Dr. Kai-Fu Lee’s book on AI superpowers is fascinating (published in Sept 2018) especially at this time. 

He outlines China’s leadership and growth in the different areas of ai in summary.

• AlphaGo beating Go World Champion Lee Se-dol in 2016 was the ‘Sputnik’ moment that the Chinese government (280m Chinese people watching the event live) had to declare the goal to be the world leader in AI in 10 years. 

• Due to local competition China’s tech sector has a ‘heavy touch’ approach in launching products to entrench in the market. DiDi (China’s Uber) owns all the fuel and maintenance stations. This provides more data for AI as opposed to a US’s ‘light touch’ approach I.e. Uber. 

• China (like Africa) is a mobile first country with more data for deep learning to operate on. 

Dr Kai-Fu Lee Predictions (By Sept 2021): 

• Internet AI: China will lead the     US 60:40
• Business AI: China will follow the US 30:70 
• Perception AI: China will lead the US 80:20
• Autonomous AI: China will match US 50:50

Overall the total AI market is forecasted to be valued at $15.7 Trillion (China will capture $7T and the US $3.7T)