Damo: China is steadily achieving its ambitious goal of becoming a global AI leader by 2030

The Zhitong Finance App learned that on June 10, Sean Kim (Sean Kim), head of the Morgan Stanley Asia Technology Team, discussed how China is reshaping the global artificial intelligence landscape in the “Market Watch” podcast. He said China is steadily achieving its ambitious goal of becoming a global AI leader by 2030. At that time, with the support of improving the regulatory environment, AI will be deeply integrated into various sectors of the Chinese economy. The AI revolution will enhance China's long-term potential GDP growth by mitigating key structural challenges such as an aging population and slowing productivity growth. According to estimates, generative AI (GenAI) can create nearly 7 trillion yuan in labor and productivity value, which is equivalent to about 5% of China's GDP last year. The investment value of China's AI development path cannot be overemphasized.

Since 2017, China has been quietly advancing a top-down strategy in a systematic manner to build local artificial intelligence capabilities. Although the US semiconductor restrictions posed a short-term challenge, they also prompted China to achieve a significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence without the need for cutting-edge hardware. Therefore, China's core focus is not on building AI capabilities with the strongest computing power, but on bringing AI technology to market with maximum efficiency.

This can be seen in the recent case where DeepSeek (DeepSeek) released the R1 model. In fact, hundreds of AI startups are using open source big language models to carve out segmentation tracks and build competitive barriers in the field of artificial intelligence. The key question is: What is the path ahead? Can China maintain this momentum and transform its scientific research prowess into global AI leadership? The answer depends on four elements: energy, data, talent, and computing power.

The Chinese government's centralized system, combined with more than 1 billion mobile internet users, has the advantage of massive data. At the same time, China has rich energy reserves — 10 new nuclear power plants were built last year alone, and 10 more will be added this year. Although US chips currently have better performance, China is rapidly catching up, and has made significant progress even in the absence of top chips. Finally, China has sufficient talent reserves: According to World Economic Forum data, 47% of the world's top AI researchers are currently in China. Furthermore, China has established a comprehensive AI policy framework to ensure the safety, ethical compliance, and strategic controllability of AI development through more than 250 regulatory standards.

Obviously, China has established a solid foundation for AI, and now both industry giants and mass-market SMEs are facing important opportunities. The focus of investment is shifting from the AI hardware layer to the application layer — China will continue to be successful in bringing AI applications to market and transforming the industry in a pragmatic way. Historical experience shows that any country or enterprise that can adopt and popularize new technology as quickly as possible can take a leading position and is difficult to be replaced.