China is in a neck-and-neck race with the West for technological solutions to make its economy more competitive and its military more powerful.
“A major challenge for China is for it to work out how to get from where it is now to where it wants to be – where higher value-added tech jobs are a real possibility,” Professor Mitter told The Straits Times on June 21.He pointed out that China’s track record in technological advancement in the past two decades and the experience of the former Soviet Union show that it is not impossible for authoritarian states to produce scientific innovations.
Professor Rana Mitter, 54, during the roundtable discussion with Straits Times editors and journalists at SPH Media on June 21, 2024. ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO He has pumped state resources to prop up state-owned enterprises while reining in private companies deemed to have grown too “unruly”, with a clampdown in the internet finance, property and education sectors.in 2023 – has also forbidden cadres from making “baseless critiques” of the party leadership and tightened censorship of the academia, media and public expression.