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News Topical, Digital Desk : This meant largely switching to Meta, another popular US-made product. But in the year since then, the global race to develop advanced AI has taken a major turn. China is spending billions of dollars to become an AI superpower.
As a result, Chinese companies such as DeepSeek and Alibaba have built their own open-source AI systems that are among the world’s top performers.
China is rapidly catching up with America
China is rapidly catching up with the US in the race to develop technologies that rival the human brain. But that's no coincidence. The Chinese government has spent a decade pouring resources into becoming an AI superpower, using the same strategies it used to dominate the electric vehicle and solar energy industries.
"China is providing state support across the entire AI technology sector, from chips and data centers to energy," said Kyle Chan, an assistant researcher at think tank Rand Corp.
China becomes leader in electric vehicles, batteries
For the past 10 years, Beijing has been pushing Chinese companies to develop manufacturing capabilities in high-tech industries for which the country previously relied on imports. That approach has helped China become a producer of one-third of the world's manufactured goods and a leader in electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels.
$100 billion spent on the semiconductor industry
The same applies to the essential building blocks of advanced AI systems: computing power, skilled engineers and data resources. The Chinese government has spent nearly $100 billion to develop the semiconductor industry since 2014. In April, the government said it would allocate $8.5 billion to young AI startups.
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