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 Bearing 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.

How hard is an economist's Asia technology correspondent?

The message being received by America and its allies the West is China's taking over the world.

So as regards to the message that's being sent, China being the creator of things, what is it doing to become that?

This has been a long process for China. It started two or three decades ago. And some things it's kind of completed.

So these are things like nuclear power plants. China is now pretty much the only country along with Russia that can build you a nuclear power plant.

That used to be the domain of France, America, Westinghouse, and Deriva. These were big companies that built nuclear power plants. Now it's just Chinese companies.

The domains that are sort of currently under question are things like electric cars and the chips that go in your phone.

And these are the areas where Chinese companies are sprinting to catch up and potentially overtake Western rival companies.

But at this stage, the chips that China is making, how do they compare with the sort of current market leaders?

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