Hello, happy New Year, and welcome back to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

The land masses of Alaska and Russia reach out across the Bering Strait, at the closest, just

50 or so miles apart. Our editor at large makes an arduous journey to get a measure of the

indigenous communities on both sides and of himself. And North Korean defectors have revealed

a curious trend. A third of them had received some form of private

education. That is illegal. Like everything else, the North Korean state wants control over learning.

So why does it look the other way? But first, in these early days of the new year, we take a step away from the news to examine a

trend that's shifting the balance of power in technology.

Three words have shaped human history, made in China. From gunpowder to paper to porcelain,

our world would be unrecognizable without Chinese contributions. The Chinese government wants

the country to resume its role as global innovator. It's making huge investments in the tech

industry in fields such as artificial intelligence, electric cars, and computer chips.

And as Chinese firms want to create new technology, instead of just mass-producing gizmos designed in America,

that's creating a new tension between the world's two largest economies.

The message coming from China is that we are not going to be content to just make all of your stuff

according to your designs in a way that is controlled by you. We are going to try and climb that

value chain and start creating stuff ourselves. And this will mean that we control its export,

we control its design, we control its configuration,

and it basically makes us more powerful.

Hal Hudson is the economist's Asia technology correspondent.

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