Jean-Baptiste Monnier, PhD, COO & VP of Asia Centre, published a new policy brief “The Geopolitics of Tech & Trust, China’s Dilemma, Europe’s Moment”.
This work is part of the European Union’s programme Horizon Europe which Asia Centre is part of. Jean-Baptiste Monnier’s policy brief is an output for our Consortium’s fifth Work Package “China’s regional and global strategies” led by Asia Centre.
This page only is the abstract of Jean-Baptiste Monnier, PhD’s work. Please click the PDF button to access the full version
Geopolitics of Tech & Trust
So this brief is about trust. Over the past 25 years, China’s technological advances have been nothing short of spectacular, yet in hindsight, they could have had a much greater impact. China would have performed even better in its technology wars with the US if politics had not gotten in the way. We review key episodes when China mixed technology with ideology, and policies got in the way, created mistrust, and forced China into defense (early internet, Huawei in Europe, global IP protocols). We consider how China frames its AI strategy and consider possible developments.
Introduction
Analysts rightfully refer to the US and China as technology superpowers; let us not forget that Europe is also a technology leader, as it is home to “the” enabler of global compute, ASML: virtually all of the most advanced chips are printed on its EUV machines. While experts argue about market leads measured in years or months in AI, and when Jensen Huang says that China is “nanoseconds” behind the US in chipmaking, ASML’s machines are literally decades ahead of any competition.
Europe is also the birthplace of Linux and home to its largest open-source talent pool. Not to forget, 99 of the world’s 100 largest enterprises run on SAP, and SAP is the leading software in supply chain and manufacturing, at the core of China’s factories.
Finally, Europe has built a world-leading “trust capital”, and this is a valuable asset whose time has come. Europe should rise as an alternative vision between the two giants who are battling for supremacy. Suggestions will be presented.
This brief uses trust as the lens. With support from a European Commission grant on contemporary China, we assess China’s governance model—what it offers citizens and foreign users—against Europe’s trust-centric approach. We also draw some recommendations for the EC.
The project “Dealing with a Resurgent China” (DWARC) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101061700. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Geopolitics of Tech & Trust: