China's Strategy of Industrial Abundance: an Imperial Banquet, not Molecular Gastronomy

"If a skilled chef already has all the ingredients—vegetables, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar—for preparing an imperial banquet, would he really bother with molecular gastronomy?" — Sun Xi (孙喜)

Forming part of what has been described by Dan Wang in his recent book as an “engineering state”, the Chinese policy establishment often lets the term “system” do the conceptual heavy lifting: building a complete “industrial system”, developing a “national innovation system” and strengthening “systemic capacity”. In an increasingly orthodox narrative that is perhaps best exemplified by the economist Lu Feng’s (路风) concept of the “complete industrial system”, technological innovation is understood not primarily as the product of nimble minds or freewheeling vision, but as the natural outgrowth of a holistic system in which supply- and demand-side inputs are calibrated for its emergence.

Echoing the previously covered analysis by public policy specialist Huang Ping (黄平) that China’s advantage in AI derives from its vast “systemic capacity” and pool of industrial demand, management theorist Sun Xi (孙喜) presents a lucid exposition here of how such an industrial system operates—theoreticall…