Adam Thierer’s book Permissionless Innovation asked whether innovators would be forced to seek permission from officials before deploying new technologies, or left free to experiment first and address harms later. For much of its history, the United States leaned toward the latter.

Historian Merritt Roe Smith catalogs that era's optimism in book titles like Eighty Years’ Progress of the United States and Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century. Economist Benjamin Anderson wrote in the 1930s that “on no account, must we retard or interfere with the most rapid utilization of new inventions.”

Those days are gone. Innovation is now viewed with suspicion, and innovators increasingly need permission—from government, organized labor, and the professional-managerial class—which is often denied.

China, by contrast, wants innovation. Permission might be required, but in sectors the CCP prioritizes, it is almost always given. And usually, Beijing actively encourages deployment.

The Innovation Divide

Ports

Yangshan Port Phase IV in Shanghai is the world's largest automated container terminal; Qingdao Port’s automated container terminal has set the world record for handling efficiency 13 times, explicitly reducing headcount to achieve technological independence. Compare that with the International Longshoremen’s Association’s 2024 contract fight, in which limits on automation at East and Gulf Coast ports were the central issue.

Clearly, a different story is unfolding in the United States: To this day, only three U.S. port terminals are fully automated and only three more are classified as semiautomated.

Robotics

Beijing’s plan for its robotics industry set explicit goals for self-sufficiency and global leadership. And now China installs more industrial robots annually than the rest of the world combined. In 2025, China deployed 59 percent of the world’s new industrial robots (354,000), while the United States installed just under 38,500—even after U.S. installations grew 12 percent. But don’t worry: U.S. Nobel laureate Robert Shiller has made the case for taxing robots.

Factory Automation

Zoomlion’s Smart Industry City in Changsha runs more than 2,000 adaptive robots across 300 intelligent production lines, manufacturing cranes, excavators, concrete machinery, and other heavy construction equipment. In line with the goals of the state-directed “Made in China 2025” initiative, the manufacturer can now produce an excavator every six minutes.

Meanwhile, only 8.3 percent of U.S. manufacturing firms have incorporated robots in production. And disturbingly, more than half—55.3 percent—considered robotics “not applicable” to their business. But scaling something like Zoomlion’s model across U.S. factories requires more than a reality check. It would also require overcoming aging equipment, costly integration, and uncertain returns, while finding enough skilled technicians to keep automated production lines running. These challenges call for coordinated support for adoption and workforce training, yet the United States still lacks a national robotics strategy, with federal efforts fragmented across dozens of agencies.

Delivery Robots

Neolix, Meituan, and JD Logistics run Level 4 autonomous delivery robots in complex environments, including public roads, sidewalks, school campuses, and business and residential compounds. JD Logistics has deployed robots that ride elevators to deliver parcels to different floors, using navigation software and connected systems that let them communicate with elevators and access controls. U.S. operators such as Starship run commercial fleets, but expansion remains subject to varying state and local rules on where robots can travel, speed limits, weight limits, and more.

Drones

Meituan, China’s dominant food-delivery platform, operates roughly 65 to 70 drone delivery routes across 12 cities, and SF Express has established more than 600 drone routes. Beyond packages, EHang has secured type and production certificates from China’s aviation regulator for its pilotless passenger-carrying electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. While Beijing has made the “low-altitude economy” a national strategic priority, commercial drone operators in the United States must work through federal flight approvals alongside state and local requirements for delivery hubs.

Major U.S. operators like Alphabet’s Wing, Zipline, and Amazon Prime Air provide commercial service. However, they are still awaiting a final Part 108 rule, which would establish a standardized framework for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations. Until then, industry must navigate the FAA’s tedious and costly certification and waiver requirements for routine BVLOS flights. Even efforts to streamline deployment face resistance: 15 states have sued over the FAA’s “environmental assessment” for drone delivery.

Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is deeply embedded in everyday life across China. Retailers accept payments through systems such as Alipay’s Dragonfly (formerly "Smile to Pay"). Commuters use facial recognition to pay subway fares, airports use it for check-in, security, and boarding, and colleges use it for secure dorm access.

Meanwhile, in the United States, laws such as Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, often considered the country’s most stringent biometric privacy law, constrain deployment. Indeed, American critics often characterize facial recognition as a tool of the police state.

Data Centers

China’s “Eastern Data and Western Computing” initiative, launched in 2022, directs investment toward national computing hubs and data center clusters and draws on the energy resources of western regions.

Is there a similar national strategy in the United States? Nope. But there are currently 367 active data center moratoriums tracked across America.

U.S. data center buildout is bottlenecked by power availability and grid connections. While America’s aging grid holds back expansion, between 2022 and 2025, China added capacity equivalent to that of industrial power sources across the entire United States. Other obstacles include permitting, local opposition over zoning and water use, and a growing bipartisan animus among elites and everyday Joes toward data centers.

Autonomous Trucking

Chinese trucks equipped with Inceptio’s driver-assistance technology log more than 1 million kilometers daily. The system is engaged for more than 90 percent of highway driving, with fuel savings of around 3 percent and accident reductions of up to 94 percent. China also deploys fully autonomous trucks in closed environments—ports, mines, and logistics parks—where public-road rules pose fewer obstacles. Pony.ai and SANY are executing “1+N” platoons, and Pony.ai has approval for cross-provincial highway tests.

While China’s 15th Five-Year Plan specifically promotes autonomous freight, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has yet to finalize a blueprint tailored to automated trucking. The U.S. pacesetter, Aurora, has completed more than 500,000 driverless miles since its commercial launch. Its network spans 10 routes across the U.S. Sun Belt, with plans to expand operations to over 200 driverless trucks by year-end. But that’s only one company, and scaling still means navigating varying state DOT rules alongside federal vehicle-safety and motor-carrier requirements.

Robotaxis

Baidu’s fully driverless Apollo Go robotaxis operate in 28 cities worldwide. Its network covers 20 cities in China as of this month, with vehicles in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and plans to begin rides in London next year. Apollo Go ran 3.2 million fully driverless rides in the first quarter of 2026 (up more than 120 percent year over year). Pony.ai’s robotaxi fleet passed 1,700 vehicles by May 2026 and targets more than 3,500 by year-end; WeRide’s global robotaxi fleet reached approximately 1,300 vehicles in April 2026.

Waymo is the leading U.S. operator of commercial robotaxis, with roughly 4,000 vehicles as of last month. It now operates in 15 U.S. cities, with most commercial launches occurring in just the past year. But as the industry moves toward broader commercial deployment, it must navigate a regulatory maze. As with the scaling of many other emerging technologies in the United States, robotaxi operators face federal safety laws alongside a patchwork of state and local rules.

AI Content Production

China’s micro-drama (duanju) industry—vertical short-form drama for mobile—is the world’s first mass commercial application of AI-generated video. In March 2026 alone, over 50,000 AI-native micro-dramas were added to Douyin, China’s original version of TikTok, at roughly one-tenth the cost of live-action production. The industry’s success is attributed to low costs, faster production timelines, and lavish state support for micro-drama production companies.

Backed by local government funding for production hubs, infrastructure incentives from regional authorities, and state subsidies of up to two million yuan per drama, the duanju industry is projected to exceed $16.7 billion this year, which would be almost twice the projected size of China’s theatrical box-office market ($9.4 billion).

In contrast, the idea of incorporating AI into parts of the U.S. entertainment industry was so upsetting that it helped spark strikes lasting 118 and 148 days. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild strikes produced contract language stipulating that writers can’t be required to use AI and AI-generated material cannot be used to undermine writers’ credit or compensation. Performers must also consent to and be compensated for digital replicas. And resistance extends beyond unions: U.S. audiences are more wary than willing to engage with AI-assisted entertainment, with 36 percent of consumers surveyed saying AI-generated video would lower their opinion of a brand.

Nuclear Power

By the end of 2025, China’s operating nuclear capacity reached about 62 gigawatts, with another 43 gigawatts under construction. Its 15th Five-Year Plan targets 110 gigawatts of installed nuclear capacity by 2030, which would surpass the United States unless U.S. capacity grows substantially. With 38 reactors currently under construction, accounting for half of all projects worldwide, China continues to lead the world in new construction. 2025 marked the fourth consecutive year that China’s State Council approved 10 or more reactors.

In the United States, Kairos Power broke ground on its Hermes 2 Demonstration Plant in April 2026, after receiving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) first-ever construction permit for a power-producing Generation IV reactor. The NRC also issued a construction permit for TerraPower’s 345-megawatt commercial nuclear power plant project in March 2026, with the first nuclear-related concrete pour expected in early 2027. These projects represent progress, but they remain far from the scale and pace of China’s intentional, sustained buildout.

America Is Getting in Its Own Way

It’s time to admit that a technology-focused authoritarian system has some advantages. Organized labor has far less power to block automation. The central government can override local opposition, making it easier for innovators to scale. In every strategic industry Beijing prioritizes, government action works to promote, not limit, innovation.

Sure, the PRC misallocates resources. But in many technology areas where first-mover advantages and scale really do matter, its approach to enabling innovation and technology deployment is better than the U.S. one. The U.S. system is now hobbled by lawyers, political polarization, NIMBYs, unions, a patchwork of federal, state, and local regulations, and elite neo-Luddism.

As many of the examples above show, letting 50 states write 50 conflicting rulebooks doesn’t protect Americans—it fragments markets, crushes innovation, and hands global leadership to China.

Under the simplest and most logical framework, inherently national issues affecting innovation, productivity, and competitiveness should be regulated at the federal level. It’s a libertarian fantasy that the United States can or should eliminate most regulations, but policymakers can and should craft a new regulatory system that balances national techno-economic power goals with other social and economic goals.

As it stands, the PRC could not have designed a better U.S. system for helping it win (and America lose) the techno-economic-trade war if it tried. Avoiding further decline in U.S. national economic power industries requires bipartisan, pragmatic transformation of the regulatory system.

America must shift to an outcome-based national developmentalist model that prioritizes automation, competitiveness, and results. For more on these issues, I encourage you to attend ITIF’s National Economic Power Industry War Conference on November 17.