Hi Joel. I agree the CCP "has so far proven very adept at identifying long-term needs and putting resources into those areas of scientific and technological innovation", but that is not the same as delivery on those identified needs. We need to look at the outputs, not the inputs, to assess whether the regime is delivering what it reckons it needs. The simple answer is, a) not very well and b) not to the level it needs or aspires. And that is crystal clear from the data and is recognised by Xi, or at least my reading of his speeches suggest he and many around him know they are well behind the frontier economies. That explains a lot of the tech policy, hacking, acquisitions, and so on.

I am not arguing an authoritarian state cannot deliver significant tech gains and even innovation. China launched a satellite and exploded its first nuclear device in the midst of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. This was impressive catching up. But it was mission-directed catching up. The Soviet Union was also pretty impressive in the 1950-60s such that Paul Samuelson, winner of the Nobel Prize Economics and author of one of the foremost economic textbooks for several decades, argued up to the 1980s the Soviet Union would overtake America.

We can envisage three pathways to fostering and delivering innovation: top-down (gov directed), bottom up (firm-based) and horizontal networks (within and between country collaboration and exchange, broadly defined as openness). The party's preferred mode is top-down. And it has delivered impressive gains. More than 2% of GDP is spent on R&D, second only to the USA. Investment in higher edu since the late 1990s means China now turns out more engineering and science graduates than any country, though the quality of most but those from the two dozen best schools leave a lot to be desired. Investment in physical infrastructure or primary-secondary schools has also been impressive the past decade or so, raising completion rates. Yet, 70% of the current workforce are high school drops out. The 2015 inter-census survey reported only 30% of workers had completed 12 years of schooling, compared with an average of 35% for the middle-income group of countries and 78% for the OECD. The level of schooling is 40-50 years behind Japan, the EU and the USA. Is that a workforce with skills and capabilities for a modern advanced economy? Closing that gap in the workforce education - not just the elite education - will take decades, and require significant investment in infant and preschool health and education as many children from rural areas, who account for 3 out of 4 new born children still, are cognitive behind even when they start primary school.

BTW, the BRI has hugely under delivered, but that is another long thread not for today.

The basic problem of innovation in China is neither economic nor technological. It is political. The reason is that innovation - and the openness required and the support for a market place of ideas - is inherently chaotic. Engineers and scientist need critical skills, not merely tech skills, which is why I would reject your assertion that knowledge in sci-tech areas is different. That makes it very risky for the autocrat and the elite coalition of interests that benefit. It is for this reason that the party state clamps down, and increasingly so since 2008/9, on contrarian voices. Time and time again Xi tells scientists, students, teachers and private sector business (the leaders of innovation) that they need to be innovative, but they must adhere to the leadership of the party and the core of Xi Jinping Thought in the New Era. Only the party subservient need apply. But as is so common in authoritarian regimes, it is difficult to know when you are too close to the accepted line until you cross it, then you might well disappear ... and your family too. Fear constrains. Even in the UK recently I have been surprised how few PRC-origin Chinese are prepared to engaged with the debate and argument I'm putting here. At a seminar last week I had ... zero questions from PRC-origin colleagues (there were about 40 in the audience).

So, I think these and other constraints on innovation and economic growth I discuss in my book, mean the authoritarian party-state will fail inn its mission to make China a clever and innovative advanced economy, and as a result will be unable to realise Xi's dream for a wealthy and strong nation by 2049.

China however has proved many pundits wrong in the past. It might well again. Who imagined in 1980 that a communist party would steer China into a market-oriented modern economy second only to the United States in size? So, the intriguing and disturbing scenario is that China will carve a new path to becoming an advanced technological superpower by the middle of the twenty-first century and remain, all the while, an authoritarian state with pervasive control over personal liberties inside its borders and even beyond. What would that mean for the global order, human rights and the democracies of the world?