China is a rapidly growing force in the world electronics and photonics markets. Over the past decade a significant proportion of the world’s electronic and photonic manufacturing has shifted to China, and R&D activities are following suit.
Coordinated by EPPIC Faraday, a DTI Global Watch Scoping Mission visited China in June 2005 to investigate the research and technology infrastructure being developed within the country and look at the implementation of new technology across a diverse range of Chinese companies. This mission was run concurrently with an EPSRC mission funded through the INTERACT programme.
Significant sums are being invested into the development of technologies for the next generation of electronic and photonic devices and China is generating its own intellectual property (IP) to support its industrial base. The government is underwriting the development of key technologies to reduce dependence on ‘foreign’ technology. At the same time Chinese industry is investing in new technologies and processes to enable it to produce high-quality, high-technology products.
China has a diverse range of industrial companies including ex-state-managed monopolies, joint venture (JV) companies (with foreign companies) and new hightechnology start-up companies.
Chinese nationals are returning to take advantage of the country’s rapid growth, and these returnees (often from Silicon Valley) – along with the large number of technical graduates produced by China each year – are providing the technical skill base required by industry.
Fuelling China’s growth is a rapidly expanding and developing internal market providing demand for a range of high-technology goods.
China offers opportunities for the UK through potential collaborations and through access to its expanding domestic market; however, the UK appears to be lagging behind other countries in seizing these opportunities.
As ever more R&D activities move from the West to China, the notion that high-technology jobs will remain in the West, and the East will concentrate on low-cost manufacturing, is gone. Research and technology are moving to China to take advantage of the low-cost, highly skilled workforce, and to be close to the manufacturing base.