Illustrative image, showing the ADM Ryzen 7040 series chips displayed at CES 2023 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 4, 2023. (Getty Images)
[People News] According to a report by Xinhua News Agency on August 3, Premier Li Qiang recently signed a State Council order announcing the revised "Regulations on the Protection of Integrated Circuit Layout Designs," which will come into effect on October 15, 2026. The official narrative remains consistent, emphasizing the protection of proprietary rights, encouragement of technological innovation, and promotion of scientific development.
This sounds impressive, as if the introduction of an administrative regulation will guarantee the success of China's chip industry and technological innovation. However, the issue lies in the fact that if a system prioritizing power, politicizing technology, stifling academic freedom, neglecting basic research, disrespecting originality, and commodifying scientific research exists, then no amount of "protection regulations" can do more than serve as tools for the political appropriation of research outcomes and the legitimization of power narratives.
The Chinese Communist Party is not skilled in respecting intellectual property rights and safeguarding private interests; rather, it excels at framing intellectual property as a means of political advancement, industrial dominance, and a tool for nationalism. The so-called innovation protection regulations are not legal instruments designed to protect creators, but rather props that endorse power and embellish political agendas.
The Chinese people are inherently intelligent and industrious, and it is not surprising that technological achievements emerge in certain fields. Indeed, many engineers, researchers, and startups are diligently working. In the realms of chips and AI, there are numerous specific challenges, including computing power layout, architecture optimization, engineering implementation, application deployment, and supply chain substitution. However, the critical question remains: to whom do these achievements truly belong? To the researchers with real names, or to the party and government cloaked in grand slogans?
In a research and industrial system where power is deeply entrenched, genuine innovators are often marginalized rather than respected; they are not legally acknowledged but are instead 'gloriously' integrated into the organizational narrative and handed over to the power elite. In the authorship of papers from various research institutions and universities in China, leaders and mentors frequently take precedence, while those who actually contribute are relegated to the background or even omitted from the list entirely. Resource allocation is based on personal connections, achievement evaluations are influenced by hierarchy, and project approvals depend on networking. Rather than being a system for scientific research and innovation, it is more accurately described as a mechanism for the power structure to distribute the benefits of scientific achievements.
The recent revision of the 'Regulations on the Protection of Integrated Circuit Layout Designs' by the State Council of the Communist Party of China ostensibly aims to reinforce the intellectual property system. However, it also serves another purpose: to institutionalize and legalize everything in the industry that can be characterized as innovative, subsequently packaging the outcomes of this legalization as a triumph of national power and institutional success. This type of innovation, even if it belongs to the creator, is a result that can be controlled, managed, disposed of, and assimilated at any moment.
Examining the legal text of the 'Regulations on the Protection of Integrated Circuit Layout Designs', it is clear that protecting layout designs, encouraging originality, and combating plagiarism are certainly valid objectives. Without such protection, creators lack a sense of security, and investment in research and development suffers from a lack of enthusiasm and initiative. This represents the most fundamental market logic and industrial principle.
The issue with China lies in its approach to intellectual property protection, which is often highlighted only when promoting a positive narrative about the country, while being selectively overlooked when discussions about fairness and rights are most critical. In the recent revision of regulations, the Communist Party of China has its own agenda; on the international front, it seeks to demonstrate that it is not a technology thief, thus crafting regulations that showcase the CCP's respect for international norms. Domestically, it aims to quickly repackage these achievements as 'system advantages', 'national capabilities', and 'system victories'. Consequently, all accomplishments that should rightfully belong to specific individuals, teams, laboratories, and engineers are generalized into a narrative that the Party has paved the way and the nation has achieved significant breakthroughs.
Given that the chip industry and AI sector are central to national competition and are at the forefront of economic development—impacting economic growth, technological security, and international competitiveness—the CCP is currently fully committed, even at the cost of allowing a real estate collapse, widespread youth unemployment, and a resurgence of poverty among the middle class, to invest heavily in these areas. Simultaneously, it is becoming increasingly skilled at presenting 'absorption, distillation, imitation, transformation, and assembly' as 'independent innovation'. This trend is particularly pronounced in AI development, where large model training, open-source ecosystems, data distillation, architecture reuse, and engineering optimization exist within a vast gray area, making it challenging to distinctly separate 'reference' from 'plagiarism'. The CCP's cunning lies in exploiting these blurred boundaries to create confusion around property rights definitions, while simultaneously emphasizing its leading outcomes and maintaining an unusual silence regarding the origins of core technologies.
To be more straightforward, many of the so-called breakthroughs that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims are not original ideas or independent technological achievements. Instead, they resemble a comprehensive accumulation made under overseas research conditions, within the international academic ecosystem, through global talent mobility, and in an open environment. This is then repackaged by domestic capital, political narratives, and nationalist discourse. The return of students from abroad, overseas collaborations, international competitions, and training in European and American laboratories are all part of the normal global flow of knowledge. However, under the CCP's rhetoric, all these contributions are attributed solely to the party and the state. The Fields Medal awarded to Wang Hong and Deng Yu exemplifies the CCP's clumsy attempt at soft plagiarism.
Even more absurd is the fact that shortly after the State Council of the CCP issued new entry and exit regulations that tightened border controls on scientific personnel, it also announced chip regulations that lock down property rights. The issue is that when a system relies on open conditions on one hand while simultaneously tightening borders, controlling talent, intensifying political scrutiny, and restricting academic freedom domestically, how can it claim these achievements as 'our own victory'?
The CCP thrives on the fertile ground of an open world, growing branches and bearing fruit, while at the same time blocking the air, water, and sunlight necessary for that fruit to flourish domestically. It then declares that this fruit is independently developed by the CCP, presenting it as undeniable proof of the superiority of its system. Genuine scientific achievements are never produced from slogans; they are cultivated in open systems. The CCP tends to take fruits that have grown in others' environments and reframe them within its own narrative, which essentially amounts to repackaging the origins of those achievements and undermining the scientific spirit.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) simultaneously promotes innovation, breakthroughs, domestic alternatives, and self-reliance while increasingly fearing the movement of talent, exerting pressure on the limits of academic freedom, remaining highly vigilant against independent research, and being unusually sensitive to international exchanges. In this environment, those who manage to remain are often not the tech elites with a spirit of challenge, but rather political subordinates who excel at expressing opinions, reporting, and obeying.
When a country views technology as an extension of its power, knowledge as a political tool, and talent as a controllable resource, it may succeed in producing numerous products, accumulating vast amounts of data, and crafting grand narratives. However, it will struggle to foster genuinely universal and enduring scientific achievements and contributions to human civilization.
The foundation of civilization lies not in 'how many achievements we possess,' but in whether we respect the processes through which those achievements are made. Thus, the recent regulatory revisions by the State Council of the CCP serve merely as a legal cover for the power to appropriate technological achievements, fundamentally disconnected from science and innovation, and represent a clumsy display of the CCP's totalitarian politics in the face of rapidly advancing technology.
(First published by People News) △
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