Chris Miller, the author of “Chip War” and one of the most cited voices in the global semiconductor debate, has laid out a blunt assessment of China’s position in the AI race: Beijing has been underspending on AI infrastructure for four years because its leadership doesn’t believe AI matters much.
The spending gap is enormous
Look at what happened after ChatGPT launched in late 2022. Google and Microsoft dramatically ramped up their capital expenditures on AI infrastructure. The response from China’s biggest tech companies, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, was notably different. Their capital expenditure trends on AI have remained largely flat since then.
The production side of the equation is even more lopsided. The US and Taiwan are projected to produce roughly 30 times more quality-adjusted AI accelerators than China.
Export controls are tightening the vise
