Ryan Hass | Director at John L. Thornton China Center | The Brookings Institution website
Kyle Chan, a fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center, said in a commentary published on Mar. 9 that China is pursuing several distinct strategies in artificial intelligence (AI), differing from the United States’ focus on achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Chan outlined how American technology companies are investing heavily in AI infrastructure, with the country’s largest firms announcing $650 billion in AI spending this year and total U.S. investment projected to surpass $2.8 trillion by 2029.
The analysis matters as it highlights diverging national priorities and methods for advancing AI technology, which could shape global competition and influence future economic and technological developments.
Chan said Chinese AI companies are emphasizing efficiency, adoption, and physical integration rather than prioritizing AGI as an abstract milestone. He noted that Chinese firms have developed innovative ways to maximize performance using limited computing resources, such as through quantization techniques and novel model architectures. "DeepSeek’s V3.2 model, for example, uses a novel sparse attention mechanism to nearly match the performance of OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 3 on complex reasoning and agentic tasks, despite likely having access to far less compute," Chan wrote.
He also discussed how open-source models from Chinese companies like Alibaba have gained popularity worldwide due to their accessibility and cost-effectiveness. "Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky made headlines by revealing that his company’s customer service agent relies heavily on Alibaba’s Qwen model, which he described as 'very good' and 'fast and cheap.' A growing number of Silicon Valley startups now prefer to build on Chinese AI models," Chan said.
Physical integration was another area highlighted by Chan, who pointed out that Chinese tech firms are incorporating AI into consumer products such as electric vehicles, smartphones with agentic capabilities, wearables, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and drones. He argued that China has advantages in these areas due to its manufacturing capacity and overlapping hardware ecosystems.
Chan attributed China’s approach partly to necessity—such as U.S. export controls limiting access to advanced chips—and partly to government policy initiatives like “AI Plus” supporting sector-wide integration of AI technologies. He concluded by suggesting the United States could benefit from supporting open-source models and developing standards for agentic AI while considering the broader economic impact of large-scale data center investments.
The John L. Thornton China Center is part of the Brookings Institution according to the official website. The center focuses on producing independent analyses and policy advice on U.S.-China ties and China's domestic evolution according to the official website. Ryan Hass led the John L. Thornton China Center and held the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies according to the official website. The center collaborates with Tsinghua University for joint dialogues and events according to the official website. It offers publications such as blogs, opinion pieces, monographs and books for policymakers and public audiences according to the official website, specializing in research related to international relations according to the official website.
