An Opportunity to Rectify History: China's 2014 Outline for the Semiconductor Industry

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
This thesis seeks to understand the process over the period 2010–14 that led to the issuing of one of China’s most important and consequential techno-nationalist industrial policies, the “Outline for Advancing the Development of the National Semiconductor Industry” (“the 2014 Outline”). It is motivated by the observation that in 2013–14, Beijing’s articulation of the importance of its domestic semiconductor capabilities emphasised the industry’s centrality to information security and national security more prominently than the preceding years. This shift towards “hard techno-nationalism” coincided with a set of developments that changed Beijing’s assessments of China’s strategic circumstances. The documentary evidence suggests that Beijing’s concerns about American containment of China’s rise, anxiety about the new dimensions of information security, aggravated by the Snowden revelations of June 2013, and perception that China’s “period of strategic opportunity” to develop its national power was narrowing all motivated China’s leaders to take urgent and major action to develop China’s core technological capabilities in a short period of time. The urgency visible in the documents and speeches from this time reflect the Party’s narrative that China’s weakness and national humiliation were intimately linked to its failure to exploit periods of opportunity to develop its technological capabilities. The genesis of the 2014 Outline, therefore, must be understood as the final attempt to rectify a history of failures.

Description

Type of resource text
Publication date August 26, 2022

Creators/Contributors

Author George, Sam Chetwin
Degree granting institution Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies
Thesis advisor Miller, Alice Lyman

Subjects

Subject Semiconductors
Subject High technology industries > Government policy
Subject History
Subject Political science
Subject Communist parties
Subject China
Genre Text
Genre Thesis

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Preferred citation
George, S. (2022). An Opportunity to Rectify History: China's 2014 Outline for the Semiconductor Industry. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/dj881jx5131

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Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection

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