AI Became a "National Strategic Resource"
Until 2022, AI was a private-competition area, but post-ChatGPT, governments position "AI as a national strategic resource on par with nuclear weapons and semiconductors." Export controls, subsidies, and data-center attraction are becoming central topics of diplomatic negotiation.
US Strategy
Export Controls
- 2022: ban on H100/A100 export to China
- 2023: regulation-compliant H800/A800 also banned
- 2024: low-performance versions like H20 also targeted, HBM export also regulated
- 2025: debate on export controls for AI-model weights/services
Entity List
SMIC, Huawei, DeepSeek etc. added to the US Entity List, restricting access to US products/technology. OpenAI also restricts API access from mainland China.
Subsidies/Industrial Policy
- CHIPS Act (2022): $52B
- Stargate concept (OpenAI + Oracle + SoftBank): hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars scale
China's Response
Domestic Frontier Models
- DeepSeek V3 / R1: surprised the world with low-cost training
- Qwen 3 / 4 (Alibaba): world-top-class as open-weight
- GLM (Zhipu): enterprise-oriented
- Kimi (Moonshot): long-context specialized
