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123 science, China has been a learner and a follower. Now, with quantum technology, if we try our best we can be one of the main players» side The West's persistent dismissals over decades about China's capaof the bilities "not being creative" were badly wrong. We said they were only # nore of the good at imitating, were too restricted and unfree, that state-owned en- # se. TheBa terprises were terrible. In hindsight, most of these assessments were plain wrong, and where they had merit, they did not stop China from # as of scen emerging as a modern-day titan in science and engineering—not least # ly alike Xi because legal transfers of IP like buying companies and translating # i instals as journals were backed with outright thett, forced transters, reverse en- ## sonic mis gineering, and espionage operations. ## er in feds Meanwhile, the United States is losing its strategic lead. For years it was obvious that America held supremacy in everything from seminajor tech Ce. conductor design to pharmaceuticals, the invention of the internet to the world's most sophisticated military technology. It's not gone, but rise. In the it's going. A report by Harvard's Graham Allison argues that the situfrom Us ation is far more serious than most in the West appreciate. China is and keen already ahead of the United States in green energy, 5G, and Al and is moment. on a trajectory to overtake it in quantum and biotech in the next few y parents years. The Pentagon's first chief software officer resigned in protest in 2021 because he was so dismayed by the situation. "We have no comcius, into peting fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it's frastruc already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he told the Fihackable nancial Times. Shortly after becoming president in 2013, Xi Jinping made a speech ransmitwith lasting consequences for China-and for the rest of the world. "Advanced technology is the sharp weapon of the modern state," he ng mone declared. "Our technology still generally lags that of developed countries and we must adopt an asymmetric strategy of catching up and overtaking." It was a powerful analysis and, as we have seen, a statement ot China's policy priorities. But unlike much of what Xi says, any world leader ## could credibly make the same point. Any U.S. or Brazilian president, German chancellor, or Indian prime minister would subscribe to the central thesis—-that technology is a "sharp weapon" enabling countries started to "hold sway." Xi was stating a bald truth, the self-declared mantra of