LettersCan China pursue tech self-sufficiency and market openness at once?

Each spring, Beijing’s policy calendar attracts global scrutiny. Growth targets, fiscal signals and industrial priorities are parsed for clues about the direction of the world’s second-largest economy. In Southeast Asia, however, the interest is less about headline percentages and more about structural intent. China’s five-year strategy will not only shape domestic trajectories, it will recalibrate patterns of dependence and autonomy across the region.

For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), China is simultaneously a gravitational centre of production networks and a source of systemic risk. The region’s export industries are tightly woven into Chinese supply chains, while Chinese capital and demand underpin infrastructure, energy and digital expansion.

Interdependence can generate mutual gain, but it can also create unequal exposure. Beijing’s renewed emphasis on opening its economy to global flows invites cautious optimism. In theory, deeper liberalisation would reinforce a rules-based commercial environment and distribute gains more broadly.

In practice, Southeast Asian policymakers will judge credibility not by vocabulary but by institutional design: regulatory transparency, equal treatment for foreign firms and predictability in trade remedies.

The deeper question is philosophical. Can a state simultaneously pursue technological self-sufficiency and expansive openness without drifting towards selective integration? If resilience is defined primarily as insulation from external shocks, policy is likely to prioritise domestic substitution and strategic sectors. If resilience is understood as diversified integration, then openness must extend beyond symbolic gestures.