The Rise and Fall of China’s Techno-Electronic Frontier: Towards a More Equitable, Green, Urban and Scientific Nation

You can live in China for a while and realize that the country is not going to collapse any time soon. Despite China’s unsteady transition away from low-cost labor and manufacturing toward innovation and consumption, its economy is still growing, albeit more slowly than in the past. China has grown to be a global renewables superpower even as it builds coal plants. The fact that the US is not friendly with Russia, Iran, and North Korea has resulted in American diplomats asking Beijing to use its leverage in the current Middle East turmoil. In frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence experts agree that discussion without China is akin to the West talking to itself.

But the sons and daughters of those builders are growing up in a very different world from their parents. They will inevitably want to make their mark on the world even if they don’t like it, but they will challenge older mores in the process, since their basic structure is rising once again. The discussion of how to get Chinese society more equitable, green, urban and scientific is growing. The builder generation could only imagine that China was transitioning to a high-tech, highly educated, prosperous and powerful nation.