The Trump administration has recognized international technological management as a core factor of its “America First” technique. Within days of assuming workplace in January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order calling for US synthetic intelligence (AI) international dominance. Measures to appreciate the president’s name to motion quickly adopted: a discount in regulatory restrictions round AI improvement and diffusion, help for extra fossil gas and nuclear energy era, the launch of the “Stargate” AI infrastructure initiative, and a dedication to export the US AI tech stack. The White House has additionally issued further government orders to help digital property and monetary know-how, in addition to drone know-how. More know-how priorities are within the pipeline.
To compete successfully with China, nevertheless, Trump would require a extra complete and strategic strategy. Chinese President Xi Jinping understands technology as “the cornerstone of a strong nation” and has created a soup-to-nuts innovation and know-how playbook designed to appreciate his vision of China because the world’s “primary center for science and high ground for innovation.” His playbook is constructed on 5 core parts: funding, indigenization, insulation, integration, and internationalization. In every of those elements, China is both following shut on the heels of or main the United States.
After many years during which China trailed properly behind the United States in each authorities and personal sector funding of analysis and improvement, it’s now anticipated to surpass the United States in 2026. Xi’s 2025 funds referred to as for an 8.3 percent increase in authorities spending on science and know-how, together with a rising share devoted to fundamental science. As Xi noted in a 2018 speech: “Basic research is the fountainhead of the whole scientific system.” UCSD researcher Jimmy Goodrich argued in a recent China Considered podcast, “China is really almost at a breakout stage of investment in basic science. . . . They’re building twenty new national labs and scientific facilities across the country. . . . It’s like Xi Jinping has a fascination with Journey to the Center of the Earth and every other sci-fi book.”
In distinction, the Trump administration slashed its 2025 proposed analysis funding for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and the Department of Energy by as a lot as 56 p.c and seeks to cut funding for fundamental science from $45 billion to $30 billion.
By different metrics, China is already ahead of the United States: It supplies 33 p.c extra contributions to papers in high-quality well being sciences and natural-science journals, employs extra researchers than the United States and European Union mixed, is on observe to award twice as many STEM PhDs because the United States, and surpassed the United States within the variety of worldwide patents filed in 2019—and the highest filer globally was Huawei (see chart). And it continues to put money into its expertise base by scores of packages to recruit high scientists from overseas, whereas the United States is hemorrhaging expertise.
In March 2025, the journal Nature reported that of 1,600 scientists polled, 75 p.c have been contemplating leaving the United States. The Trump administration’s proposed $100,000 price on US firms for every H-1B foreign-expert visa might properly lead US firms to outsource R&D. A National Academy of Sciences paper additional reported that in 2010–21, almost 12,500 scientists of Chinese descent left the United States for China—greater than half throughout Trump’s first time period. And when these scientists go away, they assume management positions within the Chinese science-and-technology ecosystem: in 2023, greater than 70 p.c of college and nationwide mission heads in China have been returnees.
Moreover, as Hoover scholar Amy Zegart has shown, China now not has the identical reliance on Western coaching for its high researchers. More than half of breakthrough AI firm DeepSeek’s employees is solely homegrown Chinese expertise.
Bringing it house
A second precedence for Xi Jinping is making certain that innovation and the ecosystem supporting it are positioned inside China. As he mentioned in a 2014 speech earlier than members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering, “We cannot always decorate our tomorrows with others’ yesterdays. . . . Moreover, we cannot always trail behind others. We have no choice but to innovate independently.”
Xi’s most important initiative to advance this goal is Made in China 2025 (MIC2025). The initiative referred to as for 70 p.c or extra self-sufficiency by 2025 in core fundamental elements and key fundamental supplies in ten precedence sectors, akin to new supplies, medical gadgets, and semiconductors, and a dominant place in international markets by 2049.
The Rhodium Group reported that Chinese companies took market share from international firms in each MIC2025 sector; Bloomberg additional assessed that China had achieved international management in 5 applied sciences inside MIC2025 sectors: high-speed rail, graphene, unmanned aerial automobiles, photo voltaic panels, and electrical automobiles and lithium batteries, whereas closing the hole in seven others. And because the MIT Technology Review reveals, the hole between China and the United States in these applied sciences is widening yearly. China’s put in photo voltaic capability dwarfs US capability (see chart). And the identical more and more holds true for different clean-energy applied sciences, together with wind generators, electrical automobiles, and lithium batteries. More than half the automobiles sold in China at the moment are electrical, and Chinese automotive firms signify two-thirds of world electrical automotive gross sales.
Closely linked to indigenization is a dedication to insulate Chinese applied sciences from international competitors. In pursuing MIC2025, for instance, Beijing used an array of market and non-market limitations to assist homegrown applied sciences. For instance, MIC2025 required high Chinese hospitals to make use of 50 p.c extra domestically produced medical devices by 2020 and 95 p.c extra by 2030. Methods to appreciate these targets diverse by province: Sichuan pressured hospitals to make use of domestically produced medical gadgets in fifteen classes or insurance coverage reimbursement can be withheld, whereas Ningxia required hospitals to justify any international medical-device import with an audit. Beijing has continued to bolster its technique by further monetary help, procurement insurance policies, regulatory requirements, and localization necessities for international companies to extend the share of high-end domestically produced medical gadgets. The objective is a totally homegrown medical gadget ecosystem from “raw materials to finished goods.”
A comparable sample is rising in synthetic intelligence. Beijing is sharply limiting alternatives for international chip firms: it has banned its main know-how firms from shopping for AI chips from Nvidia, instructed Chinese automakers to “avoid foreign semiconductors if at all possible,” required municipal state-owned enterprises to make use of Chinese-made semiconductors and computing infrastructure by 2027, and mandated that state-owned companies submit quarterly studies monitoring their alternative of international software program with Chinese alternate options.
Chinese ability
The fourth factor of Xi’s playbook is the mixing of civilian and army R&D through a military-civil fusion program. Although this system was established solely in 2017, the follow predates its formal institution. Huawei, for instance, has collaborated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) because the firm’s founding in 1987. Major know-how firms will typically possess a military-civil fusion division or workplace whose job it’s to facilitate the switch of economic know-how to the PLA and to sign to firms the know-how wants of the army. Alibaba, for instance, shaped a joint venture with China’s most vital state-owned arms designer and producer, Norinco, on a satellite tv for pc positioning service; Baidu opened a joint laboratory with China Electronics Technology Group, which serves as a essential provider of superior digital techniques and elements to the Chinese army; and iFlyTek, one of many nation’s “AI champions,” has a comprehensive relationship with the PLA and the nation’s home safety equipment. These direct linkages make for a much more seamless adoption of cutting-edge applied sciences by the PLA and supply a possible path for delicate international applied sciences to be surreptitiously exploited by the PLA through a business associate.
While Xi is dedicated to China lowering its reliance on the skin world for core elements and supplies, he’s equally dedicated to making sure that the remainder of the world depends on Chinese know-how. Xi has publicly identified know-how because the “main battlefield” within the superpower rivalry and positioned a premium on exporting China’s know-how stack globally.
Domestically, China leads the world within the scaling and deployment of many applied sciences, together with digital funds, high-speed rail, renewable power and electrical automobiles, e-commerce, and 5G, amongst others. But it additionally needs China to be the world’s know-how associate of selection. China is investing closely in international tech infrastructure and in setting international know-how requirements. Through the Digital Silk Road and Green Silk Road, offshoots of the 2013 Belt and Road initiative, China has grow to be the most important exporter of fresh know-how globally, and Chinese firms akin to Huawei, Alibaba, and State Grid have reportedly invested, loaned, or contracted over $30 billion in abroad telecommunications infrastructure, cloud providers, digital cost techniques, and satellite tv for pc navigation platforms to greater than 150 Belt and Road international locations. China’s BeiDou satellite tv for pc navigation system now covers 200-plus international locations and areas, and greater than 130 international locations rely totally on BeiDou reasonably than GPS for positioning providers.
China additionally seeks to realize benefit for its international know-how stack by setting technical requirements in worldwide our bodies. China now holds high technical management posts within the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and Chinese companies, akin to Huawei and ZTE, are among the many most energetic members in research teams, working events, and patents. While a lot of their proposals are designed to safe international markets, some, akin to Huawei’s new IP, are designed to boost state surveillance and management.
A time for brand new pondering
After greater than a decade of implementing Xi Jinping’s innovation playbook, China is within the midst of a technological nice leap ahead. As UCSD researcher Jimmy Goodrich has noted, “The story of China twenty years ago stealing and replicating technology is really the story of yesterday. We’re looking at a China that is fundamentally changed. . . . So, we have to think about China now as not just a copycat innovator but an original innovator.”
The Trump administration technique to compete depends on restricted authorities intervention to spur private-sector innovation. But this won’t be sufficient. While the United States doesn’t want to copy China’s playbook, it wants to grasp the problem it presents to US know-how and innovation management and reply accordingly.
While US companies stay world leaders in high-impact patents and frontier analysis, the United States must safe the subsequent era of scientists and engineers who will make breakthrough improvements and lead the commercialization of know-how. This means increasing, not reducing or taxing, packages just like the NSF graduate analysis fellowship and H-1B knowledgeable visas. One optimistic step was the intervention by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to restore 5 hundred NSF fellowships after the 2025 class had been lower in half from two thousand to at least one thousand. But extra sustained help is required.
Equally vital is investing in fundamental science. Congress ought to reverse the Trump reductions in help for the core science businesses and enhance funding for the NSF, NIH, DOE, and NASA to help high-risk, high-reward tasks. It ought to additional reinstate help for clear power investments within the United States; in any other case, the administration could have completely relinquished international management and share in a worldwide market estimated to achieve $2 trillion by 2035.
Support by public-private partnerships, such because the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act to bolster superior semiconductor manufacturing and the Trump administration’s latest Defense Department stake in MP Materials to boost home mining and processing of uncommon earth parts, are optimistic examples of how federal help can strengthen US capability to innovate and manufacture in core applied sciences. More such packages might be wanted in different applied sciences to compete with China’s state-driven mannequin.
On the worldwide stage, the Trump administration might want to present strong monetary and diplomatic help for American firms looking for to export their applied sciences to compete with China’s Digital Silk Road. A reported proposal to quadruple the spending energy of the Development Finance Corporation can be a welcome first step, but it surely must be coupled with a renewed, strong diplomatic effort. Deploying groups of technical attachés to embassies might assist offset the lack of USAID and State Department officers, who historically advance US know-how overseas.
Building on the work of the primary Trump and Biden administrations to advertise a “trusted technology” stack with allies and companions—together with open requirements, certification, coaching, and finance—would additionally bolster US firms’ competitiveness.
Without such measures and extra strong long-term strategic pondering on points akin to Chinese know-how funding within the United States, the position of export controls, and science training, America dangers shedding the political, financial, and safety benefits that accrue to the world’s primary science and know-how energy.