The U.S. — China Technology Race: Jeremy Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution & Blockchain’s role in disrupting national competitions

The U.S.-China trade war has escalated into a technological race, with both nations accusing each other of unfair practices (IP theft vs. economic bullying), fueling global tensions and anti-Chinese/American sentiments.
Jeremy Rifkin's "Third Industrial Revolution" proposes a shift beyond national competition, focusing on global challenges like climate change, economic inequality, and slowing productivity through a sharing economy model.
Rifkin's vision integrates three key infrastructures: a communications internet, renewable energy internet, and automated logistics internet, enabled by blockchain technology for decentralization, transparency, and trustless transactions.
China and Europe are leading adopters: China invested $82 billion in digitizing its energy grid for peer-to-peer renewable energy sharing, while Europe (e.g., Daimler) deploys blockchain-backed self-driving logistics networks.
Blockchain’s role is pivotal in securing decentralized, efficient sharing economies, though the transition won’t eliminate geopolitical conflicts or bad actors. Rifkin emphasizes interconnectedness as key to collective prosperity over isolated competition.

Journalist / Gitana

The U.S. — China trade war has created a back and forth game of national pong Olympics. Both sides are mobilizing their resources in a battle to be “fought till the end.” One of the major triggers in this trade war is the race for technological superiority. The U.S. blaming China for stealing intellectual property and China blaming the U.S. for bullying nations out of the competition. Thus, prompting what is being called the technology race — a catchy clickbait phrase triggering national and regional emotions (something I am guilty of myself). Another race to the top of the superiority ladder.

This race has led to greater anti-Chinese sentiment in America with anti-American sentiment rising everywhere else. Europe has also been the target of attack by the U.S. prompting trade tensions between the two fronts as well. Should we fear the U.S. bully or fear rising Chinese power? That is one way to frame the debate. However, falling into the bipolar trap of east versus west, nation versus nation, misses a much larger more exciting story, a story that moves beyond national boundaries and looks at the planet as a whole.

The Third Industrial Revolution

Jeremy Rifkin, an American economist and social theorist, argues that the national competitions taking place today are only secondary to a larger planetary struggle. One where global productivity and growth will continue to slow for the next 20 years and where climate change has caused extreme weather conditions and violent water events leading to what scientists describe as a 6th mass extinction event of life on earth. A planet where 40% of the human population lives on less than $2/day. How can we begin to address these global issues?

The solution, Rifkin argues, is a third industrial revolution. One that utilizes the three crucial elements of the past industrial revolutions; communication, a source of energy and new forms of transportation and logistics. Instead of telephones, coal, and railroads we should utilize the communications internet, renewable energy internet and an automated GPS driverless transportation and logistics internet in a sharing economy. A toy no longer bought, owned, and thrown away but bought and sold online to another family. We have already seen examples of this sharing economy in different parts of the world. However, how can this economy be implemented on a global scale?

Enter blockchain technology.

Throughout his report for the nation of Luxembourg outlining how to achieve the third industrial revolution, blockchain technology is one of the essential tools listed. Why?

Blockchain technology is a product of crypto economics. It is based on a decentralized self-governing peer-to-peer network that financially incentivizes actors to participate in and maintain the network while significantly limiting the potential of bad actors to undermine it. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are only one use case of blockchain. The technology has four essential qualities, it is decentralized, immutable, transparent and as a result, does not require actors on the network to trust each other (creating “trustlessness”) when making a transaction. As such, these qualities are essential for a vibrant and secure sharing economy.

Blockchain technology would jumpstart the third industrial revolution by transforming the outdated centralized economic and political systems we live in today. Is this vision nothing more than idealism?

Watch China and Europe

The nations implementing Rifkin’s strategy, per his role as an advisor to them, are China and countries across Europe.

The Chairman of the Chinese state power grid has invested $82 billion in national funds in a four-year commitment to “digitize the state grid so that Chinese citizens [using solar and wind power] can produce energy on their own and share it on the energy internet in a sharing economy.”

European auto giant Daimler, the inventor of the internal combustion engine, has developed self-driving trucks that are already on the road in Germany and are connected both on and offline to networks that collect data to reduce their ecological footprint, prevent traffic accidents and free truck drivers to complete other work.

To provide security and efficiency to these networks Europe and China are utilizing blockchain technology to allow untrusted parties in a peer-to-peer network to reach consensus on a shared digital history without an intermediary further enabling the sharing economy.

This economy will fuel these peer-to-peer, blockchain enabled networks revolutionizing the way we interact and the way we think. Utilizing blockchain tech to grow a sharing economy does not mean we are heading towards utopia. There will always be bad actors, state or otherwise. Instead, it shows that there is a bigger picture to keep in mind behind the geopolitical “races” or “wars” that flood media headlines.

“Freedom is not being autonomous but being connected,” Rifkin says. Everyday people have the opportunity to not only survive but thrive in a sharing economy that distributes power more laterally in a way that builds on our community-driven solutions to real-world problems.