The great competition between China and the U.S.

A sign at Huawei's campus in Shenzhen in southern China's Guangdong Province, December 5, 2019. /AP

**Editor's note: **Dr. John Gong is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics and a research fellow at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at UIBE.The article reflects the author’s views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

China's 2020 Central Economic Work Conference concluded on Friday. The annual conference is where China lays out its strategicgoals for the next year, which mostly relates to its economic development. But issuesthat tend to have major economic impacts will also be covered. This year's conference put out a plan that focused on eight tasks for the coming year, the first two of which were strengthening China's strategic technological innovationand increasing itscontrol of its supply chains.

It is striking to see technology and innovation become the top priorities of the country's economic goals, and certainly there is a reason for it. China's current emphasis on technologicalinnovation cannot be fully understoodwithout considering the larger context of what I call thegreat competition game between theUnited States and China.

Regrettably,this is a "game" first started by theU.S. It is the Trump administration that turnedthe bilateral relationship into an intensecompetition. Several Trump officials invoked the Sputnik moment to characterize this relationship, followed by a slew of unfriendlypolicy measures to confront and contain China, not the least of which is the trade war.

The original Sputnik moment refers to the Soviet Union's launch of the earth-orbiting satellite Sputnik 1 on October4, 1957. This wasthe first human-built object launched into space. The event kicked off a space race between the USSR and the U.S.

Over the last four years, many great technology companies in China, including Huawei and ZTE, have been placed on the U.S.Commerce Department's entity list, which essentially means a technology boycott on China from both the demand and supply sides. It is against this backdrop that Beijing was forced to respond to address the existential challenges faced by many Chinese companies.

Ironically the decoupling policy is not going to choke or slow down China's technology developmentmomentum; on the contrary, it is going to accelerate it. It forces Chinese companies to speed up indigenous development, and further stimulates the central government to increase fundingfor research.

This type of technology decoupling happened to China during the 1960s, when the then Soviet Union withdrew all help and experts from Chinaas the relationship deteriorated between the two sides. Thishoweverdidn't prevent Chinafrom making great stridesin the area of technologylater on.

This year's Central Economic Work Conferencealso mentionedawhole-of-nation approach to innovation. China does have a successful track record of using this approach, for example in developing its own very first nuclear weapons in the 1960s. And this is also not unique to China in that some of America's legendary technological feats in history, includingthe Manhattan project and the Apollo project, can all be attributed to a whole-of-nation strategy. That means more coordination and planning for mobilizingtalents and resources. The concept of national laboratories for example, which is funded by the federal government in theU.S., is likely to be popular in China.

In short, the great competition game between China and theUnited States ismost likely to keep unfolding in frontof us for many years to come.

What I advocate is healthy competitionas healthy competitionactually brings welfare gainsto both countries. While China and the U.S. will inevitably compete, both governments shouldbe mindful ofareas where they can and ought to cooperate, such as in terms of pandemic control, climate change andsomeregional securityissues. In strategic management, there isa concept called coopetition. I believe that should be the right principle to guidethe development of Sino-U.S.relations.

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