When OpenAI blocked China’s access to its advanced artificial intelligence systems last July, Chinese coders shrugged. They would rely instead on open-source systems, where the underlying technology is shared publicly for others to build on.

OpenAI去年7月禁止中国用户访问其先进的人工智能系统后，中国的程序员们并没把它当回事。反正他们总有开源系统可用，那里有公开共享的底层技术，供他人在其基础上发展人工智能。

At the time, that mostly meant turning to another popular American product made by Meta.

当时，那主要意味着中国程序员们转向使用另一个受欢迎的美国工具，即Meta公司的产品。

But in the year since, there has been a major shift in the global race to develop advanced A.I. Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba have churned out open-source A.I. systems of their own that rank among the world’s top performers.

但在那之后的一年里，研发先进AI技术的全球竞争已出现了一个巨大变化。DeepSeek和阿里巴巴等中国公司已大量炮制出自己的开源AI系统，它们的性能已进入世界前列。

China is quickly closing the gap with the United States in the contest to make technologies that rival the human brain. This is not an accident. The Chinese government has spent a decade funneling resources toward becoming an A.I. superpower, using the same strategy it used to dominate the electric vehicle and solar power industries.

在研发与人脑相匹敌的技术竞争中，中国正迅速缩小与美国的差距。这并不令人意外。在过去十年里，中国政府集中资源打造人工智能超级大国，这个战略在电动汽车和太阳能领域已获验证——中国目前在这两个行业占据了主导地位。

“China is applying state support across the entire A.I. tech stack, from chips and data centers down to energy,” said Kyle Chan, an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation, a think tank.

“中国正在把国家支持用在整个人工智能技术栈上，从芯片、数据中心，乃至能源，”智库兰德公司的特约研究员凯尔·陈（音）说。

For the past 10 years, Beijing has pushed Chinese companies to build manufacturing capabilities in high-tech industries for which the country previously depended on imports. That approach helped China become the maker of a third of the world’s manufactured goods and a leader in electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. And it has also been applied to the essential building blocks of advanced A.I. systems: computing power, skilled engineers and data resources.

过去十年来，中国政府推动本国企业在高科技行业建立制造能力，此前这些行业依赖进口。这个做法已帮助中国成为全球三分之一制成品的生产国，并成为电动汽车、电池，以及太阳能电池板生产的领军者。中国政府还把这种做法用在了发展先进AI系统的组成部分上：计算能力、训练有素的工程师，以及数据资源。

China pushed that industrial policy approach as three presidential administrations in Washington tried to hold back its ability to make technologies like artificial intelligence, including by restricting sales of chips made by Nvidia, America’s leading A.I. chipmaker.

中国推行这种产业政策是因为，先后三届美国政府都试图扼杀中国发展人工智能等技术的能力，包括限制美国领先的人工智能芯片制造商英伟达把芯片卖给中国。

On Monday, Nvidia said the U.S. government had approved sales, with a license, of a China-specific chip known as the H20. But with Beijing’s backing, Chinese companies like Huawei have been racing to develop alternatives to Nvidia’s technology.

英伟达周一表示，美国政府已批准它在获得许可后，向中国销售一款名为H20的特供版芯片。但在中国政府的支持下，华为等本土企业一直在竞相研发替代英伟达产品的技术。

杭州一家人工智能初创企业的员工。今年4月，中国政府表示将出资600亿元为人工智能初创企业提供早期资金。

Beijing’s approach to A.I. is intended to help Chinese tech companies make advancements despite Washington’s restrictions.

中国政府这样做的目的是帮助本土科技企业在受到美国政府限制的情况下仍能在人工智能方面取得进展。

In the United States, companies like Google and Meta have spent billions on data centers. But in China, it is the government that has played a major role in financing A.I. infrastructure and hardware, including data centers, high-capacity servers and semiconductors.

在美国，谷歌和Meta等公司已斥资数十亿美元建设数据中心。但在中国的人工智能基础设施和硬件（包括数据中心、高算力服务器以及芯片）投资上起主要作用的是政府。

To concentrate the country’s engineering talent, the Chinese government also financed a network of labs where much of its most advanced A.I. research takes place, often in collaboration with big tech companies like Alibaba and ByteDance.

为了把国内的工程学人才集中起来，中国政府还投资建设了一个实验室网络，国内最先进的人工智能研究大多在此进行，而且通常是与阿里巴巴和字节跳动等大型科技企业合作。

Beijing has also directed banks and local governments to go on a lending spree that fueled hundreds of start-ups. Since 2014, the government has spent nearly $100 billion on a fund to grow the semiconductor industry, and in April said it would allocate $8.5 billion for young A.I. start-ups.

中国政府还指示银行和地方政府大举放贷，催生出数百家初创企业。自2014年成立以来，中国的国家集成电路产业投资基金已募集了近7000亿元，该基金在今年4月宣布出资600亿元为人工智能初创企业提供早期资金。

Local governments have set up entire neighborhoods that function as start-up incubators, like Dream Town in Hangzhou, a city in China’s south that is home to Alibaba and DeepSeek and is known as a hot spot for A.I. talent.

地方政府还把整片整片的街区变成初创企业孵化器，例如位于杭州的梦想小镇。这座城市以中国人工智能人才的聚集地闻名，也是阿里巴巴和DeepSeek的总部所在地。

“For the government to help us cover even 10 or 15 percent of our early-stage research costs, that’s a huge benefit,” said Jia Haojun, the founder of Deep Principle, a Hangzhou start-up focused on using A.I. for chemical research that raised $10 million last year.

“哪怕政府能帮我们承担10%到15%的早期研发成本，那对我们也是巨大的支持，”杭州初创公司深度原理(Deep Principle)的创始人贾皓钧说。这家公司主要从事用人工智能来生成新型化学反应和材料的工作，去年完成了近千万美元的种子融资。

Different city districts offer competing incentives to lure start-ups to their areas. Deep Principle received a $2.5 million subsidy from a district in Hangzhou when the start-up moved to the city, Mr. Jia said. A local official helped him find office space and employee housing.

不同城区竞相提供激励措施吸引初创企业落户。深度原理迁入杭州时，获得了杭州一个区政府1800万元的补贴，贾皓钧说。一名当地官员还帮他解决了办公场所和员工住房问题。

DeepSeek和阿里巴巴等中国公司发布的开源AI系统已进入了性能最好的全球模型行列。

American A.I. systems were built using information from all types of websites, including some that are inaccessible on China’s censored internet, like Reddit and Wikipedia. But Chinese companies need to make sure that any A.I. products used by the general public comply with Beijing’s controls on information. So the government has created data resources that contain approved information for companies to use to train their A.I. systems, like one based on state media articles that is called “the mainstream values corpus.”

美国的人工智能系统在训练的时候使用了来自各类网站的信息，包括在中国受到严格审查的互联网上无法访问的网站，例如Reddit和维基百科。但中国企业必须确保任何供公众使用的人工智能产品符合政府的信息管控要求。因此，中国建立了包含获得政府批准的信息的数据资源，供企业用来训练它们的AI系统，例如基于官方媒体平台的新闻报道产生的所谓“主流价值观知识数据”。

Chinese tech companies also have an enormous amount of data on how people use the internet, which has helped companies like ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, develop some of the country’s most popular A.I. systems.

中国的科技企业还掌握着互联网用户的大量行为数据，这些数据帮助TikTok的母公司字节跳动等企业开发出一些国内最受欢迎的AI系统。

Yet Beijing’s industrial policy approach to A.I. has also been inefficient. An abundance of A.I. start-ups are vying for their piece of a cutthroat market, competing to offer their models at low rates to engineers.

但中国政府用产业政策发展人工智能的做法也存在低效问题。大量AI初创企业在竞争激烈的市场上争夺份额，竞相以低价把它们的模型提供给工程师。

This top-down approach also makes it burdensome to shift resources quickly as technology changes. Chinese companies spent years working on A.I. technologies like facial recognition but were caught off-guard by the advances in generative A.I. behind ChatGPT.

这种自上而下的做法也导致资源难以随技术变革快速调整。虽然中国企业已在研发人脸识别等人工智能技术上花了多年时间，但ChatGPT背后的生成式人工智能技术的进步让它们措手不及。

“It can be difficult to figure out where to invest and allocate resources,” said Mr. Chan, the RAND researcher. “A.I. is not like traditional industries like steel or shipbuilding, where the technology is fairly stable.”

“可能难以弄清在何处投资、分配资源，”兰德公司的研究员陈先生说。“人工智能与钢铁或造船等传统行业不同，那些行业的技术已相当稳定。”

Much of the government funding has gone to China’s leading chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, which manufactures chips designed by companies like Huawei and Qualcomm. SMIC has raced to produce A.I. chips for Huawei that are intended to compete with ones made by Nvidia.

中国政府的大部分资金已投给了中国领先的芯片制造商中芯国际，该公司生产由华为和高通等公司设计的芯片。中芯国际已迅速行动起来，为华为生产与英伟达竞争的AI芯片。

While Huawei chips may be good enough for some tasks, they cannot do everything Nvidia chips can do. Companies are also reluctant to make the switch because it is difficult for SMIC to manufacture them in large quantities.

虽然华为设计的芯片也许足以胜任某些任务，但它们不具有英伟达芯片的所有功能。企业也不愿更换供应商，因为中芯国际难以实现大规模量产。

“The idea is that in the event of being cut off, there is some viable alternative — even if it is lagging in performance — so China’s A.I. industry can continue to make some progress instead of being stopped altogether,” Mr. Chan said.

“政府的想法是，万一芯片断供，国内仍有一些可行的替代产品——即使性能落后。这样的话，中国的人工智能产业能继续取得一些进展，不至于完全停顿下来，”陈先生说。

中国政府的大部分资金已投给了本土领先的芯片制造商中芯国际，该公司已迅速行动起来，为华为生产人工智能芯片，与英伟达的芯片展开竞争。

Chinese companies are turning to open-source A.I. systems as the fastest way to catch up to rivals in Silicon Valley, which are thought to have at least a few months’ lead over China’s most advanced technology.

中国企业正在转向开源AI系统，将其作为赶超硅谷竞争对手的最快途径，后者据信至少领先中国最先进的技术几个月时间。

In the past year, Alibaba has released several popular open-source systems. ByteDance, which spent $11 billion last year on data centers and other A.I. infrastructure, also published details about how it built some of its technology. This month, Huawei released an open-source system. Even Baidu, a Chinese internet company that previously praised the “monetization potential” of closed A.I. products, recently released open-source versions of some of its systems.

阿里巴巴已在过去一年里发布了几个受欢迎的开源AI系统。字节跳动去年在数据中心和其他AI基础设施的投资高达800亿元，还公开了某些技术的研发细节。本月，华为新发布了一个开源系统。就连此前曾盛赞封闭式AI产品“盈利潜力”的中国互联网公司百度，最近也发布了其某些系统的开源版本。

While OpenAI and Google charge a premium for access to their closed A.I. systems, the Chinese approach of making models publicly available has made it easier for engineers around the world to build on their systems.

OpenAI和谷歌对使用其封闭式人工智能产品高级功能的用户收费，而中国将AI模型公开的做法已让世界各地的工程师更容易在这些系统上进行开发。

OpenAI has warned that Chinese A.I. companies like DeepSeek could block American competitors from markets around the world, giving them the chance to set standards for how the new technology is used.

OpenAI警告，DeepSeek等中国人工智能公司可能会阻止美国竞争对手进入全球市场，从而让它们有机会为新技术的使用制定标准。

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has framed the competition between American and Chinese A.I. companies as ideological and said he wants to “make sure democratic A.I. wins over authoritarian A.I.”

OpenAI首席执行官萨姆·奥尔特曼已从意识形态的角度来谈论美中人工智能企业的竞争，称他要“确保民主的AI战胜专制的AI”。

The thinking is that China’s approach may appeal to more engineers around the world.

一种看法是，中国的做法也许对全球更多的工程师有吸引力。

“Open-source is a source of technological soft power,” said Kevin Xu, the U.S.-based founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in artificial intelligence technologies. “It is effectively the Hollywood movie or the Big Mac of technology.”

“开源是技术软实力的来源，”凯文·徐（音）说，他是投资人工智能技术的对冲基金Interconnected Capital的美国创始人。“相当于技术界的好莱坞电影或巨无霸。”