Paradoksalni časi. Nekdanji izvršni direktor Googla Eric Schmidt je nekoč napovedal, da bodo ZDA vedno vodilne na področju umetne inteligence in tehnologije. Njegov najnovejši članek v Atlanticu z naslovom “Kitajska gradi prihodnost” pa govori o tem, kako je Kitajska tehnološko prehitela ZDA in kako bi ZDA lahko kopirale kitajski pristop k tehnološkemu razvoju.  Njegov “recept” je: kopirati kitajski demokratični open source dostop do tehnologij, javno financirati univerze in raziskave, odpreti ZDA za tuje talente in za kitajske investicije, da bi lahko od njih kopirali tehnologije.

Paradoks seveda ni samo v tem, da je komunistična nedemokratična država tehnološko prehitela kapitalistično demokratično državo, pač pa v tem, da je komunistična nedemokratična država svojo tehnološko prednost izgradila na open source pristopu – na odprtju tehnološke kode za vse, medtem ko so se ameriška (kapitalistična) podjetja nedemokrastično zaprla in ljubosumno čuvajo vsak svojo kodo. Posledica te ljubosumne zaprtosti je, da se znanje ne more hitro širiti in da drugi ne morejo hitro napredovati. Posledično vsi skupaj zaostajajo. Mar ni to največji paradoks tehnološkega zaostanka ZDA? In da nato ameriški tehnološki guruji upajo na to, da bodo kitajska podjetja investirala v Ameriki, da bi lahko prišli do njene tehnologije.

In 1896, Li Hongzhang, a diplomat from imperial China, arrived in the United States for the first time. China, then under Qing dynasty rule, had yet to fully undergo the Industrial Revolution. The year before, the Chinese had suffered a humiliating defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, and the country painfully awoke to its own backwardness. Li was stunned by New York City’s tall buildings, rising 20 stories or more, and remarked to American reporters that he had “never seen anything like them before.” He told them: “You are the most inventive people in the world.”

Nearly a century later, in 1988, Wang Huning—then a Fudan University professor and now the fourth-most-powerful man on China’s politburo—visited the United States and experienced a similar “future shock.” After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Communist China’s GDP was a mere 6 percent of America’s. During his six months in the United States, Wang marveled at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, credit cards, computers, the Discovery space shuttle, and research universities such as MIT. “If the Americans are to be overtaken,” he later wrote, “one thing must be done: surpass them in science and technology.”

These days, it’s the foreigners visiting China who often experience future shock, astonished by the towering skyscrapers, high-speed rail, megabridges, and ubiquitous electric cars, super-apps, and trifold smartphones. China has become an innovation powerhouse. The country now accounts for 70 percent of the world’s granted AI patents, 75 percent of global patent applications in clean-energy technology, 41 percent of granted patents in the life sciences and biotechnology, and more patent applications in fusion technology than any other country. Eight of the world’s top 10 institutions by research output are in China, according to the Nature Index. China is debuting not just pilotless flying taxis but also legions of robots, the Tiangong space station, the world’s largest hydropower project, a leading hypersonic-weapons arsenal, and more. Standing on its streets, as we did on a visit this past July, one can feel the country’s intense desire to leapfrog into the future.

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Yet China has proved surprisingly resilient in the face of these headwinds, amid narratives about its decline. China is the world’s top manufacturer and exporter. It produces more than two-thirds of electric vehicles globally, four in five solar modules and battery cells, and about 60 percent of the planet’s wind turbines, and it processes the great majority of rare-earth minerals, which are crucial for creating technologies as varied as chips and fighter jets. Even as its economy slows, China has continued to make significant technological advances.

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When Xiaomi was founded, in 2010, many people derided it as an Apple copycat. Today Xiaomi is one of China’s most valuable companies, with a market value of about $150 billion. It’s become a cult brand for Gen Z consumers who fill their homes with its products, and was one of the first tech giants in the world to actually manufacture a car. Xiaomi launched its first EV in 2024, just three years after its founder, Lei Jun, had publicly claimed that making cars would be his “last entrepreneurial project.” One month before the launch, Apple had announced that it was shutting down its own project to build an EV, which had soaked up $10 billion over the course of a decade.

Xiaomi’s success reflects a distinctive characteristic of many Chinese tech companies: They build their own hardware. Xiaomi can more easily invent new products, because those products can be quickly prototyped, refined, and shipped at scale. The company has invested in some 430 companies; many of them are other hardware start-ups that offer their own manufacturing expertise, including in the core components of EVs—batteries, chargers, lidars, sensors. Xiaomi also built a highly automated factory that the company says can produce a car, the SU7 model, every 76 seconds.

Xiaomi’s success has also been possible because of suppliers, infrastructure, and technical expertise that already existed in China. In China, electricity is cheap, construction happens quickly, and the workforce is skilled across various physical technologies. In a matter of a decade, China has installed nearly half of the industrial robots in the world, more than 70 percent of the world’s total high-speed rail, more than half of the world’s 5G base stations, and an electricity system that has more than double the generating capacity of the United States.

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The United States stands to benefit from Chinese companies’ hardware-manufacturing expertise. If Americans want to bring back manufacturing to the country, we need to think of ways to absorb the Chinese talent and firms that want to enter our market and build on our shores.

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The United States doesn’t want excessive domestic competition like China has. But it can take a cue from China’s diversified approach to AI, and to technology generally. Integrating the AI that’s already available into traditional and emerging industries will allow more people to experience the benefits of the technology. The United States should also encourage more unexpected, creative, and practical uses of AI, including in science, education, and health care.

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At the same time, the idea of open-sourcing is very much alive in China’s AI industry, and that has been a boon for China. Chinese companies regularly release information about the weights and training methods used to create AI models—essentially allowing users to download, modify, and adapt a model for free. (Weights are the numerical values that determine how much an AI should consider certain inputs over others.) When DeepSeek debuted, earlier this year, what was shocking was not just that a Chinese model had come close to American models, but that DeepSeek made its weights public. In the months since, China has seen a flurry of open-source AI models released from large companies—Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu—as well as start-ups—Minimax, Moonshot AI, StepFun, and Z.ai.

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Soon, Chinese AI could become the norm for many parts of the world, especially the global South, in turn attracting more developers to China, increasing the competitiveness of Chinese technologies, and allowing China to shape global technological standards. This will be more consequential than the Belt and Road Initiative, through which China has doled out billions of dollars in infrastructure spending around the world. The Chinese government seems to recognize the power of open-source AI. The AI+ guidelines have a section on open-sourcing that calls for “tools with global reach and influence,” and encourages universities to recognize open-source contributions as degree credits and reward contributions by faculty. We expect China to support the open-source approach in other technology sectors too.

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If the United States really wants to reindustrialize, it needs to double down on what it does best, including supporting scientific research, enacting immigration policies that welcome the best talent from abroad, and reducing regulatory hurdles. But the U.S. tech sector also needs to acknowledge where it can do better, specifically when it comes to hardware expertise, the diversity of the AI industry, and the embracing of an open-source approach to tech.

The United States and China will and should continue to compete. But in specific areas, they would benefit from more cooperation. If the United States wants to revive and expand its manufacturing sector, especially when it comes to batteries, automotive parts, and renewables, part of a potential trade deal should allow Chinese companies to license their IP to U.S. businesses. This would allow Chinese companies to train American workers, create more jobs, and in turn bring back advanced manufacturing to the U.S. Chinese companies such as CATL have expressed a willingness to build American plants if allowed to by the Trump administration. The United States could even require Chinese firms to establish joint ventures with domestic firms. Of course, the United States shouldn’t ignore national-security concerns, but it will have to weigh the need to reduce exposure to China with the need to stay competitive.

Vir:  Eric Schmidt & Selina Xu, The Atlantic