China’s top leaders did not appear to fully grasp the power of artificial intelligence in July 2023, when one of us, Eric, and Henry Kissinger met them. Economic malaise hung in the air. But when the other of us, Selina, returned to China just 19 months later, the optimism was palpable.

2023年7月，与本文作者之一埃里克和亨利·基辛格与会晤时，中国高层领导似乎尚未完全认识到人工智能的影响力。彼时，经济低迷的气氛随处可见。但仅仅19个月后，本文的另一位作者塞琳娜再次前往中国时，乐观的情绪扑面而来。

Dinner conversations were dominated by DeepSeek and other A.I. chatbots. Electric cars whizzed by, while apps offered drone food delivery. Unitree humanoid robots danced and spun handkerchiefs onstage during the “Spring Festival Gala,” China’s most-watched TV program, making the company a household name overnight.

晚餐时的谈话都围绕着DeepSeek和其他人工智能聊天机器人展开。电动汽车在街头疾驰而过，还有应用程序提供无人机送餐服务。宇树科技的人形机器人在中国收视率最高的电视节目春节联欢晚会的舞台上跳舞、转手帕，让这家公司一夜成名。

This is the country we’re dealing with. China is at parity or pulling ahead of the United States in a variety of technologies, notably at the A.I. frontier. And it has developed a real edge in how it disseminates, commercializes and manufactures tech. History has shown us that those who adopt and diffuse a technology the fastest win.

这就是我们所面对的中国。中国已在诸多技术领域与美国不相上下，甚至居于领先水平，尤其是在人工智能这样的前沿领域。而且，中国在技术传播、商业化和制造方面已经形成了真正的优势。历史经验表明，那些能够最快采用并推广一项技术的国家，终将赢得竞争优势。

So it’s no surprise that China has chosen to forcefully retaliate against America’s recent tariffs. To win the race for the future of technology, and in turn the war for global leadership, we must discard the belief that America is always ahead.

因此，中国选择对美国最近征收的关税采取强硬报复措施也就不足为奇了。要赢得这场关乎未来科技主导权——进而决定全球领导地位的竞赛，我们必须摒弃美国永远领先的思维定式。

For a long time, China was slower to the game. In 2007, the year Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s first iPhone, the internet revolution had barely begun across the Pacific: Only about 10 percent of China’s population was online, while the tech giant Alibaba was still seven years away from listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

在很长一段时间里，中国一直是慢人一步的。2007年乔布斯发布首款iPhone时，太平洋彼岸的互联网革命才刚刚起步：当时只有大约10%的中国人上网，而距离科技巨头阿里巴巴在纽约证券交易所上市还有七年。

The A.I. race appeared to follow the old pattern. The debut of ChatGPT in San Francisco in November 2022 led to a slew of copycat chatbots in China, most of which were estimated to be years behind. Yet, as with smartphones and electric vehicles, Silicon Valley failed to anticipate that China would find a way to swiftly develop a cheap yet state-of-the-art competitor. Today’s Chinese models are very close behind U.S. versions. In fact, DeepSeek’s March update to its V3 large language model is, by some benchmarks, the best non-reasoning model.

人工智能竞赛似乎也遵循着以往的模式。2022年11月，ChatGPT在旧金山问世，随后中国出现了一系列模仿它的聊天机器人，据估计其中大多数落后数年时间。然而，和智能手机、电动汽车的发展轨迹一样，硅谷再次低估了中国快速打造高性价比尖端产品的能力。如今，中国的人工智能模型与美国的差距已很小。事实上，从某些基准来看，DeepSeek今年3月发布的V3大语言模型更新，甚至成为了最好的非推理模型。

The stakes of this contest are high. Leading American companies have largely been developing proprietary A.I. models and charging for access, in part because their models cost hundreds of millions of dollars to train. Chinese A.I. firms have expanded their influence by freely distributing their models for the public to use, download and modify, which makes them more accessible to researchers and developers around the world.

这场竞赛干系重大。领先的美国公司基本上都在开发专有的人工智能模型，并收取使用费，部分原因是它们的模型训练费用高达数亿美元。中国的人工智能公司则通过免费发布模型供公众使用、下载和修改来扩大影响力，这使得世界各地的研究人员和开发人员更容易接触到这些模型。

Apps for the Chinese online retailers Shein and Temu and the social media platforms RedNote and TikTok are already among the most downloaded globally. Combine this with the continuing popularity of China’s free open-source A.I. models, and it’s not hard to imagine teenagers worldwide hooked on Chinese apps and A.I. companions, with autonomous Chinese-made agents organizing our lives, and businesses with services and products powered by Chinese models.

中国的在线零售商希音和Temu、社交媒体平台小红书和TikTok已经跻身全球下载量最高的应用程序之列。再加上中国免费开源人工智能模型持续受到欢迎，不难想象，全球的青少年会沉迷于中国的应用程序和人工智能陪伴软件，由中国制造的自主智能体来安排我们的生活，企业的服务和产品也由中国的模型提供支持。

In the internet revolution, Western dominance of the market helped America’s digital economy swell to $2.6 trillion by 2022. That’s bigger than Canada’s entire G.D.P. For the United States to reap the benefits of the coming A.I. revolution, which is expected to have a larger impact than advent of the internet, the world needs to choose America’s computing stack — algorithms, apps, hardware — not China’s.

在互联网革命中，西方的市场主导地位使美国的数字经济规模到2022年膨胀至2.6万亿美元，比加拿大的国内生产总值还要高。为了让美国从即将到来的人工智能革命中获益（预计这场革命的影响将超过互联网的问世），世界需要选择美国而不是中国的计算堆栈，这包括了算法、应用程序和硬件。

In a dozen years, China has gone from a “copycat nation” to a juggernaut with world-class products that have at times leapfrogged those in the West. Xiaomi — once best known as a maker of iPhone knockoffs — delivered 135,000 electric cars last year, while Apple gave up on its effort to produce an E.V. after burning $10 billion over a decade. China is now racing to deploy robots at scale, outlining plans for mass production of humanoids; in 2023, the country installed more industrial robots than all other nations combined. Along the way, the country also cultivated an abundance of STEM talent, robust supply chains, incredible manufacturing heft and a domestic ecosystem so brutally competitive that the only way to survive is to never stop iterating.

十来年的功夫，中国已完成从“山寨之国”到世界级产品巨擘的蜕变，有些甚至超过了西方的产品。曾经以模仿iPhone闻名的小米去年交付了13.5万辆电动汽车，而在十年间投入100亿美元后，苹果公司放弃了生产电动汽车的计划。中国正加速推进机器人规模化部署，并制定了大规模生产人形机器人的计划；2023年，中国安装的工业机器人数量超过了其他国家之和。在此过程中，中国还培养了大量的科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)领域的人才，建立了强大的供应链，取得了令人惊叹的制造业实力，并孕育出一个竞争极其激烈的国内生态系统，以至于唯一的生存之道就是永不停止地迭代。

This China-dominated future is already arriving — unless we get our act together.

这个由中国主导的未来已然逼近，只有我们齐心协力方能力挽狂澜。

We should learn from what China has done well. The United States needs to openly share more of its A.I. technologies and research, innovate even faster and double down on diffusing A.I. throughout the economy.

我们应该学习中国做得好的地方。美国需要更开放地分享人工智能技术和研究成果，加快创新速度，并全力推动人工智能在整个经济领域的应用。

Despite recent cuts in research funding, the United States continues to have remarkable strengths in university and private-sector innovation. Meanwhile, China is still playing catch-up on semiconductors. Additionally, the country faces significant headwinds of its own including a real estate crisis, mounting debt and weak consumer spending. That said, we wouldn’t underestimate the Chinese government’s resolve in tolerating near-term economic pain in pursuit of technological supremacy.

尽管最近在削减研究经费，美国在大学和私营部门的创新方面仍具有显著优势。反观中国，在半导体等领域尚处追赶阶段，同时面临房地产危机、债务攀升、消费疲软等多重挑战。但必须指出的是，我们不应低估中国政府为追求技术霸权而忍受眼下短期经济痛苦的决心。

The United States imposed export controls on cutting-edge chips in order to stifle China’s A.I. progress. The country’s recent breakthroughs, however, illustrate that such sanctions instead fueled efforts by Chinese entrepreneurs to keep training and commercializing A.I.

美国对尖端芯片实施了出口管制，试图遏制中国在人工智能领域的发展。然而，中国最近取得的突破表明，这些制裁反而促使中国企业家更加努力地推进人工智能的训练和商业化。

At lunch during Selina’s trip to China, when U.S. export controls were brought up, someone joked, “America should sanction our men’s soccer team too so they will do better.” So that they will do better. It’s a hard truth to swallow, but Chinese tech has become better despite constraints, as Chinese entrepreneurs have found creative ways to do more with less. So it should be no surprise that the online response in China to American tariffs has been nationalistic and surprisingly optimistic: The public is hunkering down for a battle and think time is on Beijing’s side.

在塞琳娜那次访华期间的一次午宴上，当话题转向美国的出口管制时，有人开玩笑说：“美国也应该制裁一下我们的男足，这样他们就能踢得好点。”这样他们就能踢得好点。这是个让人很难接受的现实，但中国科技确在封锁中取得进步，因为中国企业家找到了用较少资源实现更多目标的创新之道。因此，中国网民对美国关税的民族主义回应和反常的乐观也就不足为奇了：民众准备迎接一场大战，并且认为时间在北京这一边。

We’re no longer in the era when China is far behind us. If China’s capacity to innovate endures, if its A.I. companies continue to embrace openness, and if China stays on track to take over 45 percent of all global manufacturing by 2030, then the next chapter of the A.I. race will be an all-out dogfight on every axis possible. America will need every advantage it has.

中国远远落后于美国的时代已然终结。如果其创新能力持续迸发，如果中国的人工智能公司继续秉持开放理念，如果中国能够按计划在2030年占据全球制造业45%的份额，那么人工智能竞赛的下个篇章，将演变为全方位、多维度的白热化厮杀。届时美国必须动用自己的一切优势方能应对。