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This article provides a review of the historical trends that are shaping global competition for standard setting in emerging technologies. Specifically, it explores how the traditional rule-makers of international standardization, namely the United States and Europe, are responding to the rise of China in standard-setting. The article argues that three polities are adapting their standard-setting strategies to shifting power dynamics in the international technology order. To preserve its competitive advantage, the US is becoming more interventionist and proactive in setting technology standards. China has developed a long-term standardization strategy to bolster its domestic industrial development, increase its influence and reap greater profits from the process of rule-making. Finally, the EU is seeking a third way that strikes a balance between competition and cooperation to preserve values like interoperability, which have historically benefited its single market and the global economy at large. Our historical review shows that, while the three polities have different priorities and face distinct challenges, they all seem to converge towards a greater role for governments in standard-setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its high concentration of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in heavy industry, Manchuria (Northeast China) functioned as a symbol of the "socialist industrialization" in the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC, 1949–). Many Manchurian SOEs nevertheless originated as Japanese colonial enterprises founded before 1945. Drawing on archives and interviews in Chinese, Japanese, English, and Russian, I trace industrial Manchuria's transformation before and after the Communist Revolution with a particular focus on Anshan Iron and Steel Works (Angang). I argue that the industrial legacies of imperial Japan and Nationalist China in Manchuria facilitated China's transition to a Soviet-style socialist planned economy under Mao Zedong's leadership (1949–76). The early PRC developed a new system of socialist industrialization by simultaneously learning from Soviet economic planning and deploying physical assets, human resources, and economic institutions left by the Japanese and the Nationalists. My findings expand on recent scholarship on the pre-Communist origins of the early PRC by elucidating the significance of the Japanese influence. More broadly, I also argue that China's socialist industrialization was decisively influenced by the global spread of state-directed developmental visions during the interwar period, thereby demonstrating the fundamental interconnectedness between capitalism and socialism in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the Dimensions of Urban Energy Transitions (DUET) framework to analyse energy transitions in two Chinese cities at different development stages and provide insights into the mechanisms underlying decarbonised industrialisation. The results show that a 'green' coalition between industrial actors and local governments is critical to the initiation and scale-up of low-carbon innovations that provide strong endogenous incentives for proactive transitions. The study unveils the relevance of technology-specific characteristics and the potential countering effect of urban politics in shaping the outcomes of energy transitions, adding both nuance and depth to the DUET framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political leaders, policy-makers and academics routinely refer to development as an objective process of social change through the use of technical, value-free terms. Images of poverty and inequality are regularly presented as evidence of a world that exists 'out there' where development unfolds. This way of seeing reflects the value of scientific forms of knowledge but also sits in tension with the normative foundations of development that take European modernization and industrialization as the benchmark for comparison. The role images play in this process is often overlooked. This article argues that a dominant mode of visuality based on a Cartesian separation between subject and object, underpinning the ascendance of European hegemony and colonialism, aligns with the core premises of orthodox development discourse. An example of how visual representations of development matter is presented through images of Africa–China relations in western media sources. Using widely circulated images depicting China's impact on African development in western news media sources as an example of why visual politics matters for policy-making, the article examines how images play a role in legitimizing development planning by rendering associated forms of epistemological and structural violence 'invisible to the viewer'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies China's central-local government relations in the formation and implementation of an industry policy. In China, the central government is responsible for policy formation and the local governments are responsible for policy implementation, where local governments are allowed ample flexibility in the ways to achieve the policy mandate. This arrangement is conducive to local competition, but there is no built-in mechanism in the system to regulate such competition. The system is defective in the execution of an industrial policy in that it fails to discipline the recipients of policy favours and to make efficient exit selections. Because local competition involves policy resources as well as economic resources, the outcome of competition is not necessarily consistent with the comparative advantage of the region. The more that policy is emphasised in industrial development, the more that competition tends to favour large and rich cities. After a certain period of hands-off local competition, the timing of which is unpredictable but will come when the industry runs into troubles, the central government holds the ultimate power to determine the winners. The central government typically picks the 'large and strong' firms as the winners, which are crowned as a national team and became eligible for further policy support. This institutional set-up produces a rapidly growing industry, which often results in over-capacity but not necessarily a competitive industry. I use the case of China's solar photovoltaic industry to illustrate these points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]