- The tech race between the U.S. and China may have future benefits for the global industry, according to the International Chamber of Commerce’s secretary general. Chinese AI is heating up, and the country is making economic gambles on a tech industrial revolution, he said.
The race for economic dominance between the United States and China could have some upside too, International Chamber of Commerce Secretary General John W.H. Denton said.
“There is a competition going on for supremacy, and I think it’s perfectly important to understand that competition may actually have positive benefits,” he said during Fortune’s Building a Geopolitical Muscle for a Multipolar World event, held in partnership with BCG.
That’s despite a trade war between the two countries that is escalating as President Donald Trump levied 20% all-encompassing tariffs on imports from China while President Xi Jinping imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agriculture imports.
That followed the Biden administration’s sweeping export control measures against China to limit its access to cutting-edge technology.
But it hasn’t stopped Chinese AI advancements like DeepSeek, a large language model (LLM) that claimed to compete with American AI at a fraction of the cost.
Additionally, China-based Alibaba is launching an LLM and has pledged $53 billion over three years to bolster its cloud computing and AI infrastructure, while TikTok owner ByteDance is exploring a deep-reasoning model.
“China has made and is making some huge, highly risky macroeconomic bets in order to drive what they see is this techno-driven industrial revolution that they want,” Denton said.
Beijing said earlier this month that it would boost support for AI and the development of venture capital investment to spur breakthroughs and become more self-reliant.
As part of that effort, China is mobilizing 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) for a government-backed fund to support technology startups.
According to the head of China’s state planner, the fund will carry long-term investment cycles, heightened patience for risk, and investment into tech companies through market-based approaches. The fund will focus on sectors like AI, quantum technology, and hydrogen energy storage.
“And clearly, they’re prepared to actually take a lot of damage from a macroeconomic point of view in order to emerge in a superior position in key sectors, industries and obviously relationships as well,” Denton said.
For its part, the U.S. has made advancement in tech a priority of its own, and Denton thinks the U.S. has risen to the challenge of localizing its production.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of crypto platform Kraken, said at the same event that the White House is sending a “very clear message” that it wants to bring people from outside the U.S. into the country that are highly skilled, especially in the tech industry, to make the U.S. as competitive as possible.
“The speed at which I’m able to bring the entrepreneurs that are sitting anywhere in the world, so from France, from Germany, from Mexico, from Argentina, from Brazil has been weeks, not years or months,” Sethi said. “So that’s a huge distinction in terms of a competitive advantage for the startup ecosystem.
While the Trump administration has been pro-crypto, cracking down on immigration has been one of the many focal points in the first few months in office. Still, Trump has expressed support for H-1B visas, which are critical for bringing international talent into the U.S. tech industry.
