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What exactly does China have in mind, and what does it want to achieve in the coming five years? It might be unrealistic to pinpoint a specific target, but having a direction certainly helps.
China’s Five-Year Plans (FYP) provide a guideline as to where the country will be heading in the coming five years, setting up a wide range of policy goals from primarily economic to social, as well as defense and government organization. The country rolled out its first FYP in 1953, and Beijing has been continuing to publish a new plan every five years, exception for 1963-1965.
“Made in China 2025” is a program generated from China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, running from 2016 to 2020. However, it sparked a U.S. backlash, with headlines like “How ‘Made in China 2025’ became the real threat in a trade war,” and “China doesn’t want anyone talking about” it. Well, the truth is that China didn’t hide anything, and there’s no reason China shouldn’t prepare a strategic plan for the benefit of its people. “Made in China 2025” is a plan to engineer a shift from low-end manufacturing to become a high-end producer of goods, transitioning the country’s existing manufacturing infrastructure and labor market toward producing more specialized output, with targeted investments in research and development and an emphasis on technological innovation.
Countries like Germany and the U.S. have already laid out similar plans. The Industry 4.0 strategy, initiated by Germany, aims to increase digitization in all areas of life and the economy and upgrade its manufacturing industry.
In the U.S., a similar plan called the “industrial Internet of things” or the “industrial Internet” has similar aims. Its current form was launched by General Electric, which later formed the Industrial Internet Consortium with IBM, CISCO, Intel and AT&T.
The plan involves billions of industrial devices, anything from machines in a factory to the engines inside an airplane that are filled with sensors, connected to wireless networks, and gathering and sharing data. And all of this data can be collected and analyzed to make business processes more efficient. The three plans or strategies all serve domestic interests, so why only blame China for making plans?
There is an old Chinese saying that goes, “The magistrates are free to set fires, while the common people are forbidden even to light lamps.” Does this ring a bell?
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