Enterprise China

Chapter 2STRATEGIC PILLAR I: REVERSING DEPENDENCY

In Chapter 1 we highlighted China's vision and competitive strategy. As noted, to become one of the internally strongest and externally most influential nations on earth, China first seeks to reduce and eventually reverse its dependency on foreign firms (and countries) for key technologies and products. This pillar of the Enterprise China's strategy is not new. It was articulated nearly two decades ago in the National Medium‐ and Long‐Term Science and Technology Development Plan (MLP). In this strategy document, Enterprise China explicitly names targeted sectors for reducing dependency and articulates goals and metrics by which progress would be measured.

Specifically, the MLP identifies a host of industries including energy, water and mineral resources, environment, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, information and services, population and health, urbanization, public security, and national defense as key sectors in which China would reduce its external dependency. The main metric to measure progress would be local content. The initial goal was to increase domestic content to 30% in the targeted areas by 2020.¹

In May 2015 China released its second competitive strategy installment—Made in China 2025. MIC 2025 is a continuation of the MLP but represents an important update of Enterprise China's competitive strategy. MIC 2025 modifies the targeted sectors and raises the local content goal from 30% to 40% by 2020. It ...