China’s AI integration ‘advancing rapidly’ as it plays catch-up with US

While the United States maintains a lead in technological innovation and investment in artificial intelligence, China has the potential to rival it in AI supremacy thanks to its massive market, abundant data resources and growing industrial base, according to Chinese officials and observers.

The integration of AI with China’s vast industrial landscape gives the country a unique advantage in transitioning from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing amid intensifying competition between the two powers, as AI has become a key arena, they said at a forum during a trade fair in eastern China’s Xiamen city on Sunday.

“The US is clearly ahead of China in terms of technological activity, but we are ahead of it in terms of market friendliness,” Peng Wensheng, chief economist at the China International Capital Corporation (CICC), said during the discussion on the emerging field at the 24th China International Fair for Investment and Trade.

The assessment was made as China increasingly seeks tech-driven growth and shows a driving ambition in generative AI, which has profound economic implications, including increased productivity and cost savings.

With the escalation of the tech race between the world’s two largest economies, China in 2021 specified AI as one of the seven “frontier technologies” to develop, and in July hosted its biggest AI conference in Shanghai, exhibiting more than 1,500 AI-related products and systems.

Noting that China has roughly a third of the world’s unicorn AI companies and about 36 per cent of large AI models, Chinese vice-minister of commerce Ling Ji said China’s vast population and enormous data resources provide a strong foundation for the country’s AI development.