Our eldest and I have a plan to visit China sometime next year. If you have a family, you know how such plans go, it’s only a plan when the flights are booked. We’ll see.

If it happens, I am particularly excited to go to tech-heavy cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou, to experience driverless taxis and such. I watch videos on TikTok about the wondrous multidimensional shopping malls and neighbourhoods and I'm amazed.

In one of those videos, now about the coming Chinese 5 year plan, it was noted that it is to become a “moderately developed“ country by 2035. I'm amazed again, but for the opposite reason. Apparently, China has a long way ahead before the wealth of showcase cities is more evenly spread across the population.

China is a top-down economy. The central government has a lot of power to define the direction industries take. Obviously, this has as great advantage that it can focus on attaining its goals of growth without having to take into account those of local governments and companies too much.

How do local governments adapt then? Well, they implement the centrally defined goals, but they also innovate. They work creatively to build centres of expertise, provide incentives such as tax breaks and relaxed regulation to fintech and AI firms. They experiment. Often, reaching local goals will help individuals in local governments “climb the corporate ladder” towards central government.

In contrast, the EU is a bottom up economy. The governing bodies can only do so with the support of the 27 member states. National governments often make ambitions flounder.

Nevertheless, plans are drawn up. Generally in a 7 year cycle rather than a 5 year one, and more staggered and flexible than one would expect from China’s.

The Digital Decade is an example. Its goal is to bring digital sovereignty to the EU in 2030.

The EU is highly dependent on digital products from abroad. Mostly from the US. We Google, we FaceTime, we WhatsApp. For us in the software industry, most tools and components are US-made by a very high margin. Even the internet, decentralised as it is, could be very negatively impacted by some madman at the controls. Oh wait...

Implementing the Digital Decade is tough. Any EU governing body must gain consensus from national governments, which, in many cases need to take local authorities into account. Decision making is slow and prone to unpredictable turns and twists, where initial ambitions are diluted.

Regions and nations can be fiercely protective of their own interests and institutions. Individuals within the regional or national governments don’t have the incentive their Chinese counterparts have to “climb the corporate ladder” to get into EU government, which is often seen as a last resting place before retirement.

But, of course, the EU has no choice but to follow the path of consensus. An economic bloc rather than a political one, it depends on its members seeing their mutual interest far more than China, but also far more than the US, where the federal government’s power often reaches deep into a member state’s business.

How then does the EU lead from the bottom? The challenge is to find ways to use the creativity of the regions, of its cities and companies.

Already it concentrates on multi-country projects and national roadmaps. An apt example is EDIC, which is a language program aimed at getting the best experience for EU citizens when interacting with government. EDIC builds infrastructure to support the development of high quality multimodal multilingual AI models, including those capable of real-time translation. Think Star Trek’s Universal Translator.

But more is needed. The EU must create a sense of shared urgency and shared purpose. We have a population of 450 million yet all too often we act as if we are the underdog. We should empower the regional creativity that has brought Europe prosperity throughout the centuries, such as the local industries of northern Italy. Cut the red tape, use tax incentives, relax regulations.

Democracy is difficult, messy, and costly. But it’s the way we’ve chosen to live. Leading from the bottom.