NEW DELHI-
Buoyed by the enthusiastic reception of its DeepSeek AI platform in January, China’s leaders are doing everything they can to encourage AI companies to harness the power of this technology to compete with the United States and other countries in the business and military spheres.
China sees AI as an important tool in handling US restrictions on Chinese companies, particularly after DeepSeek shook Wall Street, resulting in a $589 billion loss for Nvidia shareholders in late January.
“China’s government is working directly with the private sector and universities on the advancement and deployment of AI technology and is reducing its dependence on imports of high-tech products,” said Lourdes Casanova, director of the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell University.
In recent weeks, China has launched several new AI models, including Manus, which experts say can rival ChatGPT’s latest model. Industry experts were more than surprised to discover that DeepSeek was equally efficient as ChatGPT, although it used older generation Nvidia chips. The United States has banned the supply of advanced chips.
“China and the United States have gotten ahead in the AI race. China used to be a year or two behind the United States. Now, it’s probably two or three months,” Jeffrey Towson, owner of Beijing-based TechMoat Consulting, told VOA.
“Alibaba’s Qwen is now a clear international leader in LLM [large language models]. “The Chinese Kling AI and Minimax are arguably the world leaders in video generation,” Towson said.
Government involvement
In 2017, China launched an AI development program to make the country a global leader by 2030. The government’s Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan said AI would be adopted in different sectors and drive economic transformation.
“China has the most elaborate AI strategy compared to any other country,” Rogier Creemers, assistant professor of Modern Chinese Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told VOA.
China has established a National Computing Power Grid, somewhat similar to power grids, making it possible for Chinese AI companies to invest less in their own computing power. In the United States, each company must stand on its own two feet, Creemers said.
Competence
ChatGPT’s updated GPT4 large language model has attracted the attention of several high-ranking CEOs of Chinese technology companies. Baidu boss Robin Li recently said his company was under “enormous pressure and a sense of crisis” after seeing the updated ChatGPT. Baidu, which launched Ernie Bot, said that “the gap [between China] and international leaders [in the field] has been expanded.”
“China is likely to take a commanding lead over the United States, just as in electric vehicles, with AI plus robotics,” Towson said. “Chinese companies like Unitree are already taking the lead. Watch for China to surprise everyone with customized robots, industrial robots and specialized robots,” he said.
Control of the Communist Party
Chinese President Xi Jinping recently convened a meeting with heads of private companies, including technology companies, and asked them to “demonstrate their talent” to overcome challenges such as the economic slowdown and US restrictions on Chinese companies.
“There is discussion that the growth of large language models (the technology behind chatbots like DeepSeek and ChatGPT) may be hampered by media censorship, because the models will have less diverse data to work with,” Creemers said.
On the other hand, government control ensures coordination of industrial policy, which is helpful for the growth of AI in China.
China is focusing more on specialized software for healthcare and other industries, which can largely tolerate political censorship. Chinese AI models are improving diagnostic accuracy in various areas, from detecting rib fractures to cancer.
US ban on advanced chips
“It will take some time, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if China was also soon able to build advanced chips for AI,” said Cornell’s Casanova.
Companies like Huawei have shown that they can successfully design and manufacture advanced chips, thereby overcoming restrictions imposed by the United States, he said.
Towson said China is 100% dedicated to building an independent semiconductor supply chain.
“It’s moving faster than anyone thought possible. But the border is always moving and it’s not clear how it will develop over time,” he said.
“But you can do a lot with software,” Creemers said. “China can work with more chips with less computing power or with less sophisticated chips.”
The risk to China is not limited to chips, because the Trump administration could impose restrictions on the Chinese AI model. It could also react to China’s restriction on the use of ChatGPT, because it may violate its censorship rules.
AI and the army
China’s air force is using AI-powered biometric tests to select potential pilots as part of a rigorous recruitment process, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
“AI now plays a crucial role in interpreting candidates’ biological signals, revealing underlying health risks that may not be immediately apparent to human evaluators,” CCTV said. “This data-driven approach allows the Air Force to predict long-term risks and ultimately ensure that only the most suitable candidates are chosen.”
Chinese researchers have also revealed that the Chinese military has been using Meta’s publicly available Llama model to develop an artificial intelligence tool for potential military applications.
