AI : a demonstration of how China is rewriting the rules of the game

This is partially based on a Pascal Coppens Book launch. His book is called China’s Next Miracle. He describes that the book launch (Europe) went far beyond his own expectations because the interest in China and its ‘miracles’ has become real. He explains that people are ready for a new narrative. They feel that something big is unfolding — and they want clarity.

In my selected and reworked writing, his work targets one of the biggest misconceptions shaping today’s geopolitics and economy. It so happened that AHH and I had a conversation about AI in the US and whether a real bubble is developing. I explained at the time that the AI in the US will develop a bubble because they are not making it usable. The next step is to develop AI for business, and they are not doing that, but the developers are trading with themselves. Pascal’s work was interesting from that perspective.

He states:

There Is No AI War Between China and the US. And believing there is may be the biggest distraction of our time.

Why the illusion of an AI race persists.

“Who here uses ChatGPT or Grok weekly?” Almost all hands go up. Then: “Who here uses a Chinese AI model weekly?” Just a handful.

So the conclusion seems obvious: the US must be winning.

But when you look at the reality on the other side of the world, the picture changes instantly. Over 500 million Chinese use a local LLM every week. And NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang openly states that half of the world’s AI developers are in China — while many developers in the US are also Chinese.

So why do we still perceive that China is “behind” in AI?

Because we see what comes out of China as the “artificial” part of AI, while we trust that the “Intelligence” part of AI is being built in the U.S.

Why there is NO AI war: A versus I

We imagine a race because we assume China and the US are trying to run the same race. They aren’t. Their AI worlds could not be more different.

A versus I.

China’s AI strategy revolves around four A’s. The US strategy revolves around four I’s.

China’s AI model:

➡️Accessible: China is doubling down on open-source. DeepSeek triggered a nationwide shift where almost every Chinese tech company now builds its models with open source and open collaboration. Open-source is not a side project in China — it is the national direction. China uses AI to maximise access, and not restrict it.

➡️Affordable: Chinese companies know how to scale and optimise. Instead of overinvesting in giant models or hyperscale compute, China made AI cheap, efficient, and fast to deploy. Affordability is not an accident — it is a strategy to win the Global South, where most people cannot pay $20 per month for AI services from OpenAI or Microsoft. China sees AI as a lever to become the service factory of the non-Western world.

➡️Applicable: China’s focus is not on building one universal model like ChatGPT. China goes mostly vertical. Sector by sector. Business by business. Application by application. The country builds AI that solves real problems in healthcare, logistics, schools, factories, and government services. The AI hospital in Beijing, operating without doctors and diagnosing 20,000 patients per week, is one of the clearest examples of this approach. AI is not a product, it is not an operating system — it is an application engine – like your browser but only designed for how you use it.

➡️Augmenting: China’s government views AI as a tool to strengthen society, not disrupt it. It invests heavily in AI governance — not to slow AI down, but to collectively build global trust so adoption accelerates. Beijing’s AI ambition is to augment humanity, not impose AI on it.

The US AI model:

➡️IP-guarded: American AI companies build proprietary systems surrounded by deep moats. Their foundation models are protected, closed, and monetised through APIs.  (In other words, you cannot just use it, you have to use a bridge between yourself and the model) The strategy is clear: defend the intellectual property at all costs.

➡️Investment-driven: American tech companies rely on locking us in with subscription models to recover billions in investment. The whole stock value of their company relies on future returns. AI became a business model, not a public good as it started off with at OpenAI.

➡️Infrastructure-focused: The US sees AI through the lens of chips, compute power, hyperscalers, and AGI. Performance is the priority. Bigger models, more GPUs, more data, more power. The goal is to build the most capable frontier models on earth.

➡️Imposing: The official US AI Action Plan frames AI as a zero-sum game that the US must win to preserve its global technological dominance. The approach is competitive, not collaborative, and explicitly prioritises American leadership over global governance.

It is clear that we have two models, two futures and no AI war.

Once you understand the A’s and the I’s, the myth of a US-China “AI war” collapses instantly. The US and China are not competing for the same markets, users, or outcomes. One wants global dominance. The other wants mass adoption and global service capacity.

You cannot have a war when you are playing different games.

The real competition is not China versus the US.

• It is open-source versus proprietary.
• It is affordability versus monetisation.
• It is real applications versus artificiality – it must work for business, and it is not a one-size-fits-all.
• It is collaboration versus competition.
• It is global governance versus worldwide monopoly.

And on each of these axes, China and the US are positioned on opposite sides.  In my old career in IT, we said, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”  China has turned that on its head.  They are giving the steak away.

Europe’s blind spot

Europe continues to look mainly toward the US, absorbing American narratives and ignoring Chinese realities. This is very dangerous. Because if Europe chooses only proprietary American AI, we risk becoming digitally colonised by systems we cannot control — something I explicitly warn about in China’s Next Miracle.

Meanwhile, China’s approach to regulation, governance, safety, and AI for public good is actually far closer to European values. But geopolitical distrust prevents forward-looking dialogue. Europe is staring at the wrong player once again.

China’s Next Miracle — and our choice

What I witnessed at the book launch was encouraging: people are beginning to appreciate that China is no longer copying the West. It is flipping the innovation model — performing a global Fosbury flop. AI is accelerating China’s transformation.

There is no war. There is only a profound divergence of models. And the future will be shaped by those who dare to see it clearly.

So the real question for business and all technology is:  Do we dare to jump differently? Do we dare rethink innovation the way China is?

The AI future will not be decided by who has the best or biggest AI model, but by who dares to flip the model entirely.  The AI industry in the US will bubble.  In China, it will soar.