China is to step up its drive for key technology breakthroughs, state media quoted President Xi Jinping as saying on Tuesday.
The pledge comes amid rising tensions with the US, which only last week banned the export of its AI chips to China.
Washington imposed the ban on chips designed by Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), both of which are based in California.
China will now look to strengthen its state-led tech programme in a bid to catch up with its rivals, Xi was quoted as saying at a top-level meeting.
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“We should give full play to the significant advantages of our country’s socialist system that is able to concentrate its efforts on major affairs, strengthen the leadership of party and the state over major scientific and technological innovation,” Xi was quoted as saying.
China has unveiled a “new whole-nation system,” counting on China’s political system to pool national resources to support tech projects and break the foreign “stranglehold,” drawing on past successes in developing nuclear bombs in the 1960s.
Xi also pledged to improve the efficiency of the use of energy, water, grain, land, minerals, raw materials and other resources, and accelerate the transformation of the way resources are used, state media said.
- Reuters with additional editing by Sean O’Meara
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