China has pledged to harness the entire nation’s resources to speed homegrown scientific breakthroughs, reaffirming a central priority to become self-reliant in spheres from AI to chipmaking to wrest technological supremacy from the U.S.
Beijing hammered home a longstanding goal to break an American stranglehold on key spheres, according to government work reports submitted to the nation’s legislature on Tuesday. The central government will increase spending on scientific and technology research by 10% to 370.8 billion yuan ($51.5 billion) in 2024, promote national champions and grant enterprises a central role in spearheading advances, according to the documents, which are closely scrutinized for clues to Chinese President Xi Jinping's thinking.
"We will fully leverage the strengths of the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to raise China’s capacity for innovation across the board,” according to the report, delivered by Premier Li Qiang to lawmakers Tuesday in Beijing. "We will pool our country’s strategic scientific and technological strength and non-governmental innovation resources to make breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields and step up research on disruptive and frontier technologies.”