a/symmetric: China’s Starlink bets
August 10, 2024China launched the first satellites of its megaconstellation. The effort is aimed at a grand prize: 6G leadership
a/symmetric: Don’t forget the low-tech manufacturing
August 3, 2024High-tech dreams stand on low-tech beams. Or, industrial foundations matter.
a/symmetric: China’s quest to replace foreign tech
June 22, 2024Its import substitution efforts gain steam, helped by both increased R&D spending and "poor man's innovation."
a/symmetric: China-Australia rare earth intrigue
June 6, 2024Digging into a Chinese investor with state ties
a/symmetric: China’s second mover advantage?
May 18, 2024Reactions to GPT-4o, and other observations on the AI race
a/symmetric: Missing the swarm for the drones
May 5, 2024Washington risks repeating its Huawei mistakes with DJI
a/symmetric: China bets on industrial AI
April 27, 2024Doing so sidesteps its US tech dependence and amplifies its manufacturing might
a/symmetric: Germany: China’s useful idiot?
April 20, 2024Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to thread a fine needle on China. But the asymmetries in Sino-German ties, strategies, and priorities make that a tall challenge.
a/symmetric: Huawei’s sanctions-beating strategy
April 6, 2024Washington boasted that it had “dealt a direct blow” to the firm. Instead, Huawei parried America’s punches and just reported its biggest-ever jump in profits. How’d it do it?
a/symmetric: An air-con maker turns to next-gen chips
March 16, 2024Gree’s new SiC wafer plant underlines the importance of compound semiconductors in China’s chip strategy.
a/symmetric: How Apple boosted China’s manufacturing base
March 9, 2024The iPhone maker has long relied on Chinese suppliers, in turn helping them upgrade their technological capabilities. Now those suppliers are helping domestic brands like Huawei and Xiaomi chip away at Apple’s market share.
a/symmetric: China is exporting its entire EV industrial chain
March 1, 2024Car exports are a function of a larger strategic goal: “whole industrial chain output," which can in turn be leveraged to win influence over technology standards, trade flows, business models, and global commerce writ large.
a/symmetric: How China’s crane champions conquer global markets
February 24, 2024Will Beijing run laps around Washington's attempts to root out China-built cargo cranes from US ports? Without a full view of major Chinese crane manufacturers, their competitive positions, and and how Beijing supports them to corner markets worldwide, that stands to be a real risk.
a/symmetric: What critical technologies lists can and can’t tell us
February 17, 2024Critical technologies lists only tell part of the story. They don’t reflect the full scope of the global industrial competition, including low(er)-tech know-how, upstream inputs, market applications that bring sales and profits.
a/symmetric: European solar, eclipsed?
February 10, 2024The fate of Europe’s solar industry has implications for the EU industrial base—and its economic security
a/symmetric: Huawei & DJI eye the autonomous driving throne
February 3, 2024The two companies are leveraging vertical integration to compound existing strengths and gain new competitive advantages. Plus: export controls whac-a-mole, Huawei goes to space, and the industrial base of high tech contests
a/symmetric: Why China still can’t make ballpoint pens
January 26, 2024And what that means for its high-end machine tools ambitions
a/symmetric: The “latest front” in the US-China competition?
January 20, 2024The global industrial contest is being waged between supply chains, not discrete technologies.
a/symmetric: “Deplorable dependence”—and an industrial base to fix it
January 14, 2024On the heels of the Pentagon's publication of its first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy, a look at a prescient 1920 analysis by a US Naval officer that lessons for today's efforts to fortify the US defense industrial base
a/symmetric: De-risking with Chinese characteristics
January 6, 2024How China has long deployed an asymmetric industrial strategy that it now purports to denounce
a/symmetric: China’s game plan for the AI race
December 29, 2023Looking beyond chatbots to take stock of China’s AI ambitions and strategy
a/symmetric: Ammo, chips, and military upstream inputs
December 16, 2023Production capacity even in relatively lagging-edge technologies can confer outsize strategic advantages—or costs.
a/symmetric: IBM’s new quantum chip, China’s quantum ambitions
December 9, 2023A look at the global race to develop quantum technology, and how China is adopting an asymmetric strategy in pursuit of quantum dominance
