China’s talent and infrastructure are strengths in AI race with US, experts say

China’s innovative work force and speedy infrastructure development are key strengths, experts told a forum

Reading Time:2 minutes

Henry He (centre), executive director and chief financial officer at Kingsoft Cloud, and Maryann Tseng (right), senior managing director of strategic investment at SenseTime, speak in a panel at the China Conference on Thursday. Photo: May Tse

Published: 9:00pm, 4 Jul 2024

China’s ability to develop infrastructure quickly and boost its talent pool can help the nation compete with the United States in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race, industry experts said on Thursday at the China Conference organised by the South China Morning Post.

While Chinese tech giants are unable to match their American counterparts in terms of budget and access to advanced AI chips designed by industry leader Nvidia, speedy infrastructure development on the mainland has provided a more robust foundation for AI training and inference than in the US, according to Henry He, executive director and chief financial officer at Beijing-based computing platform Kingsoft Cloud.

“When you’re looking at China, the infrastructure – especially the computing power – the network today is actually doing much better even than one or two years ago,” He said.

The determination of China’s tech workers is another competitive advantage for the country’s AI companies, according to Maryann Tseng, senior managing director of strategic investment at SenseTime, one of the mainland’s AI pioneers.

“There is significant drive from a younger generation in terms of innovation, motivation, wanting to do more, wanting to change the world,” Tseng said. “Those are the things that we can see visibly here, at home, at SenseTime.”

She added that SenseTime has cooperated with leading academic institutions in mainland China and Hong Kong in innovative AI research and development.