Is China winning the AI race?

It is the space race of the 21st century: A competition between the United States and China to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence tools is at a critical point. Some crucial signs point toward America faltering in that race.

The "new tech cold war" between the U.S. and China is now entering a "more dangerous" phase, said Marina Yue Zhang at The Diplomat. The Senate recently held a hearing focused on "concerns that the United States' lead over China was eroding fast," while President Donald Trump has been signing AI chip deals with "key regional allies" in the Middle East. Those developments signal American concern that China is "increasingly setting the pace and shaping the rules" in the new AI-dominated world. Beijing, after all, accounts "for over 70% of global AI patent filings."

What did the commentators say?

China is running a "different kind of strategic race," said The Economist. While American firms focus on developing the most advanced AI models, Chinese developers "emphasize practically applying AI" for consumers and in factories, said former tech executive Zhang Yaqin. Americans like OpenAI's Sam Altman talk about AI surpassing humans' cognitive abilities, but the Chinese government is focused more on solving "concrete problems like economic growth and industrial upgrading," said RAND Corporation's Karson Elmgren.

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While American companies develop proprietary AI models and charge for access, Chinese developers have "expanded their influence" by creating and distributing open-source programs like DeepSeek, said Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu at The New York Times. The result is that America is "no longer in the era when China is far behind us." Chinese entrepreneurs excel at finding "creative ways to do more with less," so the U.S. cannot count on tariffs and export controls to maintain its lead. The danger now is that the "China-dominated future is already arriving."

Either America keeps its "economic and early AI advantages" or else it falls behind in a "world dominated by communist China," said Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios. That is why the government has "scant interest in regulating AI" and why U.S. politicians of both parties are mostly "silent on AI's job threat." Trump is making an "epic gamble" with policies that "nudge" Canada, Greenland and Ukraine to share rare earth minerals — the hard foundation of AI hardware — with the U.S., while at the same time waging a trade war partly designed to limit China's progress on AI. China, though, keeps "racing ahead" in AI-related products like "drones, cars, quantum computing and batteries."

What next?

Beijing earlier this week "blasted" American policymakers for imposing controls on AI chip exports to China, said The Associated Press. Those curbs "seriously violate the consensus" the two countries arrived at in calling a 90-day pause in the trade skirmish, the Commerce Ministry said in a statement. That is a sign that "underlying differences" between Washington and Beijing could still lead to "further turbulence," said the AP.