Innovate to Dominate: The Rise of the Chinese Techno-Security State

Abstract

T he outcome of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held in October 2022, was on predictable lines. It was no surprise that President Xi Jinping was chosen CPC supremo for an unprecedented third time, defying the two-term limit set by Deng Xiaoping to prevent a single person from gaining absolute and autocratic power like Mao Zedong. Xi, considered the most powerful leader in China since Mao, is determined to put China on the ‘rejuvenation’ path and attain superpower status for the Middle Kingdom by mid-century. What approach has Xi adopted to fulfil his ambitions of transforming China into a major economic, technological and military superpower? Will he succeed and what are the obstacles going forward? What does it mean for the existing international order that is still dominated by the US? Simply, what kind of China is Xi building? Tai Ming Cheung’s, Innovate to Dominate: The Rise of the Chinese TechnoSecurity State examines these pertinent questions and argues that Xi is transforming China into a techno-security State, where the interests of national security, economic development and innovation converge. Tai, an accomplished scholar of China’s strategic innovation and military affairs, opens his exploration by defining a technosecurity State to conceptualize the nature of Xi’s China and to differentiate it from other techno-security States, particularly the US. He defines a techno-security State as an ‘innovation-centred, security maximizing regime that prioritizes the building of technological, defence and national security capabilities to meet expansive national security requirements based on heightened threat perceptions and the powerful influence of domestic pro-security coalitions’ (pp. 2–3). The author then examines Xi’s efforts in building a techno-security State and identifies five key components: 1) creation of a national security State; 2) innovation-driven development strategy; 3) military strengthening; 4) military-civilian fusion; and 5) economic securitization. Like several noted books in recent times—such as Susan L. Shirk’s Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise and Elizabeth C. Economy’s The World According to China—Tai’s book eloquently explains that Xi’s China is intensely focused on security than any other leader prior to him, since Deng downplayed it in favour of economic development. From Xi’s worldview, China faces grave dangers from both internal and external sources and to thwart them, the People’s Republic Strategic Analysis, 2023 Vol. 47, No. 1, 79–81, https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2023.2176060