President Xi Jinping just told China’s leadership:
Time to stop depending on foreign tech - especially when it comes to AI.
The mission?
Self-sufficiency across the board: models, chips, data, infrastructure.
The background noise?
The U.S. is tightening restrictions, and China is scrambling to build its own path forward.
📢 What China Is Saying
At a recent Politburo study session, Xi stressed the need to "comprehensively advance innovation" and make AI "safe, reliable, and controllable."
The government is promising support:
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Preferential procurement policies
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Talent programs
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More domestic investment
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Tougher regulations
Translation:
China wants to build its own AI empire, on its own terms.
🏯 Quick History Recap: The Real Great Wall
This AI story isn't happening in a vacuum.
It goes way back to when China built the other Great Wall - not out of bricks, but firewalls.
When the internet took off globally, China slammed the door shut:
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Google? Blocked.
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Facebook? Blocked.
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YouTube? Blocked.
The "Great Firewall of China" wasn't about access - it was about control.
Control over information, culture, and data.
It worked for a while.
But now, in the AI era, that wall is a major handicap.
You can't build global AI if your inputs are fenced off from the world.
🌎 Current Political Atmosphere: Tariffs and Tensions
The timing couldn’t be worse.
The U.S. is slapping new tariffs on Chinese goods.
There's a big push to move manufacturing back home.
Trust between the two biggest economies is at a serious low.
Every move China makes on AI will be viewed through a political lens - not a tech one.
And that makes building bridges a lot harder than building models.
🤖 When It Comes to AGI: Trust = Data = Culture
AGI isn’t just algorithms.
It’s a reflection of the people, culture, and values baked into the data.
Right now, trust and bias are the two biggest undercurrents in AGI development:
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Trust: Will people around the world trust a Chinese AGI with their data?
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Bias: Will a Chinese AGI, trained mostly on domestic or censored data, understand global diversity?
It’s already hard enough for U.S. companies like OpenAI and Google to handle bias across cultures.
For China, with tight data controls and very different governance standards, it’s a mountain to climb.
📰 The Current Stage: China Goes All-In on AGI
China knows what’s at stake.
Just a week ago, China made headlines with massive new investments into AGI - not just regular AI tools.
They are throwing billions into research centers, chip factories, and ambitious projects trying to crack artificial general intelligence.
DeepSeek, the new star, made waves by building an impressive reasoning model even without access to the latest chips.
It’s a real technical achievement.
But there’s a problem:
Impressive tech doesn’t fix broken pipelines of trust and adoption.
🧊 Frozen Light Team Perspective
DeepSeek is a big win - but it’s not the whole battle.
Not even close.
Yes, 61.8 million active users sounds great.
But compare that to OpenAI’s 400 million active users, or Google’s reach, and the gap is obvious.
And DeepSeek’s biggest user bases?
China, India, Indonesia - not the western markets driving global AGI conversations.
If China wants to lead in AGI, they don’t just need better chips and bigger models.
They need global cooperation, real trust, and cultural integration.
That means:
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Data practices that meet world standards.
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Governance that respects global norms.
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AGI models that can actually understand the messy, diverse reality of the world outside China.
Without that, China’s AGI will remain brilliant - but isolated.
Good enough to impress at home, but not trusted enough to lead abroad.
And while China tries to build inside its walls, the U.S. is playing a different game:
Buying whatever promising tech it can before it grows too big.
Just yesterday, we reported on Manus - a Chinese AI agents startup - receiving a $75 million investment from the U.S. VC firm Benchmark.
The war isn't just about building better tech.
It’s also about grabbing talent and IP before the fences get any higher.
We’re definitely going to keep an eye on how this new AI war unfolds.
It’s far from over.
You can’t build AGI behind a wall - and you definitely can’t win if no one wants to play in your playground.
🔚 Bottom Line
China can outbuild, outspend, and out regulate all it wants.
But if it can't win the world's trust - it won't win the AGI future.
You can read more about it : here.
