China to strengthen state-led system in core tech breakthroughs, Xi says

BEIJING, Sept 6 (Reuters) – China will strengthen its state-led system to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies, state media quoted President Xi Jinping as saying on Tuesday, amid tensions with the United States.

China will improve its mechanism for core technology development and strengthen the ruling Communist Party’s leadership in tech innovations, state media quoted Xi as saying at a top-level meeting.

Top leaders at the meeting passed guidelines to improve the country’s “new whole-nation system” in driving breakthroughs in core technologies, state media said.

“We should give full play to the significant advantages of our country’s socialist system that is able to concentrate its efforts on major affairs, strengthen the leadership of the party and the state over major scientific and technological innovation,” Xi was quoted as saying.

China should also rely on market mechanisms, improve resource allocation and focus on national strategies, Xi said.

China has unveiled a “new whole-nation system”, counting on China’s political system to pool national resources to support tech projects and break foreign “stranglehold”, drawing on past successes in developing nuclear bombs in the 1960s.

Washington has moved to ban exports of some advanced chips to China, escalating tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Xi also pledged to improve the efficiency of the use of energy, water, grain, land, minerals, raw materials and other resources, and accelerate the transformation of the way resources are used, state media said.

Reporting by Kevin Yao and Beijing newsroom; editing by Jason Neely and Chizu Nomiyama

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