It might seem like odd messaging from a tech chief, but Huawei Technologies Co founder Ren Zhengfei (任正非) said that the US has “exaggerated” his company’s chip achievements, which “still lag behind the US’ by a generation.”
When it comes to the race for the hardware needed to support artificial intelligence (AI), his company “isn’t that powerful yet,” Ren said in a lengthy front-page interview with the People’s Daily last week. Still, there is “no need to worry” about the US restrictions, he said. By bundling Huawei’s chips together, or so-called clustering, they can still match rival offerings from top global players.
These comments, which have garnered international headlines and gone viral at home on Weibo, appear to be at odds with each other. However, the reality is that both things can be true at once. They expose a critical crossroads for Chinese AI, as competing interests vie to control its fate in the long run. Understanding this is especially crucial at a time when export controls are on the negotiating table in trade talks.
Part of the reason Ren’s humble admission raised eyebrows is that Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) has spent the better part of this year heaping praise on Huawei’s breakthroughs.
China is “not behind” in AI, Huang said, calling the Shenzhen giant, specifically, “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world.”
However, Huang’s high acclaim must be taken with a grain of salt: Washington’s clampdowns have cost Nvidia billions of dollars. He has complained extensively of how steeply Nvidia’s market share in the mainland has plunged, because of the ever-tightening export controls — mostly to the gain of Huawei, which has been long targeted by the US.
It is also telling that Huang’s flattery has not been widely picked up by the local media. It reveals that his ambition to have Chinese AI run on American chips is not in line with Beijing’s goals. As much as Huang hopes to stay in the lucrative market, and while local firms would undoubtedly welcome this, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has made it clear that his top-down desire remains to rely on homegrown technology.
Still, Ren is very much correct that the domestic alternatives are not quite there yet. Huawei is not the top choice for Chinese tech firms. There is a reason the likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, ByteDance Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd have spent billions hoarding Nvidia chips before the onset of new restrictions rather than pivot to Huawei’s to train and run their AI models.
The company’s units have a tendency to overheat, reporting last week from The Information said. Their software functionalities are also dwarfed by Nvidia’s. It has made large sales of chips to state-owned firms and local governments, which are more likely to signal their support for Beijing’s goals (even if that means opening unused data centers). However, most of the big Chinese tech players have yet to place major orders. Closing the gap in the last mile is proving the hardest part for Huawei.
That does not mean that it cannot come out on top domestically. Such a feat would require a major shift after most companies, including AI darling DeepSeek, have already built models on Nvidia platforms. It might seem far off at this point, but if DeepSeek or other leading firms decided to build atop Huawei’s ecosystem, it would likely force other developers to follow suit and usher in the era of Chinese AI running on indigenous chips.
Beijing is in the midst of using all of the levers at its disposal to nudge the sector in this direction. This objective predated Washington’s curbs, but the outside pressure has undoubtedly forced China to double down on self-reliance.
Ren in his interview predicted that the development of AI “will span decades and centuries.” He is right. And perhaps more than anything, keeping sight of the longer battle for tech supremacy is key for Washington, as negotiators might be tempted to focus on short-term tariff wins.
Because even if Huawei chips are currently lagging, they are on the cusp of a tipping point.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News.
Chinese state-owned companies COSCO Shipping Corporation and China Merchants have a 30 percent stake in Kaohsiung Port’s Kao Ming Container Terminal (Terminal No. 6) and COSCO leases Berths 65 and 66. It is extremely dangerous to allow Chinese companies or state-owned companies to operate critical infrastructure. Deterrence theorists are familiar with the concepts of deterrence “by punishment” and “by denial.” Deterrence by punishment threatens an aggressor with prohibitive costs (like retaliation or sanctions) that outweigh the benefits of their action, while deterrence by denial aims to make an attack so difficult that it becomes pointless. Elbridge Colby, currently serving as the Under
Apart from the first arms sales approval for Taiwan since US President Donald Trump took office, last month also witnessed another milestone for Taiwan-US relations. Trump signed the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act into law on Tuesday. Its passing without objection in the US Senate underscores how bipartisan US support for Taiwan has evolved. The new law would further help normalize exchanges between Taiwanese and US government officials. We have already seen a flurry of visits to Washington earlier this summer, not only with Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), but also delegations led by National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu
Ho Ying-lu (何鷹鷺), a Chinese spouse who was a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee, on Wednesday last week resigned from the KMT, accusing the party of failing to clarify its “one China” policy. In a video released in October, Ho, wearing a T-shirt featuring a portrait of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), said she hoped that Taiwan would “soon return to the embrace of the motherland” and “quickly unify — that is my purpose and my responsibility.” The KMT’s Disciplinary Committee on Nov. 19 announced that Ho had been suspended from her position on the committee, although she was
Two mayors have invited Japanese pop icon Ayumi Hamasaki to perform in their cities after her Shanghai concert was abruptly canceled on Saturday last week, a decision widely interpreted as fallout from the latest political spat between Japan and China. Organizers in Shanghai pulled Hamasaki’s show at the last minute, citing force majeure, a justification that convinced few. The cancelation came shortly after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi remarked that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could prompt a military response from Tokyo — comments that angered Beijing and triggered a series of retaliatory moves. Hamasaki received an immediate show of support from
RSS