Tech war: Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for tech self-sufficiency a decade ago, according to speech in new book

President Xi Jinping determined as early as 2013 that China had little choice but to pursue self-sufficiency in key technologies, and that the country could rely on its socialist system to seek technological advantages, according to an internal speech made public for the first time in a new book.

In remarks to science and technology delegates at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) meeting in 2013, Xi said China’s growth in the previous three decades was a result of importing and leveraging foreign and “second-hand” technologies from the last industrial revolution, which would put China at an disadvantaged position.

“By sticking to the beaten path, China would not only suffer wider technology gaps [with the world’s advanced levels], but also be trapped at the bottom of the global value chain of industrial production,” Xi said in the speech, which was included in the book titled On Technology Self-reliance and Self-improvement, a collection of Xi’s remarks on the topic from 2013 to 2022.

“Amid an increasingly heightened global competition of overall national strength, we don’t have many options but to take a path of self-dependent innovation,” Xi said.

The internal speech was delivered by Xi on March 4, 2013, just 10 days before he was elected president of China. At the time, state media reported on the CPPCC event but only a summary of Xi’s speech was published previously.

The newly revealed transcript of Xi’s speech offers a glimpse into the thinking of the leader of the world’s second largest economy. Xi’s message of technology self-sufficiency and the necessity for China to control “core technologies” is a consistent theme throughout the book.