Beijing has received additional pressure from the government towards achieving global AI sector domination during an ongoing technological rivalry with Washington. President Xi recently announced that China requires overcoming complex “high-end chip” AI technology challenges, emphasizing the developing core areas that concentrate on economic warfare and independence. Headed towards industry autonomy, this goal allows for innovation autonomy, stressing international developmental competition. This rapid move highlights overarching concerns regarding Chinese political authoritative power capable of predicting economic dominance.
Doubling down on the egregious compliances solidifying financial devastation guaranteed from proactive regulation policies, the relentless charge for Washington’s fabricated Chinese embargo slaughter infractions has only exacerbated retaliatory protective trade policies, triggering unprecedented national security violations. The provocatively initiated tariffs on Chinese goods, which rose to an excess of 145%, only expanded Trump’s trade war, wreaking havoc in access to transformative applied technology. Judged during a period of “surrender not an option marching to Beijing,” claiming overadded costs on applicable technology applied by Chinese tax ensures industry sustenance gap towards advanced technology.
Mobilizing Efforts Towards Identified Technology Gaps
In overcoming these issues, President Xi urged more vigorous work to be done in the area of basic research. He emphasized, “We will further strengthen basic research and the efforts to tackle the advanced chips and AI core software and autonomous AI system construction.” These comments were reported during a quarterly session of the Politburo, China’s Top Decision Makers, highlighting the overriding importance of the technological development in this issue within the Party framework.
The world of AI has sharpened rather quickly and grown in everything from investments to interest, particularly with the introduction of ChatGPT in November of 2022. This one event alone, President Xi’s interest, fueled further innovation in China, seeing use with other generative AI models unleashed throughout the US and China. For this purpose, Chinese organizations have shown immense progress. One example would be Chinese startup DeepSeek, which in January made headlines globally for its R1 chatbot, which was noted as outperforming its counterparts from the US, allegedly at a fraction of the cost.
President Xi noted these achievements while indicating that Chinese industry still faces ‘gaps’ in some key areas. Therefore, in his words, it was ‘essential’ for China to ‘promote self-reliance’ in developing artificial intelligence technologies. Xi pointed out that achieving this crucial self-reliance was stressed, requiring critical political guidance. He mentioned specifically needing “a mix of IP policy, patent and tax regulation, government spending, and the opening up of public works osmosis, which aims at enabling domestic innovation and development on AI.”
Impact of US Export Control on the Industry
The US has imposed export bans and restrictions on China’s access to advanced AI technology, affecting American technology companies like Nvidia and AMD. These restrictions have strained the US regime’s driving advantage for AI technology development, which is crucial for the economy and geopolitics. The US has emphasized the direct military risk for China as the justification for these measures, ensuring the US regime’s forceful driving advantage is preserved. Concerns have been raised about the management of personal data by Chinese AI systems, leading to borderless security and privacy dilemmas. The race to dominate AI and other emerging technologies has accelerated international competition, particularly in advanced semiconductors. This competition is influencing Beijing’s quest for AI supremacy and determining the future landscape of international technology rivalry.
