There is competition and cooperation, this is the truest portrayal of the current Sino-US relations, just when the United States announced the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods worth more than 180 US dollars, Chinese and American representatives held the first meeting of the intergovernmental dialogue on artificial intelligence in Geneva, Switzerland. At the meeting, the Chinese delegation was in full swing and engaged in an exchange of firepower with the US side.
In addition to their respective foreign affairs departments, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Foreign Affairs Office of the CPC Central Committee, as well as the White House National Security Council, the State Council, and the Ministry of Commerce all sent people to attend the meeting. From a configuration point of view, the US side is obviously more interested in the so-called "national security", which also means that the purpose of the US trip is more focused on "establishing rules".
There is no doubt that China and the United States are leaders in the field of artificial intelligence. At the beginning of the year, Tortoise Media, an authoritative British statistical agency, released a report showing that the United States and China ranked first and second respectively in the global AI track, and were ahead of other countries by fault margin.
As the global technology hegemon, the United States has hard-core R&D capabilities, rich talent reserves, advanced computing power, and strong software and hardware facilities.
China's ability to obtain high-end chips is limited, and it lacks critical infrastructure software, although its scientific and technological background is not as good as that of the United States, but it has a huge user base that the United States cannot hope to match, which means that China has massive basic data and a variety of application scenarios.
More importantly, China has the determination and perseverance to catch up, as well as a strong ability to learn, and just like in the field of semiconductors, sooner or later China will close the gap with the United States in its own way.
From the perspective of the United States, what they want is to maintain an absolute leading position in various fields, and the lessons of Huawei's production of 7nm chips are ahead, and this time the United States does not dare to relax its vigilance. In 2019, the United States included the two Chinese AI companies with the highest valuation in the world at that time on the "Entity List"; Last year, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Raimondo repeatedly stressed the need to limit China's cloud computing capabilities and ability to acquire advanced AI chips. Last week, there was news that the U.S. Department of Commerce is considering restricting the export of proprietary or closed-source AI models to China.
The Biden administration's goal is to completely defeat China in the new round of China-US technology war, and in this context, China has been extremely firm and tough on the first China-US AI dialogue. According to reports, the two sides had in-depth and professional discussions and exchanged views on topics such as AI technology risks and global governance. China rejects the US's dominance of the AI field and "sets the rules", stressing that China "advocates playing the role of the United Nations as the main channel" in formulating a global AI governance framework and standards, and "strengthens communication and coordination" with the US and other members of the international community.
At the same time, China also made clear its solemn position on the US restrictions and suppression of China in the field of artificial intelligence, and urged the US to withdraw these weak unilateral sanctions. As mentioned earlier, China has advantages in data and application scenarios in the field of AI, and it is entirely possible for China to surpass the United States in some vertical fields. On the other hand, if the U.S. app wants to land in China, it must also be restricted by Chinese laws and regulations, so whether the U.S. wants to or not, it must cooperate with China, and can only accept that China will catch up with the U.S. in the future.
Recently, in order to suppress Chinese companies, in addition to the "China threat", the United States has coined a new word for "overcapacity", and the Biden administration has imposed tariffs on Chinese goods worth $18 billion again. In addition, in order to win the semiconductor battle with China, large economies such as the United States and Europe have provided $81 billion in subsidies to Intel and TSMC. In the final analysis, the United States has not corrected its erroneous perception of China, and the confrontational thinking of zero-sum game has not changed, so China and the United States need more intergovernmental dialogue to eliminate differences and seek consensus.