Knowledge-Net for a Better World May 2019   Rising China and New Civilization in the Asia-Pacific Working Paper Series (Technological Development Section)   "Will China Emerge as a Global Tech Power?" China’s rapid economic growth since its reform and opening up has propelled it to the status of a global power. If China’s economy continues to grow and subsequently approaches the level of the US GDP at some point in the future, what will the world be like? To explore possible answers to this question, EAI has launched a multi-year research project titled “Rising China and New Civilization in the Asia-Pacific” that aims to identify major global challenges posed by China`s continuous growth over the coming decades. For the first year of this research, EAI focused on analyzing current issues and trends relating to China`s economy, energy and the environment, technology, and security, and projecting how these will influence China and the surrounding region over the next ten years. In doing so, this research has produced a series of working papers. The following is the fourth set of papers covering technological development-related issues. The high technology industry has become a new growth engine for many countries. China, the second largest economy in the world, has also been playing catch up to close the technology gap. However, it still lags behind its neighboring countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan, which achieved economic miracles well before China. Douglas Fuller examines the reasons behind this, asking why China has far fewer tech giants compared to South Korea and Taiwan despite its unprecedented economic success. Fuller concludes that it was China’s ineffective pursuit of industrial policy and excessive state regulation of the market that have impeded the development of the tech industry. [PC Read More]  [Mobile Read More] Mingshen Zhang, on the other hand, analyzes China’s digitalization as spurred by advances in smart digital technologies and discusses the opportunities that this will bring to the regional economy and integration in the Asia-Pacific. China’s digital transformation is taking place across sectors, but not evenly; while China is highly digitized in e-commerce, it falls far behind in the digitalization of the manufacturing and R&D industries. Zhang, however, asserts that China’s digitalization will be further accelerated by domestic factors, such as demographic changes and structural industrial shifts, and predicts that it will generate opportunities for regional economies to cooperate with China on the development of digital infrastructure and government policy frameworks for the Internet and the digital economy. [PC Read More]  [Mobile Read More] Recent Publications Working Paper | The United States, China and the Asia-Pacific: The Shifting Economic Agenda Working Paper | Rising China, Developmental Security and the Emerging Order in the Asia-Pacific Working Paper | China’s Trade: Development, Challenges and Transformations     #909 Sampoong B/D, 158, Eulji-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, 04548, Republic of Korea Tel 82 2 2277 1683  |  Fax 82 2 2277 1684 | Email EAI Copyright 2019 © EAST ASIA INSTITUTE. All Rights Reserved.