American state capitalism will not beat China at 5G

IF IMITATION IS the best form of flattery, one can only imagine the mandarins in Beijing blushing bashfully on February 6th as they eavesdropped on William Barr, America’s attorney-general, firing the latest shots in the tech cold war. One of America’s main concerns, he told a think-tank in Washington, DC, was Chinese dominance of fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology by Huawei. It had achieved this with totalitarian central planning. “As a dictatorship”, he said, “China can marshal an all-nation approach—the government, its companies, its academia, acting together as one.”