China does not need to beat America in every lab or factory to gain a lasting technological advantage. Sometimes it only needs international bureaucrats to bend the rules of the road in its favor.

Americans tend to think of global power in terms of aircraft carriers, semiconductor fabs, and missile systems. Beijing takes a broader view. The Chinese Communist Party turns technical standards, global regulatory bodies, and obscure treaty conferences into instruments of statecraft. A handshake deal reached in shadowy bureaucratic backrooms can reshape billion-dollar markets.