Why China can’t win the AI-led industrial revolution
release of a highly competitive chatbot caused a sensation in early 2025. Dubbed the “DeepSeek moment,” it immediately prompted analogies to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957. But do such spectacles really mean that China is closing the gap with the West?In considering that question, it is important to bear in mind that no industrial revolution has ever emerged outside advanced democratic capitalism.
This is no accident. Like its predecessors, the AI-driven industrial revolution requires robust institutions to ensure secure property rights, enforceable contracts, the ability to attract and empower talent, efficient allocation of resources, and—crucially—sustained demand. The last element is often overlooked in analyses of China’s progress in AI.The People’s Republic was founded on the principle that the Communist Party of China “leads everything.” That remains true today: The CPC controls courts, markets, banks, universities, and the media, and even commands private firms.
Under such powerful party-state rule, the regime can mobilize massive resources and produce shining stars like DeepSeek (or Sputnik, in the Soviet case). An industrial revolution, however, depends on more than isolated breakthroughs; there must be a series of disruptive innovations in technology, business models, and institutions that build on one another. The Soviet experience makes this clear.
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