For the last 3 decades, Poland has developed under conditions that from today's position should be assessed as a historical anomaly within the framework of global capitalism. This was a period of free movement of capital, people, goods and – crucially – technologies. In this favourable environment, our country was able to usage its resources: human capital, a favourable geopolitical position and membership of the European Union and NATO. The technology followed abroad investments, and the organic increasing skills – engineering and organizational – translated into fast economical growth.
Such a reality – “warm water” of globalisation – is just ending. The increasing structural conflict between the United States and China, the increasing function of technological sovereignty and the "set-up" of trade and technological flows make it impossible for Poland to presume a continuation of the current model of development. The fresh global division of labour will not be built on free exchange, but on the calculation of risks and forces – economic, technological, political and military.
Chinese sovereignty model and the end of the existing globalisation model
The Chinese, wider East Asian model is at the heart of this change. China grew out in a planet based on liberal globalisation, while preserving an interior strategy that was profoundly contradictory to the logic of this order: closed, sovereign, powerfully politically controlled.
Polish success of the last 3 decades has grown on the historical anomaly of free globalisation. present we are entering a planet where improvement depends not on the openness of the markets themselves, but on the ability to build our own technological strength and resilience.
Currently, this model takes the organization form of a alleged "double circulation": on the 1 hand, it is based on the interior circulation, i.e. a comparatively autonomous national economy that provides opposition to external shocks and pressures, on the another hand, on external circulation, based on a deep integration into the global economy, assuming a minimum dependence of China on the planet and a maximum dependence on China.
So understood technological and economical sovereignty is increasingly shaping the global rules of the game. The Chinese model could have co-existed with others for years, until the scale of the Chinese economy began to autonomously alter the structure of the planet system. Today, it is 1 of the main factors destabilizing the current order.
The key nonsubjective of Chinese economical policy has been to withstand a structural, existential confrontation with the United States. This is an orderly rule that determines technological, industrial, energy and food policies. Of course, it has its interior tensions – the request to guarantee the growth and prosperity of citizens, ideological themes of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" or redistributive policies towards the large Tech sector. However, the overriding horizon remains the passage through the “barrier” of American opposition to the continued increase in China's power.
In the sense of being surrounded – besides by the European Union and NATO, seen as tools of US influence – China itself reaches the force tools: restrictions on exports of uncommon earth metals, control of technologies, selective cooperation. The consequences of these actions are felt by the full world, including Europe.
The Chinese model of sovereignty – based on interior autonomy and global expansion – has not only ceased to be a margin for liberal globalisation, but has become a force that redefines its principles and balance.
United States, Europe and "arming" globalisation
At the same time, on the another side of the ocean, the initiator of liberal globalisation – the United States – withdraws from its own model. The policy of customs, technological constraints and the support of national industry, launched during Donald Trump's first presidency and continued later, is not just a motion of interior policy. It is simply a strategy for the recovery of industrial capacity essential for long-term geopolitical rivalry and an effort to reindustrialise areas affected by desindustrialisation.
Globalisation does not fade, but it becomes a battlefield. Customs wars, disputes over supply chains, control of the flow of key technologies – from semiconductors to artificial intelligence – are elements of fresh normality. Technologies that have been comparatively free to spill around the planet during the erstwhile period are now under strict control. Export restrictions on advanced chips, AI model regulations, investment restrictions in selected sectors or embargoes on strategical natural materials are not exceptions, but a regular instrument for today's economical policy.
Globalisation does not vanish – it turns into a competitive arena where technology becomes a weapon and access to it is simply a key tool of advantage and pressure.
In this context, the question of whether fresh industries – specified as AI – will spread freely where there is possible for this is the answer today: no. Access to technology becomes a tool for building advantage and pressure, not a common good accompanying globalisation.
The 3rd major player, the European Union, is gradually realizing the nature of this change. A diagnosis in Mario Draghi's study kind indicates the request to build our own technological, industrial and financial capabilities. However, the problem remains the limited ability to turn this diagnosis into a coordinated policy. At the European Council, further strategical themes "disturbance on the bones" in the face of interior tensions and divergent interests of the associate States. In many capitals, especially in Germany, nostalgia behind the “old world” is inactive present, where industrial advantages were unchangeable and globalisation is predictable. Meanwhile, the example of Volkswagen's problems, indirectly due to restrictions on chip producers, shows that the German growth model is at the heart of trade and technology wars. What has late been a pillar of advantage is becoming a origin of sensitivity.
Poland – the large triumph of globalisation forced to change the improvement model
Poland, as an open medium-sized economy, has so far been a beneficiary of global processes. Our improvement way was based on the inflow of abroad capital, the usage of comparatively inexpensive and well-educated labour, the inclusion of European and global value chains and imported method advancement that came with investments. This model has yielded awesome results: fast GDP growth, upgrading infrastructure, improving quality of life.
The growth model that made Poland the beneficiary of globalisation is exhausted. In a planet of “armed” dependence, improvement will not happen alone – it needs to be consciously prepared for convenient conditions.
However, under the conditions of "armed globalisation", its ability to further make growth becomes questionable. The planet in which Poland grew will not return to its erstwhile shape. The fresh improvement model is not an option but a necessity. And although in many key areas, specified as security, technological standards or trade policy, only a European consequence makes sense, Poland cannot limit itself to waiting passively for others' decisions.
Technology as the core of fresh competitiveness
How should Poland so compete in the fresh global division of labour? Above all, the fight should take place in the fields of modern technologies, circumstantial competences, solutions, products rooted in the national ecosystem. This requires defining fresh improvement indicators that go beyond the classical macroeconomic indicators. The level of prosperity, the quality of public services and macroeconomic stableness stay the basis, but alongside them it is essential to specify the participation of national technological solutions in key sectors, the ability to make technology independently where it is strategically important, and the level of rooting in Poland of advanced functions – research, plan or highly specialized engineering.
This approach automatically forces the construction of a strategy of discipline and investigation capable of producing adequate human capital, as well as the improvement of companies that can commercialise these resources. Technology ceases to be something that simply "flows" from the outside and becomes an area where you gotta consciously build your own advantages.
In the fresh division of labor, we will not win with cheapness, but with the ability to make our own technologies. Today, the advantage must be built alone without waiting for favorable external conditions.
A radically different approach to abroad investors
The presence of abroad investors has been primarily a way of creating jobs, rapidly adopting more efficient technologies and processes and reducing unemployment. Not only did specified a model not automatically mean building native technological capabilities, but it sometimes reduced them. Many modern factories in Poland – especially in the automotive sector – operate on the basis of imported technology, frequently with expanding share of imported labour and limited links with national R & D facilities and high-margin functions. As a result, although the balance of payments and employment rates may be improving, there is no improvement impulse that would let national players to get closer to the technological leadership.
Foreign investors cannot be just a origin of jobs or capital. In the fresh model, it is intended to become a partner in the building of competences, an impulse for the improvement of native companies.
As part of the fresh improvement model, Poland should stay an open economy, but fundamentally change the logic of the approach to abroad investors. The aim must not only be to find the assembly plant or "dark factories", but to build their own technological and intellectual capacity in Polish entities, to make clusters and ecosystems that will let to scale the native companies, organize dedicated R & D programs and cooperate discipline with business around large investment projects, as well as to support the network of Polish suppliers who not only "service" the investor, but besides take over any of the technological competences.
Foreign investors should be treated as partners in the process of organised technology transfer, not just as a origin of capital and jobs. This applies not only to China, but besides to another more technologically advanced economies.
Poland, the European Union and ‘adult’ to the function of co-architect
It will besides be crucial for Poland to make more effective usage of our membership of the European Union. The European Community is not only a regulatory framework in which to fit in, but besides a tool for achieving its own improvement objectives. This means actively influencing the form of EU funds and sectoral policies, countering a script in which the EU industrial and technological policy focuses solely on the "technology belt" from the Netherlands to Bavaria, and including Polish priorities, including the improvement of national technological competences, into Community projects.
In order to compete effectively, Poland must go beyond the model of adapting to Europe – start to co-create its improvement directions.
The more Poland becomes a net contributor to the EU budget, the stronger the request to treat the Community, not as a ‘school’, where it “seems to the next class’, but as an area of shared work and co-design. Mature in the European Union means moving from the logic of an “urgent student” to the function of a co-architect.
Selective industrial policy alternatively of supporting everything and all
In a complex global economy, 1 of the biggest assets of Poland is organicism – the component of bottom-up entrepreneurship and creativity, producing many companies, projects and technologies, which the administration learns about late. This possible should be protected; the state should not search central planning of the full economy.
At the same time, it is essential to decision distant from a model where state attention and improvement support are smeared with a thin layer on a very large number of sectors. The fresh model should be based on the selection of a limited number of strategical areas – related to safety, health, critical infrastructure or key technologies of the future – and the focus of state resources in these areas: financial instruments, improvement institutions and regulatory support. A fewer clear indicators should be identified around them, which will be widely known, measurable and consistently monitored.
An effective industrial policy is not about supporting everything a small bit, but about consciously selecting respective areas where the state focuses its attention and builds real advantages.
So it is not about a five-year plan for the economy as a whole, but about defining the core on which attention and public aid will be concentrated, including to build real technological sovereignty in these areas. Not as a goal in itself, but as a condition for the protection of prosperity and safety in a planet where globalisation becomes a tool of pressure, not a promise of neutral interdependence.
