How should China adjust its industrial policy?

Made in China 2025 will boost manufucturing

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US misreading Made in China 2025 by design

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Made in China 2025: The domestic tech plan that sparked an international backlash

SupChina

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According to media reports, China is drafting a replacement for the "Made in China 2025" plan, with a new program promising greater access to China's markets for foreign companies and playing down China's bid to dominate manufacturing.

The "Made in China 2025" plan is a key concern of the US. The high tech products made by Chinese companies have been targeted amid the US-provoked trade war against China.

All major industrial countries have their own industrial policy that aims to promote high tech development, such as Germany's "Industry 4.0" strategy.

The intent in drafting the "Made in China 2025" plan is obviously justifiable. The discontent and concern it has stirred among the US and other Western countries shows the plan has unique implications for those countries.

The "Made in China 2025" plan emphasizes support to State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the investment of huge amounts of capital. China's private enterprises have faced difficulties for quite some time and there has been talk of a trend known as "the State advances while the private sector retreats." Therefore, it has become necessary and urgent to create an environment that provides fairer competition between SOEs and private firms.

The objections to the "Made in China 2025" plan made by the US have been beyond China's expectations.

Drafting the plan is a matter of China's sovereign right and China can totally ignore the attitude of the US and focus on its own decision. But China is now deeply intertwined with the world and there are practical reasons to mutually coordinate China's interest and those of Western countries including the US. Expanding areas of common interest is an important way that China has adopted to continuously move forward its reform and opening-up.

China will likely adjust its future industrial plan and policies accordingly while insisting on its right to develop the country's high technology sector.

The major direction of the adjustment could be granting the market a bigger role and creating an environment for fairer competition between enterprises with different forms of ownership.

Regarding whether or how China should adjust its industrial plan, we would like to analyze the key changes of the overall environment and the principles China should stick to in adapting to these changes.

First, the external environment of China's development and the dynamic of internal and external economic interactions have undergone major changes since the beginning of this year. We need to adopt a pragmatic attitude toward these changes and respond actively.

Second, external pressure has always been a driving force for China's domestic reforms. The more open China is, the more it needs to respond to external demands. China's interaction with the outside world is a result of the need to better realize national interests, rather than being pushed to make humiliating concessions in which sovereignty is oppressed. In the 21st century, China should no longer hold the belief that being tough and confrontational is more politically correct than making concessions.

Third, China's development must lead to win-win results for the world. This is the lifeline of our peaceful development and cannot be a mere slogan. China needs to be more open to the world, increase its momentum of development through expanding foreign cooperation, and bring more benefits to the world.

Fourth, China should not fear taking economic or political risks in further expanding its opening-up policy. Fair competition between all types of companies will force SOEs to reform. In fact, many SOEs are not short of funds, but lack a competitive management mechanism. By unleashing the vitality of various enterprises, China's technological innovations will usher in a new chapter. If a more robust development is achieved, we will have more resources to maintain the political cohesion of the country, avoiding greater ideological risks.

Reform and opening-up is the only path China should follow. We have achieved successful results over the past 40 years, as will we do in the future. We must effectively emancipate our minds and resolutely overcome all the difficulties on the road to success - this should be the motto of Chinese society from generation to generation.- Global Times

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Risk of rising McCarthyism warned amid China-US spat

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China’s business people, researchers, scholars say they ‘feel the chill’ in US

Growing China-US tensions have affected technology cooperation as Chinese scientists and researchers in cutting-edged sectors such as big data and artificial intelligence have seen rising obstacles in working with US counterparts this year.

Tensions have intensified after Canada announced the detention of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US.

This move is believed to be part of the US' intentions of dampening Chinese companies and investment, which aroused worries that McCarthyism is back in Washington.

"Some open-sourced platforms developed by American firms, such as in the machine learning algorithm sector, have started to limit access or charge fees for tapping into those platforms," a senior scientist in a Shenzhen-based AI company, who asked for anonymity, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"Some Chinese scientists were denied visas this year when they planned to attend academic meetings in the US, and the US' cautious attitude toward Chinese engineers has become more obvious," he said.

The Chinese academic community has felt the chill in relations since the beginning of this year, and the recent arrest of Meng has escalated conflict between the US and China. Some industry representatives even deemed the arrest as a long-term plan by the US to curb China's rise in high technology.

Meanwhile, the effects of the tension have also expanded to business. Hong Kong political risk consultancy SVA said they noticed a remarkable increase in inquiries from US-based companies about potential problems of traveling to China after Meng's detention for fear of China's retaliation, the Japan-based Nikkei Asian Review reported on Tuesday.

A Hong Kong-based financial technology company also moved two investor meetings from Shanghai to Manila to avoid being affected by Meng's case in consideration of its US co-founder, according to the Nikkei report.

The Trump administration has been restricting visas for the Chinese academic community studying in sensitive research fields to one year since June 11, reflecting its efforts to stop alleged intellectual property theft and hinder China's push for technological supremacy, the New York Times reported in July.

"The consensus of curbing China's influence has been forged inside the US government, and Chinese companies should be well prepared for confrontation in the long term," Sun Qingkai, partner of the major Chinese AI firm CloudWalk, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Sun's remarks are echoed by the tendency of Americans to habitually doubt anything related to China, particularly to Huawei at this moment.

The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, released a report in October 2017 on safe cities. The report, supported by Huawei, speaks highly of a new policing technology implemented in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and the Chinese city of Lijiang but failed to mention that the technology was provided by Huawei.

An opinion piece of The Washington Post published on December 7 listed financial support from Huawei to Brookings and interactions between the writer of the report, Darrell M. West, who is also Brookings vice president, and Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.

It then said that such relationship raises doubts over West's scholarship practices and represents "a worrying example of China's influence on one of America's leading think tanks" without providing any hard evidence.

China's cooperation with other countries was also negatively affected, especially those in high-tech sectors. An example is the Japanese government's recent ban on Huawei and ZTE from official contracts. The move followed an earlier warning from the US about security risks involved in using Chinese-made equipment, Washington Post reported on Monday.

McCarthyism warning

The current US strategy of blaming China for its own domestic economic and social problems reflects the country's anxiety and myopia facing these problems, which would only worsen the situation, Zha Xiaogang, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Zha warned that although it seems impossible for the US to return to the McCarthy-era "red scare," when the anti-communism campaign penetrated all aspects of US society, such risks remain if the situation continues to escalate.

"There is already a dire ripple effect from the US-China trade war, which will hurt the US itself and global technology collaboration," said the Shenzhen-based senior scientist.

However, technology companies have been urging more cooperation instead of confrontation, which would hurt global advancement in this sector.

Major tech giants such as US firms Google and Apple, and China's Huawei have highlighted the importance of global collaboration, which will be the driving force for technology advancement.

Google Vice President Jay Yagnik told the Global Times in an earlier interview in September that technology has been a greater "uniter" globally from a historical view. Instead of thinking about competition, companies should think about it in terms of bringing the world together and taking society to the next level.

It is in everyone's best interest that the US and China reach an agreement on trade and future intellectual property and technology collaboration, Chris Dong, global research director at International Data Corporation, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"A more open market with less government intervention, and with mutual respect and reciprocity, will benefit not only a healthier US and China trade relationship, but also the talent and knowledge exchanges," Dong said.- Global Times

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Revolutionising accounting for a new era

The field of accounting is in need of a new breed of professionals who can contribute more than a quantifiable value to companies.

Increasingly, accountants in business are given the opportunity to be less involved in automated operations and focus more on bigpicture strategies, which gives a clear indication of the type of skills required in the near future. Bryan Chung, FCPA

WHEN talking about the Industrial Revolution, images that often come to mind include the extensive use of steam power, the birth of heavy machinery and ironworks, and bleak factories in England.

However, two more industrial revolutions have since passed and the 21st century is paving its way for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0), which is seeing the rise of autonomous decision making of cyber-physical systems and machine learning through cloud technology.

In simple words, IR 4.0 is the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet to transform age-old processes and operating procedures across all industries.

With such change taking place, what does this mean for the accounting industry and where do accountants find their relevance in an era that looks to automate everything?

Calculating assets

In an interview with international education provider Kaplan, Malaysian Institute of Accountants’ (MIA) chief executive officer Dr Nurmazilah Datuk Mahzan said, “Among the current trends that are creating waves in the accountancy profession are big data and analytics.

“Companies of all sizes create massive structured, unstructured and semi-structured data every day. Organisations harnessing big data would be able to find new insights and discover unique patterns of their customer behaviour or even create new businesses that were previously not possible.”

Echoing her sentiments is Bryan Chung, Fellow of CPA Australia (FCPA), divisional councillor at CPA Australia (Malaysia), who believes that even though AI is good at matching patterns and automating processes – making technology useful to many functions in companies in the process – accountants still play a vital role.

He says, “While there is a lot of hype surrounding blockchain and AI in accountancy with more firms taking steps to increase or experiment with their use, it is unlikely that accountants (or auditors) will be out of a job anytime soon.

“It is likely that most of the administration process will be the first to be introduced to AI. Increasingly, accountants in business are given the opportunity to be less involved in automated operations and focus more on big-picture strategies, which gives a clear indication of the type of skills required in the near future.”

The challenge, however, is turning the current workforce in the accounting field into professionals who truly understand the implications of IR 4.0, not just in terms of their personal skills but also movements within the industry.

Discovering market potential

Gone are the days when sales numbers, website traffic and KPIs were sufficient information to measure monthly net profits.

In the same Kaplan interview, the organisation’s global professional accountancy head Tanya Worsley said, “Businesses today depend on their accountants beyond purely checking financial figures and balancing books.

“Financial professionals are expected to be able to provide their clients with actionable insights that can add value to the organisation’s overarching strategic goals.”

The changing role of accountants in the digital economy is what prompted MIA to launch the Digital Technology Blueprint in July this year, a document that outlines the five driving principles to help guide Malaysian accountants to respond appropriately to digital technology.

These principles are related to digital technology trends, the identification of capabilities, harnessing of digital technology, funding and governance.

Accountants who fail to stay updated with the latest trends and knowledge will cause their employers to lose out in the long run, while competing firms take advantage of the evolving cloud system.

For these reasons, upskilling and obtaining professional qualifications from MIA or accountancy bodies such as CPA Australia, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales or Chartered Institute of Management Accountants should be considered a necessity instead of mere steps for higher management.

As most professional accountancy bodies require members to undergo regular training to maintain their memberships, these certified professionals are expected to be fully prepared for IR 4.0 and, by and large, artificial intelligence experts.

Chung adds, “IT knowledge is no longer an option. Lest we aim erroneously, it is not how extensive the IT knowledge is (as this is available in abundance and can be acquired easily), but the ability to understand the evolution of the profession and apply the knowledge appropriately.”

Explaining that accountants must use technology in their favour to elevate companies to new heights, he gives the example of successful tech businesses that used e-platforms to achieve massive scalability and visibility within a short time, despite having owners or founders who were not IT graduates.

“In the same way, accountants should be more strategic, make sense of the vast data available and deliver services based on the twin pillars of speed and quality,” he continues.

Eliminating liabilities

When combining this piece of information with the future route of total automation for jobs that are repetitive, rule-based and involve limited or well-defined physicality, the traditional job scope of accountants is coming to an end.

Employers are bemoaning the skill gaps currently present in the knowledge of digital technologies, forcing companies to spend resources retraining and reskilling their employees.

At the other end of the spectrum, constant news reports highlight the more pressing issue of employers having difficulty finding good graduates who can hit the ground running upon entering the workforce.

These situations highlight the dire need for a new breed of accountants who can provide more all-inclusive corporate reporting, which tells less about the numbers and more about the narrative of a company.

The Malaysian education system, for one, must move towards becoming an ecosystem for continuous upgrading of skills, working together with employers, be they officials from the Government, small business entrepreneurs or industry experts from professional organisations.

Colleges and universities need to continue reviewing their course offerings so that graduates have an accurate understanding of the evolving industry while being trained to adapt to new technologies and autonomous changes at the workplace.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. Chung points out, “There are now many initiatives being undertaken by various professional organisations and associations to provide education to accountants to increase awareness of the changes taking place.

“There are efforts now by professional bodies, corporates and academia to come together to address the disconnect between what’s being studied at universities and what’s relevant in the business world.”

Given how the financial technology space has demonstrated the willingness of companies to use innovative methods, Chung is optimistic about the future as the accounting profession can not only make positive inroads but ride on the back of this momentum to accelerate the learning and adoption of technologies as the nation moves into a new era of automation.

Credit: Bryan Chung, FCPA

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