{"id":1191,"date":"2026-08-03T10:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2026-08-03T10:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:38:20","slug":"the-future-made-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191","title":{"rendered":"The Future, Made in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Kai-Fu Lee, the C.E.O. of the artificial-intelligence company 01.AI, lives in a mirrored high-rise in Beijing, near a procession of landmarks that emperors considered the center of the cosmos. Lee takes early meetings at a nearby hotel that could be in any country, except that the room service is delivered by robots painted in the livery of butlers and maids. State propaganda hails these robots as emblems of China\u2019s ascent; in the hallway, most people sidestep them with the kind of indifference usually reserved for a Roomba.<\/p>\n

Read more When \u201cGet Lucky\u201d Took Me Back to the Years of Disco<\/a><\/p>\n

Over breakfast one recent morning, Lee, wearing a white polo shirt and rimless glasses, spoke about the future with an air of sanguine curiosity. He was born in Taiwan in 1961 and built his career by following the moving frontier of opportunity. He got a degree in computer science from Columbia in the eighties and went on to Carnegie Mellon to study the fledgling field of A.I.\u2014which he described back then as a \u201cmost promising science\u201d that would be \u201cmen\u2019s final step to understand themselves.\u201d He ran speech recognition at Apple, and in 1992 appeared on \u201cGood Morning America\u201d to show off a prototype computer that used voice commands to record the news on a VCR. (The host,\u00a0Joan Lunden, marvelled, \u201cIt\u2019s almost going to be like a friend.\u201d) During a stint at Microsoft, he recalls, he urged Bill Gates to buy an ambitious startup called Google, but Gates declined. Lee later became the head of Google in China.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Lee moved to investing in 2009, and planned to focus on both China and the United States, but eventually he closed his American office. \u201cIt\u2019s two different universes now,\u201d he told me. The countries have diverged not only over such long-standing issues as trade, Taiwan, human rights, and espionage but also, increasingly, over the politics of technology. As Lee has noted, the Obama Administration released the federal government\u2019s first major plan for the A.I. age in 2016, but it barely registered: it came out a few days after the \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape detonated in the Presidential campaign. When Donald Trump took office, he scrapped the plan and entrusted A.I. strategy largely to Silicon Valley. When China\u2019s government issued its own A.I. plan, soon afterward, it was dense with turgid Communist Party jargon, but it also laid out a vast industrial policy, covering applications ranging from agriculture to policing, that promised \u201cmajor breakthroughs\u201d by 2025 and \u201cworld leading\u201d status by 2030. Lee called it an \u201call-hands-on-deck approach to national innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

For a long time, China looked west for visions of the future. These days, it favors its own. The Chinese car company BYD recently surpassed Tesla as the world\u2019s largest maker of electric vehicles. A popular clip shows Tesla\u2019s C.E.O., Elon Musk, being asked in 2011 about competition from BYD, which was then known mainly for a boxy, undersized sedan; Musk laughed and said, \u201cHave you seen their car?\u201d Fifteen years later, China has more than a hundred automakers, competing for customers with such extravagant features as in-car karaoke, mechanical foot massagers, and video headlights that can project drive-in movies.<\/p>\n

Lee, whose social-media posts have attracted more than fifty million followers, has a striking forecast for the two countries in which he has prospered. In his book \u201cAI Superpowers,\u201d published in 2018, he predicts a \u201cnew world order\u201d with \u201cwaves of technology that will soon wash over the global economy and tilt the geopolitical landscape toward China.\u201d That kind of prophecy suits the official mood in Beijing, where Xi Jinping, the President and the General Secretary of the Communist Party, calls technology the \u201cmain battlefield of international competition\u201d and bluntly asserts that \u201cthe East is rising, and the West is declining.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July, the Chinese firm Moonshot released an A.I. model that performed comparably to its American competitors, at a fraction of the cost. Microchip stocks plunged, on fears that China will dominate A.I., much as it now dominates hardware. China produces at least seventy per cent of the world\u2019s drones, electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and solar cells. It deploys more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, and, in medicine, it has surpassed the United States in the number of registered clinical trials. Its shipbuilding capacity is roughly two hundred times that of the U.S., and some observers in Washington worry that American stockpiles of munitions would not match China\u2019s in a war over Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Both countries are uneasily preoccupied with their trajectory these days. While the U.S. worries about whether it can continue a century of dominance, China is eager to restore its historical eminence, after two hundred years of what the Party sees as anomalous poverty. Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the People\u2019s Liberation Army who is now a fellow at Tsinghua University, told me, \u201cCommon sense says countries rise and fall in cycles.\u201d But Americans, in his view, have lost that historical awareness. \u201cThey have been so strong for so long that every American believes, \u2018I\u2019m a member of the strongest nation on earth,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he said. The Chinese are no less convinced of their ascendancy. A European diplomat who has attended meetings with Xi and his advisers told me, \u201cThey\u2019re feeling like the champions of the world. They think they can contend with anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

A decade ago, few people in Beijing would have predicted that China would challenge the U.S. anytime soon. China\u2019s decades-long economic boom was slowing, and the government\u2019s choke hold on free thought was sending ambitious people abroad. In those days, an American in China who raised the merits of the two countries was likely to have a catechistic exchange. You\u2019d note that China was growing powerful. Your acquaintance would reply, \u201cNot as powerful as America.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

The Chinese establishment has abandoned that view in stages. When Brexit was approved, in 2016, the West seemed to be turning inward. The fight over COVID-19<\/em> vaccines provided a signal that the U.S. was splintering; the storming of the Capitol offered another. After Trump returned to the White House, his Administration declared, \u201cThe days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.\u201d His aide Stephen Miller spoke instead of an international order \u201cgoverned by force,\u201d adding, \u201cThese are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Beijing, a think tank at Renmin University recently published an assessment titled \u201cThank Trump,\u201d which wryly hailed his efforts to hasten the \u201ctwilight of an empire,\u201d by undermining America\u2019s alliances, civil service, scientific institutions, and democratic credibility. In the past two years, the international approval rating of the U.S. has dropped nearly forty points, according to a worldwide survey by the Alliance of Democracies; in multiple polls, China now rates higher than the U.S.<\/p>\n

For China, America\u2019s retreat comes just as decades of state investment, industrial policy, and diplomatic planning are paying off. It would be foolhardy to entirely trust China\u2019s official statistics; as the economist Gao Shanwen once told an audience in D.C., the official growth rate \u201cwill always be around five per cent.\u201d But the change is plainly visible. In two decades, China has gone from producing about half as much electricity as the U.S. to generating more than twice as much, at far lower prices; in 2023, it installed more solar power than America has installed in its entire history. Meanwhile, Trump re\u00ebmbraced fossil fuels, in what the historian Timothy Snyder called \u201csuperpower suicide in perhaps the most basic form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has promised for years that he would stop China from \u201craping our country\u201d through unfair trade practices. On \u201cLiberation Day,\u201d in April, 2025, he unveiled a program of sweeping tariffs. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted that Beijing would quickly submit, saying that his counterparts were \u201cplaying with a pair of twos.\u201d Instead, China retaliated by restricting exports of rare earths and high-powered magnets. Within weeks, Ford was forced to suspend production of Explorers at its plant in Chicago, and automakers were pleading for a deal. Since then, China has not only retained its position as the world\u2019s largest trading nation; it also achieved a record trade surplus of $1.2 trillion, as it redirected its exports away from the U.S. In 2001, four out of five countries traded more with America than with China. By 2023, the map had reversed: seven in ten trade more with China.<\/p>\n

For the moment, China\u2019s rulers have avoided overtly antagonizing America, because they believe that, even in decline, it remains uniquely dangerous. After Trump\u2019s interventions in Venezuela and Iran, and his threats to Canada and Greenland, the Beijing Daily<\/em>, a Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote that the U.S. was \u201cdragging the world back to a dark age of plunder and division through superior military might.\u201d But that bluster obscures a colder calculation: Chinese leaders believe that Trump\u2019s struggle to dominate the world is actually aiding China.<\/p>\n

Rush Doshi, a professor at Georgetown and a China specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, sees in Trump\u2019s pursuit of territorial control a recurring historical error. In the eighteenth century, while Russia fixated on conquering Eurasia, Britain developed the steam engine; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while Europeans fought over Africa, Americans mastered the assembly line. Today, while the U.S. tries to govern Venezuela and hobble Iran and Cuba, \u201cChina is focussed on winning the technologies of the future,\u201d Doshi said. If the U.S. were to lose the competition over the next wave of industries\u2014including A.I., biotech, and robotics\u2014as it lost the ones over solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, \u201cit would irreversibly change the balance of power.\u201d<\/p>\n

What kind of world does China imagine? A preview of sorts is provided by its Belt and Road Initiative, which since 2013 has directed about a trillion dollars into scores of countries, building highways, hospitals, mines, ports, and \u201csmart cities\u201d equipped with Chinese technology. To China, Doshi said, \u201cautocracies are considered perfectly legitimate, and technology is used to strengthen them. China increasingly says to autocrats, Would you like to stay in power? I can help you with that.\u201d In Nepal, where newly installed facial-recognition systems have been deployed against activists, a photograph from a security headquarters showed a wall of video feeds above a sign that read \u201cWith Compliments of the Ministry of Public Security of China.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

But the clearest indication of Beijing\u2019s global vision may be the current state of China itself. \u201cA country tends to create an external order that looks a lot like its internal order,\u201d Doshi said. \u201cChina doesn\u2019t want you to think too hard about what its ascendance will mean for the world. They want to show you the edge of the future. They have two messages they want to sell everybody. One is \u2018We are inevitable.\u2019 And the other one is \u2018Don\u2019t worry.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Beijing is quieter than when I lived there, from 2005 to 2013. The vehicles, many of which are electric now, move silently through the streets, and in any case the residents have fewer reasons to go out; China has the world\u2019s busiest e-commerce market, and there isn\u2019t much that can\u2019t be delivered on the back of a scooter. All day long, people scan each other\u2019s QR codes to swap cash on such digital-payment systems as WeChat and Alipay, feeding the algorithms an ever more intricate portrait of their movements and preferences.<\/p>\n

There is an awkward serenity to life in the capital of a high-tech, one-party state. \u201cThis is one of the safest places in the world, if you\u2019re not a dissident,\u201d the European diplomat told me. More than a decade into Xi Jinping\u2019s campaign to remove unwelcome figures from the Party, the military, and the business \u00e9lite, the purges have circled back to the highest ranks. (People used to say that the purges evoked an old Chinese saying, \u201cKill the chickens to scare the monkeys.\u201d Now they say that Xi is just killing the monkeys.) One gets oddly accustomed to vanishing acquaintances. Since charges can stay secret for years, a person may simply \u201cdisappear into thin air,\u201d the diplomat said, adding that it is regarded as a by-product of social maintenance. \u201cThe big priority here is the Party machine. People come second.\u201d<\/p>\n

China\u2019s leaders have long believed that technology can help the state overcome the disorder of human affairs. Xi, who has borrowed Stalin\u2019s image of ideological tools as \u201cengineers of the human soul,\u201d has expanded the government\u2019s reach into private life, in the name of promoting \u201ccivilized\u201d behavior. In the southern city of Guangzhou, A.I. is helping discipline residents who fail to separate food waste from regular trash, by posting their photos to the \u201cexposure station,\u201d a digital screen near trash bins. Other cities use similar systems to expose litterers, jaywalkers, and spitters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Businesses are taking up the effort, too. At an expo of A.I.-enabled products in Beijing, I came upon a tall white kiosk made by Langxin, a company that applies A.I. to psychology. The machine was marked \u201cEmotion Recognition Training Enhancement System.\u201d I stood in front of a camera for an assessment of \u201cmicro-gestures\u201d in my face, and the screen produced a pie chart labelled \u201cPositive and Negative Proportions.\u201d It informed me that I possess 76.67 per cent positive emotion and 23.33 per cent negative emotion. My negative feelings, it turned out, included 13.33 per cent fear and 6.67 per cent rage.<\/p>\n

Langxin markets similar products for teachers, including the Comprehensive Risk Early Warning system, which scans students for signs of disruptive behavior; by combining data from classes, dormitories, spending, and psychological records, it assigns each pupil an \u201calert\u201d level of red, yellow, or blue. Police have more powerful options. At a trade fair in Beijing, another company marketed software that scans vital signs from a distance and purports to make a personality assessment in fifteen seconds, including emotional stability and \u201cbehavioral tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

A.I. has rapidly settled into Chinese work and life. People in China often regard technology with less wariness than Americans do, because living standards have improved so dramatically in the computing era. In the nineteen-seventies, more than seventy per cent of the population worked in agriculture; today, that figure is less than twenty-five per cent. Kai-Fu Lee, the investor, suggested that the Chinese had also been culturally primed for this kind of technology. For Americans, \u201calways listening<\/em> is a scary thing,\u201d he said. In China, cameras already cover just about every square inch of occupied space. Lee touted new software from his company which allows him to record every office meeting and analyze the audio with such prompts as \u201cOf the projects I think are going well, which ones really aren\u2019t?\u201d The software also tracks verbal commitments in a log called the Promise Ledger, so that staff can be held accountable during performance reviews. I asked if his recordings made anyone less willing to take on commitments. \u201cThere is perhaps some chilling effect,\u201d he said. \u201cBut in China not so much, because people always assume the boss is powerful and has a right to listen.\u201d He added, \u201cIt\u2019s a self-selection process. Those who don\u2019t like it won\u2019t join my company.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the south side of Beijing, I visited China\u2019s most famous auto plant\u2014the Hyperfactory, a campus the size of a hundred soccer fields that was built in fourteen months. It belongs to Xiaomi, a company that made its name selling smartphones and household goods, such as electric toothbrushes and frying pans, before entering the car business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

In the lobby, I found a delegation of Chinese visitors unfurling a hammer-and-sickle flag for a group portrait. Beyond them was a busy Starbucks counter. Suspended from wires overhead, a sports car was poised as if racing around a M\u00f6bius strip, meant to evoke the unending pursuit of improvement.<\/p>\n

A guide herded us onto golf carts and drove us into a cavernous site, with so few visible workers that one could be forgiven for thinking that it was a national holiday. The cars are built by some seven hundred robots, packed together in intricate, choreographed formations controlled by thick bundles of wires. Fresh parts arrive aboard a hundred and twenty-seven autonomous\u00a0carts, which bleat \u201cMake way!\u201d at humans who wander into their path. According to the company, a finished car rolls off the line every seventy-six seconds.<\/p>\n

At the end of the tour, I was directed to a track, where a driver waited in a bright-yellow Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. I climbed into the passenger seat. He smiled, said, \u201cThree, two, one,\u201d and jammed the pedal down. I hadn\u2019t focussed on the details of what we were doing, which was probably a mistake. The car burst forward with the kind of momentum one rarely experiences without jet propulsion. As I learned later, the SU7 Ultra has 1,548 horsepower and goes from zero to sixty in less than two seconds, faster than a Ferrari. I was pressed into my seat, and a wave of queasiness surged in my chest. As we rounded a curve and burst down a straightaway, I kept my eyes on the horizon and wondered if my life-insurance policy was in order. The driver gamely offered another lap, but I waved it off.<\/p>\n

It is not an accident that the factory was built within easy reach of Beijing\u2019s luxury-hotel district, rather than in the hinterlands. It is an attraction for foreigners, and for lucky locals who win a lottery to visit. Travel companies have been leading \u201ctech tours\u201d of China\u2019s most impressive industrial sites, offering rides on what they hype as \u201cthe world\u2019s fastest train,\u201d access to \u201cA.I. glasses,\u201d and coffee breaks during which you can watch \u201ca drone descend with your latte.\u201d A succession of Western influencers, investors, and commentators have duly posted awestruck images of bridges and train stations, feeding into such genres as \u201cinfrastructure porn\u201d and \u201cChinamaxxing.\u201d Their perceptions are shaped by relentless marketing and propaganda. On the afternoon that I toured the Hyperfactory, the robots were stalled for \u201cadjustments,\u201d but the guide rarely paused for more than a few seconds before pointing out the seven-hundred-ton die-casting machine, or the rapid-fire X-ray system that tests whether a cast is a minute fraction off spec. But there are real strengths along with the hype. Jim Farley, the C.E.O. of Ford, recently visited car factories in China and described its automotive progress as \u201cthe most humbling thing I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese leaders seem to be betting that, by speeding toward the future, they can outrun the mistakes of the recent past. Across the country, cities are punctuated by lanweilou<\/em>, or \u201crotten tail\u201d buildings\u2014concrete shells of unfinished towers and villas, whose developers ran out of money. For years, local officials encouraged excess construction because it financed infrastructure, boosted growth, and earned them promotions. Developers sold homes to the public before they were even built. But the property market started to collapse in 2021\u2014eventually slashing sales of new housing by half\u2014and China was left with an estimated ninety million empty homes, enough to house the population of Russia. After bankrupt developers abandoned the rotten-tail buildings, a few of the scrappiest buyers made do\u2014they moved into the unfinished shells and took to cooking over coal stoves and hauling water up the stairs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

China now contains a series of parallel economies: alongside the wreckage of the property crash and the thriving hive of new technologies, there are legions of university graduates who trained for traditional white-collar jobs but entered a labor market increasingly geared toward high-tech manufacturing. (The official rate of youth unemployment rose above twenty-one per cent before the government changed the way it reports the figure.) A study of Chinese public opinion published last year by researchers at Stanford and Harvard offered a rare in-depth look at local attitudes and found a pronounced swing \u201cfrom optimism to pessimism.\u201d The share of citizens who expect their standard of living to improve has dropped to about twenty-eight per cent, roughly half of what it was earlier this century. Xu Zhiyuan, an influential writer, has called this \u201ca profoundly confused era,\u201d marked by \u201can economic downturn, the uncertainty of international geopolitics and the enormous impact of A.I. all at once.\u201d Last fall, government censors launched a campaign against \u201cexcessively pessimistic sentiment\u201d online, including comments such as \u201cHard work is useless.\u201d<\/p>\n

One morning, I wandered over to the house where I used to live in Beijing and was surprised to find the front door wide open. The place was vacant, but people were bustling in and out. By chance, I had arrived as rental agents were taking photos, hoping to find a tenant and collect a commission. I was struck by the number of agents competing over a two-bedroom rental\u2014a totem of the hyper-competition that prevails in China\u2019s industries.<\/p>\n

A real-estate agent in a gray windbreaker approached me, carrying a scooter helmet. He was sorry to learn that I was not a potential customer, but eager to chat. He spoke English with the earnest formality of someone who has worked hard to learn a language that he rarely has the chance to use. He had adopted the name John, and he peppered his comments with English aphorisms. When I asked how business was going, he said, \u201cHard, but every coin has two sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was candid about the strains of his profession. The truth was, he hadn\u2019t earned a commission in four months. A lot of real-estate agents were bankrupt. \u201cUnder twenty per cent are earning money,\u201d he said. John was forty-seven and divorced, with a daughter in college. His father and his older sister were helping him pay for food. \u201cIt sucks for me at my age,\u201d he said. \u201cI still want to find love, but it\u2019s really difficult.\u201d He had gone on dates, but nothing had worked out. \u201cI think one reason is I don\u2019t have enough money,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I\u2019m a tycoon, they would want to communicate with me.\u201d Hoping to reassure him, I said that he seemed to have a good heart. John smiled and straightened up. He had another aphorism at hand: \u201cLife is not easy, but we don\u2019t know what will happen tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

China\u2019s desire to engineer the future has long been entwined with its anxiety about the West. In 1872, during the Qing dynasty, Governor-General Li Hongzhang wrote bitterly of a change \u201cnot seen in three thousand years\u201d: Westerners, relying on their \u201cadvanced guns, cannons, and steamships, have been able to run rampant on Chinese soil.\u201d China had started casting iron a millennium or so before Europe, but it had grown complacent. Now, he declared, it was time to \u201clearn the superior skills of the barbarians in order to control the barbarians.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

But the empire resisted efforts to modernize, and China\u2019s reformers fled into exile. In 1902, one of the leaders of the reform effort, Liang Qichao, published \u201cThe Future of New China,\u201d a novel that imagined the country decades later, with a constitution, a parliament, and such technological prestige that students flocked there from abroad. When Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, he had other ideas. \u201cPolitics and technology must be unified,\u201d he declared. It was a disastrous union: Mao\u2019s Great Leap Forward, a delusional attempt to vault China past Britain in just fifteen years, produced the worst famine in history, killing an estimated forty-five million people.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the late seventies, the illusion of social engineering created another disaster. The Party adopted the goal of reaching annual incomes of eight hundred to a thousand dollars per capita. To get there, it reasoned, it would have to manage the growth of the population. A Chinese rocket scientist named Song Jian helped lead a mission to chart the right path using the nation\u2019s most advanced computers. He and his team concluded that the \u201ckey to the entire problem\u201d was to limit each family to one child. It was a radical idea, but Song and the group were persuasive; they presented their findings in printed graphs and figures, when many experts were still working by abacus and pocket calculator.<\/p>\n

Susan Greenhalgh, an anthropologist and the author of \u201cJust One Child,\u201d writes that the engineers were \u201cenclosing everything in a black box that got labeled \u2018science,\u2019\u00a0\u201d though the policy rested on unexamined political judgments about the role of government, the sanctity of the human body, and the boundaries of private life. It was also wrong. As Greenhalgh wrote, the engineers had stitched together patchy data and extrapolated it to two decimal points with false precision. Most of all, they were accustomed to dealing with inanimate objects, rather than the mess of human society, and they dismissed warnings from social scientists about the consequences: rapid population aging, labor and military shortages, and the brutal necessities of enforcing the law.<\/p>\n

In the next thirty-five years, the one-child policy led to the sterilization of nearly two hundred million citizens and to more than three hundred million abortions. By the time China dropped the policy, in 2015, it had also produced an economic fiasco, shrinking the pool of available workers and acculturating the country to single-child families. The number of children born in China has fallen by almost two-thirds since 1987. Last year, there were fewer than eight million births\u2014resulting in the lowest rate since records began, in 1949. Though America\u2019s birth rate has also fallen, to 1.6 births per woman in 2024, China\u2019s problem is much more severe. Its fertility rate is now one birth per woman.<\/p>\n

To reverse the decline, China has offered child-care coverage, tax breaks, housing incentives, and fertility-treatment subsidies. None of it has worked. Maternity wards and kindergartens are closing. Emma Zang, a Yale sociologist who studies fertility patterns, visited China last year and was startled that young people often asked why she had decided to have children. She concluded that \u201cthe real barrier is not the cost of raising children. Rather, it is the conviction that parenthood no longer makes sense in a future that feels uncertain and unworthy of investment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

None of these repercussions have shaken the Party\u2019s belief in the transformative power of engineering. In the past decade, Xi has taken to describing the historical moment with a pointed phrase: \u201cgreat changes unseen in a century.\u201d He is echoing 1872, but with a difference. Back then, the \u201cunseen\u201d changes were the new strengths of the West; today, Xi is calling to exploit the West\u2019s weaknesses.<\/p>\n

In 1978, just as Deng Xiaoping was setting China on the course of reforms, an aspiring scientist named Yi Rao started college. Chinese science was severely underfunded in those years; even the disposable plastic tips on the end of pipettes were nearly impossible for lab workers to get. But Rao knew Chinese scientists in the U.S., who agreed to scrounge them from the trash and send them back. \u201cWe could use them many more times,\u201d Rao said.<\/p>\n

Chinese leaders were determined to \u201ccatch up with and surpass\u201d advanced countries in science, and three things mattered above all: talent, money, and infrastructure. To train talent, they sent students abroad; within a decade, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. had grown tenfold. In 1985, Rao moved to San Francisco to study neuroscience and noted that an ordinary kitchen counter was made of better material \u201cthan any research bench in China,\u201d he said. \u201cHow could I imagine I\u2019d ever come back?\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the mid-two-thousands, when he was a professor at Northwestern, he was offered a job as the dean of Peking University\u2019s School of Life Sciences. China was luring scientists back with patriotic appeals and the promise of transforming the nation\u2019s scientific prospects. Rao agreed, but he had limited expectations. He recalls that nobody at the university had even published a paper in a top international scientific journal. Professors gave jobs to poorly qualified friends and prot\u00e9g\u00e9s, and academic fraud was common. Chinese biotech produced little more than cheap generic drugs.<\/p>\n

Rao took over, and replaced required courses in botany and zoology with genetics and molecular biology. A turning point arrived in 2015, when China began overhauling its drug-safety laws to meet international standards, allowing local biotech companies to get lucrative foreign contracts. Scientific talent had started to return, drawn by generous lab funding and signing bonuses that could exceed a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Then tensions with the U.S. exploded. In 2018, Trump started a trade war, and his Department of Justice created the China Initiative, to root out espionage and trade theft, which targeted more than a hundred scientists and others of Chinese descent. In ways that outsiders did not fully appreciate, Trump tipped the balance of an internal Chinese political debate. The private sector was ascendant, and the influential billionaire Jack Ma was arguing that a university education was overrated. \u201cHe said, basically, intellectuals don\u2019t produce anything,\u201d Rao told me. \u201cChina\u2019s economy has done well by copying from the West, so why should we put more funding into original research? But, once Trump came in, that side completely collapsed.\u201d In 2020, the Party\u2019s Central Committee established \u201cscientific and technological self-reliance\u201d as a paramount goal, and last year funding for exploratory basic research hit a record seven per cent of the nation\u2019s R. & D. budget.<\/p>\n

The effects were startling. By 2024, China had outstripped the U.S. in the number of clinical trials. (Recruiting test subjects there can take less than half the time, and trials cost an estimated forty per cent less.) That fall, an experimental cancer drug from the Chinese firm Akeso outperformed Keytruda, a gold-standard therapy made by the American pharma giant Merck.<\/p>\n

Early this year, after the Trump Administration slashed funding to American federal and academic scientific studies, the Chinese government announced another ten-per-cent increase in funding for science and technology. China has overtaken both the U.S. and the European Union in publishing influential research papers, measured by how often they are cited by others. Chinese biotech firms now generate nearly a third of the world\u2019s new drug candidates, almost matching the U.S. \u201cPeople in Washington are worried that biotech is the next E.V.s,\u201d an American executive told me. \u201cWe\u2019ve scared all of this fucking talent back to China. If you look at the guys who are doing this, they used to work for Western pharma giants, or they were running a top university department somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

A report by researchers at Princeton, Harvard, and M.I.T. identified almost twenty thousand scientists of Chinese descent who left America between 2010 and 2021. The Canadian scholar David Zweig, who has studied the exodus, told me that at Westlake University, a new Chinese research institute, \u201cthere are approximately a hundred new labs set up by returnees, and probably eighty per cent of them are from the United States.\u201d He said, \u201cFirst, it was because they felt alienated. Then the money dried up.\u201d<\/p>\n

I visited Yi Rao recently, and met him on the top floor of an academic complex, in a corner office overlooking a lake. He showed me a lab filled with world-class equipment available to student researchers. \u201cI have to keep telling them what luxury they are living in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I asked Rao about the effects of Trump\u2019s cuts to science. \u201cIt\u2019s very stupid,\u201d he said. \u201cInvention doesn\u2019t come out of the blue.\u201d He gave an example: if the U.S. reduces funding for cancer research, \u201cit would now be natural that China might invent a cancer vaccine before the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Antonio Banderas\u2019s Acts of Faith<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Rao is candid about the enduring problems facing Chinese science and tech. For instance, China has never mastered the ultra-precise manufacturing required for commercial jet engines or the highest-performing microchips. He dismisses thirty per cent of the country\u2019s biology papers as \u201cgarbage,\u201d and says that another fifty per cent represent incremental findings, rather than \u201czero to one\u201d breakthroughs. For now, he says, China excels mostly in the progress from \u201ctwo to a hundred,\u201d but he thinks that the standard will improve. If China becomes known as the place that develops cancer cures, things will be different in a fundamental way. \u201cThe current world order was built by a group of geniuses, mainly in the U.S., who hailed from Europe,\u201d Rao said. \u201cIf Trump had maintained the order effectively, China would find it very hard to get through. Trump really helped us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of Beijing\u2019s tech companies are in the Zhongguancun district, a cluster of office complexes set on land that, during the imperial era, served as a burial ground for palace eunuchs. For a generation, Zhongguancun has evolved with each passing fashion in tech. These days, advertisements for A.I. products are rapidly replacing washed-out ads for the metaverse.<\/p>\n

People who have worked in both China and Silicon Valley tend to comment on the similarities: the belief in rapid change, the power of engineers, the odes to humanity that mask impatience with actual humans. At a Peet\u2019s Coffee in Zhongguancun, full of twentysomethings wearing AirPods, it would be easy for a visitor from Palo Alto to feel at home. The big difference between the two countries\u2019 A.I. hubs is in how people talk about their intentions. American engineers tend to focus on the transformative potential of reaching artificial general intelligence, and on the utopian (or dystopian) cascade that could follow. Chinese tech firms have more imminent goals; they have less capital and less computing power, owing partly to American export controls on the most advanced chips, so they focus largely on pushing products into everyday commerce. Last year, the Chinese startup DeepSeek released an A.I. model that stunned Silicon Valley. Critics attributed its success to smuggled chips and opaque financing, and OpenAI accused it of cribbing from better models. Chinese observers noted that DeepSeek worked well, and for far less money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

At AInnovation, a firm that integrates A.I. into traditional factories, I met the chief technology officer, Fan Li, who was plucked out of a coal-mining city by a government program for prodigies. He worked at Microsoft and Amazon before returning to China in 2021 to join its A.I. boom. Li walked me over to a machine marked \u201cAI Screw Inspection Equipment.\u201d Inside, tiny screws whizzed along a production line as high-resolution cameras scanned them for microscopic problems. Those which passed the test slipped down a chute marked \u201cGood Product.\u201d (It called to mind a slogan from the Cultural Revolution which urged each comrade to be a \u201crustless screw in the revolutionary machine.\u201d) Before A.I., the factory needed humans to check the screws, which, Li said, was \u201cnot efficient.\u201d Now those humans could be replaced.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s factories still make plenty of cheap toys and shoes, but the country has also made a technological leap. Investments in factory automation and robotics have allowed goods to be produced so cheaply that U.S. tariffs mostly don\u2019t matter; even with the fees piled on top, prices are still low.<\/p>\n

On a screen, Li pulled up an intricate diagram of a factory for the Tsingtao Brewery, one of his customers. He typed in a prompt: \u201cHave they achieved their energy-saving goal in the past year? If not, why?\u201d It\u2019s a deceptively simple question. Not only do you need to know past performance and future goals\u2014\u201cyou need to dig deeper into each production line, each machine,\u201d he said. After a moment, the system flashed a message: \u201cWe have successfully retrieved energy-consumption data, causes of anomalies, and recommended actions for four devices.\u201d It noted that \u201canomalies\u201d were lurking in a pasteurizer and a malt mill, and told us what to do: Look for wet malt or jams at the mill; investigate steam and pump behavior in the pasteurizer. Li said, \u201cIt might have taken a human three hours to do the whole process. Now you can finish it in minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

China is not immune to fears that A.I. will cause sweeping job losses and social upheaval. Kai-Fu Lee warned in his book that \u201cA.I. risks creating a twenty-first-century caste system.\u201d But he predicted that job losses would create more turmoil in the U.S. than in China, because a larger share of American workers hold white-collar jobs. I asked what he made of the news that college graduates in the U.S. were booing commencement speakers who touted A.I. Lee said, \u201cThe American way is very understandable. But the Chinese way will cause a proliferation of talent, usage, data\u2014until something horrible happens. Then things might change. But people forget things in the age of social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Li, of AInnovation, hears from people who are more worried about the risk. Over sandwiches in a conference room, he told me that he has a fifteen-year-old son, and fellow-parents often ask, What should our kids study? \u201cI ask myself the same question,\u201d he said. In recent years, China has sharply scaled back undergraduate majors deemed obsolete, including many in the humanities, while introducing programs in fields like embodied intelligence. Many universities have opened A.I. programs. But, Li said, \u201cthree years from now, when my son goes to college, artificial intelligence may not even be a major anymore.\u201d Even the people who work on A.I. can\u2019t keep up with technology that is changing \u201cprobably ten times faster than ten years ago,\u201d Li said. \u201cThe closer you get to the ecosystem, the more you know the details and what\u2019s coming, and you become a little bit concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Cutting down on the need for humans is one way that the Chinese government can make up for its shrinking workforce. Another way is robots. In 2024, China deployed nine industrial robots for every one installed in the United States. The competition between man and machine has even spread to pop culture. In early 2025, Beijing inaugurated a half-marathon that pitted robots against humans, and the humans won easily, as many of the robots overheated. But, a year later, a bright-red humanoid\u2014swinging a pair of spindly arms for balance\u2014beat all twelve thousand human competitors and broke the world record. There was another sprawling display of robotics expertise at the Spring Festival Gala, the most watched television event of the year. Humanoids marched, backflipped, and twirled nunchucks; robotic pandas gambolled. Some Chinese viewers sensed a loss. As one reportedly wrote online, \u201cWe are looking for humans amid all the robots.\u201d But the government\u2019s goal was to build confidence in the onrush of tomorrow. The head of one of the robotics companies told a reporter that he\u2019d felt intense pressure to \u201cdeliver a performance that was significantly better than last year\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Choreographed spectacle is easier, in some sense, than contending with the messiness of the workaday world. The humanoids on Chinese television were beautifully synchronized, but if something had gone off script\u2014an errant foot, a human who missed a cue\u2014the machines could have turned into a heap of tangled, waving limbs. In Li\u2019s office, I watched two employees demonstrate preliminary work that they hope will equip robots to retrieve objects from factory supply closets. One shuffled a selection of bottles, cans, and snacks, while the other, wearing a virtual-reality headset and holding a tracking device in each hand, guided a small yellow humanoid as it haltingly picked up everyday objects. The exercise looked bafflingly difficult.<\/p>\n

Robots have improved more slowly than expected, Li said. \u201cChatGPT was successful because it consumed almost every word ever written in the world,\u201d he told me. \u201cThere are many tasks people want robots to do, but we don\u2019t have enough data.\u201d At a nearby table, a pair of slender metallic arms was folding and refolding a blue T-shirt. In tech circles, folding laundry is sometimes called the \u201choly grail of robotics,\u201d because of both the intricacy of the challenge and the public enthusiasm if it works. Li said, \u201cWe\u2019re looking at two metrics: how fast the robot can finish the job\u2014thirty seconds, one minute\u2014and the failure rate.\u201d The failures stemmed from randomness. \u201cYou can put the clothes on the table in many ways,\u201d Li said. \u201cThe shape is different each time.\u201d<\/p>\n

On my way out, I visited a convenience store off the lobby. The counter was staffed by a humanoid robot with a shiny silver face and powerful arms. To its left, sausages revolved on chrome rollers; to its right, a human attendant in a brightly colored uniform looked patient and quizzical. The robot\u2019s manufacturer, Galbot, had an office in the building, and, like so much that I was seeing, the machine seemed to have been installed for both functionality and P.R. value. It greeted me merrily in Mandarin: \u201cI can help you find products, grab some sausages or drinks, or tell you a corny joke to lighten the mood.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

As I took a moment to contemplate the scene, the robot urged me along: \u201cWhat items do you need?\u201d Other customers were filling in behind me, and, before I could reply, the robot added, \u201cYou look a little tired.\u201d I was tired, in fact; I had been trooping from one meeting to another. Before I could ask how the robot had acquired such sensitivity, it posed another question: \u201cWould you like me to grab you a bottle of Vitality Water Balance or fragrant pomelo jasmine tea, to help you recover?\u201d<\/p>\n

I chose a sausage instead. \u201cI\u2019ll get it for you right away!\u201d the robot said, and maneuvered its left arm into the display case. But the sausage slipped from its grip and plopped back into formation, alongside the others revolving lazily between rollers. The robot hadn\u2019t noticed the mishap; it withdrew its arm, deposited the nonexistent cargo in front of me, and announced, \u201cRemember to check out on the left!\u201d The attendant laughed nervously and waved off the request for payment.<\/p>\n

I wandered for a while in Zhongguancun. It was a hot afternoon, and a group of delivery drivers had gathered to smoke in the shade of an overpass. As the economy has slowed, more than two hundred million Chinese people have joined the gig economy. Among them are some twenty million delivery drivers, who have become the most visible symbols of the new era.<\/p>\n

In 2018, a young man named Hu Anyan found work in Beijing as a courier, after stints as a convenience-store clerk, a bicycle salesman, and a security guard. A typical day involved eleven hours of deliveries, but the shifts were longer when e-commerce sites ran promotions and order volumes spiked. \u201cWe still had to deliver all of the day\u2019s packages before we clocked out, which often meant fifteen or sixteen hours,\u201d he told me. Hu stayed vigilant for obstacles that he could not control\u2014buildings with slow elevators, locked gates where he had to wait for a resident to let him in. To reach his goal of about forty dollars a day, he had to make a delivery every four minutes. Stopping to pee cost him about two minutes, so he drank as little water as possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Some employers were better than others, but they shared a culture of the algorithmic era. As one stern boss told Hu, the \u201cplatform tells you the deliveries you must make!\u201d and \u201cThere\u2019s nothing special about you.\u201d It bothered Hu, but he realized that the boss, too, was \u201cactually just another cog in the machine.\u201d Over time, life in service of the algorithm altered his sense of human affairs. He began to resent colleagues and see their struggles in zero-sum terms. \u201cA few veteran employees will hold on to the easier routes for a long time, while the rookies, who get stuck with the harder ones, often just quit and get replaced,\u201d he told me. He became \u201cmore impatient and anxious,\u201d but what unnerved him most was a creeping numbness. After learning one day that an elderly customer had waited nearly three hours at a market for him, Hu felt no sympathy. \u201cUnder normal circumstances, I\u2019d feel guilty,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at that moment I still had a whole load of packages to deliver, and I couldn\u2019t stop for him, even for five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hu lasted twenty months as a delivery driver. Then he quit and described his experiences in a plainspoken memoir, \u201cI Deliver Parcels in Beijing.\u201d The book became an unlikely best-seller and inspired other recent Chinese memoirs of precarity, including \u201cI Drive a Taxi in Shanghai\u201d and \u201cMy Mother Works as a Cleaner.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, in China, the precarity is never confined to those at the bottom. In March, authorities abruptly barred the two founders of an A.I. startup called Manus from leaving the country. They had made a deal to sell their company to Meta, the American social-media giant, for two billion dollars, and the Chinese government wasn\u2019t happy. It was a chilling message to other A.I. firms that some humans were too valuable to the nation to be allowed to leave.<\/p>\n

For years, China\u2019s rising power has rested on a fragile balance of economic freedom and political control, in what early Party reformers called the \u201cbirdcage economy\u201d\u2014airy enough to allow enterprises to thrive, but not capacious enough to sacrifice power. That arrangement has rarely looked more tenuous. Gary Rieschel, an American investor with deep experience in China, told an audience last year that Xi was trying to \u201ctether\u201d the \u201cgoose that laid the golden egg of China\u2019s extraordinary rise.\u201d Rieschel added, \u201cIn case you don\u2019t know, geese don\u2019t like to be tethered.\u201d He said, \u201cThe critical question becomes, Can this Beijing leadership effectively balance the delicate relationship between control and dynamism?\u201d<\/p>\n

In Robert Kagan\u2019s book \u201cThe World America Made,\u201d he enumerates a succession of global powers, all of which were convinced of their own durability: \u201cThere has been an Egyptian order, a Roman order, a Greek order, an Islamic order, a Mogul order, an Ottoman order, and many others.\u201d Each was born of particular, often fragile circumstances. The American order, Kagan wrote in 2012, would endure \u201cuntil some yet to be determined moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

That moment seems to have arrived. Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me that the international system the U.S. constructed after the Second World War\u2014and ran, often to its benefit\u2014is \u201cdefinitely dead and beyond redemption.\u201d He said that Trump\u2019s dismantling of the country\u2019s alliances signalled the end of the \u201cwillingness of the American public to play the role America has played for most of the last eight decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

But America\u2019s diminished stature does not necessarily clear a path for China. Few people these days are enthusiastic about the prospect of a world dominated by either superpower. In Europe, views of Beijing have hardened since the late twenty-tens, when its envoys experimented with a combative style known as \u201cwolf warrior\u201d diplomacy. After a Swedish prize for persecuted writers was awarded to a Hong Kong dissident, a Chinese ambassador said, \u201cWe treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we\u2019ve got shotguns.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, European anxiety has centered on the economics of trade. As China has devoted itself to dominating global tech manufacturing, it has taken to producing far more than its domestic economy demands\u2014electric vehicles, solar energy, batteries, wind turbines, basic chemicals. In theory, that kind of overcapacity should lead factories to close and the surge to subside. But China\u2019s government has kept pushing firms to produce, partly out of fear that rising unemployment could fuel unrest. The surplus gets exported, often at prices low enough to undercut the industrial economy in other countries. \u201cIt\u2019s systemic, not accidental,\u201d Joerg Wuttke, a former head of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told me.<\/p>\n

The fear in Europe is increasingly urgent. Volkswagen is considering eliminating as many as a hundred thousand jobs and closing four plants, the biggest cut in the history of the global auto industry. Leonard told me that resentment of China\u2019s industrial policy has reached \u201ca fever pitch, particularly in Germany, where there is a sense that China is doubling down on policies leading to the deindustrialization of Europe.\u201d He added, \u201cThe big fear is that Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg\u201d\u2014the home of Mercedes-Benz\u2014\u201cwill turn into Detroit.\u201d European politicians, he said, privately describe a feeling of simultaneous assault from Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, and are \u201cwaking up to a world where they have to protect themselves from all the big powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The responses under discussion have the flavor of emergency improvisation: blocking Chinese firms from building factories or bidding on lucrative contracts, imposing severe tariffs on steel and chemicals, even suspending technology patents\u2014an approach known in aggregate as the \u201ctrade bazooka.\u201d Some economists argue that Europe could compete more effectively by modernizing.\u00a0But the feeling of hardening up extends beyond trade. Germany has committed to as much as a trillion dollars in new spending on arms and infrastructure. Wuttke said, \u201cTrump is severing ties, imposing tariffs left and right. The Chinese are not moving. So the decision is not \u2018Beijing or Washington.\u2019 It is building ties with Jakarta and Delhi, and with other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese officials often warn against a lawless world in which \u201cthe weak are meat for the strong.\u201d But the Party\u2019s own tactics are uncompromising, both at home and abroad. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. Ambassador to China, told me, \u201cChina always says, \u2018The U.S. government is too pugilistic.\u2019 That\u2019s their rhetorical veneer. The reality is they are competing tooth and nail behind the scenes.\u201d Last year, Trump pressured Panama to strip the control of two significant ports from a Hong Kong-based company and give it to an American-led consortium. In the dispute, China reportedly warned foreign executives against \u201cillegal activities that harm the interests of Chinese companies.\u201d Such warnings are dangerous to ignore. International businesspeople drawn into geopolitical disputes have been barred from leaving China. The message, the European diplomat told me, is \u201c\u00a0\u2018We are a great power, and we will retaliate against anyone who hurts our rights or interests.\u2019 Behind this is the undisputed rule of the Chinese Communist Party.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Yet China is not rushing to re-create the international order that has recently frayed. Since 1949, Beijing has signed only two formal alliances\u2014with North Korea and the Soviet Union\u2014and both proved costly. Patricia Kim, an expert at the Brookings Institution, calls Beijing\u2019s posture a \u201cChina first\u201d strategy. \u201cChina is happy to put out statements, but it has no interest in stepping in as a crisis manager,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt wants greater influence, but it also wants to avoid responsibilities.\u201d Chinese leaders view \u201cthe burdens of U.S. global leadership as a source of American overextension and decline,\u201d she said, \u201cand they have no interest in emulating this model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhou Bo, the retired People\u2019s Liberation Army officer, made a similar point from a different perspective. \u201cThe Trump Administration has walked away from sixty-six international organizations,\u201d he told me. \u201cThis is a big gap that China simply cannot close.\u201d<\/p>\n

The likely successor to the American order, then, is not a Chinese order so much as what Leonard calls a period of \u201cun-order\u201d: a jungle in which every country hedges, arms, subsidizes, hoards, and searches for choke points to exploit. In the words of Suisheng Zhao, a China scholar at the University of Denver, it is the makings of a \u201ctwenty-first-century Hobbesian struggle of all against all.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Cold War, as futurists on both sides of the Iron Curtain plotted to control the direction of history, another group coalesced around a more modest idea. Mankind 2000, as it called itself, was made up of European survivors of fascism who were wary of both Communist determinism and American hubris. They warned that man could be \u201cabsorbed by his machine\u201d and declared, \u201cThe future belongs to all of us, not only to small oligarchic groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spend enough time in Beijing and Washington these days and the rivalry looks less like a clash of competing systems than like a race between small oligarchic groups\u2014tight circles of men with immense power over everyone else\u2019s future. In China, Xi is trying to bend technology toward obedience and growth. In America, Trump and his allies in Silicon Valley have put the development of A.I. ahead of concerns about its risks. \u201cWe have to grow that baby and let that baby thrive,\u201d Trump said, unveiling an A.I. strategy in 2025. \u201cWe can\u2019t stop it with foolish rules.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

In this view, regulation, safety testing, liability, and labor protections are all indulgences that a superpower can no longer afford. David Sacks, an investor and a former White House A.I. czar, recently warned that creating \u201can F.D.A. for A.I.\u201d could mean losing to China. This is an old political maneuver. In 1988, when Japanese carmakers were ascendant, Ronald Reagan\u2019s Transportation Secretary derided stricter fuel-economy standards as a \u201ccompetitive disadvantage\u201d against \u201cthe Asians.\u201d A year later, under pressure from Wall Street, Bill Clinton repealed the separation between commercial and investment banking, saying that it would help America \u201ccompete in global financial markets.\u201d That decision was later identified as one of the causes of the Great Recession.<\/p>\n

China can, indeed, build with a speed that Americans regard with awe and despair. In the 2025 book \u201cBreakneck,\u201d Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford\u2019s Hoover Institution, popularized an image of the rivalry between the two countries as a contest between an engineering state and a lawyerly society. In fact, the book is subtler than this formulation suggests. (Wang had considered calling it \u201cMove Fast and Break People,\u201d but his publisher intervened.) Wang explored the macroeconomic effects of the one-child policy\u2014which, he told me, have become even more concerning since the book came out. Though China can produce \u201cstrong outcomes in science and technology,\u201d its internal problems are profound, he said. \u201cShanghai is pretty amazing. It may even be one of the top-three great cities of the world. But how can China be a great civilization if almost no one wants to have kids?\u201d He added, \u201cYoung Chinese especially are gripped by this serene discontent. People don\u2019t have that great a hope about an economic boom that basically will elude everyone outside of a few folks working in A.I. or finance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The engineering state can churn out an electric car every seventy-six seconds, but that carries you only so far if people are so alienated that they decline to bring children into the future being built for them. The Party wants A.I. entrepreneurs who can dazzle the world, but it also wants the power to decide where they can go and what they can become.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has a different weakness. So far, the dystopian uses of technology have come less from government facial-recognition systems than from a handful of ultrapowerful companies that exploit data to increase their control over people\u2019s lives: insurers that use A.I. to decide which treatments to cover; retailers that deploy \u201csurveillance pricing\u201d to raise costs according to a customer\u2019s location, habits, and urgency. But the distinction is eroding, as private defense contractors help merge domestic law enforcement, immigration, and national security into an interlocking apparatus. Even in areas where machines may genuinely make life better, the decisions are being made in secrecy. Waymo reports better safety records than human drivers, but autonomous-vehicle companies have resisted public scrutiny. When Senator Ed Markey asked seven major companies how often remote human operators had to guide vehicles through difficult situations, they refused to answer, with several citing \u201cconfidential business information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The more centralized the system, the further an error can travel. In March, when Baidu, which operates self-driving taxis in more than a dozen Chinese cities, suffered an outage, cars halted on busy highways. We are almost certainly better off without humans at the wheel of cars and trucks, but history warns that we should not let engineers make these decisions alone. The country best equipped to help its people will not be the one that simply races to insinuate A.I. into every aspect of civic life; more likely, it will be the one that shields decisions about deployment from the distortions of ideology and corruption, that finds ways to distribute both the rewards and the losses from A.I., and that makes people feel they have a voice in their future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

America is not functioning well these days, but its political system, by design, gives the public more power to fix problems\u2014if they choose to fix them. As Wuttke put it, \u201cThe United States has a knack of going down in flames and then rejuvenating. China does not.\u201d The advantage might go to the side that can face its problems most candidly. \u201cYou can live in an alternate reality in China, in Russia, or in the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is always a dangerous proposition, because you might miss the signals of history coming your way.\u201d<\/p>\n

One afternoon in Beijing, when I found myself with a free hour, I scanned the QR code on a bike share and rode across town, savoring the fresh air. I nearly got creamed by a couple of delivery drivers, but it was a joy to be someplace where I could be free of real-time feedback on my micro-gestures.<\/p>\n

For all the assertive calculations and predictions that I\u2019d been served during my interviews, I couldn\u2019t shake the feeling that the future is too opaque to predict, let alone to ordain to multiple decimal places. Young Chinese people, like young Americans, are partaking in a new fad for fortune-telling. People are going out for drinks and astrology readings, or using astrology apps. (In Chinese, the term for \u201cfortune-telling\u201d shares a character with the term for \u201calgorithm.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Beijing has had fortune-tellers for centuries, though the Party opposes what it calls \u201cfeudal superstitious activities\u201d and periodically cracks down on them. They always filter back, quietly resuming work in neighborhoods near Buddhist and Confucian temples. I was connected to a man in his early seventies whom I\u2019ll call Master Sun. He wasn\u2019t around all the time\u2014fortune-tellers are gig workers\u2014but he agreed to meet, and arrived wearing an old-fashioned blue padded jacket and a jade necklace. He was walking beside his bike, with a basket on the front and plastic wrap still protecting the frame, like a sofa guarded against spillage.<\/p>\n

Master Sun\u2019s office was a block away, and as we walked he asked how I knew Mandarin. I used to live in China, but I\u2019m American, I said. \u201cAmerica is a powerful country,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\u201cChina is also powerful,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot as good as America,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

We reached his office, tucked behind a convenience store. On his desk, he had a small shrine, with a ceramic Buddha, an incense burner, three gourds, and a chocolate bar. He studied the lines on my palm, gave me some bronze coins to toss, asked for my birth date, and began calculating on a pad of paper. Watching him work felt faintly radical; he had found a way to survive with dignity against both the Communist Party and the age of algorithms. After a while, he looked over the top of his glasses and told me, \u201cYour fortune says you have a noble destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

I liked the sound of that. It reminded me of the jolt of pleasure when\u00a0ChatGPT applauds your question. I asked, \u201cI want to raise my children well and give them a bright future. What should I do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Master Sun thought for a moment and said, \u201cYou should give them great wisdom. That\u2019s more important than giving them money. Make sure they study well. With that, wealth will come.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was kind, though I wasn\u2019t sure anyone knows the answer anymore. Finally, Master Sun pulled out a stack of folded red cardboard slips and asked me to pick three. He looked at them and announced, \u201cYou\u2019re destined for either political power or great wealth!\u201d I decided to wrap it up while I was still feeling at least 76.67 per cent positive.<\/p>\n

But then he paused and held up one of my three slips. It was labelled \u201cJoy Knocks at the Door.\u201d He said that it was the luckiest slip in the deck, and he offered advice: \u201cYou should spend a little money to protect that good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh? I asked. How much?<\/p>\n

\u201cSix hundred and sixty yuan,\u201d he said\u2014about ninety-seven dollars.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t going to argue with the fortune-teller. He accepted multiple payment platforms. We took out our phones and I sent him the money.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The World Cup Is Not for Sale<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy, and whoever wins will have extraordinary power to shape international politics. Evan Osnos reports from a Beijing that is being retooled to compete with Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letter-from-beijing"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Future, Made in China - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Future, Made in China - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"China is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy, and whoever wins will have extraordinary power to shape international politics. Evan Osnos reports from a Beijing that is being retooled to compete with Silicon Valley.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-03T10:38:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"51 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"The Future, Made in China\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-03T10:38:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191\"},\"wordCount\":10210,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Letter from Beijing\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191\",\"name\":\"The Future, Made in China - City Relocation News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-03T10:38:20+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=1191#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Future, Made in China\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"City Relocation News\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Future, Made in China - City Relocation News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Future, Made in China - City Relocation News","og_description":"China is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy, and whoever wins will have extraordinary power to shape international politics. Evan Osnos reports from a Beijing that is being retooled to compete with Silicon Valley.","og_url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191","og_site_name":"City Relocation News","article_published_time":"2026-08-03T10:38:20+00:00","author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"51 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"headline":"The Future, Made in China","datePublished":"2026-08-03T10:38:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191"},"wordCount":10210,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp","articleSection":["Letter from Beijing"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191","name":"The Future, Made in China - City Relocation News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp","datePublished":"2026-08-03T10:38:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ba7928955e7dd1cfc73e458d3a9fc8e5.webp","width":1280,"height":720},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1191#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Future, Made in China"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/","name":"City Relocation News","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com"],"url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}