Understand China | Is China going to dominate everything?

The scientific formulation and continued implementation of five-year plans are a key means through which the Communist Party of China governs the country, and an important window for the international community to better understand China's path to modernization.

People's Daily Online has launched "Understand China," a new program that focuses on the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030). The series examines China's development planning, opportunities, and governance approach, aiming to clarify misconceptions and enhance mutual understanding and recognition.

This episode of "Understand China" features a dialogue between Ji Deqiang, professor and director of the National Centre for Communication Innovation Studies at the Communication University of China, and Martin Lockett, professor in Strategic Management at Nottingham University Business School China. Their discussion explores how China's scientific and technological self-reliance will influence its economic growth and global innovation.

Is China going to dominate everything? Addressing external concerns over China's technological advancement, Lockett noted that such questions come, in some ways, from China's success in manufacturing and other sectors. He stressed that the "China threat" theory has been exaggerated, adding that it is based on either outdated ideas, or alternatively, miscommunication.

In Lockett's view, China's push of strengthening high-level sci-tech self-reliance represents both a reactive and proactive response. He applies the concept of "ambidexterity" from international business research to interpret this: "What good (sci-tech) self-reliance means is, on one hand, to have the ability to have key products, services, and so on, to be able to run without having to rely absolutely on one place or a small number of places, but equally to think, if we're going to have a really productive world economy, we're going to have productive cooperation. The challenge is to do both at the same time."

Ji said that China harbors no ambition to dominate everything. "China has this kind of sense of responsibility," Ji said, noting that this responsibility is reflected not only in developing a high-tech supported digital economy for itself, but also in supporting developing countries to develop their own digital economy and sharing market benefits. For a major country like China, he stressed, it is necessary to maintain key capabilities in core technologies to develop technical strength for security and mitigate industrial risks, but sci-tech self-reliance does not equate to closedness.

"For most of the market issues, I think China really wants to pursue international collaboration," Ji added. He emphasized that China's drive to accelerate high-level sci-tech self-reliance is both a consequence of history and a foundation for higher-quality multilateral cooperation.

Both guests pointed out a series of concrete examples—from the De Aar Wind Power Project in South Africa, which helps ease local power shortages, to the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System shared with the world; from international cooperation on the Chinese space station to collaboration between China and other countries in the intelligent vehicle sector—clearly demonstrate that China's scientific and technological development emphasizes self-reliance while remaining firmly oriented toward openness and international cooperation.