Henry Farrell - Driven to Self-Reliance: Technological Interdependence and The Chinese Innovation Ecosystem

How do rising powers like China balance the benefits and costs of technological interdependence? As with many crucial questions about international relations and technology, we have few good answers. On the one hand, states embedded in global technological infrastructures like the Internet, and help their businesses collaborate in global innovation networks will be better able to tap into and build upon leading-edge innovations, supporting core state objectives of security and development.  On the other, technological interdependence may involve a risky reliance on technological innovations, capabilities and infrastructure that are rooted in other, potentially hostile jurisdictions. Neither realist nor liberal approaches provide a satisfactory account of how China's approach to technological interdependence has changed from reliance to self-reliance.  In this article, we invoke that we need to focus on different causal factors to explain the change. Specifically, we argue that China’s shift of policy can be attributed to processes of state learning and coordination that are under-valued in both liberal and realist accounts. To understand how China’s perspective on technological interdependence has shifted, we use Natural Language Processing to how explore Chinese sentiment and policy over science and technology issues has changed over the last decade and a half across different parts of the Chinese state.