Innovation in

By Harvey Dzodin

As has been the case in recent years, innovation will be both a major theme and preoccupation for China in 2018, given even more importance after pronouncements by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), in his report at the 19th National Congress of the CPC in October 2017, where he spoke of the shape of the new era and the new principal contradiction, both inextricably linked to accelerated innovative advancements in numerous fields.

Xi declared that the principal contradiction facing China’s socialist society had gone through a certain evolution. In the recent past, it had been between “the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production,” while now, it is between “unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life.”

In the West, most of us are blissfully ignorant about the centrality of the concept of contradictions. However, in China, it is of immense importance, being derived from the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism related to the interaction of contradictory social forces.

While many contradictions coexist, there is only one of such importance that it must be successfully addressed lest it pose an existential threat. Meeting the challenge of addressing the principal contradiction by providing balanced and adequate development to meet the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life requires innovative solutions of great magnitude and increased frequency.

China is well advanced in this regard, as I found out at the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou in December 2017. The city’s leaders obviously worked hard to win this coveted prize that focused attention on the event itself as well as the innovative city and region hosting it.

There was definite electricity in the air at this gathering of some of the smartest, richest and most powerful people on the planet. I came away feeling that China has almost left its copycat phase behind and is addressing its principal contradiction by morphing into a world-class inventor and innovator, just as it’s now positioned as the world leader in globalization.

Major national initiatives can be cited to demonstrate this point. Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025) is a national project to enable the country to become