China, by contrast, has long had a chequered track record on the innovation front. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) once dubbed the country the “Fat Tech Dragon”, in reference to its low innovation “metabolism” in possessing an R&D engine that was large but inefficient. In a similar vein, Chinese innovation was often tagged with the derisive label of “good enough innovation”. Under the heavy hand of party-state direction, China’s top-down innovation model has long faced persistent problems of wasteful spending, allegations of intellectual property (IP) theft and a perceived lack of meritocracy, among other issues.
Who is leading the artificial intelligence (AI) “arms race” — the US or China? To judge by the past decade, the answer might appear almost self-evident. From the hallowed halls of Ivy League institutions to the entrepreneurial crucible of Silicon Valley, American breakthroughs have served as global technological milestones.
In commercial and academic spheres alike, US leadership has appeared so entrenched as to be unassailable. The rise of Big Tech and the market performance of the Magnificent 7 stocks — which include Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft — have cemented US dominance in market leadership and global influence. On the cutting edge, homegrown innovations such as CRISPR-Cas9 in gene editing, the ImageNet database in computer vision and, most recently, OpenAI’s GPT AI models continue to push boundaries.
