The US and China are locked in a technology competition. Less well understood is how each side assesses the contours of that contest, and the strategies for winning it. Yet any serious game plan must contend with the opponent’s view of the competitive landscape, or risk being outflanked and outplayed.

In our new research report, we assess the current US-China competitive balance in the technology domain, and benchmark the two countries’ standing in the field.

Both Beijing and Washington treat science and technology (S&T) as integral to their competition – and, more specifically, to Beijing’s efforts to leapfrog long-standing US leadership. This report seeks to assess the current competitive playing field, benchmarking US and Chinese standing in S&T. The analysis finds that the United States and China define S&T similarly and prioritize parallel emerging S&T domains. However, the United States and China differ in their approaches to developing those fields and deriving national power from them: Across government, academia, and private sector, the United States placesmore relative emphasis on basic, or fundamental, research and development (R&D). China’s resource allocations lean more toward the later stage “applied” and “experimental” domains of S&T development. Aligning with those resource allocations, Chinese strategic discourse and policy actions emphasize the competitive imperative of building high-tech infrastructures to scale and setting international technical standards. US strategic discourse is beginning to acknowledge this need as well, but only recently, with minimal action to match, and with little critical consideration of relative US strengths.

To account for the asymmetry in approach, this analysis breaks its assessment of S&T standing into three parts.

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Basic R&D is treated as a “fundamental” resource for S&T capacity: This is the element on which other instruments of S&T-derived power are based. Because basic R&D does not target specific outputs, thisanalysis uses financial resource allocations as a metric for standing in that domain.

High-tech infrastructures are a “synthetic” building block: These systems are necessary for deploying S&T capacity and converting it into power. While it does incorporate financial allocations, the analysis ofstanding in this domain primarily assesses the scale and scope of infrastructure outputs, as well as government control over them. The analysis focuses on EV charging stations and satellite networks, cases selected because of their roles in Chinese and US S&T and industrial policy.

Finally, technical standards are treated as a critical “downstream” theater of the S&T competition:Technical standards promise high value-add, enduring positions of influence over and advantage in the global S&T ecosystem. The analysis assesses standard-setting capacity in terms of representation and leadership roles in international standards bodies. The analysis focuses on the International Standardization Organization (ISO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the International Electrotechnical Commission(IEC) because those are the multinational standard-setting bodies that Beijing prioritizes.

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This analysis finds that:

• In basic R&D, as measured by resource allocations, US capacity far outstrips China’s, both numerically and as a share of national and corporate wealth. This holds at a macro level, taking government, academia, and private sector actors together. It also holds at a more disaggregated level, looking only at the resource allocations of each side’s respective powerhouse technology Trendlinessuggest that the gap will endure moving forward.
• Chinese discourse and policy suggest a deliberate prioritization of high-tech infrastructures that is absent from analogous US deliberations. In emerging infrastructures (e.g., electric vehicle charging stations) this prioritization manifests in a determinative advantage for China. In more legacy ones (e.g., satellites), the US appears to maintain a quantitative advantage with larger infrastructure But the US networks tend to be decentralized and fragmented. China’s are largely centralized, under Beijing’s control. This asymmetry may propel a differentiated Chinese strategy and deliver results able to tilt the balance in China’s favor despite quantitative disadvantage.
• In technical standards, Beijing deploys a deliberate competitive strategy that has only recently been recognized in the United States, and for which there is not yet a US response. However – as with China’s standing in more legacy technology infrastructures – this emphasis may not yet have yielded adeterminate advantage for China in international standard-setting bodies. In the International Standardization Organization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), China has marginally more “members” than does the United States. However, China appears still to lag the United States in influence, as measured by leadership over significant technical committees. By contrast, in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an organization with a larger share of its membership drawn from industry, China’s representation and leadership well exceed that of theUnited Across all three, Chinese representatives are more tightly tied to the Chinesegovernment and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than their private sector, fragmented US counterparts are to Washington – or any other centralized source of policy. As with the infrastructure case, this centralization that may tilt the influence balance over standards organizations in Beijing’s favor.