[fn Plaza] Survival Strategy in the Nutcracker

During the nine-day Chinese New Year holiday, people in China were completely absorbed in a new-tech ecosystem built around humanoid robots and generative artificial intelligence (AI) for video. Unitree Robotics’ H1 humanoid robots appeared on the eve of the holiday, February 16, at China Central Television (CCTV)’s CMG Spring Festival Gala, dazzling 677 million viewers across China with 360-degree spins, three-meter somersaults, and other martial-arts-style moves. Videos of humanoid robots walking tightropes and performing alongside human actors at theaters and parks nationwide flooded major social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) and Douyin. As demand surged to rent robots for performances, promotions, and banquets, robot rental shops enjoyed a boom they could barely keep up with.
Photos and videos also poured out from major cities such as Chongqing, showing hundreds of drones painting the night sky with characters wishing prosperity for the new year and with various shapes. Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s generative AI tool that produces a 15-second, high-quality video from just a few short prompts or several photos, has established itself as a new video production tool less than a month after its launch.
China’s major cities have become test beds and early adopters that apply and integrate cutting-edge technologies into everyday life faster than anywhere else in the world. Chinese society also shows intense receptiveness to new technologies and engineering achievements. The success of the 10-year “Made in China 2025” initiative has further fueled this atmosphere. According to one assessment, “China has become a global leader in four of ten key industrial sectors, including electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving, and solar power, and is now part of the leading group in five other sectors.” The image of a “cheap, knockoff China” has quietly given way to that of a front-runner in advanced fields that preempt new technologies. A recent “2024 Technology Level Evaluation” report by the Ministry of Science and ICT pointed out that, among 50 national strategic technologies, South Korea is ahead of China in only six, including hydrogen vehicles. In 2022, Korea held an advantage in 17 areas; China has since caught up in 11 of them. On a scale where the United States is set at 100, Korea scores 82.7, compared with the European Union (EU) at 90.5 and China at 91.3.
This kind of breakneck technological rise has been powered by a society-wide culture that prizes engineering. Elite young people choose engineering schools with dreams of launching startups. In his book “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future,” Silicon Valley–based China analyst Dan Wang writes, “China is a country built by leaders trained as engineers,” and argues that China’s distinctive “engineering state” ethos has enabled the rapid construction of massive infrastructure and high-speed growth. Behind the ecosystem and national temperament of this “engineering state” stand national leaders who are themselves engineers. Every top national leader since 1990—Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping—has had an engineering background. Engineering graduates also make up an overwhelming majority in the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the country’s top policy-making bodies. These engineer-leaders have focused and mobilized national resources and public capabilities on strengthening core science and technology. Viewing advanced technologies as game changers in the struggle for hegemony, Xi Jinping has championed “New Quality Productive Forces,” which emphasize high-end industrial technologies. On February 9, he visited the IT Innovation Complex in Beijing Yizhuang. Footage of him inspecting humanoid robots threading needles and listening closely to briefings on the progress of the AI industry was broadcast nationwide that day via CCTV. On the eve of the country’s biggest holiday, the top leader’s message was clear: technological innovation.
An acquaintance currently staying in Shanghai told me that during the Chinese New Year period he rode self-driving EVs all around the city and came to understand firsthand why German carmakers are “begging” Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers for technology partnerships. In China’s economic capital, areas where autonomous driving is permitted cover more than 2,144 square kilometers—over 30 percent of the city’s total area. “The whole city feels like an innovation lab, a regulatory sandbox freed from conventional rules,” he reported.
After last week’s Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling that Donald Trump’s tariffs were unlawful, the Trump camp has been pushing to overhaul tariff policy once again, shaking the global economy. In the midst of this, China has unveiled its “China Standards 2035” blueprint, openly signaling its ambition to extend its overwhelming manufacturing capacity into dominance over global technology standards as well. The United States, for its part, is determined to bring China to its knees through supply-chain blockades and aggressive tariff and financial measures. The increasingly rough power struggle between these two superpowers is narrowing the space for free trade and undermining the survival base of a trade-dependent country like ours. Without the resolve to turn the entire nation and its industries into something like a regulatory sandbox, it will be hard for us to secure our future. The onslaught of “Red Tech” from China and the “changed strategy” of our ally, the United States, are both aimed at us like a dagger. We must tighten the reins on our preparations for the future, rather than be lulled by the illusion created by the semiconductor boom. In a turbulent global environment, squeezed between volatile, muscle-flexing great powers, we urgently need to redefine our industrial and diplomatic strategies and set a new national agenda so that we do not end up like a nut caught in a nutcracker.
june@fnnews.com Reporter