China's DeepSeek AI has reignited fears that China might win its tech race against the U.S. It’s just the latest example of the PRC stealing our innovation to undercut America on the world markets.

When Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev said in 1956 that communist countries would “bury” capitalist ones, he didn’t mean that the USSR would inter the United States beneath the irradiated debris of its own cities. He meant something more like “We’ll outlive you” or “We’ll be there at your funeral.”

Kruschev’s words were less a threat than a projection based on existing trends. The Soviet Union had rapidly industrialized and modernized under Stalin’s brutal dictatorship. Even in the West, many believed the USSR would inevitably overtake the U.S. economically. In 1960, four years after Kruschev made his prediction, Harvard economist Abram Bergson suggested that the Soviets “will probably catch up to the United States in the 1980s.”

Today, the Chinese Communist Party is similarly confident they can outlast their geopolitical foe. This idea of civilizational competition underlies just about everything Xi Jinping does, on issues ranging from video game restrictions to foreign affairs.

According to one recent report, Xi has pursued a policy of “economic and technological ‘self-reliance’ via-á-vis the West,” including shameless intellectual property theft and protectionism for key industries. The expectation is that China can displace the U.S. as the world’s........

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