China appears to be easing its high-tech industrial development push, dubbed "Made in China 2025," which has long irked the United States, amid talks between the two countries to reduce trade tensions, according to new guidance to local governments.
Beijing has dropped references to "Made in China 2025", an initiative intended to help China catch up with global rivals in sophisticated technologies and promoted aggressively since 2015.
The strategy is core to China’s aim to transform itself into a global superpower by 2050, and rival U.S. dominance in sectors such as semiconductors, robotics, aerospace, clean-energy cars and artificial intelligence.
But its open efforts to deploy state support and subsidies to close a technology gap has provoked alarm in the West and blowback from the United States.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said it was clear China has been de-emphasizing the 2025 plan in response to objections from the United States and other countries, "but that doesn’t mean they’ve dropped it."
He told CNBC television that he expects China to move into more advanced technologies and he has no objections to that.
