It’s the new battleground for China v the US. But Beijing has one big advantage

August 4, 2026 — 5:00am

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Although we are in the very early days of the artificial intelligence world, the US and China are emerging as the dominant forces. This will be a continuation of their geopolitical contest by other means.

We can assume that the two countries attain similar levels of tech prowess. Why? Because of the general and the specific. In general, China has caught up to, or surpassed, the US in every field of technology that it has designated as a priority.

China now leads the US in 69 of the 74 technologies classed as critical and advanced in the tracker maintained by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, last updated in June.

It’s “a clear signal of a structural shift under way in global technological power”, according to ASPI. And when China’s firms industrialise technologies, they have a record of undercutting and overtaking US competitors.

The New York Times headline from July 15 tells the tale of one sector: “The American EV has been crushed”. China’s electric vehicles accounted for 60 per cent of all sales worldwide last year, according to the International Energy Agency.

And a CNN headline from last week tells another: “China’s humanoid robots have been taking over the global market. Now the US is banning them.”

China boasts 140 manufacturers turning out more than 330 models of humanoid robots, accounting for 90 per cent of all production globally last year “while US competitors like Tesla and Figure AI have struggled to start mass manufacturing”, as CNN put it.

And then there’s the specific. In AI specifically, the US has suffered serial rude shocks as one Chinese firm after another has released AI models that rival or exceed their frontier US counterparts.

The first such moment came last year when........

© The Age