State-led Investments
I have acquired country-level technology investment data from Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which includes the investment in fixed, mobile and other telecoms services and total IT spending on packaged software, hardware, and IT services. This data set is straightforward and by visualizing the data in Excel, as exemplified by Figure 1 and 2, it is clear that the investments and spending in telecoms and IT presented two disparate patterns in Japan and China. Japan has a relatively balanced investment track record with an average of $128 billion spending on information and technology and $19 billion investments in telecoms. China’s has invested $105 billion in IT investments and $40 billion in telecoms. It is also obvious that China’s spending is expanding much faster than Japan, with an average growth rate of IT spending at 14%, while Japan’s growth rate is at 9%. These two trends in IT expenditures serve as general indicators of two developmental patterns; however, EIU’s data is vague in terms of stakeholders in these investment and spending.
In the following steps, I tried to take a closer look at government-led and private sector-led investments in broadband internet, robotics, IoT, cloud computing and A.I. to see whether the expenditure trends in these subcategories correspond to the pattern observed above. There is a fair comparison between Japan and China in its broadband Internet development but there is a scarcity in finding databases that show a historical trend in robotics, IoT, cloud computing and A.I.
I attempted to use news title scrapping as an alternative to see how the media portrays the state technology-related policy differently but not much useful results were found.
Broadband Internet Development
Through EIU and investment data from government documents[1], I was able to compare the state-led development in broadband Internet.
As Figure 3 and 4 show, in terms of fast internet access, a fundamental digital development for both Japan and China, it can be observed that China's broadband penetration rate reveals a huge jump since 2014 while Japan's broadband adoption rate grew at a relatively same pace. China's sudden increase in broadband Internet penetration is consistent with the Chinese government's two decades of large investments in broadband infrastructure. From 1997~2009, Chinese government invested 6.4 trillion USD in IT infrastructure building and then 1.1 trillion RMB from 2016~2018 to further popularize 53 broadband-related infrastructure projects.[2] Although some critics have argued that the Chinese government’s policy in broadband construction is not well-structured and lack clear national planning, resulting in the disproportional investment and return ratio.[3]
Robotics, IoT and A.I.
Specific government data on robotics spending is very limited and often mixed with investments from private sources too. Japanese government overall provides policy guidelines and does not have a strong direct investment in robotics. [4] For example, Japan presses ahead with a robot project worth nearly 1 billion USD through solicitation of private investments in robot development by making full use of multiple pump-priming policies ensuring systematic and environmental readiness through regulatory reform by the government. [5]
Since 2013, China has bought more industrial robots each year than any other country, including high-tech manufacturing giants such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. By the end of this year, China will overtake Japan to be the world’s biggest operator of industrial robots, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), an industry lobby group.[6]
In 2014, President Xi Jinping called for a “robot revolution” that would transform first China, and then the world. China’s leader has set the goal to make the country “the biggest market for robots.” Nevertheless, there is no open information about how much the government is spending/subsidizing on robotics development as the goal is realized usually by a joint effort of the state, private companies and state-owned enterprises.
Similar issues were found in my further research on IoT and A.I. technology. The government plans are usually impact-oriented but do not disclose actual state budget in realizing the goals.
Newspaper Title Scrapping
Seeing that quantitative data is hard to obtain, I attempted to scrap news headlines and subtitles from major newspapers using the keyword search of “Japan/China”, “Technology” “Policy” to see whether media narratives on the two countries’ technology policy can yield any new discoveries.
Sources:
I used Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and The New York Times archives to scrap all the related news article title, dates and subtitles from 2000 to 2016. After three trials, The New York Times archive proves to be the most conclusive database, whereas I ran into issues of formatting the different columns in other two websites using both Grepsr and Web Scrapper.
Data Processing:
There is 1035 related news regarding “China, Tech, Policy” and 573 related news regarding Japan. For preliminary data analysis, I used WTFCSV, Word Counter and Same and Difference functions from databasic.io. Among the three methods, Same and Difference demonstrates some intriguing results. “China”, “new” and “United States” are the most frequent words used.
This result can have two interpretations: 1. the media narratives put China in the focal point of the discussion. 2. Due to the larger volume of news search related China, the country is mentioned more often. Since NYT is a US media, United States’ relevancy is also high in this analysis. Overall, the news scrapping strategy turns out to have limited effects in helping me navigate the digital development landscapes in Japan and China.
[3] Examining the influence of government policy on broadband internet access: the case of China Qiuyan Fan University of Western Sydney, Australia 2010
[4]https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2016/11/12/japan-planning-to-invest-billions-in-service-robots/8624/