China is winning the other tech race

In 2006, well before Xi Jinping came to power, Chinese state television ran a 12-part miniseries called The Rise of the Great Powers. It was based on Paul Kennedy’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, first published in 1989, and included interviews with the author, but also expanded on the source material. The show went through a bunch of historical examples of great powers — the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia/USSR, and the U.S. — and tried to explain each one’s rise (and, if applicable, its fall). The implication was, of course, that China ought to become the next great power in the sequence.I haven’t seen the series, but I’ve read Kennedy’s book, and its ideas are powerful and provocative. The most interesting idea is that countries become great powers due to their mastery of the most important technologies of the day — gunpowder, sailing ships, steam power, mass production, steel, the combustion engine, industrial chemicals, electricity,…