China today is not the China of the pre-COVID age, but many commentators think it is still an economy based on cheap manufacturing.

Several weeks ago, Thomas Friedman, diplomatic editor of The New York Times, travelled to China and published his impressions in a syndicated article on the country’s “staggering manufacturing muscle”. He concluded that “while we were sleeping China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything.” He failed to understand that this is not China redux.

He noted a range of obvious advances. The ubiquity of cashless payments, the increased use of robotics in factories and autonomous logistics management in warehouses.

He was astounded, and frightened, by the growth of EVs, battery technology and overwhelmed by the smooth fast train travel at 321 kph – slow by new China standards. A decade too late, he advises the world to “get ready for more designed in China”. Despite this, his focus was firmly in the rearview mirror with a concern about the “staggering manufacturing growth”.

These features were noted with some surprise because, he assumed, like many Western commentators, that China had atrophied during COVID and had not moved on. He also assumed that China’s progress had been effectively halted by aggressive US sanctions, the CHIPS Act and other punitive measures designed to undermine the country. His surprise was that China had not collapsed, but his observations never moved beyond the superficial.

In particular, he failed to appreciate how each of these observations were just the outward manifestation of deep economic and technological change that is altering the structure and direction of the Chinese economy. He is joined in this miscalculation by much of the US and Australian policy community.

A more nuanced observation might have noted the software advances that managed his train ticketing, scheduling and high-speed driving. He might have noted the co-ordinated and complex 10,000 drone displays illuminating Christmas, and later, Chinese New Year, skies. There is a software development and advanced 5/6G communication connectivity underpinning this that carries much broader implications for development and service delivery. (The military dual use trolls will be rushing for their bunkers.)

Friedman’s observation of tethered robots and their industrial impact came before the Chinese New Year gala performance featuring fully autonomous humanoid robots joining dancers on stage in a choregraphed performance requiring fine balance on two legs and multi-party co-ordination.

Following his surface skim, the Australian Financial Review asks “Can China get off the canvas?” Like Friedman, the question misses the way the “canvas” has shifted.

DeepSeek is part of this shift and raises many important issues, but perhaps the most important of all is how this advance in AI will power the digitisation of the Chinese economy.

The China bears believe in the collapse of China as it falls inexorably into the middle income trap. To believe this is to also believe the absurd idea that President Xi makes every decision in China and that China is incapable of planning for the future.

Escape from the middle income trap is enabled by an improvement in productivity. (Australia, take note) It could be argued that the technology of the desktop computer drove the last great spurt of productivity in Western economies. For China, the expansion of productivity rests on the digital economy and that is powered by AI. Not the expensive, power-hungry multi-hectare data centre-based AI, but the cheap, affordable AI seen in DeepSeek.

The response to DeepSeek was predictable. It is stolen, it is untrue, it is expensive, it is a psyops exercise and, if not any of these, then it is a threat to Western civilisation that deserves to be blocked immediately.

Nowhere in the media commentary is it seen as something that could be co-operated with and nowhere was it noted the role that this most efficient technology could play in increasing productivity.

The DeepSeek commentary, like Friedman, never understands the economic and social impact of these features.

Nor do these critics appreciate one of the outstanding features of DeepSeek. It is bilingual and English is not its native language. It is “trained” on both Chinese and English data and draws from these sources.

Is there a Chinese version of ChatGPT that will respond to prompts written in Chinese, or draw upon Chinese language data sources? In a hegemonic world there is only one language and one world view and that world view is white, middle-class and deeply conservative. Just ask President Musk.

American software development reflects these values which is why there is such a high level of failure in facial recognition when it comes to non-white people.

AI, in all its iterations, sits at the heart of the developing technological world. It drives the internet of things, including the smart autonomous cars that avoid collisions, and which, today in China, safely deliver thousands of passengers to their destinations.

DeepSeek is deeply discomforting to people like Friedman, and more broadly to Western commentators who believed that China has been hobbled by US sanctions. DeepSeek smashes the complacent assumptions about China’s capacity to innovate and develop new economic directions.

The China that Friedman glimpsed, and that DeepSeek revealed, is a reconstructed China of the future and not China redux. Our relationships must recognise this reality and work with it.

https://johnmenadue.com/western-commentators-still-unable-to-see-the-advances-in-china/

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PLEASE DO NOT BLAME CHINA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.