Artificial Intelligence and China – Where Are We Now?

I can remember fears about China taking over the world, dominating certain industries, and becoming generally invincible since the 1970s.  Now, despite what has clearly been American supremacy in AI, events, those old thoughts keep popping up.  How valid is that concern now?  Here’s what I’ve seen over the past year.

Remember the kerfuffle about a Chinese company allegedly matching the best AI in the world for a tiny fraction of the resources?  The oldest article here, and the latest one I’ve seen about that product, is “China’s DeepSeek faces House probe over US data harvesting, CCP propaganda” (Morgan Phillips, Fox News, April 24^th).  The House’s Energy and Commerce Committee wrote that “DeepSeek admits to sending Americans’ personal information to servers in China, where it is undoubtedly accessed by officials connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”  That led to three states forbidding that company from using “government devices,” joining “Canada, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and Italy.”  Adding that to “reports” which have “suggested that DeepSeek trained its R1 model by “distilling” outputs from American competitors,” we have the end of any concern, once widespread, that we have been leapfrogged.

Overrepresentation and posturing again appeared in “Does China Have a Robot Bubble” (Meaghan Tobin and Xinyun Wu, The New York Times, December 17^th).  “Robots made by Chinese start-ups have danced on television, staged boxing matches and run marathons,” but, while “the robots can mimic human movement and even complete basic tasks,” “they are not skilled enough to handle many tasks now done by people,” and “have a hard time reacting to events as they happen.”  Many humanoid robots are produced there and are priced lower, but, given their limitations, do not seem to have enough customers.

Maybe “Move Fast, but Obey the Rules:  China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.” (again Meagan Tobin and Xinyun Wu in the New York Times, February 2^nd) is an improvement.  Yet there is “a tension shaping China’s tech industry,” as while its “leadership has decided that A.I. will drive the country’s economic growth in the next decade,” “it cannot allow the new technology to disrupt the stability of Chinese society and the Communist Party’s hold over it.”  The resulting “increasingly complex set of rules” included each company acting “as a gatekeeper to prevent the spread of information that the Chinese government deemed illegal,” with violations possibly causing them “significant legal, financial and operational consequences.”  When “these systems learn by ingesting large amounts of data,” including “internet sources, like Reddit and Wikipedia, that contain information censored in China,” the choices of allowing or not allowing large language models to access such storehouses are both problematic.

On data center projects, is it fair to say that “America must power AI with speed and discipline – or China will dominate” (Jeff Kupfer and Brant Fewell, Fox News, March 3^rd)?  Here, “AI data center projects are encountering growing resistance,” as “in 2025 alone, at least 25 projects were canceled, four times more than the year before,” “nearly 100 projects nationwide are now contested,” and “in December, more than 230 environmental organizations urged Congress to impose a nationwide moratorium on new data center approvals.”  While more and more American areas do not want such construction, many still do, so even a temporary nationwide ban would be unreasonable, and yes, if we cannot within our borders “build the infrastructure to power it with speed and discipline…  China will.”

I had thought that the title of “China Is Embracing OpenClaw, a New A.I. Agent, and the Government is Wary” (once more Tobin and Wu in the Times, March 17^th) meant more Communist Party data-suppressing issues – but it did not.  This popular and “versatile” new product, which has gained admiration even from Nvidia’s CEO, has committed “leaks of personal information,” “errors in financial transactions,” and at least once, when it was “left… running with access to (a) credit card,” it “had run up the card to its limit.”  How quickly OpenClaw will stop these things will determine whether its introduction, when it was, will be seen as bold and powerful or irresponsibly premature.

Somewhat updating the second story above was “Humanoid robots hit mass production in China” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, April 9^th).  The subject was “a new factory in China” making “about 10,000 units a year,” with “24 precision assembly stages” and “77 inspection steps.”  Knutsson declared that “the robotics industry has reached a turning point,” as “it is no longer enough to show what a robot can do,” since “companies now need to prove they can build them at scale.”  Although such factory output “signals that a company can move beyond demos and into real deployment” with “confidence that there will be actual demand,” the pieces above say we shouldn’t take that for granted.  Indeed, per Knutsson, while “building the body is getting easier,” “teaching it how to function in the real world is still difficult.”  Still.  I acknowledge the manufacturing progress, but will need to see stories like this without text like that before I think humanoid robots are truly about to achieve widespread, routine success.

After the six articles above, I did not expect “I Went to China to See Its Progress on A.I.  We Can’t Beat It” (Sebastian Mallaby, The New York Times, April 13^th).  But this author of a pertinent-sounding book told us that “China has rolled out a series of excellent A.I. models,” building “copycat” versions of “cutting-edge” American products through distillation, and is now “leading” “on industrial applications,” and so, fearing not only for our safety but that China is ahead, we should seek “nonproliferation” agreements. 

Chinese AI certainly has its strengths, but its flaws seem greater, and while for some the future may be theirs, the past has not been.  Chinese culture and government have not historically rewarded independent thought nearly as much as in America, where eccentric geniuses, not fearing or even wanting homogeneity, have kept us on the forefront of innovation for centuries.  Now, while there are certainly orthodoxies in American thought, they have much milder effects on identifying reality than those in China, with greater chances of being discredited.  As well, American business transparency vastly exceeds the Chinese, and we simply cannot be sure if they are doing what they say they are.  We will never know what they are suppressing, and our companies do not enjoy potentially unlimited governmental support. 

So, I decline seriously worrying about Chinese AI leadership.  If OpenClaw reaches even ChatGPT and Claude security levels, and those 10,000 annually-built robots are as successful on jobsites as they seem when leaving the factory, I will take stock.  But for now, we still lead, and not by a small margin, the artificial intelligence world.