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View all search resultsAI: China’s unbeatable new export
China is not merely moving more goods; it is exporting a new production model powered by automation, AI and state-guided industrial optimization.
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This photo shows the DeepSeek app on a mobile phone in Hong Kong on Jan. 28, 2025. (AFP/Mladen Antonov)
T
he Chinese “cannot be allowed to export their way back to prosperity,” argues United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who claims that China’s economy is the “most unbalanced in history.” Such remarks reflect the growing fear in Washington that China’s overcapacity, subsidies and dumping are distorting global trade.
The more pressing concern, however, is not what China exports, but how. Global cost structures are indeed being reshaped, but by a quieter and more complex force: relentless productivity improvements.
China is not merely moving more goods; it is exporting a new production model powered by automation, artificial intelligence and state-guided industrial optimization. This shift is disruptive, deflationary and still largely misunderstood.
China’s rise as the world’s factory in the late twentieth century was driven by labor and scale. But now, China aims to achieve a new form of dominance through intelligent infrastructure.
No longer confined to apps or chatbots, AI has been embedded across the physical economy – guiding everything from robotic arms and warehouse fleets to autonomous production lines. For example, Xiaomi’s “lights-out” factory in Beijing can assemble ten million smartphones annually with minimal human intervention.
AI conducts a symphony of sensors, machines and analytics that form a tightly woven industrial loop, driving efficiencies that traditional manufacturers can approach only incrementally.
Nor is this technology-driven ecosystem confined to a single factory. DeepSeek’s 671-billion-parameter open-source large language model is already being deployed not just for coding but also to optimize logistics and manufacturing.
