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China Technology

China's 7-Year Tech Independence Push Yields Major Gains in AI, Robotics and Semiconductors (msn.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the become-self-reliant dept.
China has achieved substantial technological advances across robotics, AI, and semiconductor manufacturing as part of a seven-year self-reliance campaign that has tripled the country's research and development spending to $500 billion annually.

Chinese robot manufacturers captured nearly half of their domestic market by 2023, up from a quarter of installations just years earlier, while AI startups now rival OpenAI and Google in capabilities. The progress extends to semiconductors, where Huawei released a high-end smartphone powered by what industry analysts believe was a locally-produced advanced processor, despite U.S. export controls targeting China's chip access.

Morgan Stanley projects China's self-sufficiency in graphics processing units will jump from 11% in 2021 to 82% by 2027. Chinese companies have been purchasing as many industrial robots as the rest of the world combined, enabling highly automated factories that can operate in darkness. In space technology, Chinese firms won five of 11 gold medals when U.S. think tanks ranked the world's best commercial satellite systems last year, compared to four for American companies.

China's 7-Year Tech Independence Push Yields Major Gains in AI, Robotics and Semiconductors More | Reply

China's 7-Year Tech Independence Push Yields Major Gains in AI, Robotics and Semiconductors

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  • China (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday May 22, 2025 @04:07PM (#65396821) Homepage
    There are a lot of very smart technologists in China. They've done some amazing things. But I don't understand the obsession that young people in America have about talking up a country that's run by a regime that's a one-party system and a leader who won't step down, and where they're literally using slave labor on some ethnic minorities. And they're also building up a military to invade their neighbor (Taiwan). I realize they claim that territory as theirs, but it's de-facto a separate country. Why all the pro-China stuff? Is it just that it's a communist party that runs it, and Gen Z hates capitalism?

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by BytePusher ( 209961 )
      You might not realize it, but we also have a one-party system in the US and a horrific history of human rights. For example, slave labor didn't end in the US, we just call it prison labor. This isn't what-about-ism, but pointing out that the US should worry about their own problems before pointing out China's problems. Much of your information is also just flat out propaganda and a distortion of reality.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      1. Have you looked what is happening in the US at the moment?
      2. Underestimating an opponent is a grave mistake.

    • For most I imagine if you pressed them on it they wouldn't like all those negative things but they see things like this it does strike a chord. The stats like China has laid more rail in the past 30 years than most nations put down in history is impressive and China does show that type of internal investment all around. If you're born in the last 20-30 years in America that type of thing seems in the past. We have been told and have history to show the USA can do big things so why aren't we as much?

      We're

      • The stats like China has laid more rail in the past 30 years than most nations put down in history is impressive and China does show that type of internal investment all around. If you're born in the last 20-30 years in America that type of thing seems in the past. We have been told and have history to show the USA can do big things so why aren't we as much?

        Railroads are a mature technology. China laying down lots of rail lines is mainly a combination of starting with an undeveloped nation with the need for new rail lines and an authoritarian government that doesn't have to consider property rights or environmental issues and which has lots of money fueled by exports. None of these factors are true in the US.

        • For sure but there's a middle ground between that and say the California rail project which is decades long and well over $50B and maybe pushing $100B.

          You don't need authoritarianism you just need political will, consistent funding and regulation reforms. China has been spending hundreds of billions every year and the US finally got that type of spending just in the past 4 and now much of it is getting dismantled for purely partisan reasons. The fact people look at the one-party authoritarian country and

          • The US also has a gdp per capital triple that of china’s but they’re dwarfing us in infrastructure and scientific investments. We have a lot of money here, but it just goes to the ultra rich.

          • "At least Mussolini made the trains run on time." was a cliche. I am not sure if it was an endorsement or a parody of his support.

            I think it is a mistake to think that the United States is in danger of falling into authoritarianism. It fell there a while ago. We went from a country where people believed in their right of self-government to a country ruled politically, intellectually and economically by a very narrowly drawn group of elitists who believed they were natural rulers. Once people started choosi

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      There are a lot of very smart technologists in China.

      I was told the model is "Design in the US, manufacture in China." The US will have all the tasty intellectual work and China would to the dirty work of manufacturing. So everything is fine. No need to worry about outsourcing: you're just a Sinophobe.

      I never believed it, because I'm not a fucking idiot. But everyone else did. Except Andrew Grove, who explained all of this to us decades ago.

      Why all the pro-China stuff? Is it just that it's a communist party that runs it, and Gen Z hates capitalism?

      Yes. US hating pinkos abound, and they always have. Back when Russia was the great rival to the US, Russia coul

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

        "Yes. US hating pinkos abound"
        Funny how every thread about china has milquetoast liberals sounding like your fox news-watching grandpa circa 2004. Surely it is just because they hate America... yes, they hate us for our freedoms.. keep telling yourself that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        China is simultaneously a threat to us due to how much they've advanced, but also in the middle of a collapse and their government made up all the numbers.

        In reality, this has nothing to do with China at all. Replace China with another country and you'll get the same. China is whatever the people in charge want them to be in order to push their current agenda.

      • It's not really the same this time around, though. We can enviously see the Chinese zipping around in their neat little BYD cars that we're not allowed to have. Whereas nobody in America is looking at Russia and thinking what we really need is, uh... internet troll farms? Rip-offs of Starbucks and McDonald's, because the real companies won't do business in their warmongering shithole country?

        China is fascinating because we've been told that without freedom, the end result is Russia, North Korea, and som

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tailhook ( 98486 )

          It's not really the same this time around, though.

          It was never an option to evacuate our industrial base to the Soviet Union. We were governed by people that understood what the Soviets were, and treated them as pariah. Back then the self-loathers couldn't overcome this, despite their control of higher-ed and the media. But by the 90's, with boomer-hippies like the Clintons calling the shots, China was just another "alternative" in a globalized world, and they didn't hesitate to pencil whip China's MFN status.

          The pinkos won. Khrushchev was right.

          En

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Way to cherry pick history. None of what you said was true as large of proportions as you seem to believe. I lived through it, so gaslight somewhere else, FOX comes to mind. They like your sort of bullshit.

    • Acknowledging China's successes is realistic.

      Pretending they don't have any is idiotic, jingoistic, and nationalistic, but I repeat myself.

    • All you mention can be said of the US...

    • Why all the pro-China stuff? Is it just that it's a communist party that runs it, and Gen Z hates capitalism?

      I suspect it's to bring balance to the force. The anti-China brigades have ruled the roost for too long.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Same reason people idolize another country that also uses slave labour pretty extensively, spends nearly as much on its military as the rest of the world combined and has spent that last seventy years actively invading other countries around the world and destabilizing governments democratic and otherwise?

    • 1) I believe the United States also uses slave labor, in both places its called prison labor.
      2) China actually has more than one party but the Communist Party is the only one that matters. It has 87 million members, one in every 16 Chinese.
      3) China's leaders are chosen by the party through an indirect process, just as the US president is chosen indirectly. That is true both in theory and has been true in fact. Xi didn't seize power in a coup, he was selected when the party became disenchanted with this

    • I don't understand the obsession that young people in America have about talking up a country that's run by a regime that's a one-party system and a leader who won't step down, and where they're literally using slave labor on some ethnic minorities. Why all the pro-China stuff? Is it just that it's a communist party that runs it, and Gen Z hates capitalism?

      Information warfare.

      We are constantly talking about how bad things are here in America. We tell each other how terrible it is, and how it is getting worse by the day. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt is in-your-face big-screen news on the 24x7 cycle. Meanwhile China is trying to control the narrative, pushing stories about successes in science, engineering, medicine; about how life there is getting better for the citizens all the time with growing access to luxuries, education, useful employment -while suppr

  • I'm sure the average Slashdotter doesn't remember, but in 2020 I was saying the sanctions would backfire by clearing out competition in domestic Chinese markets. Well, here we are. While the US was busy staring in the rearview mirror, China was closer than they appeared and sped past. Clearly, the only solution is more sanctions, tariffs and cutting research funding!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      When you're ahead in a foot race but #2 is catching up, it's tempting to stop and try to fight #2. However, the correct answer is to run faster.

  • When China runs a fiscal deficit, who buys their bonds to make it up, or do they simply just print the money without the predicted inflationary consequences?

    • Doesn't really matter if the generated economic growth is more than the inflation, that's really the key to deficit spending, what are you spending it on and when?

      • Who's auditing China to see if your model is being followed in practice, or if your model of inflation and money supply is badly wrong and China makes decisions in irrational, fickle, arbitrary ways that happen to work out some of the time, while a lot of printed money goes to failures that you don't hear about and which, contrary to your presumed economic model, still doesn't cause inflation like you predicted?

        Even in the recent pandemic aftermath, if the Fed increased high velocity money by 40% and inflat

        • It's kinda hard to audit other sovereign nations unless they provide the data but we keep seeing economic growth that is fairly undeniable, they didn't become the worlds factory because they tried to half ass it. On the flipside it's a global economy, if a nation is experiencing real economic hardships it's hard to fully conceal that, for every positive story there are questions of if China can sustain. Only thing that will tell the tale is time.

          Infrastructure, education, business sector investment and de

  • This is not really China being strong. This is China acting mostly reasonable and this is the West being weak, lazy and spending time and energy on unimportant stuff, chasing hypes and some people getting filthy rich to the detriment of all others.

    Now that the "American Century" is clearly at its end, I seriously hope we will not be getting a "Chinese Century" as a replacement.

  • when arrogance makes you think you can strong all other countries, so they develop their own solutions.... and here we are....

    a humble foreign policy would have yielded better results than being the bully on drugs in the playground.

  • The idea that the United States could economically freeze out a country that contains like a fifth of the world's population, plus 80% of its manufacturing capacity, was pretty fanciful to begin with.

  • Following the words of Lenin:

    The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.

  • "AI startups now rival OpenAI and Google in capabilities."

    This is not surprising. Deepseek models did introduce some advances, but they were mostly incremental. Since the models are purely software, it's not at all surprising that the moat against competition was slight. Industrial espionage for AI models is trivial. Many AI researchers are Chinese nationals, and if not motivated by patriotism, they along with non-Chinese can be easily motivated by money. Furthermore, every year, many companies, universities, and groups are eager to publish thousands of papers, not to mention directly share new models.

    The one slight moat is the overwhelming number of models, which makes it slightly more complicated to determine which is more useful to copy.

    "The progress extends to semiconductors, where Huawei released a high-end smartphone powered by what industry analysts believe was a locally-produced advanced processor, despite U.S. export controls targeting China's chip access."

    China has made a lot of progress with chips but it's still significantly behind. The Kirin 9000 family is about 3 years behind on performance, and SMIC is stuck on non-EUV 7nm.

    Another much discussed chip is the Ascend AI chip, which is held up as an example of what happens when the US tries to starve China of a much desired AI chip. However, there are many reports of China indirectly (and illegally) buying H100. Perhaps the most telling is the fact that China companies are willing to buy billions of dollars of a crippled H20 even though the Ascend chips are readily available and encouraged by the government.

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