What happens to ‘Made in China 2025’ as trade war fears grow
The objective of China’s version of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is to make the country more self-sufficient in a range of technologies and activities
Launched by Premier Li Keqiang in 2015, the “Made in China 2025" strategy aims to guide the country’s industrial modernisation, including the substitution of foreign technology with innovation developed on the mainland.
This strategy, known as the Chinese version of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, had initially raised concerns in the United States and European Union because of the mainland’s goal to wean itself off importing a range of technologies from leading foreign suppliers.
“Instead of moving ahead with the progressive market-based reforms announced at the Third Plenum in 2013, state planners are unfortunately falling back on the old approach of top-down decision-making,” Jörg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said in a report.
The Mercator Institute for China Studies, a German think tank, described the strategy as “a forceful and smart challenge to the leading economies of today”.
That initiative, however, has proved to be prescient as China faces a potential trade war with the United States after US President Donald Trump announced plans to impose tariffs worth US$60 billion against goods imported from the mainland.