The Belfer Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School released a paper in December titled “The Great Tech Rivalry: China vs the US”, analysing the technological status of the two giant economies. Harvard professor Graham Allison, lead author of the report, and Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, also published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on the subject. They contend that China has already surpassed the US in areas like artificial intelligence, 5G, quantum information science, semiconductors, biotechnology and green energy. The study identified China’s “whole-of-society” approach as the differentiator. But how does this accelerate China’s technological development? The...