WHY CONQUER TECHNOLOGICAL DOMAIN IN KEY INDUSTRIAL SECTORS IS SO DIFFICULT?

Is it possible for a region or country to achieve its socioeconomic development without first going through an industrialization process??

This is a question that may stimulate our reflections and bring us interesting revelations.

For some, industrialization is interpreted as a process in the history of a given society through which industry becomes the dominant sector of an economy.?

In a non-industrialized society, the instruments, techniques, and production processes are different from those observed in the new paradigm associated with the milestones of the 1st and 2nd Industrial Revolutions. This 1st?and 2nd?milestones’ paradigm continually evolved and gradually accumulated a higher level of complexity and sophistication along the 20th?century until now, this due to the contributions and achievements of science and technology.

In other words, the industrial-based economy differs from the one that did not fully embrace this “new paradigm”.

Locations with human settlements that stimulate only economies essentially based on crafts, agriculture, and with very low technological intensity, have certain productive activities that are, of course, characteristic of them.?

Their production factors, and consequently their productivities, differ from those found in regions and countries with high levels of adoption of the industrialization process.

Transforming the factors and modes of production of a region or a country, as different examples in recent world history show us, is a possible social process of transformation.

But such a possibility is not a simple one, otherwise we would not witness so many regional contrasts within developing or even developed countries, themselves, and between them.

It is possible to us as an exercise of visualization, imagining a hypothetical scenario in which the levels and the intensity of technological sophistication and industrialization, on the planet as whole, are regionally homogeneous.?

But, when “painting” this imaginary picture in our minds, it is likely that, regarding this scenario, we will make some considerations.

For example, one of them would be in relation to the environmental impacts associated with this geographically wide-ranging industrialization.

Could our planet environment support, and survive, such an imaginary progress?

??????Well, a planetary “homogenization” of industrial and technological capacity could assume different competitive, collaborative, and geopolitical configurations.?

It is only an imaginary frame with already conceptually open formatting. That is, a mental creation not finished.

So, what different scenarios could we exercise in this sense, bearing in mind that their respective implementations would result only from collective and global processes??

This would be, of course, a world framework of probably complex political and institutional contours to negotiate and to realize.

??????Migrating from this imaginary, this hypothetical framework I have suggested for us only as an exercise, to the real global arena, bring us interesting industrial aspects to explore and to compare.

For example, we can pay attention at the annual study carried out by the OECD, the “Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development”, on the perspectives of science, technology, and innovation of its member countries. And in such a study we also can compare this set of OECD’s countries policies to what is happening in the main emerging economies.?

The OECD’s annual study implicitly highlights the predominantly competitive character that involves the phenomena of regional socioeconomic development and, consequently, the industrial qualification of each country.

According to this Organization, geopolitical tensions are contributing to strategic competition in emerging technologies. The ongoing serious conflict between Russia and Ukraine currently is occupying a relevant part of the concerns of international politics. But it does not exhaust the set of issues that generate these geopolitical tensions. It even raises the question, about such a conflict, of whether this War is one of the causes or one of the consequences of this global competitive geopolitical context.

China and the US, and their interest and power agendas, are other relevant components of this arena. And the technological intensity and productive scale of the industry in these two leaders of the world economy does not seem to leave room for doubt about a strategic binomial: that is, the “industrialization”, and the “power”, associated with it, including the military one – “the military power”.

The OECD clearly indicates the strategic role that technology plays in this competition. Countries with technological dominance in key sectors are competing in the “future point”, that is, in emerging technologies.

The heart of concerns for liberal market economies, according to the OECD, is China's ascendancy in frontier technologies.?

What may us learn with this type of vision or position statement??

This of course brings guidance and indicates institutional paths of articulation to be followed for the economies of developing countries, whether they are liberal or not.?

What frontier technologies are these that OECD is talking about??

The future vulnerability of the present interdependencies in the supply chain is a point of special attention. We can observe, for instance, the case of semiconductors. Other strategic issue is related to certain minerals considered critical, such as lithium.

China after World War II did not have key technologies. This Chinese conquest took place gradually, but assertively, throughout the second half of the 20th?century and the beginning of this “21st”. What does this have to do with liberalism? Much of the path taken by the Chinese industry and its business model was based on the achievements and examples of Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan. What seems to confirm being relatively irrelevant in industrial performance, the “color of the cats”, if they are, in fact, effective, in the act of “hunting mice”.

Today, Chinese industry competes intensely with countries that until recently were market leaders.?

The technologies that will define the support of future world economic competitiveness and, at the same time, will be the basis of the so-called “security of nations” in the military field, become the strategic focus of the institutional agendas of developed countries.

This present geopolitical context influences the worldwide scenario, in the sense of promoting a convergence between the economic and the national security agendas.??

The concept of a “world product” based on global technology seems to be now being challenged in this competitive new scenario.

The present interdependencies between countries and the respective international flows of technology came to be considered as being “risky production models”.

In this point I have to say that the objective of this analysis here and of the possible discussions that will unfold from it, is not to criticize the worldwide models of competition or any existing alliances and coalitions. All these aspects are essentially part of our world history path dependence. The aim here is merely to verify what, at a world level, the leading nations are institutionally able to practice.

So, in this finding, we are observing that part of the most technologically industrialized nations is, or seems to be, a real threat to the other part of countries also well technologically industrialized.?

Consequently, resources are increasingly applied to competing between powerful industrialized countries, rather than collaborating.

In this current situation of tense geopolitical nature and of perceived growing risks, lies a precious lesson for the developing countries.

The developed countries of so-called liberal economies are directing policies for their internal industrial strengthening, intensifying their efforts in scientific and technological activities biased towards business performance.?

In a certain way such industrial and technological approach doesn’t bring us any worldwide political novelty at all. Otherwise, the most welcome alliances to them, in this regard, are those between like-minded economies in terms of shared political and ideological values.

That is, what in recent decades has been prescribed for developing economies, to open their markets and "bet" on the outside protagonists of foreign multinationals firms in their own domestic markets, now assumes a contradictory character.?

We are observing the current self-centered and exclusivist trend of conduct, in political and technological terms, from the developed liberal economies.

Competitive tightening and geopolitical tension are pointing out to developing countries the irreplaceable value and role played by technological mastery.?

And this competitive environment “invites” them, the developing countries, to act seriously in the industrial and trade policies that could promote and strengthen its own domain of technologies.

When observing the worldwide call to face certain global challenges, it is understandable that the problem of climate change is highlighted.?

The effects of such an aggression to the environment indeed pose a threat to all countries, indistinctly, whether they are already developed, or in development, or even the totally backward ones not yet industrialized.?

These last, the non-industrialized countries, by the way are probably the ones that so far have less accumulated responsibility for these global impacts.

In summary, the simple speech of the need for growing integration of the world economy and, for that, the pressure we followed along decades until now to open developing countries markets, etc., does not seem to correspond to the true global conduct towards the effective institutionalization of non-discriminatory and non-excluding developmental practices.

To avoid oversimplifying something apparently so complex, it might be convenient to think about the possibility of a balance between the political conduct of developed countries and the ones to be played by the developing countries.?

The emergence of institutional and multipolar conducts, in the sense of pragmatic political agendas in line with entrepreneurship without borders would be welcome. The developed countries have financial, industrial, and technological resources which can accelerate global development to mitigate and even reverse existing excessive regional inequalities.?

Nevertheless, human solidarity, may individually or collectively, has limits. We are not used to practicing it intensely. But on the contrary, the exchange of values between individuals and collectivities has been known and practiced to us, as societies we are, for millennia.?

Let there be, therefore, assertiveness of lagging regions and countries in leading their own social, technological, and industrial progress. Thus, assuming this path, they will have high added value technologies, products, services, etc. that are things desired by their "future peers" who now are already technologically industrialized. Maybe it is, or may will be, only a matter of regional high-tech specialization.

But how developing countries could do that, and what would be the “step by step” of such an achievement? And one final question, why conquer technological domain in key industrial sectors is so difficult to certain countries?

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(CLIQUE,?TTC-I&RD)

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