Why is China’s Advancing Commercialized Tech Advancing So Much Faster than the US?

                                                             2024-2025 use of renewables for power generation

Why is China’s Advancing Commercialized Tech Advancing So Much Faster than the US?

Is Donald Trump’s vision of the world holding us back?

The battle for superior military technology and AI sophistication seems to dominate the headlines these days. Yet a militarily devastated Iran has successfully held the United States at bay, noting that it is Iran (and only Iran) that controls the Strait of Hormuz no matter what the US military deploys. But Donald Trump’s anachronistic view of modernity – especially in the sphere of electrical power generation – places the United States at a commercial disadvantage, just when the electrical demand of large warehouses of AI servers is ramping up to unsustainable levels.

While humanity’s rising demand for electricity requires the Earth to continue to depend in serious part on fossil fuels, not anticipating future realities is insane. If you like the heat waves, floods and unpredictable weather patterns we have just experienced, this false mantra of “drill baby, drill” will ensure continued climate pain everywhere. Even the entire WAR with Iran, particularly the de facto oil embargo by a seriously squeezed Strait of Hormuz, is strong evidence why the Earth needs alternative energy like air. We are fighting unnecessary WARs over oil?!

In the above chart, the biggest loser is the United States, as the Trump administration has just committed to pay a French power company operating in the US to stop deploying Trump’s hated “windmills” (wind turbines to the rest of us) to generate electricity:

“The White House has agreed to pay TotalEnergies $1 billion to shelve East Coast wind farm projects that it condemned as ‘costly,’ with the French energy giant's investment set to be diverted into U.S. LNG production instead… The U.S.' Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday [3/23] what it said was ‘a landmark agreement’ with TotalEnergies for the company ‘to redirect capital from expensive, unreliable offshore wind leases toward affordable, reliable natural gas projects that will provide secure energy for hardworking Americans.’" CNBC, March 25th. Those “windmills” were remarkably efficient.

Meanwhile, China’s car and solar battery developments have created vehicle range of well over 650 miles with charging capacity measured in minutes. As Trump’s miserably failed WAR against Iran continues to raise the price at the pump here to over $4/gallon average, the inventory of EVs built by US carmakers sit in scrapyards, and we are unable to sell Detroit’s new gasoline/diesel replacements against China’s total domination of the international car market, where their EV vehicles account for 30% of all international car sales today. Trump is killing the construction of modern car charging stations as fast as he can. Writing for the April 1st FastCompany.com, Chris Stokel-Walker tells us why China is able to design and place into commercial/consumer service truly ingenious technology so much faster than we can:

“The U.S. and China are racing to define the future of technology, with very different ideas about how fast it should arrive and how tightly it should be controlled… The urgency is no longer abstract. In recent weeks, China approved the world’s first commercial brain-computer interface medical device and unveiled a five-ton class electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that has already completed a public flight. At the same time, U.S. agencies are scrambling to speed up approvals in areas like aviation and biotech, even as layoffs and political pressure threaten to thin out oversight.

“In both Washington and Beijing, senior officials are no longer hedging: This is, they openly say, a race for technological supremacy. Last year, Michael Kratsios, the science advisor to the president, called China the U.S.’s ‘most formidable technological and scientific competitor.’ More recently, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has similarly described a global race for tech supremacy.

“Beijing sees the same contest. During a February visit to an information technology innovation park, Xi Jinping said self-reliance and strength in science and technology are ‘key’ to building China into a modern socialist power. The country, he added, must ‘seize the commanding heights in sci-tech competition and future development.’

“The competition is already playing out across multiple fronts. The U.S. and China continue trading the lead in AI, with successive model releases displacing one another. But the real divide is emerging in how each country approaches risk. One system is willing to move faster and sort out consequences later. The other moves more cautiously, with heavier guardrails that can slow deployment… That difference carries real stakes. It shapes which technologies reach the public first, how safely they are introduced, and who ultimately sets the global standards that other countries follow.

“‘Most Americans do not realize that by multiple different metrics, China already exceeds the United States in a number of different fields, in terms of science and technology, artificial intelligence, quantum internet and biomanufacturing,’ says Margaret Kosal, a professor in technology strategy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.” So, it’s not as if China does not have guardrails, but Xi’s directives are more pragmatic, less encumbered by political patronage that we have (surprising, huh?), and implemented (and adjusted) with amazing speed. The problem, of course, is that it is China that is setting the global standards for the commercial use of AI and hi-tech consumer products and not the United States. Donald Trump, who has just fired both DHS head, Kristi Noem, and his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is the master of political infighting and competition-killing instability. Running a country successfully? Not so much!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, no fan of Xi Jinping (a brutal autocrat), but putting up his leadership moving China into the future against Donald Trump’s distorted vision continues to be a blessing, a gift if you will, from the United States to its archrival, China.