Despite obstacles, AI researchers claim that China is catching up to the US in terms of technology

China Can Close AI Gap With US Despite Chip Constraints: Industry Leaders

Beijing: China could narrow its technological gap with the United States through increased risk-taking and innovation, but the lack of advanced chipmaking tools remains a major constraint, leading Chinese artificial intelligence researchers and industry executives said on Saturday.

Their comments come as confidence in China’s AI sector grows, following strong stock market debuts this week by so-called “AI tiger” startups MiniMax and Zhipu AI on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Beijing has been fast-tracking AI and semiconductor listings as it seeks to build domestic alternatives to advanced US technology amid tightening export controls.

Yao Shunyu, former senior researcher at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and now chief AI scientist at Tencent, said there was a high likelihood that a Chinese firm could become the world’s leading AI company within the next three to five years. However, he identified chipmaking equipment as the key obstacle.

“Currently, we have a significant advantage in electricity and infrastructure. The main bottlenecks are production capacity, including lithography machines, and the software ecosystem,” Yao said at an AI conference in Beijing.

China has developed a working prototype of an extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine that could eventually produce cutting-edge chips comparable to those made in the West, Reuters reported last month. However, the machine has yet to manufacture functional chips and may not do so until around 2030, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investment and Compute Gap

Speakers at the conference also acknowledged that the US retains a substantial lead in computing power due to significantly higher investment in infrastructure.

“The US computer infrastructure is likely one to two orders of magnitude larger than ours,” said Lin Junyang, technical lead for Alibaba’s Qwen large language model. “OpenAI and others are investing heavily in next-generation research, while we are relatively constrained by capital.”

Lin was speaking at a panel discussion at the AGI-Next Frontier Summit, hosted by the Beijing Key Laboratory of Foundational Models at Tsinghua University. He said limited resources have forced Chinese researchers to innovate, particularly through algorithm–hardware co-design, allowing large AI models to run on smaller and less expensive hardware.

Rise of Risk-Taking Entrepreneurs

Tang Jie, founder of Zhipu AI, which raised HK$4.35 billion in its initial public offering, highlighted a cultural shift among younger Chinese entrepreneurs toward higher-risk innovation—an approach traditionally associated with Silicon Valley.

“If we can improve the environment and allow these risk-taking, intelligent individuals more time to pursue innovation, it’s something the government and the country can help support,” Tang said.

Industry leaders said that while China still faces structural challenges, especially in advanced semiconductors, a combination of policy support, growing entrepreneurial risk appetite and technical ingenuity could accelerate its progress in the global AI race.