China's Infrastructure Upgrade: A Shift to High-Tech & Innovation

CGTN Europe

The infrastructure projects proposed by China are crucial to its economy, evolving from traditional ones to support high-tech and innovation sectors, such as data centers. Rorry Daniels, Managing Director at Asia Society Policy Institute spoke to CGTN Europe.

Transcript

00:00Let's talk now to Rory Daniels, who's the Managing Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

00:05Good to see you again, Rory. Thanks for coming back on the program.

00:08So we heard some of the detail there of the kind of infrastructure projects that China does.

00:12How important are they for the country economically?

00:16I think they're incredibly important. And what you see in China is an evolution of those projects

00:20from traditional infrastructure, bridges, roads, etc., into areas that support China's high tech

00:27and innovation sector. Water, for example, China being a developing country, still water is very

00:34important to the development of Western China and the least developed areas. But it's also

00:42incredibly important to building the type of data center infrastructure that I think China would

00:47like to see long term as it looks at national tech and innovation policies. So infrastructure is

00:53incredibly deeply connected to China's development agenda and the types of infrastructure projects

00:58that China will announce or put forth in the five-year plan or targets that it will put forth in the

01:05five-year plan will be connected to the upgrading of China's economy over time.

01:11And the data center infrastructure there, do you think we're witnessing a shift away from

01:16traditional hard infrastructure, hard infrastructure, if you like, roads, railways, bridges, the kind of

01:21changing China builds so efficiently towards perhaps new infrastructure like those data center networks,

01:28green energy, smart cities, for example?

01:31I think all of those projects that you just mentioned are incredibly important to the Chinese

01:37leadership. And we will be seeing a move away from traditional networks like roads where, you know,

01:44China's road infrastructure is already quite dense. The electric vehicle infrastructure is already

01:50quite dense. So some of the investment in infrastructure is now going to be moving toward what China calls

01:56new quality productive forces, which is really about building the type of integrated tech economy

02:02that will sustain China's long-term growth and development, even as it faces demographic challenges

02:08of the aging population and displacement in the labor force due to AI and automation.

02:14So this is really about leveling up production and the quality of production over time.

02:21So what key policies and announcements will you be looking out for when the details of this five-year

02:28plan are released?

02:30I'll be looking at everything because I think that what happens this week and the policy documents or

02:37summaries that come out of the plenum say a lot about how the state will build the five-year plan.

02:42This is a really important time for the Communist Party and particularly for Xi Jinping as a leader

02:48to articulate his priorities over the next five years. I'm expecting that there won't be massive

02:56policy shifts, that the assessment of the external environment that China is facing hasn't changed

03:03much since the last time a five-year plan was put forward, in that China feels that, you know,

03:08global growth is slowing, that it needs to be more self-sufficient and self-reliant.

03:15And I expect that the documents coming out will be more toward that end.

03:21Rory, thanks so much for coming back on the program.

03:22That's Rory Daniels, the Managing Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

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