If today we were asked which country is leading the race for artificial intelligence, the most immediate answer would probably still be the United States. And it wouldn’t be an occurrence. For decades, the country has set the pace for technological innovation and a good part of the digital tools that we use daily come from their large companies. However, that leadership is no longer as incontestable as it once was. The board begins to move and there is an actor who is closing distances at a speed that is difficult to ignore. That actor is China.
The question is no longer whether China competes, but how it got here. How a country identified for years as the world’s factory, associated with mass production and cheap labor, has become a benchmark for innovation and technological vanguard. In a new video from Xataka’s YouTube channelour colleague Francisco Franconi analyzes this process in detail and puts figures, context and nuances to a phenomenon that we are seeing develop almost in real time and that can alter the balance of power in the global technology sector.
China is no longer just the world’s factory: it is building its own path in AI
“China should be years behind the United States in the development of AIs. It is a fact, since between 85 and 95% of the global market of chips used in this sector belong to Nvidia,” explains Franconi. The data is key, but it does not explain everything. The race for artificial intelligence is not only played in the field of semiconductors. There are other structural factors that are equally determining, and one of them is energy. The video delves into the enormous energy gap that separates both countries and why this aspect is crucial to understanding Chinese progress.
As Franconi points out, energy “is necessary to build chip factories, supercomputers and processing centers. Without it there is no industrial growth.” To contextualize this statement, the analysis uses data from the International Energy Agency that helps to measure the real scope of this advantage and its direct impact on industrial and technological development.
Another of the axes of the video is resilience. Specifically, China’s ability to adapt and continue moving forward despite the sanctions and restrictions imposed by the different US administrations. Franconi focuses on the repeated limitations that affect NVIDIA, but also examines the case of Huawei and the role that startups such as deepseek in this new scenario.
Talent appears as another of the fundamental pillars of this career. “A relevant fact is that China has a greater number of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but the most shocking fact is that 50% of the world’s AI researchers are of Chinese origin“says Franconi. A figure that helps understand why the Asian country is gaining weight so quickly in development and research in artificial intelligence.
The video also covers the current ecosystem of language models competing in the market and offers a clear snapshot of the position that China and the United States occupy in this technological race. An analysis that leads to our colleague’s conclusions about where this global pulse is heading and what implications it may have in the medium and long term.
You can see now the full video on the Xataka YouTube channel. And, of course, we invite you to leave your comments both there and on this article.
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