China’s AI Path and the Needham Question: From 1 to 10, Not 0 to 1

"In the context of US-China rivalry, innovative resilience may matter more than the capacity for breakthrough innovations". — Huang Ping (黄平)

As both nations invest ever more significant resources into artificial intelligence, the divergent trajectories between China and the US have become a key issue—with many pointing to a philosophical—even quasi-religious—divide between the rapid adoption of practical AI applications in the former and the more abstract pursuit of AGI in the latter. Huang Ping, an up-and-coming associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, agrees with these analyses. He notes that despite state-funded investment drives in basic research, China’s innovation system remains relatively weak at original breakthroughs (moving from “0 to 1”) but excels at scaling and commercialising technologies (moving from “1 to 10”).

In developing this argument, Huang evokes an indigenous cultural tendency towards “practical application” over “knowledge for its own sake”, drawing on the well-known response of Wu Guosheng, a historian of science, to the “Needham Question”. This was the question posed by the polym…