Invest, Acquire, Dominate: The rise and rise of China tech

Like most developing countries, China regards technology and self-reliance as two key pillars of modernisation. Unlike most, however, China has historically sought to not only catch up with the advanced countries, but to surpass them. Indeed, in the last 30 years, China has emerged as the leading manufacturing power in the world. Today China’s aim is to avoid the so-called ‘middle income trap’: when an economy is developed to the point when it loses its low-cost advantage, yet is not developed enough to transition to a higher value, innovation-based economy, resulting in stagnation at the middle-income level.