NEWS FROM THE FUTURE: Look to the east

Dateline: December 4 2031

There are two kinds of innovation. Mind-blowing, leading-edge innovation like ChatGPT, Nvidia and SpaceX, and efficient, fast-follower innovation like DeepSeek, Xiaomi and LandSpace.

America and the West have a well-deserved reputation for tech inventions that shatter the status quo and herald the dawn of a new paradigm. Like electricity, the telephone, the assembly line, the personal computer, the internet, GPS, the iPhone and many, many more.

We’re not just talking electronics and gadgets here. Think lasers, lidar, fracking, even quadcopter drones. And lithium-ion and LFP batteries. Just to name a few.

But increasingly it’s not the originator of a new technological revolution that powers ahead, leads the commercialisation and ultimately dominates the space. Just like DJI did with drones, Chinese companies are dominating electric cars, solar and batteries, phones and routers, power tools and heavy engineering equipment.

They have become experts at understanding and re-engineering technologies, rather than just copying products. And they do it with scale and efficiency in mind, creating value through innovative designs and manufacturing techniques. Lowering cost by several orders of magnitude, while still delivering high-quality products and services, has become a Chinese science, and their supreme competitive advantage.

Now, if you want to peer into the future and see which way the technological winds are blowing, where the latest breakthrough is headed, where to place your bets and where to invest your money, don’t research what’s happening in Silicon Valley.

Look to the East. And let China show the way. / First published in Mindbullets December 4 2025.

Making China great again

Tech trade barriers are the gift that keeps giving

Dateline: November 11 2030

The saying “hard times create great people” applies to companies and nations too. When the US imposed restrictions on the sale of hi-tech products to China it didn’t dream that, ironically, it would have the opposite effect to the one intended.

Necessity is the mother of invention. When Elon Musk started SpaceX, he tried to buy a Russian rocket to get started with the technology. They laughed at him and sent him away empty-handed. But he needed it, so he designed and built his own, profiting from the hardship of the experience and ultimately outcompeting every space launch company (and country) on the planet.

Similarly, when Huawei was denied Western know-how and market access, it developed its own and cleaned up in emerging markets such as Africa. It became arguably China’s most innovative company. Because it needed to.

It’s fair to say you want to level the playing field, and China is known for not necessarily playing fair. However, imposing tariffs in a trade war to keep the other side down, to keep your country on top, can backfire spectacularly. And let’s not blame it all on Trump 2.0.

When advanced ASML chip-making equipment faced export restrictions, China’s imports of existing systems surged in a strategic move to acquire the machines before further restrictions were introduced. China’s tech innovators developed ways to upgrade the older systems to produce more sophisticated silicon, while focusing on mature designs that had high demand volume, like chips for the automotive industry.

Now China — with Asian allies — is starting to challenge Western technological hegemony, not only in low-cost manufacturing but in innovative chip design and artificial intelligence systems. The hard times imposed on them have bred some great companies.

So, who really made China great again? / First published in Mindbullets November 14 2024.

• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.