Paul Tembe
Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the opening of the 19th General Assembly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the 14th General Assembly of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in Beijing on May 28, 2018.
That address set the theme for most of the scientific development China has experienced lately. XI said as China strives for prosperity and rejuvenation, it needs to devote a huge amount of resources to promoting science and technology, and endeavour to become a world centre for science and innovation.
The president mentioned that China is going through a transition from quantity accumulation to a quality leap-forward and from breakthroughs in certain fields to overall improvement of performance. As a new round of scientific, technological and industrial revolutions is reshaping the world, the impact of science and technology on a country’s future and its people’s wellbeing has never been so profound as today.
President Xi urged scientists and innovators to make efforts and ensure “high-quality science and technology” underpin the development of a modernised economy. By integrating the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence.
With economic development and industrial innovation, China will move from the low to the medium or high-end of the global value chain, he said. He told the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering to have courage and explore the uncharted courses, so one day China will have all its self-developed core technologies.
“The initiatives of innovation must be secured in our own hands,” he said. The plea and encouragement made by Xi to scientists is reminiscent of the success and prominence of the four-great inventions of ancient China.
Papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the compass are to this day representative of the significant and primary contributions of the Chinese nation to world civilisation. In recent years, China has also managed to reach admirable feats of scientific and technological innovations.
The four great new inventions of China in modern times are Alipay, the high-speed train, online shopping, and bike-sharing. These are leading a new trend in convenience and efficiency, and are changing the livelihoods of Chinese people.
Although the technologies of these new inventions did not originate in China, and were first devised decades ago, China has outpaced other countries in its widespread adoption and adaptation of all of the four technologies. Through these inventions China has managed to come closer to the ideal of smart cities in places like Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Shenzhen have all made significant progress in dealing with the challenges of urbanisation.
By the year 2021, China was reported to have nearly 800 smart cities. Smart cities have and are embracing technologies to improve convenience and efficiency.
In the aerospace industry or race to space, China is showing no signs of slowing its pace to surpass the US and other powers in space transportation and exploration. Experts in the field commented that China was set to get a fair share of profit margin, gain economic revenue stream and more robust national security implications through its efforts and successes in the aerospace industry.
They went on to state that “competition will play out in myriad ways in 2022 that could ultimately determine which country seizes the upper hand”. The successful launch and landing on October 15, 2021 of the Shenzhou 13 and re-entry module return to Earth on April 16, 2022 marks the latest victory in China’s efforts to become a force to reckon with in the aerospace industry.
The victory is preceded by earlier endeavours to make a series of strategic science and technology breakthroughs by 2030, while elaborating on a proposal of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee for the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020).
In efforts to become the global centre for science and innovation, China has made strides in exporting and assisting other nations to achieve its level of technological know-how. In an effort to fast-track and achieve global technological equity, President Xi has encouraged scientists and innovators to “deepen international co-operation, making use of global innovation resources, and fostering win-win partnerships to deal with common challenges such as food and energy security, health and climate change.
The statement by Xi is a repopulation of efforts towards promoting the building of a community with a shared future for humanity. China has vowed that these would bring benefits to other countries and peoples, and help with better development in the rest of the world while working on its own development.
Africa and other developing nations seek to take advantage of technological advances from China to leapfrog into these advanced technologies. Developing nations have an advantage of directly accessing these innovative technologies with the need to retrofitting old technologies.
Developed nations on the other hand are ready to drive a comparative advantage to China’s technological advances in order to secure their markets and technological advantage in foreign shores, especially in developing nations.
China has over time proved to have a strong synergy between education and technological innovation. South Africa on the other hand is so far struggling to establish synergy between the education and technology innovation. If such a trend were to continue, South Africa will miss an opportunity at harnessing its demographic.
The looming African Youth Dividend may manifest as an African curse if South Africa lacks coherent instruments aimed at producing engineers, graduates and keeping that talent at home. The failure may lead to the “traditional brain drain” that has come to form part and parcel of the African vicious cycle of losing graduates to the highest bidder anywhere around the world.
It would serve South Africa and the region well to take some lessons from the type of periodical long-term planning that one has encountered whenever dealing with developments in China; be it within the field of education, economy, technology or innovation. Emulation of periodical long-term planning from China would help South Africa and the continent up its game in leapfrog processes.
Such processes would only increase co-operation and a win-win situation between China and Africa.
In 2020, President Xi Jinping stressed the continuing advancement of science and technology development to a deeper and broader level. He made these comments at a symposium attended by scientists in Beijing. Xi said the scientific and technological development must target the global science frontiers, serve the main economic battlefield, strive to fulfil the significant needs of the country and benefit people’s lives and health.
The president chaired the symposium to solicit opinions on China’s scientific and technological development for the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025). Highlighting innovation as the “primary driving force”, Xi said China needs scientific and
technological solutions more than ever to boost economic and social development as well as improve people’s living standards. He said Chinese scientists and scientific professionals have the confidence, determination and capability to scale the heights of science.
Projects that cover aviation engines, quantum teleportation, intelligent manufacturing, and robots, deep space and deep-sea probes, new materials, brain science and health-related science were mentioned as core areas of scientific research and technological innovation. “The country must place innovation in key science and technology areas higher on the agenda,” Xi said.
The following four main pillars for technological and innovation in China in the current and foreseeable future as stressed by President Xi in his speech in 2021:
∎ Sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening should always be considered a strategic support for national development.
∎ Joining the global network of sci-tech innovation and playing an active role in coping with major challenges facing humanity.
∎ Make resolute efforts to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields.
∎ China should strive to train top sci-tech talents with global influence.
∎ China’s science and technology ought to make greater contributions to building a community with a shared future for humanity.
* Tembe is a sinologist and founder of SELE Encounters