China leads world in 19 of 23 critical tech; US way behind in hypersonics, electronic warfare, undersea capabilities

In bad news for US-led West, China is leading in “high-impact research” in 19 out of 23 technologies, with “commanding lead” in hypersonics, electronic warfare and undersea capabilities.

This was revealed in the Critical Technology Tracker report of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

“China is leading in high-impact research in 19 of these 23 technologies and has a commanding lead in hypersonics, electronic warfare and in key undersea capabilities. But in other key technologies such as autonomous systems operation technology, advanced robotics, adversarial AI-reverse engineering and protective cyber the collective strength of the AUKUS countries shifts this picture, and they take the global lead,” the report said.

In a dangerous trend, the report cited an unassailable gap between China and other countries in some key technological areas.

“But across a number of technology areas China’s lead is so great that no aggregation of countries exceeds its share – highlighting the importance of the accelerating effect of greater collaboration between like-minded partners.”

“For some technologies at least 9 of the world’s top 10 research institutions are based in China (for autonomous underwater vehicles it’s 10/10) and they are collectively generating 8 times more high-impact research than the second-ranked country (in all cases the US).”

“In these 23 technologies, ASPI’s talent tracker dataset shows 14.2 per cent of high-impact authors working in China completed postgraduate training in an AUKUS country (US = 8.5 per cent UK = 3.8 per cent, Australia = 1.9 per cent), while 4.3 per cent trained in the EU, 1.9 per cent Canada, 1.6 per cent Singapore and 1.1 Japan. That knowledge import is highest in defence categories like hypersonic detection (AUKUS 19.5%) and electronic warfare (AUKUS 17.6 per cent),” ASPI added.

What is ‘Critical Technology Tracker’

According to ASPI, its ‘Critical Technology Tracker’ “provides – beyond datasets showing research performance – are unique insights into strategy, intent and potential future capabilities.

It also provides valuable insights into the spread and concentrations of global expertise across a range of critical areas. Sometimes countries are leading because they are well ahead across the entire technology (research, commercialisation, manufacturing, supply: for example China’s stunning lead in electric batteries).

In other cases, a country is leading in high impact research output because they (and their institutions: universities, national labs and companies) are seeking to catch-up through significant investment, typically incentivised by government funding and policy directives.”

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