US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross emerged last month from a visit to Beijing with a warning about China’s goals to develop robotics and other high-tech sectors, a surprising new tack given the Trump administration’s previous focus on jobs in traditional industries such as steel.
Are robots in Chinese factories about to threaten US robots’ jobs by working for lower wages? No, and even if they did, that’s not what concerns the White House. During his weekend in Beijing, Mr Ross had an earful from American business about a Chinese plan to create a range of cutting edge industries, called Made in China 2025.
Made in China 2025 is a top-down industrial policy that in its benign form unlocks loans and approvals for companies that meet Beijing’s goals to create internationally competitive industries at home. More troubling for the foreign companies complaining to Mr Ross, the favoured short-cut to “indigenous” high tech is not to develop and commercialise it but to pressure investors in China to hand over rights to the tech they’ve developed, in return for maintaining their market access in China.