China may not need Western technology very much longer

Western countries have become increasingly wary of sharing technology with China, with the U.S. and Netherlands recently imposing new restrictions on exports of semiconductors and the equipment used to make them.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies are rising up the list of the world’s biggest spenders on research and development — a sign that perhaps they won’t need that Western technology much longer.

When I last compiled one of these lists five years ago, mobile infrastructure and device maker Huawei Investment & Holding was in sixth place behind Microsoft, just as it is here, but it was the only Chinese company in the global top 25. It has been joined by TikTok owner ByteDance, WeChat owner and gaming giant Tencent Holdings and e-commerce, payments and cloud-computing purveyor Alibaba Group Holding.