“This Policy Brief examines China’s rapid ascent in frontier innovation across artificial intelligence, semiconductors and quantum computing, and the most important companies behind these breakthroughs. In these three areas, the United States leads overall, but China continues to narrow the gap and now excels in areas including semiconductor fabrication, AI video and audio processing and aerial vision. China lags the most in quantum computing. The European Union lags significantly behind both the US and China in patent breakthroughs, with slightly better relative performance in quantum. When it comes to the diffusion of such breakthroughs, Chinese and US innovators are much faster than their European counterparts at replicating novel patents from other countries. European innovators take more than twice as long to replicate US or Chinese breakthroughs, whether in AI, semiconductors or quantum. That Chinese replication happens nearly as rapidly as US replication, even in areas subject to strict export controls, is another signal of China’s rapidly advancing innovation capabilities.”
Morten W. Langer
