The electric transition, and how both are reshaping U.S.–China competition, especially around autonomous driving and AI-powered vehicles.
Yu Chengdong has played a decisive role in shaping Huawei’s intelligent vehicle industry chain, acting not only as a product leader but as a strategic architect of an emerging ecosystem. His influence extends well beyond the launch of individual vehicle models. Through clear strategic judgment, bold disruption of conventional automotive logic, and strong execution, he … Read more
Japan’s widely cited technology “missteps”—from CDs over MP3s and hydrogen fuel cells over battery electric vehicles, to ISDB over ATSC/DVB and Blu-ray over streaming—are better understood not as failures of innovation but as the outcome of once-successful strategic assumptions colliding with a changed world. Japan optimized for engineering excellence, incremental refinement, and tightly integrated hardware … Read more
Drawing on the arguments of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, 2023), the contrast between China and the United States in implementing industrial policy reflects deeply divergent historical, political, and cultural foundations. In the United States, decades of ideological … Read more
The United States and China both operate mixed economic systems that combine market mechanisms with government intervention, yet they represent contrasting ends of the mixed-economy spectrum. The U.S. model is predominantly market-led, privileging private enterprise, price signals, and decentralized decision-making, with the state acting largely as a regulator and stabilizer. China, by contrast, follows a … Read more
The electric vehicle (EV) and EV battery industries offer a clear lens through which to compare the mixed-economy models of the United States and China. Although the United States pioneered many foundational EV technologies—ranging from early electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries to the commercialization breakthroughs of firms like Tesla—China has emerged as the dominant force … Read more
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) marks the most consequential shift in U.S. industrial policy in batteries and electric vehicles in half a century, while the CHIPS and Science Act performs an analogous role for semiconductors. Though publicly framed as climate, competitiveness, and national security legislation, the operational logic of both statutes closely mirrors core elements … Read more
In China’s industrial policy, overcapacity is not a failure but a deliberate feature, sharply distinguishing it from the experiences of Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. Whereas liberal market economies tend to view excess capacity as inefficiency and policy error—because firms cannot sustain prolonged losses, governments struggle to coordinate at scale, and political systems … Read more
China has pursued what can be described as a “proof by exhaustion” strategy to avoid the risks of path dependence and technological lock-in. Rather than committing early to a single foreign standard, China systematically explored multiple competing technologies, integrating innovation with scale-driven feedback loops. In earlier decades, China’s long hesitation before selecting one imported system … Read more
In recent years, a notable cohort of U.S. tech leaders—including Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and Reid Hoffman—has voiced admiration for China’s approach to technology development. This “China envy” is not about endorsing authoritarianism, but rather reflects a recognition of China’s growing ability to coordinate, execute, and deploy technology at … Read more
Industrial policy has been more successful in China than in Western Europe, the United States, and Japan because China uniquely combines strong state capacity, long-term political commitment, and market scale with the ability to coordinate firms, finance, and regulation toward strategic goals. In industries such as photovoltaic panels, EV batteries, display manufacturing, and telecommunications equipment, … Read more