President Xi Jinping determined as early as 2013 that China had little choice but to pursue self-sufficiency in key technologies, and that the country could rely on its socialist system to seek technological advantages, according to an internal speech made public for the first time in a new book.

In remarks to science and technology delegates at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) meeting in 2013, Xi said China's growth in the previous three decades was a result of importing and leveraging foreign and "second-hand" technologies from the last industrial revolution, which would put China at an disadvantaged position.

"By sticking to the beaten path, China would not only suffer wider technology gaps [with the world's advanced levels], but also be trapped at the bottom of the global value chain of industrial production," Xi said in the speech, which was included in the book titled On Technology Self-reliance and Self-improvement, a collection of Xi's remarks on the topic from 2013 to 2022.

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"Amid an increasingly heightened global competition of overall national strength, we don't have many options but to take a path of self-dependent innovation," Xi said.

Public discussion in China on economic security has gained prominence in recent years, after the Sino-US tech war and Washington's technology restrictions laid bare the risks of relying on key supplies from overseas.

A women uses an iPhone as she passes a lighted Apple logo at the Apple store in New York City, US, April 14, 2023. Photo: Reuters alt=A women uses an iPhone as she passes a lighted Apple logo at the Apple store in New York City, US, April 14, 2023. Photo: Reuters>

The internal speech was delivered by Xi on March 4, 2013, just 10 days before he was elected president of China. At the time, state media reported on the CPPCC event but only a summary of Xi's speech was published previously.

The newly revealed transcript of Xi's speech offers a glimpse into the thinking of the leader of the world's second largest economy. Xi's message of technology self-sufficiency and the necessity for China to control "core technologies" is a consistent theme throughout the book.

"Historical facts have shown that a big economy doesn't mean a powerful economy. If a country is persistently lagging behind others, the fundamental reason is that its technology is lagging behind," Xi said.

Lettering with the logo of Google is seen on a glass pane in the press center of the Cologne Trade Fair, Germany. Photo: dpa alt=Lettering with the logo of Google is seen on a glass pane in the press center of the Cologne Trade Fair, Germany. Photo: dpa>

Xi's speech was made years before the US sanctioned Chinese tech firms such as ZTE and Huawei Technologies Co, and the message was further justified later after Washington imposed broad export restrictions on Chinese access to advanced chip technologies.

In his 2013 speech, Xi also seemed to invoke China's "century of humiliation" by saying the country's "technological backwardness" was why it was "beaten up" by other powers. "This lesson is too profound to forget. We must bear it in mind firmly," he said.

In the speech, Xi called for the nation to pool resources to help make breakthroughs in key technologies, while championing the advantages of the country's socialist system, which he said enabled China to "pool our strengths to accomplish great things".

"In the past we counted on this to successfully develop our nuclear weapons, missiles, and artificial satellites. In the future we will also count it for driving innovation," Xi said.

In 1960, China successfully test-fired its first home-grown ground-launched missile under the direction of Qian Xuesen, who had been one of the top missile scientists in the US. Qian, who returned to China after being accused of being a communist sympathiser, went on to play key roles in the country's nuclear bomb tests, and headed a task force which manufactured and launched China's first man-made satellite in 1970.

Most of the speeches and articles in the book have been published previously by Chinese state media. The full transcript of Xi's speech at a 2016 cybersecurity conference was republished, in which he urged the country's Big Tech firms to team up like US tech giants Microsoft and Intel did in the 1990s, to form a Chinese version of the so-called "Wintel" ecosystem.

"A significant reason [why China lags behind] is that our key enterprises didn't pull off synergies like what Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple have done," Xi said in remarks to the cybersecurity and information conference.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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