"A number of prominent Chinese internet executives have been left out of the country's top political meetings in Beijing this week, giving way to experts in artificial intelligence and semiconductors as Chinese leader Xi Jinping's priorities shift amid rising technology competition with the U.S.
Pony Ma, Robin Li and William Ding, the chief executives of Chinese internet companies Tencent Holdings Ltd., Baidu Inc. and NetEase Inc. respectively, are conspicuous in their absence from this year's list of delegates to the National People's Congress, China's legislative body, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body. Also missing was Lenovo Group Ltd. CEO Yang Yuanqing.
The meetings are largely ceremonial affairs designed to project unity and harmony across the world's most populous country. Each year since 2018, the internet moguls had submitted policy proposals that attempted to align their business interests with the Communist Party's policy priorities.
This year, their vacancies reflect the increasingly clear political reality that the online services industry, known in China as the platform economy, no longer sits at the center of Beijing's development agenda.
"Ding, Li, and Ma are the symbols of an older era," said Xiaomeng Lu, a director at consulting firm Eurasia Group who focuses on emerging technologies and geopolitics. By appointing a new class of executives to the meetings, Ms. Lu said, Beijing is "endorsing their business models and suggesting they are the future of Chinese technology."
Many of the new and reinvited delegates from the tech sector are entrepreneurs as well as researchers in strategic areas, such as AI, cloud computing, semiconductors and hardware.
The reshuffle underscores Beijing's shifting policy focus toward boosting self-sufficiency in technology and supply chains as the country faces growing challenges from the U.S. on both fronts.
"Beijing needs private-sector companies to step up their game as Xi and the party gird for a long-term struggle with the U.S., not for 'dominance' of the technologies of the future, but for control over China's technology supply chains free of U.S. regulatory encumbrances," says Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China and technology policy lead at Washington-based advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group.
Washington has announced a series of escalating U.S. export controls around chips, which could hinder Beijing's technological advancement." [1]
1. World News: Gatherings Snub Internet Moguls
Shen, Lu. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 06 Mar 2023: A.7.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą