The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) organized the second annual ChinaPower conference “China’s Power: Up for Debate” in Washington, D.C. November 14, 2017. Ten experts from Harvard University, University of Texas at Austin, Zhejiang University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Jinan University, Council on Foreign Relations, Euroasia Group, and Paulson Institute and so on were invited to participate in the conference. The structure of the event differs from other conferences. Each of the invited experts instead of speaking in a standard panel format, debates a specific proposition against another expert. The U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Brigadier General Robert Spalding III, the Senior Director for Strategy and Planning at the United States National Security Council delivered the keynote speeches.

Prof. Can Huang and Dr. Adam Segal, who holds the Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and is Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program in Council on Foreign Relations, had a friendly debate about the proposition “In the coming decade, China will emerge as a global leader in technology innovation”. Prof. Can Huang gave a presentation to support the proposition. His speech consists of three parts. In the first part, he introduced the seven cases of the cutting-edge technologies that China has developed and are leading in the world, which include high-speed railway technologies, internet technologies, extraction of methane hydrates, quantum communication, SingleRAN telecommunication technology, the technologies used to build the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge as well as supercomputing. Through the cases, Prof. Can Huang argued that China has indeed emerged as a global leader in a broad spectrum of technologies. He then explained the three reasons why China is able to develop these cutting-edge technologies: China’s massive domestic market that leads to increasing returns on investment in innovation, its centralized power and willingness to employ state-sponsored industrial policy, and the globalization that facilitates China’s technological learning and upgrading. In the end, Prof. Can Huang concluded that the Chinese companies are likely to rise to a level that is on par with their counterparts in the United States, Germany and Japan in a decade, ushering in an age of Chinese global technological leadership.

(From left to right: Professor Can Huang, Ms. Bonnie Glaser and Dr. Adam Segal)

Dr. Adam Segal argued against the proposition. After their presentations, Prof. Can Huang and Dr. Adam Segal were engaged in a session of rebuttal and at last answered the questions from the audience. The audience voted before and after the debate. More than half of the audience supported the proposition in the end of the debate.

Founded in 1962, CSIS is one of the world’s preeminent international policy institutions focused on defense and security; regional study; and transnational challenges ranging from energy and trade to global development and economic integration. It is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization based in Washington D.C. For the past six years consecutively, CSIS has been named the world’s number one think tank for international security by the University of Pennsylvania’s “Go To Think Tank Index.”

The full video of the debate can be seen at https://www.csis.org/events/chinas-power-debate-0.