Chongqing - In the latest episode of Global Vision, Stephen Ezell, Vice President for Global Innovation Policy at the U.S.-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), said China has moved beyond being a fast follower to become a system-level competitor in global innovation.

Ezell unpacked what this means in practice — a potent mix of top‑down strategic direction, concentrated industrial scale, and supply‑chain speed that no other nation can replicate. 

He pointed to examples like Dongguan’s Robot City, where over 400 robotics firms, universities, and research institutes cluster on a single government‑backed campus. One Japanese automaker told him that swapping a car display takes three to four months in Japan; in China, a supplier probably delivers the new part in two weeks. That iteration velocity, he argues, is China's hidden advantage.

The conversation goes further, touching on how western China's "greenfield development" could redraw the country's digital geography, and why the future U.S.–China contest will be less a battle of single technologies than a clash of entire geo‑economic systems. 

For anyone tracking the reshuffling of global tech power, this episode offers an essential lens.

(Lu Wanqing, as an intern, also contributed to the report)