Cooperation key to global AI development

Response to questions about technology sharing issues

Yao Yang: The problem is not that the Chinese companies do not want to share their technology. It is that some countries are digging in their heels on security, like with Huawei. Italy was the first country in Europe to ban the use of DeepSeek. Such securitizing technology hinders the sharing of the benefits of the Chinese technological progress.

The United States does not want to see fast development of AI in China, but DeepSeek became successful in China. If they prohibit us from accessing advanced chips, we will have to work on our own instead of using Nvidia. The US' behavior is like dropping stones on its own feet.

China's primary task in economy is to develop its domestic demand. The US insists on imposing tariffs on China and to remedy this we will have to develop the domestic market. But the traditional Chinese thinking emphasizes too much on saving, which goes as high as 37 percent of their incomes. And the Chinese companies too, instead of investing and redistributing dividends.

On the issues of EV and technology transfer, China used to benefit from European tech transfer to grow its own automobile industry. Now China is willing to transfer the technology to Europe through joint ventures, allowing the Europeans to benefit from it.

Yao Yang is a professor at the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University.