IT IS A sign of the increasing sophistication of the country’s technology that Beijing is imposing controls on exports of some advanced drones and supercomputers. Or at very least a sign that Beijing wants its technology so regarded.
From the middle of this month, export licenses will be required for drones that can fly 1,500 meters high, stay airborne for longer than an hour and handle strong winds. Licences will be granted or withheld on grounds of national security, which will, in the manner of the times, inevitably be judged case by case.
There is also a bit of tit-for-tat at play. The export licensing scheme also covers supercomputer chips and follows US restrictions on computer hardware that can be sold to China. China’s Tianhe-2 is currently the world’s fastest supercomputer though the Obama administration has announced a programme to reclaim that title for the U.S. The Americans have concerns that the Tianhe-2 is being used for nuclear-weapons development
Meanwhile, China has become a leader in drone manufacturing. DJI Technology, the Shenzhen-based company whose drones have been flown (uninvited) into the White House grounds in Washington and onto the roof of the office of the Japanese prime minister in Tokyo, had sales of $500 million in 2014, more than any another maker of unmanned aircraft.
Sales of its best-selling Phantom line of commercial drones (seen above mounted with a GoPro camera) are unlikely to suffer from the new regulations, and so DJI will remain on track to become this year the first drone maker to record $1 billion in sales.
Update: DJI has 70% of the world market for commercial drones and is valued at $10 billion, according to an FT interview with one of its earliest outside investors, Neil Shen, who runs the China arm of the Silicon Valley investment firm, Sequoia Capital.
China Bystander 