Data advantage to speed up China’s AI development

The country’s huge data resources offer great opportunities to boost AI applications

By Lee Shih Ta

As strategic competition between China and the U.S. heats up, the U.S. is expected to ramp up restrictions on Chinese high-tech sectors, especially semiconductors and AI. But that doesn’t mean that China’s AI development will stop or investors will stop chasing AI companies. One area where Chinese companies can potentially capitalize on a home field advantage is in the huge amounts of data needed to develop new AI applications.

Once Donald Trump becomes president next month, the U.S. is expected to enact new and stronger restrictions against China in the semiconductor and AI areas. Despite that, the CSI All-Share Semiconductor Industry Index rose for six days in a row after Trump won in early November, hitting highs not seen for two and a half years. This reflects market expectation that China’s leadership will accelerate development of indigenous semiconductor industrial chains in response to further containment efforts from the U.S.

This is borne out by messaging coming from the just-wrapped Central Economic Work Conference, which prioritized tech innovation to drive construction of a modernized industrial system in China. Speeding up development of the AI sector was listed as a major task in that drive.

AI is currently positioned at the cutting-edge of technology, harnessing computing power to sift through huge amounts of data to discover patterns. It has emerged as a force for enhancing efficiency and cutting costs across industries. However, the value and potential of AI technologies can only be fully unleashed when they are combined with industry-specific expertise and are designed for integration into daily corporate operations.

The wider and broader application of AI technologies is conditional on having massive amounts of data.

The AI sector now demands more and better data, not just more computing power, and China is uniquely positioned at this turning point to provide companies with opportunities to leverage large-model technologies and realize rapid growth, said Dai Wenyuan, founder and CEO of AI company Fourth Paradigm (6682.HK), speaking at a ceremony to receive the Ninth Guruclue Global Investment Carnival 2025 Golden Award of Excellence for an Outstanding Company.

“The new challenges in the AI sector represent opportunities for China,” he added.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics recently published a “Trusted Data Space Development Action Plan (2024-2028),” aimed at building more than 100 trusted data spaces. It represents China’s first attempt at systematic planning on how to roll out emerging infrastructure.

Accumulation of data will contribute to the granularity of models and holds great potential for AI applications used by companies. China possesses unique advantages in terms of high-quality data. Learning how to efficiently leverage their own core data assets and closely combine those with AI technologies and their own business strategies will help companies beat their competitors in the future.

Lee Shih Ta is an editor at Bambooworks. You can contact him at shihtalee@thebambooworks.com

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