A few months ago, the Chinese government issued a ban on “sissy men” on television and video streaming sites. This move, although a relatively low-level one with a limited impact, gained considerable traction in Western popular media. It is easy to see why: it speaks to pre-existing notions of China as an authoritarian octopus, forever looking for the next target to ensnare in its tentacles. It also speaks to highly visible identitarian debates in the West itself, and perhaps most of all: it is simple. The document containing this ban was only a few pages long, containing mostly bland administrative-speak. 

In contrast, the government’s release of a collection of policy plans for the entire digital environment at the end of last year was mostly met with silence in Western media. Between Christmas and New Year, Chinese authorities issued an extensive five-year plan for the digital environment, with accompanying separate multi-year plans for digital government, the digital economy and fintech. Their impact is likely to be massive, as they signal a considerable shift in Beijing’s approach to managing large platform companies, put the role of data front and center by identifying it as a new factor of production, and promise a comprehensive overhaul of the entire public-facing side of government. 

To be sure, much of this silence can be explained by timing. The Chinese government has a habit of releasing major documents in the last week of the year, possibly to avoid attention in Western news cycles, and for the banal bureaucratic reason of needing to wrap up projects before the end-of-year deadline. But perhaps more importantly, these documents are both long — the 14^th Five-Year Plan for National Informatization is 22,000 words in translation — and excruciatingly boring. As the great Belgian sinologist Simon Leys once wrote: “reading Communist literature is akin to munching rhinoceros sausage, or to swallowing sawdust by the bucketful.”

Yet we ignore such documents at our peril. Very often, the Chinese Communist Party is accused of being opaque and secretive. And that is true, if one wants to know what the outcome of the 20^th Party Congress will be. However, the CCP is also a large, bureaucratic organization that requires clear communication and instructions. If Xi Jinping wants his wishes to be carried out, officials up and down the hierarchy need to know what they are. Much about the CCP, or Chinese policy in general, is not unknowable or hidden behind a jade screen. It is there in plain view for anyone who is willing to absorb industrial quantities of the most indigestible stuff.

What, then, can we find in this new collection of plans? First, the documents give us a capsule version of the current worldview and outlook from Zhongnanhai. They tout the progress that the government  has made in expanding connectivity, the rapid growth of digital patent applications and the high growth rates of the digital industries. They also identify near-term challenges that primarily include development shortcomings and imbalances, including low levels of digital adoption in the countryside, still sub-par digital productivity, too much separation between the digital economy and the real economy, and a need to do more to exploit the potential value of data. 

These perceptions then connect to broad priorities. First, Beijing now identifies data as a factor of production equal to land, capital and labor. If exploited correctly, particularly through AI technologies, data possesses the potential not only to create a step change in China’s economic development, but also to vastly improve the efficiency of government, the documents argue. Most Western readers will immediately associate this with the more authoritarian aspects of Chinese policy. These are important, but the vast majority of the policy bandwidth is dedicated to public services and social welfare, including specific sections on services to the disabled, the elderly and other vulnerable groups, or to less advantaged regions. In China, too, citizens value access to healthcare and education, and don’t like too much government red tape. 

The Chinese government has now, more than ever, great ambitions matched with growing capabilities. It has hammered out the outlines of a new development approach that will be watched with interest, and perhaps emulated in part, by other emerging economies.

Second, the plans set much store by the concept of “ecosystems.” In contrast to the Western approach to the digital sphere, which sees companies as autonomous actors, the more dirigiste Chinese governing style aims to develop mutually reinforcing, organically evolving and self-sustaining systems. Plans like these aim to create dozens of actionable points that individual businesses or local governments could take up. They incentivize early movers, by signaling that the State will mobilize resources such as subsidies or public procurement to create initial markets, after which benefits of scale can kick in. In other words, the government sees itself partly as a kickstarter for market mechanisms that would otherwise develop far more slowly. 

One specific example is that of reforms in the platform sector: anti-monopoly regulations issued last year were aimed in part at limiting the ability of giant platform companies like Baidu and Alibaba to exact monopoly rents from on-platform merchants and other winner-take-all effects. Rather, Beijing would like the oxygen in the system to be spread around more evenly. More broadly, this aims at the greater integration of resources across businesses, education and research institutions, government departments, industry associations and other actors in order to advance not just corporate profits, but the Party’s full-spectrum development program. Chinese policy documents sometimes refer to cyberspace as a “common spiritual garden” for the nation, as if their authors imagine a meticulously manicured Suzhou garden. 

The plans are stuffed with dozens of more specific intentions to be realized and actions to be undertaken. The logical question to ask is: will this work? This is difficult to say, as the plans lay out few numerical targets or measurable benchmarks against which success can be assessed. Instead, they contain many verbs like “improve,” “strengthen,” “promote” and “advance.” It is easy to be skeptical: despite years of significant government investment, China has seemingly not achieved many of its tech sector goals. It is still years, if not decades, behind in indigenous chip manufacturing capabilities. Western operating systems like Windows and MacOS, Android and iOS still dominate the market, despite years of Chinese efforts to foster domestic replacements. 

Yet China’s innovative capabilities should not be underestimated. Its vast investments into education, research and infrastructure have generated many opportunities for serendipity and positive unintended consequences, and this is likely to continue. Government investment may have resulted in significant inefficiencies in several sectors, but the Chinese state favors efficacy over efficiency. Perhaps counterintuitively, it has become more tolerant of experimentation and failure, if it results in at least some game-changing companies, technologies and products emerging in the long run. Government encouragement steers companies to bridge gaps that, left to their own devices, they might not have considered, or would have done so far more slowly. This might result in activities that, regardless of their potential contribution to the bottom line, may also have significant beneficial effects to the well-being of Chinese citizens. Compared with the current stagnation in Silicon Valley, the Chinese system seems to be generating new ideas and visions, some of which may well transform into reality.

Many of these aspects are hypothetical, and the test will come in the next five years. The Chinese government has now, more than ever, great ambitions matched with growing capabilities. It has hammered out the outlines of a new development approach that will be watched with interest, and perhaps emulated in part, by other emerging economies. Not only China, but most major countries are now recognizing they may be better off trading efficiency for resilience in the tech sphere: Beijing is leading the way in setting out a comprehensive strategy for a world in which governments prioritize reducing their vulnerability to external pressures, over optimizing their value chains. 

Understanding this approach and responding to it effectively will require a greater degree of willingness and ability to engage in detail with the Party’s vision and its plans, however much one might disagree with them. If this is a new age of great power competition, underestimating the competitor may not be a winning strategy.

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