China's Technology Landscape
China has emerged as a major technology power through decades of state-directed industrial policy, massive research investment, and a strategic push for self-reliance in critical technologies. The country's technological evolution has drawn global scrutiny[^c1], intensified by US-China strategic competition that has reshaped global supply chains across multiple sectors.
Since the launch of Made in China 2025, the country has pursued dominance across ten priority sectors. By some estimates, China has invested over $250 billion in semiconductor manufacturing since 2019[^c2] and achieved approximately 86% of the plan's goals[^c3]. China became the world's largest R&D spender in 2024, with OECD data measuring its expenditure at approximately $1 trillion[^c24], and by 2025 its R&D intensity reached 2.8% of GDP (~3.9 trillion yuan), surpassing the OECD average for the first time[^c19].
By mid-2026, US export controls had driven a fundamental restructuring of China's technology landscape. Nvidia's share of China's AI accelerator market fell from 95% before sanctions to zero, with CEO Jensen Huang publicly confirming the company had completely exited the market[^c29]. China's GPU self-sufficiency ratio crossed 41% in 2026, up from roughly 20% in 2023, with Morgan Stanley projecting approximately 85% by 2030[^c44]. The domestic semiconductor equipment self-sufficiency ratio surged to 35% in 2025, exceeding the government's 30% target[^c45]. China's LineShine supercomputer, built entirely with domestically developed processors, ranked first on the global TOP500 list[^c30]. The global semiconductor market neared $1 trillion, reaching $791.7 billion in 2025 and projected to grow to $975 billion in 2026, driven by AI demand[^c40].
In July 2026, Shanghai-based startup Dongfang Suanxin unveiled the DF1000 AI chip, fabricated on a 14nm process using a fully domestic supply chain. The chip combines software-defined architecture with 3D-stacked near-memory computing to achieve 520 TFLOPS and 6.4 TB/s memory bandwidth without relying on advanced lithography or HBM memory[^c51]. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng stated that chip supply problems would no longer be a key obstacle to AI competitiveness within a year, and that the company had secured approximately 16,000 of Huawei's Ascend 950 AI chips[^c54].
China's open-source AI models surpassed those from the United States in global downloads for the first time in 2025, ranking first worldwide[^c41]. Chinese models accounted for over 60% of global token requests on OpenRouter by March 2026, while US model share fell from 72% to 33%. By mid-2026, however, major Chinese AI companies had begun restricting access to their most advanced models, limiting them to the domestic market[^c53].
In embodied intelligence, China elevated humanoid robots to a national strategic priority in March 2025[^c31]. By 2026, the MIIT reported that China produced approximately 20,000 humanoid robots in 2025, with output surpassing 40,000 in the first half of 2026 and projected to exceed 100,000 for the full year[^c56]. China accounted for roughly 85% of the approximately 17,000–18,000 humanoid robots shipped globally in 2025, depending on the source consulted[^c42][^c50]. AgiBot's overseas business already accounted for more than 30% of its revenue.
In July 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the creation of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) with 29 founding countries, positioning China as a champion of global AI governance and presenting an institutional alternative to US-led frameworks[^c43]. In the same month, China submitted a position paper to the UN advocating for "digital sovereignty" — the right of each country to independently choose its AI technology path without being coerced into choosing sides[^c52].
China achieved major milestones in space and aviation. On July 10, 2026, the Long March 10B rocket successfully recovered its first-stage booster during an orbital launch test, marking a historic breakthrough in reusable rocket technology[^c55]. In June, China rolled out the AEE25, its first domestically developed aviation electric engine specifically for eVTOL aircraft, achieving the highest torque density among China's publicly disclosed 200-kW-class aviation electric engines[^c57]. The CAAC's flexible certification model achieved eVTOL certification cycles of 2–3 years, significantly faster than the 4–6 years estimated for the FAA and EASA[^c58].
In advanced materials, China launched the world's first 4-meter-wide T1100-grade carbon fiber production line[^c32], and in nuclear fusion, completed the world's largest reactor superconducting magnet with entirely domestic technology. In biotech, drugs originating from China were projected to account for 35% of FDA approvals by 2040, generating up to $220 billion in annual revenue[^c26].
The decoupling has spread from trade to capital markets, with SpaceX and OpenAI blocking Chinese investors, while Beijing regulators have forced companies to structurally separate their China and international businesses[^c39]. The global technology landscape is fragmenting as a result of these dynamics, with analysts describing a shift from economic interdependence to selective decoupling[^c5] and experts warning that "a new kind of iron curtain" is descending in technology[^c6]. China has shifted from a purely defensive posture to actively managing outflows of its own advanced technologies through a comprehensive export control framework covering 63 technology areas[^c20].