US Chokehold on China’s AI Progress ‘Unlikely to Succeed’, Says Washington-Based Think Tank

China’s robust academic advancement and state-backed funding have made the nation a major challenger to the US in AI, according to ITIF
US efforts to hold back China’s artificial intelligence (AI) advancement “are unlikely to succeed”, as the mainland finds ways to skirt Washington’s export curbs and nurture local innovations, rapidly challenging American dominance in the technology, according to recent research by a US think tank.

Since Microsoft-backed US start-up OpenAI unveiled its groundbreaking ChatGPT chat bot in late 2022, China has been increasing investments nationwide to catch up in the field of generative AI (GenAI).The US government, in turn, has restricted the shipments of advanced AI chips to China and barred a list of mainland AI chip designers from accessing the manufacturing services of world-leading foundries.

Such measures, introduced on national security grounds, have had “limited success” in curbing China’s AI development, according to a report published in last month by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington-based non-profit think tank.

The report – which analysed data including published scientific articles, patents, talent and infrastructure – found that China’s robust academic foundation, innovations and state-backed funding are propelling the nation to become a major challenger to US leadership in the AI sector.

China led the world in AI research-publication output between 2017 and 2022, with over 234,000 papers published, according to the ITIF report, citing research by the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. The US came in second with more than 172,600 publications. However, US articles were cited more in research papers than Chinese publications.

From 2014 to 2023, China filed six times as many GenAI patents as the US did, the ITIF report said, citing a report published in July by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, a UN agency.Chinese firms and institutions made up six of the world’s top 10 GenAI patent applicants. They include social media and video gaming powerhouse Tencent Holdings, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, TikTok parent ByteDance, search engine and AI pioneer Baidu, Ping An Insurance, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. In terms of patent quality, however, the US surpassed China, the report said.

ITIF researchers also credited China’s talent pool for contributing to the country’s rise in AI. The mainland expanded its share of the world’s top AI researchers to 47 per cent in 2022 from 29 per cent in 2019, according to an analysis by MacroPolo, an in-house think tank of the Paulson Institute in Chicago. The Chinese government is throwing its weight behind the domestic AI industry, as US venture capital pulls out, according to the ITIF report. Between 2000 and 2023, Chinese state-backed funds invested in 9,623 local AI firms in more than 20,000 transactions totaling US$184 billion, according to research by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit think tank based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.