US-China Chip War – Policy Recommendations by PKU Scholar Lu Feng

"Since the US has used its ‘nuclear weapon’ against China, China should strike back and use its own ‘nuclear weapon’ ... The US’s ‘nuclear weapon’ is tech and China’s ‘nuclear weapon’ is its market."

Dear Everyone,

Happy New Year of the Rabbit!

Today’s edition of Sinification looks at an important interview with Lu Feng (路风), a political economist and professor at Peking University's School of Government. Lu has long been an advocate of Chinese “independent innovation” and was part of the expert committee tasked with discussing China’s plans to develop a homegrown passenger jet some twenty years ago. Gao Yanping (高艳平), the journalist who conducted this interview on behalf of the news website Guancha, describes Lu’s ideas as having had “a huge impact on readers interested in China's industrial development.”

The following interview was published a couple of weeks ago and is certainly one of the more detailed and interesting pieces discussing the current US-China tech war to have been published in China in recent months. For those of you interested in this topic, I would recommend reading it in full. The lengthy excerpts below have been translated with the kind help of Laura van Megen…