Despite external uncertainty and the pandemic, China’s economy kept steady growth through 2021, and technology innovation was a major engine: basic research extending deeper and wider, 5G and other domestically developed technologies empowering the real economy, and the dual carbon goals pushing innovation to a higher level.
Companies push into basic research
Year-end brought news that a world-class mathematician had joined Huawei: French Fields medalist Laurent Lafforgue will continue his work on topos theory, a step toward mathematics’ uncharted territory. He is not the first: Huawei’s Lagrange Mathematics and Computing Research Center in Paris already hosts three other Fields medalists working on mean-field game theory, large-scale dynamic interactive systems, higher category theory and deformation theory.
JD, reporting third-quarter results, likewise signalled deeper basic research: its JD Explore Academy built China’s first super-large computing cluster on the SuperPOD architecture with Nvidia – Lyra Alpha – and proposed the ViTAE model and a leading mammal pose estimation dataset with universities at home and abroad.
After large-scale ‘from 1 to 10’ application innovation and ‘from 10 to 100’ industrial innovation, Chinese companies are reaching into ‘from 0 to 1’ basic research. The leverage is well understood: an original algorithm from a Russian mathematician once opened European markets for Huawei; a Turkish mathematician’s paper laid foundations for 5G. A topos breakthrough could open new space for communications theory and AI alike.
Corporate R&D spending keeps climbing. The National Bureau of Statistics reports China spent RMB 2.44 trillion on R&D in 2020, with enterprises accounting for RMB 1.87 trillion – 76.6%. Huawei topped the private-500 R&D ranking at RMB 141.9 billion; Huawei and Baidu both spend over 15% of revenue on core R&D; and Huawei’s 90,000 invention patents are the most held by any company. Its roughly 105,000 R&D staff – 53.4% of the workforce – are a key reason the company not only survived export restrictions but did so with quality.
‘Without valuing basic science and research, without deep cooperation with the world’s leading scientists, we would never have accumulated today’s theoretical and engineering depth – and the problems we faced would have been unresolvable,’ said founder Ren Zhengfei.
From fast to strong: innovation drives industrial fusion
Five hundred and thirty-four metres underground, the world’s deepest 5G network is energising a coal mine – intelligent inspection robots, one-tap ride hailing, real-time video calls. The Xinyuan coal mine’s 5G smart mining project won first prize at the 2021 World 5G Convention’s application design contest, and mining is only one front: in transport, energy, ports and smart cities, 5G’s low latency, large bandwidth and massive connectivity underpin automation and high-traffic services, with applications penetrating from production support into core processes.
China’s 5G leads the world: over 1.15 million base stations in the largest standalone 5G network, with more than 10,000 application innovation cases. From AI to quantum computing, China is a knowledge output power – the World Intellectual Property Organization’s 2021 Global Innovation Index ranks it 12th, and global tech firms flock to its industry conferences seeking deployment opportunities.
5G will drive breakthroughs in chips, components and basic software while fusing with manufacturing, transport, energy and healthcare to upgrade AI, big data, VR and HD video – and its converged applications will drive cross-innovation across frontier fields, restructuring global tech industry and value chains. Officials call large-scale 5G application a key measure for economic upgrading and supply chain resilience. By 2025, 5G is expected to drive about RMB 1.2 trillion in network investment, RMB 8 trillion in related information consumption and RMB 2.93 trillion in direct economic value added.
The macro numbers back the trend: November’s high-tech manufacturing value-added rose 15.1% year on year, industrial robot output grew 27.9% and new energy vehicle output 112%; manufacturing investment grew 13.7% in the first eleven months, with high-tech manufacturing up 22.2%.
The green transition looks far ahead
In Qinghai, semi-desert land is now a new energy base of solar panels, wind turbines and a molten-salt tower solar thermal station. In Shaanxi, coal is transformed ‘from black to white’ into biodegradable toothbrushes, tableware, absorbable surgical sutures and bone scaffolds. In Hebei, short-process steelmaking powered by electricity and natural gas skips coking and sintering entirely, with materials arriving by enclosed conveyor from the docks.
Under the carbon peaking and neutrality goals, energy, chemical, steel and transport industries are all accelerating green transformation. As the world’s largest renewable energy market and equipment maker, China supplies over 70% of global photovoltaic modules, and the IEA calls it the largest manufacturer of solar panels and EV batteries among key clean technologies. Even ICT itself contributes: 5G consumes roughly one-tenth of 4G’s energy per bit while delivering 30 times the capacity, and GeSI projects ICT will enable a 20% cut in global carbon emissions by 2030.
The carbon goals are not just an energy story, argued Zhu Min of Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Financial Research: they change the entire economic structure and rebuild economic technology – ‘a change of development paradigm, and we are walking at the world’s frontier. The room for imagination is enormous.’
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