US-China tech war: Beijing’s top policy official lays out strategy to address Washington’s ‘stranglehold’ over China

A high-ranking official within the inner circle of the ruling Chinese Communist Party has said China must embrace a “whole country” approach and mobilise the nation’s private businesses to reduce reliance on foreign technologies amid ongoing US sanctions that restrict China’s access to advanced equipment and devices.

Jiang Jinquan, the newly promoted head of the Central Policy Research Office, which studies and drafts national policies for China’s top leadership, wrote in an article in the official media Study Times on Monday that it was Beijing’s “inevitable choice” to seek a greater level of technology independence when the US was imposing technology restrictions on China.

The article was Jiang’s interpretation of a keynote speech made by President Xi Jinping to China’s provincial level leaders earlier this month. The full transcript of Xi’s speech has not been published, but according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency, Xi told the country’s rising political stars that the nation has entered a “new development stage” where time and trends are in Beijing’s favour in a rapidly changing world.

Xi said that a hallmark of this “new development pattern” was a higher level of self-sufficiency and self-empowerment and that China must “focus more on ingenious innovation”.

Jiang wrote that China’s technology sector still has many short comings and weak links, making the country vulnerable to external sanctions.

“In the semiconductor industry, China’s production capacity accounted for only 7 per cent of the global total but China’s demand accounted for 33 per cent of global total. As a result, China has to rely on imports to meet over 80 per cent of domestic demand for semiconductor products,” Jiang wrote.