China’s demise was gleefully predicted by the west – meanwhile, it built an AI revolution | Larry Elliott | The Guardian
China’s demise was gleefully predicted by the west – meanwhile, it built an AI revolution | Larry Elliott | The Guardian
摘要: China's first fully domestically produced 100,000-card AI supercluster Sugon 8000 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, 20 July
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China's first fully domestically produced 100,000-card AI supercluster Sugon 8000 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, 20 July 2026.
Photograph: VCG/Getty Images
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China's first fully domestically produced 100,000-card AI supercluster Sugon 8000 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, 20 July 2026.
Photograph: VCG/Getty Images
China’s demise was gleefully predicted by the west – meanwhile, it built an AI revolution
Larry Elliott
Free AI models that are as good as the investment-hungry US versions will disrupt global markets, and offer Britain a lesson
lmost from the moment it began, the end of the Chinese economic miracle has been much anticipated. Thick and fast, the books have come explaining how it will end badly. Overinvestment. A country wallowing in debt. The
collapse of the property market
. Political repression. The demand for democracy from a growing middle class. All have been put forward as reasons for the inevitable terminal crisis.
Even those impressed by the country’s rapid growth took comfort from the notion that the west would continue to dominate advanced manufacturing while
would be stuck assembling TVs. And while the wait for its much-predicted demise has gone on and on, China has become the workshop of the world.
This process has come in two distinct phases. Initially, it is true, there was a concentration on low-cost manufactured goods because cheap labour costs provided a competitive advantage. Firms left for east Asia in search of higher profits. Without China 1.0, Donald Trump would have remained a New York property developer and Brexit might never have happened.
Yet, the Chinese were not content to remain solely the producers of low-cost consumer goods and began to invest heavily in higher-end manufacturing. China 2.0 shattered the illusion that it would forever remain a developing economy destined to produce low-grade products and little else.