Inside China’s Pursuit of Tech Dominance–and What It Means for the U.S.
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What are the defining stories of China's economic landscape?
Are we ready? Hello, and welcome to the World's News Sunday podcast. I'm Lingling Wei, your host today. I'm the chief China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Every week, I dive into the world's second largest economy and its complex relationship with the U.S. in my newsletter, WSJ China. And recently, I asked my readers, what are your biggest questions about the U.S.-China technology race? The response has been enormous, and the questions cut right to the heart of what makes this one of the most defining stories of our time. When we talk about China today, we're really telling a tale of two Chinas. One story is about China's economic struggle. The country's 40-year investment-driven boom is over.
It's grappling with a collapsed property market, soaring youth unemployment, and deepening deflation. But the other story is about its technological progress. In fields like AI, quantum computing, telecommunications and clean energy, China isn't just a competitor. In some cases, it may be setting the pace. To help answer some questions, I'm bringing in my colleague Peter Landers, Wall Street Journal's Asia Business Editor, based in Singapore. This year, he's taken a few trips to China and has very recent first-hand knowledge of the technology landscape there. Thanks for joining me, Peter. You bet. Peter, our first question is from Glenn Loveland from Scottsdale, Arizona.
Hi, Ling Ling. My question is, China is moving at an extraordinary pace in applied AI, EV infrastructure, and integrated mobility, building smart cities at a scale that reflects powerful alignment between industry, policy, and talent. New visa policies are also drawing in foreign expertise to accelerate this momentum. At the same time, some expatriates, including those from China, are fleeing the U.S. under Trump 2.0. My question for you, based on what you're seeing, in which of these domains is China not just catching up, but setting new global standards? Thank you.
Excellent question, Glen. Look, China's progress is most visible in areas like electric cars, infrastructure, and application of AI. They're doing incredible things. Whether they're actually writing the global rulebook for those industries, That's another matter entirely. A lot of China's changing technologies, they're often proprietary or they're just flat out incompatible with the system we use here in the United States or in Europe. But here's the kicker. Is the world really going to adopt a smart city blueprint that is built on China's very specific model of mass surveillance and centralized data control? I'm highly doubtful on that one. Peter, what are you seeing on the ground in China?
When I was in Beijing this summer, I had a chance to ride in a couple of Chinese robo taxis And to your point, Ling Ling, even the Chinese robotaxi companies and experts in the field say that Google sister Waymo is probably ahead in the latest technology for autonomous driving. The Chinese companies like WeRide, Pony AI, Apollo Go, they're definitely watching Google very closely. And any paper that Google might publish about its algorithms for robotaxis, those are sure to be scrutinized carefully by the the chinese robo taxi companies and so it's a race really to get global markets the us market is not really open to these chinese companies but other global markets are and it's a race who can get there first and spread their technology and i got the sense that china might ultimately win and set the global standard five to ten years from now just because their robo taxis are more affordable and i
Companies are more active even than Waymo in trying to set up demonstration projects and experimental projects in the Middle East, in European countries. So I think it's a race in many areas, not just robo-taxis. I offered that as one example. And it's also in AI and things like LLMs. So it's a race to set those global standards for AI and also be the most widely used
It seems to me that what China is adopting here is really a good enough strategy.
I think that's right.
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