With the technology race between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, intensifying even though a trade truce was reached in late October, analysts say the prospects of China achieving self-sufficiency in semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI) are positive, despite American efforts to maintain leads in those fields.
“If any country can do it [achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors], it’s China, owing to its vast resources and pool of engineering talent,” Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, was quoted as saying in a report published by Goldman Sachs on Thursday.
While the idea that the US could maintain its lead in advanced AI hinged on the assumption that scaling up computational power would guarantee superior models, Chinese firms like Alibaba and DeepSeek had demonstrated an ability to build advanced models that used far less computing power, Triolo said. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
“So, the US expanding or even maintaining its current lead is not a foregone conclusion,” he said.
A bipartisan group of US senators unveiled a bill on Thursday that would prevent the Trump administration from loosening rules that restrict Beijing’s access to advanced AI chips for two and a half years.
“The best AI chips are made by American companies,” said Republican Senator Pete Ricketts, one of the bill’s authors. “Denying Beijing access to these AI chips is essential to our national security.”
The Trump administration has vacillated on allowing the export of advanced chips to China, uncertain about whether doing so would create a dependency or boost China’s military and technology sectors.