BlueSky Thinking Summary

The article examines China’s accelerating rise in the global AI race, spotlighting DeepSeek-R1, a powerful open-source large language model released in 2025.

Despite operating with far fewer data and computing resources than its Western counterparts, DeepSeek-R1 delivers competitive performance, signaling a new chapter in AI development marked by efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

This breakthrough is not a one-off achievement but the result of years of strategic investment in national infrastructure, AI talent, and competitive corporate ecosystems led by players like Huawei and Alibaba.

Technical innovations such as mixture-of-experts architecture have allowed Chinese engineers to sidestep hardware constraints while maintaining model quality.

However, the article also notes challenges embedded in the ecosystem, including state-driven censorship and opaque governance practices.

Still, China’s trajectory reveals that AI dominance will no longer be defined by scale alone.

The competition is no longer about who leads—it’s about how fast the rules of the game are changing.