China’s Xi Calls for Self-Sufficiency in AI Development amid US Rivalry

 In this photo released by Malaysia's Department of Information, China's President Xi Jinping waves upon his departure to Cambodia at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Malaysia's Department of Information via AP)
In this photo released by Malaysia's Department of Information, China's President Xi Jinping waves upon his departure to Cambodia at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Malaysia's Department of Information via AP)
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China’s Xi Calls for Self-Sufficiency in AI Development amid US Rivalry

 In this photo released by Malaysia's Department of Information, China's President Xi Jinping waves upon his departure to Cambodia at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Malaysia's Department of Information via AP)
In this photo released by Malaysia's Department of Information, China's President Xi Jinping waves upon his departure to Cambodia at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Malaysia's Department of Information via AP)

China's President Xi Jinping pledged "self-reliance and self-strengthening" to develop AI in China, state media reported on Saturday, as the country vies with the US for supremacy in artificial intelligence, a key strategic area.

Speaking at a Politburo meeting study session on Friday, Xi said China should leverage its "new whole national system" to push forward with the development of AI.

"We must recognize the gaps and redouble our efforts to comprehensively advance technological innovation, industrial development, and AI-empowered applications," said Xi, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Xi noted policy support would be provided in areas such as government procurement, intellectual property rights, research and cultivating talent.

Some experts say China has narrowed the AI development gap with the United States over the past year. The Chinese AI startup DeepSeek drew global attention when it launched an AI reasoning model in January that it said was trained with less advanced chips and was cheaper to develop than its Western rivals. China has also made inroads in infrastructure software engineering.

The DeepSeek announcement challenged the assumption that US sanctions were holding back China's AI sector amid a fierce geopolitical tech rivalry, and that China lagged the US after the breakthrough launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022.

"We must continue to strengthen basic research, concentrate our efforts on mastering core technologies such as high-end chips and basic software, and build an independent, controllable, and collaborative artificial intelligence basic software and hardware system," Xi said.

He added that AI regulations and laws should be speeded up to build a "risk warning and emergency response system, to ensure that artificial intelligence is safe, reliable, and controllable."

Xi said last year that AI shouldn't be a "game of rich countries and the wealthy," while calling for more international governance and cooperation on AI.



Huawei Shows off AI Computing System to Rival Nvidia’s Top Product

An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)
An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)
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Huawei Shows off AI Computing System to Rival Nvidia’s Top Product

An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)
An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)

China's Huawei Technologies showed off an AI computing system on Saturday that one industry expert has said rivals Nvidia's most advanced offering, as the Chinese technology giant seeks to capture market share in the country's growing artificial intelligence sector.

The CloudMatrix 384 system made its first public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a three-day event in Shanghai where companies showcase their latest AI innovations, drawing a large crowd to the company's booth.

The system has drawn close attention from the global AI community since Huawei first announced it in April. Industry analysts view it as a direct competitor to Nvidia's GB200 NVL72, the US chipmaker's most advanced system-level product currently available in the market.

Dylan Patel, founder of semiconductor research group SemiAnalysis, said in an April article that Huawei now had AI system capabilities that could beat Nvidia.

Huawei staff at its WAIC booth declined to comment when asked to introduce the CloudMatrix 384 system. A spokesperson for Huawei did not respond to questions.

Huawei has become widely regarded as China's most promising domestic supplier of chips essential for AI development, even though the company faces US export restrictions.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in May that Huawei had been "moving quite fast" and named the CloudMatrix as an example.

The CloudMatrix 384 incorporates 384 of Huawei's latest 910C chips and outperforms Nvidia's GB200 NVL72 on some metrics, which uses 72 B200 chips, according to SemiAnalysis.

The performance stems from Huawei's system design capabilities, which compensate for weaker individual chip performance through the use of more chips and system-level innovations, SemiAnalysis said.

Huawei says the system uses "supernode" architecture that allows the chips to interconnect at super-high speeds and in June, Huawei Cloud CEO Zhang Pingan said the CloudMatrix 384 system was operational on Huawei's cloud platform.