China News Service, Beijing, October 8th. Question: Why is China experiencing a wave of hard technology development?
——Exclusive interview with Mi Lei, founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing
Author Di Ziying
From the emergence of Changxin Technology as the new “King of Stocks” in A-shares to the intensive iteration of large-scale domestic models such as DeepSeek and Kimi, China’s hard technology has ushered in a period of accelerated breakthroughs. Capital market enthusiasm is rising, industrial innovation vitality is surging, and a wave of innovation driven by underlying technological breakthroughs is gradually taking shape.
Why is China experiencing a wave of hard technology development? How should we adhere to long-termism and find a path of technological innovation that suits our own characteristics in the future? Mi Lei, a doctor of optics at Xi'an Institute of Optics and Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and founding partner of China Science and Technology Star, gave a systematic explanation in his latest book "Hard Technology Wave". Recently, he accepted an exclusive interview with China News Service's "East-West Question" to interpret the underlying logic of this era.
Mi Lei's book "The Wave of Hard Technology". (Photo provided by interviewee)
The interview transcript is summarized as follows:
Reporter from China News Service: In recent years, hard technology has received more and more attention from fields such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors to life sciences and new energy. How do you understand the current “hard tech wave”? What kind of technological development trends does it reflect behind it?
Mi Lei: "Hard technology wave" is a vivid metaphor used to summarize the current trend of technological development. It not only embodies the unstoppable development momentum of core technology breakthroughs, but also represents the paradigm change of the replacement of old and new and cyclical iteration in the field of science and technology.
In fact, long before humans appeared, life had found various ways to continue the population. This is nature's "primitive technology". When humans came on the scene, faced with unpredictable natural environments and successive survival crises, they no longer relied solely on their natural physical conditions to survive, but learned to build external tools and rely on technology to extend their abilities.
Today, human civilization has reached a new turning point and is beginning to face the core development bottleneck—the inherent limitations of carbon-based life itself. As a result, human exploration has moved in a new direction, no longer relying solely on tools to expand, but trying to combine technology with technology to break through the shackles of the body. Based on this, human civilization is ushering in a new evolutionary stage: from "tool-enhanced evolution" to "life-enhanced evolution."
In addition, the relationship between man and nature will also shift from one-way development and utilization to understanding, repair and integration, gradually forming a new civilization form in which man and machine collaborate, man and nature coexist, and life and the universe merge. It is based on this judgment that I summarize this new technological paradigm change as a "hard technology wave." How to understand and respond to the changes of this era not only affects the direction of scientific and technological development, but also affects the future evolution of human civilization.
Reporter from China News Service: How are the current basic conditions for the development of hard science and technology in China comparable to the British Industrial Revolution and the rise of American science and technology in history? What are the different development environments?
Mi Lei: First of all, it is reflected in the increase in talent density. Through the popularization of education, the development of higher education and the construction of a scientific research system, China has formed the world's largest team of engineers and technical talents.
Secondly, China is constantly increasing its capital intensity. It has gradually shifted from a development model that relied on investment and manufacturing expansion in the past to capital investment oriented by technological innovation. A large amount of funds have begun to enter strategic fields such as semiconductors and new energy, making venture capital an important force in promoting technological breakthroughs and industrial upgrading.
Thirdly, China has unique resource advantages, which not only include land, population and energy, but more importantly, ultra-large-scale markets, complete industrial systems and the richest manufacturing application scenarios in the world, which enable China to quickly commercialize and scale technology.
What is different about China is that China did not rise in an era when technology was not yet mature, but achieved catch-up and breakthroughs in a context where the global science and technology system is highly mature and competition is more intense. Therefore, China is not only facing the problem of expanding its scale, but also the challenge of moving from "catch-up innovation" to "leading innovation".
On August 13, 2026, the roll-off ceremony of Tianjin Shiyun Technology’s first batch of humanoid robots RD3 Ultra was held at the Tianjin Sky and Sky Digital Industrial Park. The picture shows the humanoid robot RD3 Ultra interacting with guests. Photo by China News Service reporter Tong Yu
China News Service reporter: How do you evaluate the scientific and technological innovation model that China has formed in recent years? What are the advantages of this model, and what problems does it face that need to be overcome?
Mi Lei: The core advantage of the Chinese model lies in its strong system integration capabilities. It can integrate scientific research institutions, enterprises, supply chain and market resources around major engineering goals, and quickly implement complex technical systems. In other words, China’s innovation system relies on a large-scale unified market, a complete industrial chain, a multi-level engineering talent echelon, and an efficient collaborative government-enterprise-industry-university-research mechanism. It is good at rapid iteration, large-scale verification and implementation optimization, and has formed a unique “from 1 to 100” engineering and industrialization advantage.
In addition, China's engineering talent team is large-scale, grounded, and focused on industrial practice. A large number of talents have taken root in the front lines of the industry to carry out technology research and development and engineering practice, forming a unique dividend of large-scale industrial engineers.
Therefore, the essence of China’s scientific and technological development path is not to simply copy the Western model.
However, as technological competition enters cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, engineering advantages alone are not enough. In the future, China needs to further strengthen basic scientific research and original theoretical breakthroughs, enhance its original innovation capabilities and underlying breakthrough capabilities "from 0 to 1", and consolidate the underlying foundation for the independent development of cutting-edge technologies.
To build a scientific and technological power with global influence, it is necessary to combine the Western tradition of attaching importance to basic scientific discovery with China's engineering realization and industrialization capabilities to form a complete innovation system from scientific discovery, technological innovation to industrial application.
Reporter from China News Service: Hard technologies often have the characteristics of long R&D cycles, heavy investment, and high uncertainty. In this context, how to understand “long-termism” in technological innovation? What more exploration does China need to make for this?
Mi Lei: Scientific and technological development should not only focus on short-term results, industrial scale and application speed, but also pay attention to basic research and original breakthroughs.
In the future, China needs to continue to increase investment in basic fields such as mathematics, physics, life sciences, materials science, and artificial intelligence to provide scientists with a stable, relaxed, and long-term exploration environment, because technologies that truly change the world often come from years or even decades of knowledge accumulation; at the same time, it is necessary to further cultivate talents with original abilities and encourage Raise new questions, explore unknown areas, and establish an innovation culture that allows failure and respects creation; we should also take advantage of our own ultra-large-scale market, complete industrial system, and manufacturing capabilities to quickly transform scientific and technological achievements into industrial competitiveness; maintain open cooperation, actively participate in global scientific and technological exchanges, absorb advanced experience in competition, and improve our own capabilities.
In the final analysis, building a technologically powerful country depends on the long-term investment and relay creation of one generation after another.
On August 10, 2026, a robot dog interacted with children in the Yiyushu Technology store in Beijing. Photo by China News Service reporter Jiang Qiming
Reporter from China News Service: If technological innovation is observed in the longer cycle of the development of human civilization, what will be the trend of global technological competition and cooperation in the future? What role might China play in this?
Mi Lei: Throughout human history, the development of civilization has never been driven by a single path. In the era of agricultural civilization, different regions gave birth to different farming systems; in the era of industrial civilization, different countries formed different industrialization paths; in the era of hard technological civilization, there should be no single template for innovation models. In the past few hundred years, the modern scientific system was mainly formed in the context of Western industrial civilization. This is a great achievement that belongs to all mankind. But the future scientific and technological civilization requires the participation of more civilizations.
China's exploration of its own path of scientific and technological innovation is essentially answering a larger question: Can an Eastern civilization with a long civilization tradition, a very large population, and a complex social structure create a scientific and technological development model that adapts to its own characteristics and at the same time contributes to all mankind? If the answer is yes, then its significance transcends national competition and rises to a higher level that enriches the development of human civilization. (over)
