In mid-April, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a ban on prohibiting U.S. companies from conducting business with ZTE. This refusal order caused ZTE to cry out 'extremely unfair' and unacceptable. This news was soon detonated when public space and social media discussions were detonated.
What makes the ZTE event surpass a company’s gains and losses, disturbing the emotions and nerves of the official people, and becoming a major discussion of China’s innovation path? The key point is that the ZTE event not only suddenly revealed the truth of Sino-U.S. power comparisons that were previously unknown to the general public. The potential dangers were suddenly exposed to everyone, and they linked up the long-term disputes over the development of China's industries and showed them in an unavoidable and sharp manner.
The 'bypass' rule result is a double loss
Look at ZTE itself. There are reasons for being punished.
In 2017, ZTE pleaded guilty to criminal charges against US sanctions against North Korea and Iran and agreed to pay a fine of 1.2 billion U.S. dollars. The U.S. Department of Commerce has now determined that ZTE has suspended the observation period of 'deception, misrepresentation and repeated violations of US law', resulting in activation of the previous The 7-year refusal order that was discussed.
This activation decision is in line with U.S. Department of Trade’s previous U.S. law negotiating with ZTE. Therefore, it is also expected. As for how many U.S. entanglements of U.S. penalties are unruly, how ZTE responds to clumsiness is actually not the key.
Judging from this case, the lesson that ZTE should accept is not to master (all) autonomous technology or to punish politicization, but also to learn the simplest and most straightforward lesson. That is to abide by the rules. ZTE invested 5 yuan in compliance in 2017. Ten million US dollars, plans to organize more than 65,000 employees compliance training, this is the meaning of the title, only to start. Compared with Toshiba, Boeing, Goldman Sachs and other companies that have been heavily punished by the United States, ZTE is not alone.
There are many entanglements in the Sino-U.S. trade war. A major point of disagreement is in compliance with the rules. If both sides have an agreement, both parties should theoretically abide by it. If one side 'rules through' the rules, it may be viewed as smart or self-righteous in the short term. However, many times in the game should not assume that the opponent is a fool, the consequences of the 'bypass' rule may be a contract collapse, in fact, the result is a double loss.
The wise man accepts correct lessons from his loss, and the wise man accepts erroneous lessons.
The Past and Future of China 'Core'
After the ZTE incident, 'China cannot be controlled by people in core technology' seems to have become an official consensus. Is this correct?
In fact, regardless of whether or not ZTE is punished, the determination and actions of Chinese companies to develop core technologies must not be overlooked. In recent years, the leap in Chinese patents has been regarded as a global phenomenon, which is regarded as the key to China’s move from manufacturing to manufacturing in China. According to the data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 2017 ranked the number of patents applied by China surpassing Japan, ranking behind the United States and becoming the second largest in the world. Since 2003, China has maintained a 10% increase in the number of patent applications each year.
In terms of corporate rankings, ZTE contributed a lot. It ranked second, lower than Huawei's 4024, and ranked higher than Intel's 2637. This is only the corner of ZTE's patents. ZTE announced at the end of 2017 that it had 6.9 More than 10,000 pieces of global patent assets, many of which are IC chips, 5G and other fields.
Even so, in the chip field, China's chips are still highly dependent on imports and cost even more than twice that of imported crude oil. According to official data, China's IC imports reached 377 billion pieces in 2017, and imports amounted to US$ 260.1 billion, which accounted for China’s total imports. Close to 15%.
Having witnessed such a high price, many Chinese people called on China to independently research and develop chips. Is China's 'core' necessary? In many reviews, articles by Liu Yuanju and Liang Ning are reviewed. The former examines China’s longing for a complete technology tree in terms of comments. The latter shared the experience of domestic chip development with personal experience, involving a lot of historical details. Both articles were reprinted in my public number “Xu Xuan Economic Man”. Interestingly, the former exceeded 100,000 readings. It was deleted in less than 24 hours, which seems to imply that the discussion on the chip is still very sensitive.
Liang Ning’s article recalled the process of domestically produced chips. The feelings were very impressive. What impressed me most was that they admitted that they had handled the Prime Minister and did not get a user experience. The result was a defeat.
What is the solution? One view is that the government needs to burn money to produce an ecology and tolerate failure. This view is not exceptional. In most industrial reforms, we can already see too much money being burned. Compared with the amount of money burned Whoever burns the money decides the final result of burning money. If the government dominates, it must be an official to choose their favorite company. At this time, the ability to please the officials rather than the ability to innovate is more important. It is not hard to imagine the countless Hanxin. ' It will surely come into being: Facing this kind of opportunity, you can imagine the power of counterfeiting.
The process of mastering the core technologies must not be the government-led so-called various problems, but the massive trial and error of the free companies themselves. The innovation and progress of the core technological level is essentially difficult to derive from a formula. It can only be tested in the midst of massive trial and error: In the process of core technology derivation, countless details are not clear, and each route can either succeed or fail. Before its final formation, there is no Anyone who penetrates the unknown wisdom, traverses the future, and predicts the right choice. This process must be determined by the enterprise as the main siege force rather than the will and official documents of a bureaucratic bureaucracy.
If the United States does not have Bill Gates, or if he publishes the document format a few years ago, will the Ark or the Chinese system be successful? The answer is almost negated. Besides the superficial 'user experience', the more fundamental nature is the Liang. Ning himself also referred to the 'order-of-magnum application migration, and there are also more substantial and ecologically rich': each company is living in this ecosystem, can only do a good part of the ecology, and can not create a complete New ecology.
The battle of the line under the technical war
Finally, from a larger perspective, China's choice of a trade conflict with the United States behind the chip incident will determine China’s future economic and political direction. It is not without a correct path, but see if we can move to the right choice.
With China’s economic growth, China has replaced Japan as the second largest country in the world, and China’s argument as a major country has re-emerged. In this chip debate, one of the prominent arguments is that because China is large-scale, there is a scale advantage in doing so. Because China is big, we must master autonomous technology.
As a very large-scale body, China is a topic that many scholars are keen on. This can be used to explain the centralization of China’s past history. It can also be an innovation for current Chinese science and technology, and is more convenient than the Beijing consensus. However, Imagine that even if we have a larger body and we have a large number of industries, the relative advantage of each industry will still be high or low, and it will still not change China's efforts to develop its own industry with the most comparative advantages. It is impossible and should not have all industries. In other words, whether China is large in size cannot determine whether China should develop and whether it can develop the chip industry. The answer to this question depends only on whether China has a comparative advantage in the chip industry. Further, even the issue itself It can't be answered in writing, but only countless companies try it out.
The fact that China’s size is bigger and larger than the laws of the world has actually triggered my final observation that the Sino-US trade war is not only a trade war but also a line struggle. The Sino-US trade war seems to be about trade, but it is actually about technology. It is the U.S. unease about China's technological catch-up; further, it is about the international order and whether the U.S. and China can continue to get along in order under the existing international order.
China is a big country in the world order
Looking at China’s economic growth from a historical point of view, the three core elements are the vitality of reforms brought about by the reform of the system, the demographic dividend brought about by the transfer of labor force, and the technology transfer brought about by openness. All three have led to the past development of the Chinese economy. For both, there will be no openness, but no openness. The achievements of the first two are also meaningless.
The real economic activity is an economic process that unconditionally seeks to improve and optimize the combination of production factors. In this process, it requires a very intensive division of labor and processes, and in the modern economy, Division of labor and cooperation, broadly speaking, is a cross-border, cross-economy division of labor and collaboration. This will certainly require trust between cooperative agencies. The so-called trust is to play this division of labor and collaboration in accordance with the rules of the free market.
The premise of this trust is not based on the acquaintanceship relationship, or all kinds of private interest exchanges. It is on the trust of such a rule that the two parties' voluntary contract will be implemented in good faith, that is, there is a lot of talk in economics. How the trust between strangers is built: Rules shaped in the middle of multiple repeatable games shape and constrain everyone's code of conduct. Such rules of behavior are ostensibly dominated and dominated by the West. However, it still has its own spontaneity, naturalness or rationality.
For 40 years of China’s reform and opening up, it has generally followed this set of rules. It is precisely in accordance with this set of rules that China continues to smoothly implement technology transfer. It can be said that it is the biggest beneficiary under this set of rules. The economy has accounted for a negligible share of the world economy before the reform and opening up, and it has now risen to the second place in the world. Further, it is also easier to judge if we continue to follow the rules and exercise the wisdom of the Chinese people under this set of rules. To innovate and develop, China will still be the biggest beneficiary.
Nowadays, for the core technology appeal, the subtext is that after it seems that there is a core technology, there is no need to be restrained by people. The so-called restrictions on rules or intellectual property no longer exist. This is a false illusion. Mastering core technologies means a greater degree of division of labor. Cooperation, not the other way around; it is only possible to master the core technology by choosing a greater degree of cooperation. The truth is not complicated. The so-called core technology is a technology that is better than the technology that others give you. It can only be the world’s most The result of good components, best processing equipment, and so on. Therefore, mastering core technologies requires that we do not do not cooperate, but rather more cooperation, and we must not be unrestrained by humans, but rather have deeper mutual restraint and cooperate with each other.
Looking back at the driving force of China’s past development, in order to clarify the path of China’s future, China is still in a catch-up phase. This time rejecting or even opposing the world order is not worth the candle. China is a big country and is also a China in the world. This is the history that we should countless times. Lessons learned from experience are common sense that must be clarified in the future.