How China seeks to distribute AI while US only wants to dominate
AI Action Plan , calling for deregulation, semiconductor expansion and 'full-stack' AI export packages to allies. Days later, China put forth
its proposal at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai: a global AI governance body open to the Global South, a push for open-source collaboration and a subtle rebuke of AI becoming 'an exclusive game' dominated by a few nations.
Advertisement
The visions mirror one another in ambition at first glance, but beneath the surface lies a strategic divergence: the US aims to dominate through invention and control while China seeks to influence through adoption and distribution. In the unfolding race for AI leadership, the former focuses on capabilities and the latter on infrastructure.
The US playbook is familiar. For decades, American hegemony ran on a compounding engine of public research and development feeding private commercialisation, which in turn built platform monopolies such as Unix and iOS that scaled globally. Like steel and railways once powered industrial empires, these digital scaffolds became the data arteries of the modern world, quietly carrying the lifeblood of global infrastructure. American tools became global defaults, not by decree but by design.
AI, particularly large language models, is reshaping the formula. Today's leading models, such as GPT-4, Claude 3 and Gemini 1.5, remain gated behind proprietary interfaces.
Even Llama , Meta's so-called open model, carries usage restrictions. These are technical marvels, but in many parts of the world they remain inaccessible, unaffordable or inflexible.
Meanwhile, China is taking a different path. Last month, Chinese labs released two of the world's most effective open-weight models in Moonshot's
Kimi K2 and Alibaba's
Qwen3 , which both rival their Western peers across several benchmarks. Critically, they are optimised for use cases that matter most to governments and enterprises, such as document processing and financial summaries.
Advertisement
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
26 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
On WWII anniversary, China's PLA says Japan never abandoned dream of military power
China's military mouthpiece has accused Japan of hollowing out its pacifist constitution and 'embarking on the dangerous path of military expansion'. As Japan marked the 80th anniversary of its surrender in World War II on Friday, the PLA Daily warned in a commentary that 'the spectre of militarism has never left the Japanese archipelago', and that right-wing forces had 'never abandoned the dream of becoming a military power'. It accused Tokyo of using American support to steadily roll back post-war restrictions and trigger 'deep concern in the international community over the revival of militarism'. 09:49 Japan weighs bold era of militarisation as Tokyo races to meet defence spending goals Japan weighs bold era of militarisation as Tokyo races to meet defence spending goals The commentary coincided with Japanese Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi's visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary, the first confirmed visit by a cabinet member from Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's administration. Such visits have consistently drawn sharp criticism from China and other Asian neighbours, which view the shrine as glorifying Japanese militarism and insulting the victims of Japan's wartime aggression. The commentary in the People's Liberation Army's newspaper also warned against Tokyo's expanding defence partnerships, citing deeper US-Japan military integration, reciprocal access agreements with Australia, Britain and the Philippines, and growing engagement with Nato. 'Under the pretext of cooperation and exchange, Japan is using military linkages to build momentum for its own military development,' it said.
South China Morning Post
26 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
Unitree's H1 robot wins 1,500 metre race as China hosts world's first humanoid games
China is hosting the world's first-ever humanoid games, featuring contests that pit machines against each other in events such as basketball and kickboxing, as the country puts on a display of its ambitions in the rapidly growing sector. Human-shaped bipedal robots from companies such as Unitree Robotics and X-Humanoid kicked off the event – officially known as the World Humanoid Robot Games – by competing in a 1,500-metre run in Beijing on Friday. Chinese robotics darling Unitree, based in Hangzhou, was the clear winner in the first race, with its H1 humanoid securing first and third places. Beijing-based X-Humanoid's Tien Kung Ultra, which won the world's first half-marathon featuring both human and robot runners in April, came in second. The H1, priced at 650,000 yuan (US$90,526), was the same model that performed the Chinese folk dance Yangge at this year's Spring Festival Gala, alongside a troupe of human dancers. Humanoids play football during the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Friday. Photo: EPA Unitree founder and CEO Wang Xingxing told local news portal Phoenix News that the performance of its H1 robots in the 1,500-metre race was 'meaningful', as the model was the first humanoid the company ever made.
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
China told to remove purchase restrictions, set mandatory targets to spur consumption
A high-level Chinese official has called for easing property and other market restrictions to boost spending among the wealthy, as Beijing steps up efforts to stimulate consumption amid deflationary pressures. 'Let the rich spend. This is the most direct [approach],' said Yin Yanlin, who was deputy director at the Office of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, a party organ overseeing economic policy, from 2018 to 2023. Yin, now a senior economic adviser in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, made the comments at a Peking University organised seminar on Thursday, where he outlined the challenges of deepening reform. Spending by affluent groups can drive market demand and generate income growth, setting off a positive cycle, he said. One of the most important tools to boost consumption lies in removing restrictions, such as those on property and vehicle purchases. Major Chinese cities have relaxed home-purchase restrictions in recent years to support their struggling property markets. Even the capital Beijing, long known for its caution, further eased controls in its outlying districts last week. Yin said certain restrictions have constrained diversified consumption and weakened domestic demand. Income levels are not the main impediment, he stressed, noting that the country's savings have been rising. In the first seven months of 2025, savings in China increased by over 18.4 trillion yuan, including nearly 9.7 trillion yuan (US$1.35 trillion) from households, according to central bank data.
