The closing paragraph really gives the game away, but can't expect any better from The Economist:

In the process, the West has been abandoning its commitment to a bottom-up, market-based approach to setting technical standards.

So in the process of being spooked by China, the world's largest manufacturer of electronics, having some influence on standards, the West refers to letting the biggest pile of capital set standards for profit as a 'bottom-up approach'.

“We are being forced to undermine a system that has been very effective and that we have profited from for a long time,” laments Mr Rühlig. In more ways than one, China is making the West play by its rules.

China now being more capable at playing the same game they been playing for decades is framed as a terrible injustice. They are crying that they used to be able to set standards that relied on privately owned intellectual property that generated easy profits for years or even decades.