Speaker 1: Pushkin Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Nate and Maria.
Speaker 1: We're dropping by today to share an excerpt from a
Speaker 1: new audiobook we think you'll find very interesting. It's called
Speaker 1: Global Tech Wars, China's Race to Dominate, and it's about
Speaker 1: how China's innovation is reshaping the global balance of power.
Speaker 2: For decades, China's economic rise has been symbolized by the
Speaker 2: unstoppable force of its low cost manufacturing. And now China
Speaker 2: is among the leading countries and cutting edge industries like AI,
Speaker 2: electric vehicles, surveillance technology and more. When that comes a
Speaker 2: new and disruptive wave of competition, one that threatens not
Speaker 2: just Western manufacturing but also the West geopolitical dominance.
Speaker 1: In Global Tech Wars, Financial Times veteran journalist James King
Speaker 1: not only analyzes China's rapid technological ascent, but what it
Speaker 1: means for the future.
Speaker 2: Drawing on deep research, exclusive interviews, and first hand insights,
Speaker 2: King impacts the seismic shifts already underway, shifts that will
Speaker 2: redefine economies, industries, and global power structures in the years ahead.
Speaker 1: Here's an excerpt of Global Tech Wars. If you want
Speaker 1: to hear more, find Global Tech Wars from Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and the ft at Pushkin dot Fm, slash audiobooks on Audible, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your audiobooks.
Speaker 3: Chapter one, shun Jun Speed in the heart of shun Jun,
Speaker 3: a city in southern China, is the district of Hua
Speaker 3: Chiangbi and it's home to the biggest electronics market in
Speaker 3: the world. Yeah, it's a vast warren of stalls selling
Speaker 3: every kind of electronic component under the sun. So we're
Speaker 3: standing in the middle of one of the Huai Chanbi
Speaker 3: electronics markets and the scene is really quite impressive. It's
Speaker 3: basically one stall after another. There's hundreds of stalls here.
Speaker 3: I mean there's just piles of electronic components on top
Speaker 3: of each other in a very higgeldy piggledy way. It
Speaker 3: looks like a rather eccentric hardware shop where you know
Speaker 3: that you're selling everything, but you're not quite sure where
Speaker 3: anything is.
Speaker 4: So we have signal generators, we have multimeters, lots of
Speaker 4: different kinds of multimeters. Obviously any micro controller you could
Speaker 4: possibly want.
Speaker 3: And in the market, I met Noah's Zerkin. He's a
Speaker 3: tech inventor from the US and he's chosen to innovate
Speaker 3: new products, not back home in America, but here in
Speaker 3: shun Jerns's inductors. For him, the electronics market is an
Speaker 3: Aladdin's cave of potential treasures.
Speaker 4: USB con actors of every sort, including some rather exotic ones.
Speaker 3: And these ones have here with lots of like brass
Speaker 3: looking nodules coming out of them.
Speaker 4: It's something that I've actually been looking before it for
Speaker 4: close to a year. A suitable punch.
Speaker 3: Yes, So what kind of products could you build with
Speaker 3: the components that we can find in these markets here?
Speaker 4: Everything from consumer electronics devices to robots, drones, military systems,
Speaker 4: to maybe even space systems. Right, you can build anything
Speaker 4: using the components here, Yes, I mean it's such a
Speaker 4: tough question because you can literally build anything.
Speaker 3: For decades, this part of China was known as the
Speaker 3: electronics workshop of the world. But these days shun Jen
Speaker 3: doesn't just make other people's technology. It's building its own
Speaker 3: Chinese tech, and in the process, China is emerging as
Speaker 3: a tech innovator on a course to overtake the US
Speaker 3: as the most important technology power in the world. We're
Speaker 3: here in shun Jen. We're standing by a busy road
Speaker 3: intersection surrounded by a forest of enormous skyscrapers, glass and
Speaker 3: metal buildings reaching all the way down this long avenue. Cars, taxis,
Speaker 3: even motorbikes riding on the pavements around us. Pretty much
Speaker 3: in the center of this vast metropolis, Shunjun is known
Speaker 3: as the Silicon Valley of China, and it's changed dramatically
Speaker 3: in the last few decades. About twenty years ago, shun
Speaker 3: Jurn and the cities around it in the polar of
Speaker 3: the Delta made a name for themselves by mostly manufacturing
Speaker 3: other countries technologies and maybe copying it as well. But
Speaker 3: now we're on the brink of a really totally different
Speaker 3: new era. These days, Chinese companies are making their own brands,
Speaker 3: innovating their own technology, and selling that to Europe, America
Speaker 3: and all over the rest of the world. Shun John
Speaker 3: is home to some of the biggest names in Chinese technology.
Speaker 3: The internet giant Tencent is based here, as is Huawei,
Speaker 3: the tech behemoth that's found itself at the center of
Speaker 3: US China tensions over technology in recent years. There are
Speaker 3: newer trailblazers too. Dji, which essentially invented the consumer drone market,
Speaker 3: is a Shunjan company, as is byd the Chinese carmaker
Speaker 3: that is fast becoming a dominant force in electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: It all points in one direction. Something. A think tank
Speaker 3: recently highlighted that China is overtaking the US in its
Speaker 3: capacity to innovate, and it's now ahead of the US
Speaker 3: in everything from advanced batteries to hypersonic aircraft, quantum communications
Speaker 3: and supercomputers. To understand how that has happened, you need
Speaker 3: to look at China's long history of manufacturing consumer technology.
Speaker 4: Okay, in this bin there, these are sort of ancient
Speaker 4: prototype parts. But so let's take us down and this
Speaker 4: needs to go on the floor.
Speaker 3: In his workshop a short walk away from Shunjan's electronics markets,
Speaker 3: the American inventor Noah Zerkin shows me what he's building,
Speaker 3: an augmented reality headset.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there are you see. There are these three
Speaker 4: circuit boards up here, and that's just for making the
Speaker 4: displays work. And there are these two sensors, each of
Speaker 4: which have two little cameras on them, little fish eye
Speaker 4: cameras to track your hands. Then there are these two
Speaker 4: big curved mirrors that rest in front of your eyes.
Speaker 4: And the electronics on this headset are basically all made
Speaker 4: from stuff that you can find in the market downstairs.
Speaker 3: Tech inventors like Noah have chosen to base themselves in
Speaker 3: shun Jen rather than the United States because being in
Speaker 3: Shunjen means having instant access to a vast supply chain
Speaker 3: of components and factories. It means they can work quickly
Speaker 3: develop prototype products, test them, and manufacture them all at
Speaker 3: a rapid rate.
Speaker 4: Being able to source those components, I was able to
Speaker 4: order things mostly from places that have stalls representing them
Speaker 4: in the Watching Bay markets right that are right here,
Speaker 4: and have them arrive at my doorstep, if not that day,
Speaker 4: the next day. Same with the PCBs that the circuit boards.
Speaker 4: Nowhere else can you get twenty four hour turnaround. If
Speaker 4: I make a mistake on one of my prototypes, I
Speaker 4: can identify it, change it anywhere else.
Speaker 3: This is a big deal.
Speaker 4: So I can do a prototype iteration in twenty four
Speaker 4: to forty eight hours. That is not true anywhere else
Speaker 4: in the world.
Speaker 3: The ability to prototype and manufacture tech products rapidly is
Speaker 3: giving rise to some really exciting companies in Senjen.
Speaker 5: Very small factory, that's matter of fact, this is not
Speaker 5: a factory all right. It looks like an exhibition center,
Speaker 5: but it's not. This is a our R and D
Speaker 5: testing field, so where you can see along the windows
Speaker 5: they are are over twenty fifty chairs and those for
Speaker 5: R and D and productions staff.
Speaker 3: Only a few miles north of La Chiangbay are the
Speaker 3: offices of the robotic startup Ui Bought. They design and
Speaker 3: build industrial robots. In their bright and spacious new research
Speaker 3: and development center. Dozens of robots move around the vast
Speaker 3: open floor, guided by lasers and algorithms. The company is
Speaker 3: growing rapidly. Just a few years ago, it was a
Speaker 3: neighbor of Noah Zerkins in a small workshop above the
Speaker 3: electronics market. Granjen from UI Bots says access to supply
Speaker 3: chains and manufacturing expertise means startups here can operate at
Speaker 3: what he calls Hunjen speed.
Speaker 5: For the most typical example, during the pandemic, we build
Speaker 5: a anti pandemic robot UVC lights and a serum meter
Speaker 5: camera on top within fourteen days. I'm not talking about
Speaker 5: forty days to get the conception of a robot. I
Speaker 5: mean fourteen days for the first prototype from an idea
Speaker 5: to a prototype two weeks.
Speaker 6: That's supply chain.
Speaker 5: Were you able to do that, we can get every
Speaker 5: single component downstairs in Jaisel, Norris.
Speaker 3: This means Ui Bought is rapidly catching up with more
Speaker 3: established US and European competitors.
Speaker 5: Before the pandemic, there were several strong competitors globally like
Speaker 5: we look up to them and we try to study
Speaker 5: from them. After the pandemic, when we joined the conference
Speaker 5: in Germany, we strangely realize that the European players, they
Speaker 5: still trying to sell the same thing with the one
Speaker 5: before pandemic three years earlier, and when we look at ourselves,
Speaker 5: everything's totally different.
Speaker 3: So your R and D effort was moving at Shunjan speed.
Speaker 5: Well, I prefer to call it Shunjan speed.
Speaker 3: Yes, for newer startups like Ui Bot. There are plenty
Speaker 3: of examples around shun Jen of the potential global success
Speaker 3: that Chinese companies can aspire to. We've come to a
Speaker 3: different part of Shunjen. We're now in one of the
Speaker 3: big tech centers of this city. We're surrounded by huge buildings,
Speaker 3: mostly occupied by some of the biggest tech companies in
Speaker 3: China and in the world. There's a sounder construction in
Speaker 3: the background. Three more huge blocks are going up soon
Speaker 3: to be occupied by other Chinese tech companies. And we're
Speaker 3: standing in front of the brand new headquarters of one
Speaker 3: of the companies that's really put hun Jen on the
Speaker 3: map in the last few years, and that's Dji. If
Speaker 3: you want an example of a Chinese company totally dominating
Speaker 3: a sector, Shunjan's drone maker Dji is a good example.
Speaker 3: Over the last decade, it effectively invented the consumer drone market.
Speaker 3: It now sells eight out of ten drones around the world.
Speaker 3: When it's coming towards us, it really looks like an insect.
Speaker 3: I'd say a dragonfly or something like that. Now gone,
Speaker 3: I don't know. That must be twenty thirty meters into
Speaker 3: the sky. It's just tovering over the fore court of
Speaker 3: this building that's going even higher. Oh my, it's now
Speaker 3: a side success for Dji means a massive new headquarters,
Speaker 3: two towers that appear to hover in the sky called
Speaker 3: sky City everywhere we go in Shandani's enormous buildings.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so if you tell here six years ago, now
Speaker 7: it's seven years ago. There's no this building right now
Speaker 7: because we got this piece of land in twenty sixteen
Speaker 7: and in twenty twenty two, we move into this building.
Speaker 7: So after six years we have this beaultiful twin building
Speaker 7: and campus here and right now we live here more
Speaker 7: than one a.
Speaker 5: Half here already.
Speaker 3: Christina Young showed us around the buildings and told us
Speaker 3: about the secret drone testing area housed inside one of
Speaker 3: the towers.
Speaker 6: Before.
Speaker 7: When we have the office that we rent, it's so
Speaker 7: difficult to find a place to fly because people are
Speaker 7: going to walk around. We need to avoid the people.
Speaker 7: And also some of the people they try to know
Speaker 7: or try to find out what is DG's next for that,
Speaker 7: so they try to still and see the product that
Speaker 7: we're testing flight. So we have the fly inside inside
Speaker 7: this building. You may see of those two box there
Speaker 7: are four floor high area.
Speaker 3: Cell floor high area.
Speaker 7: That's the flighting side.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's very interesting. So they can fly in there
Speaker 3: in peace, they know nobody is watching. You can maintain
Speaker 3: your intellectual property. Nobody can see.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And also even without the good condition, like if
Speaker 7: it's ringing windy, you can still test inside.
Speaker 3: Have you got any really cool prototypes you're working on
Speaker 3: at the moment.
Speaker 7: We have so many, but I cannot share now.
Speaker 3: A company like DJI represents something that ten or twenty
Speaker 3: years ago. To observer US in the West, at least,
Speaker 3: would have been difficult to imagine a Chinese company way
Speaker 3: out in front of the competition setting the pace in
Speaker 3: the creation of leading tech products. But China's tech ambitions
Speaker 3: are not limited to robots or drones. China wants to
Speaker 3: lead the world in all kinds of cutting edge technologies.
Speaker 3: The drone maker Dji is one example of a Chinese
Speaker 3: tech company that's leading its field in the development of technology.
Speaker 3: Huawei is another, and China might be leading in a
Speaker 3: multitude of other areas. Last year, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,
Speaker 3: a think tank, made waves when it concluded that China
Speaker 3: now leads the world in thirty seven out of forty
Speaker 3: four critical areas of technology. Another think tank, the Information
Speaker 3: Technology and Innovation Foundation, based in Washington, warned that China
Speaker 3: is evolving from an imitator to an innovator.
Speaker 8: It's easy to forget now just how far behind China
Speaker 8: was in technology and how dismissive most of us in
Speaker 8: the West were about China's tech capabilities all the way
Speaker 8: up till pretty recently.
Speaker 3: Matt Shean is a fellow in the Asia Program of
Speaker 3: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the US, where
Speaker 3: would you say China is right now? Is China catching
Speaker 3: up to the US level in many technologies? Is it
Speaker 3: a peer competitor already? Is it on a trajectory to
Speaker 3: overtake I.
Speaker 8: Think the term peer competitor captures it. I mean there
Speaker 8: are some areas where the US is clearly ahead, you know,
Speaker 8: right now, in the frontiers of AI, in large language models,
Speaker 8: in generative AI, that's an area where the US can
Speaker 8: pretty comfortably say we are ahead.
Speaker 6: But if you look across other areas, if you look at.
Speaker 8: Renewable energy technologies, clean technologies, battery powered vehicles, electric vehicles,
Speaker 8: China is far and away the global leader in these.
Speaker 8: It has the supply chains, it has the deep manufacturing expertise,
Speaker 8: and it's really on a trajectory currently to dominate those
Speaker 8: industries globally. Look at an area like quantum, it's still
Speaker 8: a wide open field. We don't know which sort of
Speaker 8: path is going to be the most promising. But China
Speaker 8: is showing results that are just as impressive or roughly
Speaker 8: on par with the US across a few of those
Speaker 8: different approaches. If you look at you know the success
Speaker 8: of platform technology companies. Obviously, the US has some of
Speaker 8: the global leaders in Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, But you
Speaker 8: know the most popular app in the world right now
Speaker 8: is a Chinese app. It's TikTok.
Speaker 3: In recent years, China has overtaken the US to become
Speaker 3: the biggest file of patents in the world. Last year,
Speaker 3: Huawei filed more patents than any other company anywhere. But
Speaker 3: Shean says, innovation is not just about coming up with
Speaker 3: new ideas. It's about turning them into solutions and products
Speaker 3: at a scale that can reach a mass market.
Speaker 8: This is really an area where Chinese manufacturing prowess is
Speaker 8: going to come into play. You know, the idea of
Speaker 8: China being the factory of the world just because it
Speaker 8: has cheap labor is way out of date. China's advantage
Speaker 8: is not the cost of its labor. It's the fact
Speaker 8: that it's built up the most sophisticated, intricate manufacturing ecosystem
Speaker 8: in the world.
Speaker 6: That they have trained engineers who have spent thirty forty
Speaker 6: years progressively building and refining more and more precise manufacturing
Speaker 6: technologies and especially learning how to take a good idea
Speaker 6: and scale it up to the level of hundreds of
Speaker 6: thousands or millions of products.
Speaker 3: The Chinese government has technological progress at the center of
Speaker 3: its national ambitions. Matt Chian says it's not clear that
Speaker 3: China will inevitably overtake the US, but he says China's
Speaker 3: progress so far suggests that the US cannot assume that
Speaker 3: it will always be in the lead broadly.
Speaker 8: But I think, especially if you zoom in on the
Speaker 8: United States and on Silicon Valley, we have this narrative
Speaker 8: that technological innovation, freedom of speech, and democracy are all
Speaker 8: intimately intertwined, that you cannot have innovation unless you have
Speaker 8: free speech, free internet, political freedoms, and I think that
Speaker 8: was a nice story. It fit broadly with our perception
Speaker 8: of the way that creativity works and the way that
Speaker 8: business and markets work. I think what China's done over
Speaker 8: the last ten to fifteen years it's essentially pulled apart
Speaker 8: that narrative that innovation depends on certain types of freedoms.
Speaker 8: You can have world leading apps come out of a
Speaker 8: country that doesn't have a free Internet. You can have
Speaker 8: some of the biggest and most successful technology companies in
Speaker 8: a country that has quite controlled markets and a very
Speaker 8: heavy handed government. And I think it turned a lot
Speaker 8: of ideas that we had in the West on their head.
Speaker 3: It's a profound conclusion, used to be an article of
Speaker 3: faith that you need a democracy to spur tech innovation.
Speaker 3: But China is turning that argument upside down. In an
Speaker 3: authoritarian state, you can still innovate tech products and sell
Speaker 3: them to the rest of the world via gloves off,
Speaker 3: bare knuckle capitalism. So in your daily life, how many
Speaker 3: times do you feel surprised by new products being made
Speaker 3: and new innovations?
Speaker 9: Almost every day, almost every day.
Speaker 3: Chijo is a venture capitalist based in shan Jin. He
Speaker 3: spent years working at Huawei and in Japanese tech companies
Speaker 3: before returning to China to capitalize on what he saw
Speaker 3: as a boom in Chinese innovation.
Speaker 9: I forced myself to meet at least the one company
Speaker 9: one day, at least the one company one day, and
Speaker 9: read five to ten business plans one day, five to
Speaker 9: ten businesses every day, every day, almost almost so I
Speaker 9: can see a lot of innovative products.
Speaker 3: Joe agrees that China's expertise in manufacturing has helped tech
Speaker 3: companies develop, but he says there's another factor spurring Chinese
Speaker 3: firms on the intense competition between Chinese companies for Chinese
Speaker 3: tech consumers.
Speaker 9: Chinese guys like to use new things like application, one app,
Speaker 9: and they will give up one app very quickly too.
Speaker 9: So if you can't let them know the evaluations of
Speaker 9: your app, they will give up very quickly. This is
Speaker 9: the one point. And another point is competition. Competition. This
Speaker 9: is a different culture. I think in the Western countries,
Speaker 9: I do my business, you do yours. But in China,
Speaker 9: I don't think so. I do my business and I
Speaker 9: do your biness too.
Speaker 3: Joe says. Chinese companies think of it in terms of survival.
Speaker 3: Innovate or die. Survive.
Speaker 9: Survive is a very important cure in China.
Speaker 3: China's transformation into a global tech superpower to rival the
Speaker 3: US is an incredible story. But the question now is
Speaker 3: whether China is going to maintain that momentum and power
Speaker 3: past the US and other countries to become the tech
Speaker 3: power in the world. The global success of Chun Jan's
Speaker 3: companies suggest it might, but it's not a given. I
Speaker 3: would say so.
Speaker 9: Most advanced technology is not in China even now in
Speaker 9: some key industrials. We need some time, We need time
Speaker 9: to develop, like semiconductors like ais SO.
Speaker 3: China is not the most advanced in terms of technology,
Speaker 3: but it's catching up fast. Do you think that China
Speaker 3: one day soon, in the next few years, could become
Speaker 3: the most advanced country for technology?
Speaker 9: We are developed very rapidly before today. After that, I
Speaker 9: cannot predict. We are still working hard on catching up.
Speaker 9: But when we overtake the US, we don't know. And
Speaker 9: I think from the point of government, we don't think
Speaker 9: one day we have to we have to overtake America.
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 9: But as the boss of the company, we have to
Speaker 9: overtake see other guys. I am a businessman. When I
Speaker 9: am invested a company, I hope say we're visa first
Speaker 9: of one in the world one day.
Speaker 3: A changing of the guard when it comes to technology
Speaker 3: happens very rarely. For the first time, we're seeing global
Speaker 3: tech come out of an authoritarian state, without free internet,
Speaker 3: without freedom of expression, and where surveillance cameras monitor your
Speaker 3: every move. If China wins the tech race, the impact
Speaker 3: on the rest of the world will be huge, and
Speaker 3: we're already starting to see it.
Speaker 2: We hope you enjoy this excerpt of Global Tech Wars.
Speaker 2: Find A four Audio bok at Pushkin, dot Fm, Slash Audiobooks, Audible, Spotify,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your audio books.