A graduation ceremony at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Justin Chin/Bloomberg/ Getty Images
Donald Trump called it a “wake-up call”; Marc Andreessen called it a “Sputnik moment”. By all accounts, the release of DeepSeek’s R1 model was a bombshell. Not only is the Chinese AI model highly intelligent, but it was supposedly far cheaper to build than its American rivals. It may well be a harbinger of many more Chinese tech breakthroughs to come.
When news of DeepSeek’s triumph hit America, the markets descended into pandemonium. In a day, hundreds of millions of dollars were wiped off American technology stocks, with Nvidia leading the fall. Washington had restricted the sale of highly complex chips like Nvidia’s to Chinese companies in the hope of stunting their AI advances — and yet Chinese developers had succeeded even without them.
The naysayers soon piled in. American AI executives, aware that they had been brutally shown up, belittled DeepSeek’s advances. Cold warriors accused DeepSeek of ripping off Western research, pointing to the fact that its model appeared to “think” it was ChatGPT (for which there is a perfectly reasonable explanation), as well as lambasting R1’s reluctance to discuss political subjects that are taboo in China, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre.
They were all missing the point. This was not a fluke, nor the result of foul play, but a show of China’s engineering ingenuity. The real revolution lay in DeepSeek’s willingness to go “open source”. Unlike OpenAI’s products, any designer can look under the hood of a DeepSeek AI model to see how it works. DeepSeek has even released a detailed scientific paper explaining how it designed R1. Western coders are now busy remaking its model, independently and from scratch, using information released to the public.
Another extraordinary aspect of DeepSeek is that its models, once trained, require very little computing power to use. In the industry, this is called “inference”. Up until now, AI companies have tended to rely on vast data centres — energy-hungry buildings humming with interconnected computers — to run their AI models. A company will license out its AI model to other companies — a bank, let’s say, that wants to create a chatbot to field customer questions. For a fee, that bank can then send questions to the data centre, where the AI model will process the questions and send back answers. That’s why you need internet connection to use ChatGPT.
DeepSeek works differently. Its free, open-source model can be installed wholesale onto a (slightly specialised) personal computer. A “distilled” or simplified (that is, still as adept at reasoning if not as knowledgeable) version of DeepSeek’s model can then be used and edited offline, for no extra cost. This is a colossal development. It means that any Chinese user wishing to discuss Tiananmen Square would simply need to download DeepSeek onto an offline computer, without fear of a CCP hack, and edit the model. Voilà: you’ll have permanent access to a high-performance AI that will talk to you about any heretical subject you like.
Why would a Chinese company share its secrets in the middle of a global tech race? From DeepSeek’s perspective, there may be a great advantage to remaining open source. Open-source technologies create communities of mutual benefit and learning that benefit everyone involved. In the world of cybersecurity, for example, there is a vigorous and partly open community of cyber-defence analysts all trying to locate, publicise and eventually “patch” up weak points in hardware and software. In such a scenario, there is advantage in collaboration.
Like any community, an open-source community is ruled by hierarchies. A company at the leading edge of such a network is likely to attract collaborators, and gain trust and credit. Since DeepSeek published its models, it has been contacted by dozens of leading AI researchers and companies in the US and China. It will now be busy making powerful new friends, and discussing new techniques. If it can build quickly on its successes, DeepSeek will gain much from sharing its research.
Having cottoned on to this approach, American companies are now scrambling to design their own open-source models. It looks like a new paradigm and has been compared to the release of the first open-source internet browser.
American tech leaders are still right to be alarmed. DeepSeek didn’t come out of nowhere, but has emerged from a vast ecosystem of Chinese tech talent. How many Westerners have heard of CATL, Hesai, DJI, SMIC, Oppo, Pony.ai, Zhiyuan? — among the world’s best companies in robotics, autonomous driving, drones, lidar, AI and battery technology. DeepSeek is really only the tip of the iceberg — one which the US is about to crash straight into.
For one thing, Huawei designs chips now — and it has been on the warpath ever since the US had one of its leading executives arrested in 2018 and then tried to destroy its phones and network technology business. Given DeepSeek’s very low inference costs, it doesn’t depend on sanctioned Nvidia ultra-advanced chips to run. It can work with cheaper Huawei chips — which are anyway growing more sophisticated every year.
Nor is DeepSeek the only up-and-coming Chinese AI company. Other impressive Chinese models have been released recently, such as that of sanctioned firm iFlytek, or Alibaba. All of this has taken place in spite of America’s best efforts to prevent or slow down the rise of Chinese technology. Some have even suggested that American sanctions helped Chinese chipmakers — since sanctions made it profitable to innovate domestic chips instead of just buying American ones.
A clear narrative is emerging here. The Chinese, quite apart from IP theft, are bloody good at technology. They are not going to stop innovating. America can’t stop them, and they are well past merely “catching up”.
How did it all go wrong for the West? Steve Hsu, an American physicist, argues that China is eclipsing America when it comes to cultivating human capital in the sciences, maths and engineering. Within a couple of generations, malnutrition (which stunts brain development) has been all but eliminated in China; the majority of children now graduate from high school, and roughly 60% go on to university. Nearly a third of students study STEM subjects at university, compared to just 3% a generation ago. And China’s best universities are now ranked as highly as those in the West.
Due to the size of China’s population, these reforms have left the country with a much larger, and still growing, pool of very smart and highly STEM-educated citizens. This pool is much larger than in India, whose comparable population continues to be blighted by illiteracy, malnutrition, and a lack of educational opportunity. And the long era of Chinese brain drain is finally over: more and more, Chinese STEM graduates remain in or return to China rather than trying their luck in the West, their prospects at home bolstered by a dynamic economy and improved standards of living. In fact, the humiliating trend has begun to reverse, with the annual number of scientists leaving the US for China increasing by a factor of five or so in the last 15 years.
Critically, and unlike in the West, China’s STEM graduates gravitate towards jobs in engineering, design, technology, and basic research rather than in finance. DeepSeek itself illustrates the precarity of China’s finance industry — it grew out of a quantitative investment fund that was hit eight months ago by a government crackdown on computer-driven high-speed trading.
Might an aversion to finance be a blessing for China? Steve Hsu likes to quote what billionaire investor Charlie Munger said of America’s elite culture: “I regard the amount of brainpower going into money management as a national scandal. […] We have armies of people with advanced degrees in physics and math in various hedge funds and private-equity funds trying to outsmart the market. […] It’s crazy to have incentives that drive your most intelligent people into a very sophisticated gaming system.”
Not only are Chinese keeping more AI-ready engineers and designers, but theirs have a massive industrial ecosystem to play with — a contrast with deindustrialised America. In April 2022, Sun Ninghai, the director of the Institute of Computing Technology at China’ Academy of Sciences, gave a lecture to the 200-odd strong standing committee of China’s National People’s Congress, which comprises some very senior leaders. He warned that China must not go down America’s path of “contempt for the real economy” and diversion of IT talent into the “virtual economy” — consisting of virtual reality, the meta-universe, blockchain, and the like.
Sun’s argument is a persuasive one. America has neglected making useful physical goods, he says, with the percentage of jobs in manufacturing falling dramatically since 2000. He argues that far too much intellectual energy has gone into the false economy of financial speculation or virtual tech that doesn’t produce tangible goods. Google and Facebook’s revenue comes mostly from advertisements (77% and 98% respectively), while Amazon’s revenue comes from selling Chinese goods, which make up 71% of their products.
By contrast, Sun urged China to apply its AI innovation to the “real economy”. This means integrating AI algorithms into physical mechanisms across industry. The idea is to build AI innovation into China’s successful manufacturing and export-based model, bolstering the government’s existing efforts to surpass America technologically in as many industrial categories and supply chains as possible.
For China’s innovations are already coming in thick and fast. First there was Huawei’s superior 5G, then the PLA’s world-leading hypersonic missiles, which stunned the US military establishment. The story some media missed last week was the discovery of a vast and apparently secret experimental fusion research centre in Sichuan province. If China could invent cold fusion, a means of generating energy by joining atoms together, that would be the ultimate Sputnik moment.
None of this is going to stop. We should expect more stunning advances from Chinese science and technology in the coming months and years. And unless the West begins to nurture and direct STEM talent more effectively, it risks falling behind. We must ensure more incentives for ultra-bright maths graduates; the science faculties at top institutions must be insulated from campus culture wars; policymakers must listen more to scientists and technologists. But, above all, the West must start making things again, fostering the physical and intellectual proximity between industry and research that breeds real advances. We need to get our heads out of the cloud, and into the real world. For the Chinese have entered their era of innovation.
***
The views expressed here are personal, not those of UKCT.
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SubscribeI mentioned this in comments to this article:
Will China blink first in Trump standoff? – UnHerd
As previously said, this would be the real game-changer.
Regarding this article, the task for the US isn’t to try “to stop” the Chinese tech revolution, but to emulate it. Trump seemed to get this with his “wake up call” comment.
The ridiculous waste of intellectual energy expended on financial systems is well-described. The way that finance and consultancy firms approach final-year students to tempt them with their soulless jobs is something that needs to be addressed.
Of course, the USA has already been working on atomic fusion for many, many years and has produced an experiment which generated more energy than was injected into it. There has for decades been a race towards atomic fusion but it had gone a bit quiet because there didn’t seem to be much progress. Apparently, China has demonstrated that it is not asleep and is up there with the front-runners. Maybe there is a while to go yet.
China will also be working on the next generation of car batteries but the danger there (for them) is that they don’t want something which takes away the point that the batteries have to come from China. I would bet on Toyota winning that race.
The article shows that the US is decadent and we all knew that. They invented woke to keep people busy and, naturally, we copied them as we always do.
In the US, it is the Left that are decadent, but they have been recently deposed, so expectations for the US have been changed, for the better.
Heat can be removed from fission reactors (with Uranium or Thorium fuel) by passing liquid through pipes within the volume generating the heat. And there is plenty of fuel available.
In conventional fusion reactors, the heat needs to extracted from the surface of the volume generating the heat, otherwise the plasma within it will collapse, stopping the reaction.
Cold fusion is still a mystery: it might be because no-one knows, or that those who do know won’t tell us.
The concept of the Left is a fiction, a bogeyman, an imaginary enemy. The USA is so decadent that they have failed to make useful innovations – their ideas are in finance (Right) and entertainment Left). Why does nobody buy their cars? Why is Boeing in so much trouble?
What planes or for that matter cars do WE now make in any quantity?*
*Excluding those we make for our Japanese paymasters.
..don’t forget the parts GB makes for the F35 to carry out the genocide.. Where would that really effective genocide be without good old, arse-lickin’ John Bull, eh? ..and other WMD as well?
John Bull pales into insignificance compared to the Kerrygold Republic!
“Bought and sold for EU gold what a parcel of rogues in a nation”.*
*Thank you RB.
How did this post get through? My reply was not allowed as it was in response to an “unapproved comment”?
If the left is defined as communist then your statement and the whole supposition that the right is intellectual, is thrown into confusion .
Don’t let one Side of your brain stagnate .
Because fusion works in theory – see JET/F4E/Lawrence NIF in Ca, it may one day work in practice. The design and control of the reaction is not yet within our grasp, but may be within our reach. Materials and the magnetic fields required to contain the reaction seem to be the stumbling block. Meanwhile China has learned to plough the Thorium Power Station furrow that got the West’s scientists so exited in the 1950s + 60s. However we weren’t ruled by science then as now and our “leaders” needed plutinium for weapons so safe & cost effective nuclear power never came to pass. If the Chinese perfect it we can copy it, but only if we can return western culture to its 18th to late 20th century culture – ie before pseudo-marxism and its denial of science took over.
You were doing so well until you got to yor last ½ sentence.. pity. Couldn’t resist, eh?
You can’t resist insertion of ‘genocide’ . . . so you should expect no better of others, let’s be honest.
Accusing finance and consultancy firms like that is not only pointless and ineffective, it is illogical.
They have to work within the rules, the Laws of the Land. And they are the responsibility of our Government and Parliament, even if they didn’t write them in the first place.
Much of the problem is the money printing, increasing the money supply, that is, Inflation, by the same government, which then causes problems downstream. The remedy is for Parliament to correct this, but it is full of Arts and Humanities graduates, especially Law and assortments of History and Economics, that don’t understand the basics of Mathematics and Business, and think it can be substituted by Politics, Marxism and Fabianism, enhanced by their profound Intelligence.
Fix that, probably by electing a new set of MPs with the difficult decisions included in their manifesto, and rest will sort itself out, after a lot of hard work in Westminster.
By the time a man got anywhere near the levers of power* in Ancient Rome he had served as Junior Magistrate, Junior Military Officer, Accountant, Lawyer, Senior Military Officer, Senior Magistrate, and Politician.
He would then be eligible to serve as ‘Governor’ either as Proconsul or Legatus of a Province, before possibly serving as CEO of the Senate, and finally governing a prestigious Province such as Africa, Asia or even Britannia.
Such professional standards simply do exist in Westminster today, in fact almost the opposite!
A plethora of ignorant, egotistical muppets is the best we can do.
*Governorship of a Province with full capital powers.
It’s a horrifying thought, but Rory Stewart may be the closest thing to a qualified person under those rules …
Rory Stewart? Lord help us!
He didn’t serve anything like enough time in any of his ‘posts’.
For example the nano-second he served in the Black Watch does NOT compare with say serving three years as a military Tribune with Legio IX Hispana in Lindum. (Lincoln.)
Really?
You have to be a moron to imagine that you can win Conservative Party leadership on “woke” platform.
Even if later you ignore any Conservative principles and go full woke.
You still need to win first.
I’m afraid you’re the one missing the point. I’m not “accusing” finance / consultancy of anything; as you say, they’re playing within the rules of a system. The point the author makes, with which i fully agree, is the way we expend our energies on sifting and sorting through existing ways of doing things, rather than creating actual physically useful things. Failure to understand that is the very issue that’s holding us back.
But this is not new, i think. What i would call ‘fringe’ ways of doing things to make money has been with us for a while. that is why we have to import doctors and nurses – because it seems easier to make money from money. This is sheer laziness. being a doctor is difficult but being an economist is a lot easier.
Addressing the behaviour of the finance and consultancy firms is only dealing with secondary symptoms, as I explained.
Perhaps, but i’d earlier explained the wider point. Choosing to dispute the minor point is hardly worth making an issue over.
It sounds more like the blob needs to be pensioned off and replaced by STEM graduates. After all, politicians are generally stupid in all but cute-hoorism as we Irish say, and besides, they come and go like the wind. The real govt. (civil service) needs to be be totally revamped, CIA style.. maybe get Elon Musk over to do it?
I wouldn’t want everyone replaced by STEM graduates! But what we have is Westminster and Whitehall devoid of all STEM knowledge, to such an extent that they don’t even recruit suitable advisors, like mistaking Windmill Salesmen for Engineers. They might be Engineers, but the job comes first.
“The ridiculous waste of intellectual energy expended on financial systems is well-described.”
I worked for a US firm (Trailstone) a few years ago, who try and make money out of trading renewable energy (very hard to do reliably) – they had more PhD’s there than a teaching hospital, including a couple of ex-CERN physicists.
Such a waste of talent.
Like many professions, Finance requires doing stuff before becoming a consultant. Being an MP is another, as an important part of the job is Infrastructure building, which requires having Project Management skills and Experience. And PhDs are like all degrees, it depends on what the subject was. Gordon Brown has a PhD, but it was in the History of the Labour Party!
These guys were meteorologists and physicists.
To be fair, I remember a conversation I had circa 1999 with an ex-CERN physicist, while working at Enron – I asked him what prompted his move into finance, and the answer wasn’t money. He told me that most of them switch due to burnout. At that level, apparently, it is not uncommon to spend 3 months working on a single equation, and it becomes all consuming.
Pricing exotic derivatives for investment banks is trivial by comparison.
During the cold war there was a conscious effort to provide affordable and high quality education to the majority of the population with an emphasis on STEM. The rationele was simple: if you only educate the elite, you miss out on a lot of talent. And that is not optimal if you want to compete with the Soviets, who were – in the eyes of Western planners – in the process of surpassing the West.
When the Soviet threat waned, much of this was abandoned in favor of so-called ‘neoliberal’ policies. Industry was off-shored in and replaced with speculative financial markets. According to some scholars, an important reason for the neoliberal turn was simply to restore upper class wealth and power, which had come under threat by the postwar welfare efforts. During the neoliberal period higher education was transformed as well, emphasizing more on business and finance. Universities themselves also came under the spell of market fundamentalism: enrolling as many students as possible for a lot of money while lowering standards. Meanwhile researchers, with unstable temporary contracts, focus much of their energy on acquiring grants and dealing with manegerial bureaucracies, audits and targets.
With China as a new competitor the weakness of our system becomes increasingly apparent.
Just a minor point, it won’t be ‘cold’ fusion they are researching, but the more promising laser induced fusion. Cold fusion is something that lawyers like Starmer would buy into.
Strewn with basic factual errors.
Huawei does not make chips. It designs them. They’re just made at companies in China now rather than Taiwan.
Meta’s Llama AI models were already open source before DeepSeek.
I’ve heard of SMIC. They are still well behind Taiwan’s TSMC with no hope of catching up for over a decade.
AI is being used industrially in the West.
That’s just from a quick scan of the article.
The author makes some valid points about Western priorities and the dominance of finance. But he’s completely adrift when it comes to technology. Without apparently the slightest awareness of the fact.
I think a major reason for this is because of the Dutch company ASML. They are the only company in the world capable of producing the EUV Lithography machines operating on the small resolutions required for producing the most advanced chips. They have been ‘asked’ by the US not to sell their machines to China. While anyone seems to be able to produce a bit of generative AI, neither China nor anyone else has been able to replicate these machines. So apparently EU innovation is not completely stagnant either.
It is a bit of modern wonder EUV. However, my understanding is that we’re closing in on its limit and other technologies must be developed into functional manufactured products at a scale necessary for the semi-conductor industry (e.g. x-ray lithography).
Granted, I’m not 100% certain what the timeline is because most of the terminology I once understood has been butchered by the marketing speak of companies like Intel and AMD.
..give it a few months.
China in the Lab only has devised a new technique for
The manufacture of chips
And now trialing in order to perfect and set about Manufacturing of advanced chips
The method is based upon using Nano second pulses of
Very high energy lasers
The main problem to overcome
Was the extreme heat created
That damaged the materials used
That’s the exact problem they have resolved
Great post.
Why should West sell advanced technology to enemies like China?
The same goes for training enemy combatants in Western Universities.
People promoting these sort of policies should be treated like traitors and executed.
Sorry, I just remembered that our politicians and top 1% promote these policies.
I am old and childless but when China takes over I hope these “Lenin idiots” and their families end up in Chinese gulag.
I’d like to see some stats to back up the claim of STEM graduates gravitating to finance rather than technology industries. While I’m sure there may be a higher proportion of that in the west (particularly the UK), I’m unconvinced it is in numbers that make an appreciable difference.
Aside from anything, the UK is a leader in fin-tech; I was actually surprised on a visit to the US in about 2015 that they didn’t have chip and pin.
The much bigger issue in the west, especially the UK, is the number of STEM graduates as a proportion of total graduates. This is, to my mind, the damning indictment of our lack of industrial policy and that university education is a means unto itself and little else.
Certainly from working with colleagues in India, where I see trends significantly different from the UK (far more women seemingly want a job in STEM for instance), I am made to despair.
I have my doubts about your counter views.. and I suspect a good deal of wishful thinking on your part.. Your first point is irrelevant for starters!
Excellent article.
It’s been ‘interesting’ watching the academic rise of China. From a small number of papers that were almost like explanations of Western science, to increasing numbers of papers in badly written English (of a level that wouldn’t have got past peer review just a few years before), to the absolute deluge of papers now.
The West has fallen behind, even the US. It’s really only a question of whether China can sustain it, and how long they wait before striking.
“..before striking”? ..before striking what? who? where? ..are you not aware of Chinese history?
‘They’ think it’s their turn Liam old chap, and they’ll probably fight for it.
However, as always, ‘we’* shall disabuse them of that arrogance.
* The US and her Allies of which the Kerrygold Republic is one, even if infinitesimal in absolute power terms.
I fear you’re (almost correct) on you latter points but you’re so last century on your openers Charlie.. yer livin’ in de past Charie.. An tSín abú mar a ndearthá as Gaeilge.. ‘Go China’ as béarla*.. smart guy like you can work that out I’m sure!
* English language.. In American, GB is toast!
Perhaps, but the triumph of Mr Trump gives us all hope, don’t you agree?
Under Trump and then Vance Irish freeloaders would start paying their share.
Irish tax racket will be shut down and Oirish will revert to their usual diet of white pudding, potatoes and Guinness.
Open source, ChatGPT-comparable large language models have existed for years, most notably Meta/Facebook’s “Llama” models. They also exist in distilled versions anyone can run on their own computer (check out https://ollama.com/ if you’re interested). So nothing really new there.
Some other interesting points in the article, although the effect of the ultra-competitive education and work ethic on birth rates is absolutely catastrophic, so one wonders what all these STEM graduates will be doing when their parents can’t care for themselves and there’s nobody else to care for them.
The amusing thing is that while the West discarded focus on STEM in order to incessantly whine about diversity, gender equality, how women are somehow prevented from doing STEM, anything but actually encouraging the (most male) students keen on STEM…
Countries like China (and India, Korea, etc) actually have far greater proportions of female students in STEM.
Interesting up beat article about China’s tech industry, but perhaps we should remember the negatives for China.
1/ China is a totalitarian state.
2/ China’s population is expected to decline from 1.4 billion to 800,000 by the end of the century.
Trump has come to the Presidency with promises to industrialise America again, hence the tariffs.
The best result for the planet would be for China to genuinely democratise and then people could enjoy the benefits of competition in tech & industry across the World.
Here’s an interesting fact, gleaned from a right-wing Western think tank: 37% of Americans believe they live within a democratic system, whereas 70% of Chinese believe they do live within a democratic system! Go figure, as the Yanks say!
So Chinese are either stupid or brainwashed.
No one with real understanding of the world would believe that China is democracy.
My guess is that CCP calls it “democracy with Chinese characteristics”.
Usual lies of dictatorships.
What a load of Bull
Believe it or not China is very democratic
Go study how they use 5 yr plans
And how during current plan they identify what future actions required
And fed out to relevant expertise
To formulate solutions
After which upon agreement are put out to The Provinces to develop
Then put onto local administrative units to agree / disagree and add effective input Over the 5 yrs plan
This all goes back to Centre for final approval
Once approved then put into policy
And a integral component of next 5;yr plan along with funding allocated and locked
This may be referred to as Proper
Governance
Study their History, wether Emperor
Or President
If you fail to govern properly then
You gonna be replaced without doubt
The Whole system is designed to
Ensure such
The way you write your pathetic pro CCP rubbish, it is clear that you you another “chow dog Doyle”.
With party shield on one arm and Bejing tuned antena on the other.
I noted quite a few UK elections ago, think 2010 + 2015 – there were a greater range of views on offer to Chinese voters than UK ones. Chinese “village elections” – ie local elections, not actual “villages” could choose from far left revisionists, Keynesians (inc the CCP candidates) and entrepreneurs who i suppose UK regime media would call “far right” but in reality are probably like JD Vance – so free market WITH a minimal safety net at the bottom. Uk got LibLabCon – all versions of the same Eu social democratic parties that have failed time and time again. The fringe parties in the UK were so swivel eyed – Greens, BNP etc, i doubt they’d get on a Chinese ballot at all.
China is institutionally incapable to do anything approaching Democracy.
However if they really wish to try, they should emulate how we, the British governed Hong Kong from 1841 to 1997. A textbook example of good good governance.*
*Apologies for breaching the old adage “Self praise is no recommendation.”.
Nah, I’m not buying it, Charlie; Hong Kong was always Chinese, in essence.. the Brits added a pinch of corruption Is all..
It was the least corrupt place in the whole of China, which is why it worked so well for all of us.
China last year conducted 88, 000 serious investigations into corruption which in turn led to many a conviction and jail sentence along with the ending of Hundreds of thousands
Careers
As corruption became more sophisticated in response to the purge
China has set up 8 new Centres to deal with these developments and already ahead of the game
Now Think HS 2 COVID PPE , Grenfell and Hillsborough
Not a single prosecution
And hundreds of Millions blootered upon enquires
The UK is one of the most corrupt systems of Governance
In existence
England and Westminster have had a 1000 yrs to perfect how to cleverly load the Dice
Think the English water and Sewage regime
And the UK energy set up whereby Scotland produces the cheapest energy globally
But pays the Highest charges
The examples of Severe Institutional corruption are endless in UK Governance
Which has resulted in Relative wealth declining rapidly
And the cost of living constantly rising
Whilst those powerful elite and their partners in crime enrich themselves by jumping on the gravy trains Westminster churn out with ever increasing Productivity
No one who has worked with Chinese engineers is surprised by this. On average, they’re more talented and harder working than their non-Asian counterparts (I include Cambodian and Vietnamese engineers in the more talented class.)
I believe the capital gains preference is behind almost all of the speculative economy that the US now has. Almost all of finance is about movement of, for example, stock prices and almost none of it is about the business a stock represents.
So powerful are the doyens of finance now that even Karmala Harris, the great enemy of all things capital, had to get their approval for the highest capital gains tax rate they would permit.
Either get rid of the preference or extend it to dividends. Either would tilt the field towards fundamentals, a long term perspective, and tangible goods and away from speculation and financial engineering.
But how much of this is simply stolen from California by CCP spies posing as graduate researchers in the university of Berkeley? And in biotech research programs elsewhere in the US.
Clearly, just enough for starters.. fish course, main course and dessert all by China, it would seem!
Wether you steal info or not
It’s utterly useless unless you possess the were with all to turn
What’s been stolen into actual manufactured goods
Why steal a car if you can’t drive nor sell it
Three cheers for Chinese cold fusion, if it happens! What a great leap for humanity, who cares who invents it.
But, above all, the West must start making things again, fostering the physical and intellectual proximity between industry and research that breeds real advances.
That’s it in a nutshell. Making things vs making profits which the financial ‘industry’ is all too good at.
Given China’s previous record on inventions* and then their abject failure to properly utilise them, I am not unduly concerned about this. In fact it is all a bit déjà vu.
*The Printing Press, Gunpowder and the Magnetic Compass.
Go research their research development with wind tunnels
Result completely New generation of Hypersonic missiles
Which the West even at the Races yet
Basically this new wind tunnel
Enabled them why Hypersonic missiles were so difficult to guide to target due the effects of high velocity distorts the guidance and computer systems
So China goes and completely redesign the location of the electronics in the missile
And create completely new materials from where to house the
Electronics
Thereby guaranteeing accuracy
Increasing velocity and weapon loads
The new materials are Top secret
Along with how the tunnel achieved
Such high speeds by which to conduct tests
But we know that to achieve such
Massive amounts of electricity had to be generated
Therefore China by passed this
By development of Milli seconds
Computerised high explosions
Firing in a highly controlled synchronized series of detonations
The West gave up years ago in.their
Attempts to construct a conventional high speed tunnel fast enough to develop Hypersonic missiles
I can give you reams of examples
Whereby not only today but historically China developed new ideas and technology
Go and look at their 3000 yr old bridges
Which today enabled China to build
1000,s of Km of HS rail and motorway bridges over water and gorges with terrifying speed in comparison to Lack lustre Western
Efforts
It’s so easy to find videos online of
Their Bridge building technology
HS rail line track laying machinery
You will be astounded at what you gaze upon
Which shall prove indeed that we are now the Coolies
They’ve missed the bus Brian old chap.
It’s all over “bar the shouting”..
Your bathing in the big Egyptian river there Charlie, methinks!
Thanks to the Aswan Dam it’s quite safe now.
Oh have they
Explain how the US had the A bomb for over 9 yrs before they
Managed to create the H bomb
China took 11 months to go from A to H
And when we at it explain how the UK’S future economic prospects are going to turn out by becoming a global leader and powerhouse by way of AI
When the AI patents under IPO
granted to the UK represent 0.28 % of global total granted
In 2023
All whilst China holds 68 % of global AI patents granted
And to cap it all with regards HS rail and advanced technology and construction
China holds 98.6 % of global patents
UK a big fat Zero
That explains HS 2 and not 1 mm of functioning railway all after 18 years and £ Billions spent
All whilst in less time and huge sums of money less
China has 50,000 Km of HS rail
The fastest and most advanced reliable cheapest fares globally
I know how this was achieved
Solely by way of total and utter
Corruption in China as you previously state with regards corrupt China and The UK whiter than the driven snow
After all I just a stupid ignorant
Poorly educated peasant Scot
And I bow to my English colonial masters in that the only way to build cheaply and fast is by corruption.and corruption only
And obviously when HS 2 finally
Completed it will be a shining beacon to the whole world as to how properly undertake vital infrastructure projects by proper governance alone
This is absolutely amazing
Considered such has all been
Achieved by English Coolies
It is amazing that someone purporting to tell us about China’s “unstoppable” technological development is so ignorant of technology as to talk about “cold fusion”.
All this AI hype is somewhat ludicrous, though inevitable.
However just wanted to point out that no offline computer will ever be as fast as a GPU accelerated data centre. GPUs have for years been the only way to exponentially speed up processing power and produce instant results in any complex processing task.
Of course people are stupid and the moment they hear some story about an underdog they think it’s all over and the world has moved on
I agree open source is best and I’d like chatgpt to be that open source leader but I doubt it.
But the idea that because you can download it on your computer means it will inevitably change the world is silly. It still costs you a fair amount of $ to buy a laptop or PC that can make this thing really work, you’re talking around $5-10k for a properly functioning deepseek in 2025, who’s got that kind of money, instead of course they are going to use online and that will still be directly competing with chatgpt.
Compare the computing power and storage capacity of a £5k computer from 2015 to a £2k one today. Even more important is comparing a £5k computer from 2005 to the phone in your pocket today
Comment on the photo. Virtually ALL Chinese people of college age have dark black hair. Whoever picked this photo for the article blew it. As a publisher, I think things like this are important.
Yes, China is hastening the end of us all in this putrid civilization, and not before time. Only then will the non-human world, if it hasn’t been entirely destroyed by the super-human spectre of AI, perhaps begin to breathe and live again.
What we are learning very clearly is that billionaires fund many ideas, but if an idea doesn’t promise the best ROI, they either shelve it or let it go bankrupt. The Chinese, however, were smart enough to buy many of these discarded ideas and improve them. and we call them they stole it! LOLOLOL
What does this tell us? It suggests that billionaires are not hungry enough to drive true innovation. Innovation requires hunger—it thrives on necessity, a need. But in America, everything has become about profit and financial speculation. Without real need, there is no drive to innovate.
The U.S. used to have that hunger in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. But it died with Steve Jobs—the day Apple shifted its focus from groundbreaking technology to mass-market consumerism. That was the moment when the hunger for true innovation was replaced by the pursuit of financial gains for individuals!
China, on the other hand, had a need—to become independent from the U.S.—and that need fueled its innovation.
I am suspecting they are not even letting it out yet! Also why China is focusing on Global South to ensure its hunger does not become its demise just like China surpassed US!
“A company will license out its AI model to other companies — a bank, let’s say, that wants to create a chatbot to field customer questions.”
I have yet to come across a chatbot that does more than tell me what I already know, or after some re-wording of the question, get the “I’m handing you over to one of our advisers” message.
I have a 30 minute record of an exchange with a chatbot in 2023, to try to change the date of transferring my main bank account another bank. The attempt was a complete failure.
The final response was:
Hi, thanks for using Chat. Our chatbot MOBA will be happy to help you. To keep you safe, don’t share personal information like your full account number or card details.
What a refreshing article. Yesterday, when I mentioned my degree in Mechanical Engineering in discussion with a medical group, my work was described as my “trade” by these equally qualified people! STEM is not simply about maths and physics, but the use of these disciplines to design and make things of use. An engineer is not someone who fixes your phone line, vehicle or gas boiler, but someone who made these things in the first place. If the author thinks that the USA has lost the plot, how much further behind are we here in UK nowadays? The USA has just managed to launch a supersonic airliner, but we decommissioned Concorde over 20 years ago…
The Chinese emphasis on STEM reminds me of how, 3 years ago, after the BLM protests, the Russell Group redbrick Sheffield University’s Department of Engineering announced efforts to “decolonise the curriculum”. This garbage is common in British academia.
This year Sheff Uni dropped out of the global top 100.
Nuclear fusion plus artificial general intelligence means it will become economically feasible to automate all human labour very quickly. In fact as people become unemployed and spend less then their energy consumption will decrease which will further reduce energy costs thereby further accelerating automation. Personally I am looking forward to having a robot servant as I retire soon but something will need to be done to police and keep the billions of unemployed occupied. They may have to be given a UBI in return for sterilisation as the only scarce commodity left will be land and this will reduce its price and make the world liveable.
> and still growing, pool of very smart and highly STEM-educated citizens.
Actually that pool is shrinking and shrinking rapidly, and can only continue to shrink. If you look at a demographics pyramid most of China’s population is 30+ years old. We are facing a problem in the west that older engineers are retiring and new engineers aren’t qualified to take their place (I blame it on flipping 6 week coding boot camps), in China they won’t have the people by a ratio of over 2 to 1 to sustain what they have going on.
China now resolved such problems and as we speak the policies not only to resolve but greatly enhance their capabilities accordingly implemented
Big clues as to how comes from thousands of years of Chinese philosophy
‘ The only reason a problem arises
Is for to find and Implement a solution ‘ and ‘ If unable to do so
Then all you suffer from is a Temporary Lack of Knowledge ‘
Such is in their very DNA
How much of this was stolen from Western companies – either in joint ventures with Chinses firms or clear-cut theft and espionage of Western firms – hacking or having people send tech secrets to China e.g. Google recently?
US prosecutors unveiled an expanded 14-count indictment accusing former Google software engineer Linwei Ding of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies he was secretly working for.
Suppose the Chinese people overthrow the Communist Party. Then imagine the effect it would have on their advancement. At this point, it’s the party that’s pooping the party. When they’re gone, the west will be toasted.
” Not only is the Chinese model highly intelligent…”
Oh, Jeez! Already?
Are we really ready to redefine the word “intelligent” to mean “capable of creating any intelligible string of words”?
I can hardly wait to read the anti China garbage that most Unherd (right-wing, head in the sand, Empire deluded) contributors have to say on thus one.. ‘should be good for a laugh…..
..to be fair, most comments recognise China’s superiority and so I must apologise to Unherd’s contributors.. or most of them! Sorry!
Very insightful! USA cannot stop China’s innovation. It can only strive to remain one step ahead.
Fat chance of that!
And how does the US achieve that
When it’s already been lapped by China on the Race Track
Unless western politicians and media understand STEM our societies will never realise it’s true potential. First step is to understand that Science addresses the limits of what we know – it could be hi-tech or low-tech but its the frontier of knowledge, usually wrong, sometimes right. Technology is the use of what has already been discovered, some of this tech arrived by chance (penecilin) and some by scientific study (DNA sequencing) So a developer who invents a structured software language needs a level of scientific method and scientific culture to succeed. A programmer learning to code using this langauge is a technician, using techology, but not part of a scientific endeavor unless they change the language itself.
I got Deepseek on my phone last week and found it to be a wordsearcher or text generator like ChatGPT or similar. So if it does have an AI function i couldn’t find it. It is not a “machine learner” like DeepBlue or Watson, and certainly nothing like the software used to decipher the Herculaneum scrolls last year. I don’t know what that software was but it is clearly a powerful image processor which probably works in a similar way to a digital signal processor used to put images and texts on our mobile devices.
At long last a article that clearly shows just not only China streets
Ahead but in many areas now impossible for the West to catch up
Therefore it’s either drop the sanctions etc. and cooperate and share
President Xi Jinping has already stated that China along with other Nations by way of BRI & BRICS
are for the New Era creating a New Civilisation that’s referred to as Environmental friendly, sustainable,
Equitable and to return Humanity to a State of Balance and Harmony
With Nature in order to confront the
Huge problems now confronting Mankind
And those who refuse to join in shall simply be left behind to wither and die
Here’s a few simple examples of just how far in front China is
And clearly demonstrates The West has no choice now
Cooperate or Your Civilisation dies
,1. Patents – in 2023 China in AI granted 65 % of Global Total
The EU less than 2% , UK 0.08 %
And delusional Little Englander
Swallow hook , line and Sinker
Sir Keith Stammers ,( Starvers ) Coital Bovine Scatology
That UK shall achieve growth by AI
and become a Global power house
2 . UN economic development agency identified 22 separate areas that essential for economic development and success for the future
China holds top spot in 17 of these areas , UK big fat Zero
4. By way of it’s 5 years plans China now implementing massive changes to the Education system from Nursery to PhD level
And dropping over 1000 courses
Then adding over 1300 new courses for for the New Era
5. HS rail California in 1991 proposed HS rail from N to S
Spend billions of $
Result not 1 inch built
China operates today 45,000 Km
By end of this year 50 ,000 Km
By 2030 – 83.000 Km
Futhermore Last November
China successfully tested a New HS Loco and carriages Speed 1000 ,Km / HR design Speed 1400 Km / Hr
China in the Last 10 years has built
883 number Bridges in length of over 1 Km
USA existing rail bridge’s old and detorating at a alarming rate due to
Poor maintenance and lack of funds
6. EV recharges The West sorely lacking a complete integrated network
China by end of year shall have
60, 000 Battery change stations
And change your battery in less than 2 mins
Over 800000 recharge points
8000 mobile recharge units for dealing with High Volume traffic
During Holiday periods
Over 120,000 recharge Robots installed in Carparks , Rail Stations etc
Their philosophy is that the Recharge points find the vehicle
Which now mostly all Chinese built
EV,S have transponders to recharge points when their battery about to
Report critical level
Whist in the West the EV
Driver is terrified that he
Unable to find a recharge
Point that’s actually works
Now do you see either cooperate before it’s too late or be left behind
For Neo Liberal Capitalist civilisation to wither and die
What I’ve imparted here is a tiny
Fraction of just how far China is ahead in almost every area
I keep on telling all those that read here
Go study China because if you do
Then you will soon realise you Cooperate to
thrive and moderately prosper or go extinct
Over to you now
Make a informed choice which has nothing to with luck
It’s either Smart or plain Stupid what your decision is
,
Yep, as I suspected.. very few Unherd readers want to hear the facts! Don’t you have any nice comforting lies, distortions, denials, propaganda to share with us?
Oh yes I have a Library full of those lies and Propaganda
Particularly so with regards
England,s colonisation of Ireland and Scotland
And still active in Northern Ireland and very much to the fore in Scotland today
Come off it Brian!
England colonising Scotland? Whatever for?
Ireland yes, at least there was something worth pinching, but Scotland never.
You forget the haggis Charlie, and the neeps and rhe tatties… Tasty..
England stole from Scottish waters 48,000 , 000 , 000
Barrels of oil
That’s more than a Sovereign Norway produced who wisely set up a Sovereign Wealth fund
Now holding $ 2, 000 ,000 , 000 ,000 in it’s coffers
Yielding $ 600 , 000 , 000, 000
In interest alone in 2024
And over the Years Norway has from such fund and other taxes from oil & gas production
To thourghly modernise all it’s niche industries into Global beating industries
Also greatly and consistently achieve high annual increases in Productivity
I can assure Scotland has rec’d
NO lasting benefits
But actually has become In real terms poorer
Once we Independent then we shall seek repartition of all monies looted by Westminster
Just as India is preparing their demands for ,The $ 68, 000 ,000 , 000 , 000
Looted from them in Days of Colonialism
Your future indeed is very bleak indeed and no possible solution
To all the Chickens coming home to roost
Bye Bye Bye
You had your last chance at Culloden Brian and LOST.
…tell me about it!
Chinese have entered their era innovation? What a joke. Demographics aren’t on their side.
They can always take in immigrants, can’t they? No shortage of those and no one else wants them, it seems.. Chinese 1, Demographics 0.
Interesting solution. Diversity is strength. And recently they have integrated the Uyghurs into compliance with Beijing policy.
I guess the sky’s the limit.
Another village Idiot indoctrinated with Western propaganda
Go see China’s Next 5 yr plan which
Very intelligently deals with such
Can’t be bothered educating you all
The info is all out their for the Whole World to study and digest
You stupid stupid little Englanders
Keep going the way you are
All so State Pensions, NHS and wellbeing of the citizens collapse
And all due to a complete lack of proper planning and governance
Not an englander. 5 year plans for problems that have been the result of the last 30 years of one child policy will not avail you.
Go see how China has corrected the one child policy
Adjusted retirement regime
Tax regime to encourage
Greatly larger families
Reduced mortgages for
2 and 3 child families
Child birth for 2024 increased by over ,450 ,000 compared to 2023
By 2030 these policies will have increased China’s population by over 8 million
All future additions to a highly educated, qualified
And skilled workforce
And actually ensuring that the pool of highly trained skilled labour required for The New Era shall be in abundance
Thereby enabling huge productivity gains and a significant reduction in the hours of a normal week for all
And the provision of far more
Public Amenities for their citezens and resources for the social care of the elderly
This is what is called good governance
Go compare with Western bad
Governance
You ain’t got a scooby have you
You make it sound like paradise.
Cradle to grave, if government gives you everything they can take away everything,
Oh China no from cradle to grave
Their socialist capitalism is ruthless ensuring only the best run companies succeed
Incompetent fail Quickly
Socially it’s vital that China ensured it’s Citezens
Have a roof over their heads , clothes upon their back , high quality natural food in their belly , educated to the highest standards , kept healthy and the sick and elderly properly looked after with care , respect and compassion
Unity to the Chinese is of the highest order as with your responsibility to your family and fellow citizens Low behold those who fail to meet those individual responsibilities
If you fit and capable
Here’s just a Snapshot of How China meets its responsibilities to those Citezens who require
Genuine help
The Chimes Lunar new year thousands of years old festival
This year over 5 billion trips
Of which nearly 2 billion by RAIL mostly HS rail
So let’s say you are
A pregnant mother
A parent with a child below 3 yrs old
A person with severe mobility issues
A seriously disabled person
How does any above visit family and unify to celebrate this festival
Well here’s how the Chinese government deals with this
Firstly you register for assistance
But what follows is for Rail only
Different for Road and Sea but roughly similar
Once Registered
Issued with a wristband c /.w
Computer Chip
And a App loaded up to your phone
So once you arrive at rail Station
They not only know who you are but the exact type of assistance required
You then go to designated area
Upon which a special Rail employee and a Robot ( if deemed necessary )
Attends upon you and escorts you and carries your luggage
To the Train you booked for
And takes your designated carriage and the special seating
Within
Basically repeat when at destination
This China refers to as Proper
Governance and meeting it’s duties to it’s fellow citezens
Who are disadvantaged and particularly so during this most important of festivals as the Lunar New year
All so that these Citezens fulfil and honour their duty of unity with their family , friends and fellow citizens from where they born and raised
If by Private EV then along your journey charge points designated and only your wrist band or App allows a recharge
Or a Robot to recharge for you
If seriously disabled
So off you go this Easter break and take along trip if you one of these disadvantaged Citezens
Report back and tell me how it all goes
To digress somewhat
Attack China and you guaranteed a response form it’s Military personnel that shall clearly demonstrate to you that you have now made your best possible friend and turned them in a flash to your worst of enemies that ever you will have the misfortune to.confront
And so bloody obvious to any who open their minds and eyes
Why Because what I’ve imparted is the culture and the
Civilisation whose function is to protect and defend
That’s why and NOT for King and Country whose values are far removed from those of China