China has gizmos, ambition but few answers on trade

The Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou stood as a rebuke to US efforts to hem in China’s technology. But the real competition is internal, and profits are hard to find, writes Andrew Higgins from Hangzhou and Hefei

- Andrew Higgins

Tesla's booth at the Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou last week featured a Cybertruck.NYT

The Russians — officials, businesspeople and media — turned out in force, but the only American in view at a gigantic, high-tech trade fair last week in central China was Elon Musk, or at least his disembodied voice, booming out from a Tesla video pitching “humanoid robots.”

The Tesla booth was one of hundreds at the jamboree of dazzling and sometimes quirky technological innovations. The expo featured boxing robots, robots that clean toilets, emotional support robots for older adults, automated police vans, a self-driving yacht and many of the more than 100 Chinese electric vehicle brands engaged in increasingly cutthroat competition for market share.

At the centre of Tesla’s display at the event — the fourth Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou — was its Cybertruck, a tank-like vehicle that cannot be sold in China because it hasn’t been approved by regulators. Tesla cars are on the market, but their sales have plummeted in the face of the crushing competition from Chinese brands offering better technology and far lower prices (though only a handful make money).

The vast array of Chinese-made gadgets and gizmos on display filled an area bigger than 21 football fields. It showcased China's success at turning its huge manufacturing sector, once driven almost entirely by cheap labour, into an economic juggernaut increasingly powered by innovation and the mastery of advanced technologies previously dominated by the United States.

But at a time of rising trade tensions, amid alarm in both rich and poor countries over a flood of Chinese exports, the display also raised difficult questions: Who will buy all this stuff? And can the companies that make it turn a profit?