When and Whether Can China Become a Manufacturing Powerhouse?
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Nice to see you on my second live show. Today I will talk about a very important topic: China’s manufacturing industry. We all know how important the manufacturing industry is for a country. So how about the situation in China? Very surprisingly, during the recent CCP’s annual “Two Sessions” meeting in Beijing, two senior CCP officials seemed to have told us a different story about China’s manufacturing industry. So today I will discuss this.
Admission from Senior CCP Official
A senior CCP official recently admitted that because China's manufacturing industry is limited by China's social system, lack of talents and other factors, and because key technologies are controlled by “others”, China needed at least 30 years to achieve the goal of becoming a "manufacturing powerhouse."
This statement was made by Miao Wei. He is the deputy director of the Economic Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former Minister of Industry and Information Technology of China.
He said at a meeting on March 7 that in terms of global manufacturing industry, there are four different levels.
The first level is led by the US, it is the global science and technology innovation center.
The European Union and Japan belong to the second level, and they are at the high-end of manufacturing.
China and other emerging countries can only belong to the third level, which is at the low- and mid-range of the manufacturing industry.
The fourth level consists mainly of resource exporting countries, including OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), Africa, Latin America and other countries.
Miao Wei said, China's manufacturing industry is "big but not strong, comprehensive but not good", with weak basic capabilities, while key technologies are still controlled by “others”, not China. So it will take at least 30 years for China to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
Another CCP senior official Si Zefu also agreed that China’s manufacturing industry is “not as good as others” . He is a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Harbin Electric Corporation.
He said that China’s manufacturing industry had three weaknesses. They manifest in the following three areas: innovation capability and innovation level, product quality and branding, management level and efficiency.
Miao Wei also stressed that the GDP contribution of the manufacturing sector fell very fast recently. This not only dragged down China’s economic growth, but also affected urban employment. It will also bring industrial safety risks, weakening the competitiveness of the Chinese economy.
Miao Wei said that in 2020, China's manufacturing share of GDP was just over a quarter, the lowest level since 2012.
As to the problem of China’s social system, Miao Wei believes that "lack of market-oriented reforms" is the fundamental problem limiting the development of China's manufacturing industry.
He also thinks that apart from lack of key technologies, China also lacks talents in emerging industries, and this has become an obstacle for improving the overall status of the manufacturing industry.
I must say that he was very bold when he actually dared to say that China lacks market-oriented reforms, and there are problems with China’s social system. This is not obviously what Xi Jinping has been talking about. Xi Jinping always says he has confidence in the CCP’s social system, and he actually wants to promote it to the entire world.
The CCP Seems to Have Abandoned Its Goal of Becoming a Manufacturing Power in 10 Years
In 2015, the CCP proposed the ten-year Made in China 2025 project, envisioning that by 2025, China would have transformed from a big manufacturing country to a manufacturing power, and that by 2035, the country’s manufacturing industry would surpass that of industrially advanced countries like Germany and Japan. The CCP hopes it will lead innovation in key manufacturing sectors by 2049, which will be the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the CCP’s regime.
However, after the “Made in China 2025” became a sticking point in the trade war with the U.S., the CCP has stopped talking about it publicly. The project even disappeared from the CCP’s 2019 government work report.
The reason why the CCP no longer talks about it, is that the US has been criticizing the CCP for stealing technology from the US.
I remember when I covered a US Senate hearing in 2018 on “China’s Non-Traditional Espionage Against the United States”, Senator John Cornyn pointed at a poster of the CCP’s “strategic goals” and said that was the CCP’s shopping list to steal technology from the US.
So it seems that the push back of the US had worked a little bit. That’s why the CCP no longer talks about its ambitious Made in China 2025 plan.
Xi Jinping Feels “Choke Held” in Key Technologies by the West
In addition to the trade war, the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on the CCP’s state-owned technology companies such as telecommunications giant Huawei and ZTE, and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation.
As a result, the CCP has publicly admitted that China is suffering “choke holding” in the field of technology.
Actually, it was Xi Jinping who first used the term “choke holding” in a CCP’s Central Economic Work Conference he hosted in November last year.
He admitted that innovation in China's manufacturing industry was far from enough, so the country's strategic science and technology forces should work on solving the problem of being "choke held" by others in key technologies.
Then in December last year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also talked about solving a number of 'chokehold' problems as soon as possible.
So from these we can see that although the CCP has stolen a lot of technology, it wasn’t able to master the most important, key technologies. That’s why the CCP officials now realized and admitted that China needs 30 more years to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
However, I doubt if the CCP can still exist for another 30 years. Maybe before China can become a manufacturing powerhouse, the CCP will have already collapsed, right? If the CCP does collapse, maybe China will really have a chance to catch up with the world in 30 years or even sooner.
Anyway, that’s what I think.
Huawei Turns to “Smart Pig Farming” Due to a Cut-off in Chip Supply
In recent years, China has become the world's largest manufacturing country driven by domestic and international demand, but its industry’s dependence in U.S. high-tech products such as semiconductors has become a strategic weakness for the CCP.
For example, although Huawei has been backed by the CCP with full force, it was hit hard by the U.S. sanctions.
Recently, when it became too difficult for it to maintain its main cell phone business, Huawei was forced to announce that it would try to "survive without cell phones".
In February this year, Huawei’s Chairman Ren Zhengfei vowed to "survive without cell phones", and launched the so-called "Nanniwan" project to save itself.
The project includes making breakthroughs in various fields such as coal and steel production, music, smart screens, PC computers, tablets, etc.
So what is the “Nanniwan project” ?
Nanniwan is actually the name of a place, the so-called "revolutionary base" of the CCP located near Yan'an in Shaanxi Province in China. In 1941, that was, when the legitimate Chinese government led by Kuomingtang was fighting with the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the CCP was hiding in Yan’an and tried to survive and develop. And it used its soldiers to farm at Nanniwan, and they also grew opium [ˈoʊpiəm]. They sold the opium to buy supplies for the CCP, and this really saved the CCP’s life.
So after the CCP took power, Nanniwan has become a symbolic “sacred” place that has saved the CCP. Let’s show a few pictures of it now. You can see that Nanniwan has now become a tourist site and a base for the CCP to brainwash young generations.
Now let’s see a picture of the CCP’s flag they grew in the land of Nanniwan, obviously to educate the visitors that you need to “love your motherland”, in fact, to love the CCP. Now let’s see another picture of Mao Zedong’s famous quote in Chinese “自己动手，丰衣足食” also being grown in the land of Nanniwan.
“自己动手，丰衣足食” means if we work hard ourselves, we will have enough food and clothing.
It was a famous slogan in Mao Zedong’s time when China was isolated by the world as a Communist regime.
Now, Huawei’s chairman wants to go back to Mao Zedong’s time and to adopt the so-called “Nanniwan Spirit” to try to save itself.
Well, Huawei did have launched its "Smart Pig Farming" project.
It includes providing dashboard monitoring, big data analysis, and digital management etc, to the pig farming industry.
It also supports AI identification, AI learning, AI prediction, AI decision making, etc.
We have all heard about “facial recognition” technology, right? Well, Huawei has now extended this to pigs, so they have created identity cards for pigs, and use "pig face" identification in their "Smart Pig Farming" solutions.
A lot of Chinese netizens are mocking that Huawei has finally found an area to put its high technology into practice.
Well, since the first case of African swine fever was confirmed in China in 2018, the price of pork has risen steadily in China.
As a result, the CCP has started to promote the so-called "scientific pig farming". Many high-tech enterprises have entered the pig farming industry. That’s why Huawei is also starting to get in on the act.
Will it succeed? We’ll have to wait and see.
Well, that’s all for today’s “Inconvenient Truths”. I hope you have enjoyed it. Please make sure you subscribe to, and are still subscribed to my channel. Please also take some time to like my videos, and leave us a comment.
Thank you so much. See you next time!
3/13/2021 *
Truth Saves Lives. Subscribe and support! 真相能救命。請支持！
Donate to me directly 直接捐款：https://donorbox.org/inconvenient-truths-by-jennifer-zeng
Subscribestar 會員頻道： https://bit.ly/3fEzeJB
YouTube 油管：bit.ly/3b87DPj
GoFundme 衆籌：https://bit.ly/2zx6LVw
Patreon 網站：https://bit.ly/3cvBy3H
Paypal 捐款：http://paypal.me/JenniferZeng97
Bitcoin 捐款：bc1qlkkvwyvw96x3xx6jgzkhlnnv0nv3d9vm078vfd
