A HUSHED HISTORY
The highly centralised leadership resembles what Beijing had in the 1950s when scientists were led by Nie Rongzhen, then director of the National Science Commission and vice-chairman of China’s military commission to develop missiles, nuclear bombs and man-made satellites, according to Chen Daoyin, an independent political scientist and former professor.
“The situation is similar nowadays,” Chen said. Although it faces challenges from tech export sanctions and investment bans by the US and its allies, China wants to achieve indigenous innovation in key areas and set up a national system to mobilise resources nationwide for key tech projects, he said.
“Members of the commission are supposed to be loyal technocrats with high prestige. The revelation of key personnel could shed light on the direction or development of China’s innovation initiatives,” he said.
“So out of concern for national security and the scientists’ personal safety, the organisation is expected to operate in high secrecy,” he said.
A Chinese rocket scientist said it would be “very easy” for the US to “sabotage China’s progress if Beijing makes everything transparent”.
“Secrecy is nothing new in technology competition. The more advanced it is, the more secretive it shall be. Because once it is leaked, it will ruin the whole nation’s strategy going forward and set us back for many years,” said the scientist, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“But I don’t think such a low-key approach means China is closing our door for international cooperation in science and tech.
“For example in space technology, the US has refused to work with us, so be it. We do research on our own while continuing to work with those who still want to work with us – like Russia – to find synergies.”
CHALLENGES TO KEEPING QUIET
However, it could be hard to achieve a high level of secrecy, according to Michael Frank, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani Centre for AI and Advanced Technologies under the Washington-based think tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“It is easy to keep a commission’s meeting notes secret, but far more difficult to wrap the actions of the nation’s researchers, labs, universities, companies and investors in a shield of secrecy,” Frank said.
“That is not to say the commission will be broadcasting its every deliberation and action, but that it will probably function with the same level of opacity as any other part of the Chinese government these days,” he said. “The caveat is that there may be internal objectives that are not publicised.”
Neil Thomas, a Chinese politics fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis, said more centralised decision-making about technology policy in Beijing could help direct resources towards priorities such as AI and semiconductors but could hurt China in the long run if it discouraged entrepreneurial innovation and crowded out investment in promising new areas of research.
“More opaque policymaking in Beijing will feed US suspicions about the purposes of state-sponsored research in China and contribute to an increasingly difficult political environment for scientific cooperation between the two countries,” Thomas said.
This article was first published on SCMP.
