ABSTRACT
Vice President Mike Pence of the United States warned that “through the ‘Made in China 2025’ (MIC2025) plan, the (Chinese) Communist Party has set its sights on controlling 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced industries.” Indeed, the plan looks very ambitious, and as the United States is keen to prevent China’s ambition to realise, a struggle over the technological hegemony between China and the US seems inevitable. However, both Pence’s interpretation of MIC2025 and the possibility of its realisation are questionable. This chapter will place MIC2025 in the context of China’s industrial policies during the past 20 years and assesses the possibility of its goals becoming a reality. By focusing on integrated circuits and robotics, this chapter points out several policy failures made by the Chinese government, which will be detrimental to the realisation of China’s goals, despite the broad market opportunities for high-tech industry development in China.
