China Decoded is Newsweek’s in-depth newsletter about China’s growing influence on the world. It goes beyond the headlines to examine how Beijing thinks, how its policies travel beyond China’s borders, and what they mean for the United States and its allies. The newsletter is written by journalists with deep experience covering China.
Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Senior Correspondent for International Affairs and Investigations, has reported extensively on Chinese politics, influence and security. John Feng, China Editor, is based in Taiwan and covers China’s domestic politics, foreign policy and the strategic competition between Beijing and Washington. Below, for Newsweek Members, we are reproducing the latest edition of China Decoded in full: It’s a familiar playbook: Communist Party economic planners identify an exciting new technology and acquire it “by multiple means,” as their phrase goes.
They boost it with subsidies and other forms of industrial support that far outstrip others’; the technology is integrated into state development plans and the country’s military-civil fusion system; even cyberespionage capacities are deployed to secure advantage and create global dependency as manufacturing expands. That’s what’s happening with 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, as it’s more accurately known. AM refers to production processes that create physical objects from digital models by adding material layer by layer.
It will, literally, print the future. The technology is fast and flexible, making it particularly valuable in time-sensitive or supply-constrained environments including defense, disaster response, and other crisis conditions, according to a revelatory and thorough new study, Blueprinting the Future: Mitigating the Risks of Chinese Hegemony in Additive Manufacturing, by David Gardáš, Michal Thim and Filip Urban, and published by the Czech think tank Sinopsis. China has a playbook for industrial areas where it wants to dominate, and it does it well.
Policy is clear, people work hard, they work fast, the product is well-priced and good. But little is left to chance. That raises a question: is it fair?
And is dependency in this area what the rest of the world wants? Perhaps fairness has nothing to do with it. Perhaps that’s sour grapes.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
