Dr. Cha Jung-mi (Associate Research Fellow) has categorized China’s strategies to survive and overpower the rival in the era of the U.S-China tech war into two aspects, “technological innovation” and “technological solidarity”. She emphasized that Korea needs to seek independent strategies for innovation and solidarity since nowadays the U.S.-China conflict is not limited to technological innovation but expanded to technological alliance to build their own technology network.
According to Dr. Cha’s opinion, China defines this era as the era of “Great Revolution of the Century (世界百年未有之大变局)” in which scientific and technological transformations take place at the same time; they see a prominent strategic opportunity to rise and are actively engaging in “technological innovation” and “technological solidarity”. In fact, the rise and fall of great powers in the history of mankind have always been linked with emerging and decline of new technology; it is why China is focusing on innovation and solidarity, believing that the rise of novel technologies gives it an opportunity to take the global leadership. China has been fostering especially artificial intelligence, space science, and quantum information as strategic nation-critical science and technology projects, while expanding its global network with initiatives such as “Digital Silk Road (数字丝绸之路)” and “Alliance of International Science Organizations (国际科学组织联盟).
“The significant characteristic of this era is that the rise of new high-tech technologies and fierce competition to take the lead – this is an important transitional period for Korea to determine the economic and strategic status of Korea in the future of technological revolution,” said Dr. Cha. “Beyond merely forecasting and analyzing the future of the U.S.-China tech hegemony, we should address the very important task of the mid- to long-term strategy to seek the governance of integrated communication and cooperation among the governance, industry, academia and laboratory for establishing Korea’s strategies in the innovation and solidarity that will help us take a lead in the era of Industry 4.0.”
Meanwhile, NAFI’s Center for International Strategy is conducting two projects under the 2021 agenda “the future of U.S.-China technological hegemony”: the “Global Collaboration Research” project together with scholars from 13 countries, which is a comparative study on perceptions and forecast strategies of major countries for U.S.-China tech war; and a project in cooperation with about 10 domestic scholars to determine Korea’s best diplomatic strategies and tasks under this hegemony.
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