A Study Of The Impact Of The New Technological Revolution On International Power ——A Global Value Chain Perspective

Over the past Industrial Revolutions,technological innovation has undoubtedly had profound impacts on the transformation of national power and the international system.The impacts include the upgrading of national production networks and industries driven by different waves of technological innoctaion,which led to the transformation of production structures,as well as the diffusion and centralized evolution of international power.Currently,the world is in the development phase of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,in which the new technological revolution embedded opens up new frontiers for the future transformation of economic and technological systems.As more and more countries are integrated into the wave of technological change,a new round of reorganization and transformation of international power will take place.Most of the existing discussions in international relations theories regard technology as a dependent variable,hidden under the frameworks of institutional,military,and economic,and lack corresponding explanations for the origin and transformation of technological power,and the relationship between power and technological change is seldom discussed.Thus,the paradigm shift of technology aside,the production and technology model of global value chains has posed new challenges to theories of power.This paper sets itself apart from often discussions of the corporate power given by scholars of global value chain,which focus on the power of corporates in global governance from a micro perspective.Which the global value chain perspective applied in this paper,focuses more on the vital role of systemic and ecological nature of technological power in international power from the macro level of the state.In terms of the current competition for technological power among major powers,the U.S.is targeting technological catching-up countries through the new "cold war" on technologies,creating an active and inhibitory game around technological heights.It even implemented compulsory technological cutting at certain key nodes of the global industrial chain.In addition,the U.S.is also trying to form multilateral technology alliances to dominate the rules and systems of technology standards,in order to block China's path to achieve technological autonomy and self-control.The EU,on the other hand,is claiming digital sovereignty to convey a pan-European philosophy of regulation of digital technologies,as well as to fight for independence in digital services and hardware,thus establishing the EU's global leadership in the digital market.In contrast,although Russia has formulated a national strategy for the development of AI and explicitly targeted the military sector as a breakthrough in AI,multiple factors such as weak basic R?D,little commercial application space and lack of talent pool have doomed Russia to remain in a dependent and marginalized role in the game for technological power.The study also finds that the power hierarchy of global value chain dominated by a few companies and the cross-innovation of the new technological revolution have jointly driven the creation of a “New Frontier” of technology.It is the overlap of the unknown and the fear of the “New Frontier” of technology that has led multinational enterprises from various countries to achieve interdisciplinary systemic breakthroughs through government-funded basic scientific research,to build complex technological barriers,and to increase the layout and competition for technological ecology and technological standards.Previous studies on power by international relations scholars have overlooked the process of paradigm adjustment of international power from the underlying structure of the “New Frontier” of global value chain technology.Among them,the technology giants rely on their technological power to compete for international technological power on behalf of countries.This means not only technology dominant countries are unable to make unilateral cuts,but small countries can't get rid of technological dependence.Overall,the change in production methods and industrial redistribution brought by the new technological revolution will have a comprehensive and profound impact on the international power landscape.Developing countries taking over the industrial transfer of developed countries in the context of globalization may face more risks and variables,and the latecomer catch-up path of global value chain may become exceptionally tortuous.Countries relying solely on low labor cost and low value-added production will definitely face the risk of weakening their latecomer advantage,while countries with knowledge and technological advantages will become the biggest beneficiaries of the future international power dynamics.