.


Read More at https://www.boloji.com/articles/51280/what-chinas-mic-2025-means-for-india

11 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page