{"id":78193,"date":"2025-07-04T05:40:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T05:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=78193"},"modified":"2025-07-04T05:40:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T05:40:01","slug":"when-the-dragon-learns-to-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=78193","title":{"rendered":"When the dragon learns to think"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why China may lead the next AI revolution and how the West might\u00a0answer<\/em><\/p>\n

Image generated with\u00a0GenAI.<\/em><\/p>\n

For centuries, the dragon slept. It\u2019s vast, scaled, and still.
It watched the world from behind the mountains.
But now, something stirs beneath the\u00a0smoke.<\/p>\n

This time, the dragon isn\u2019t just breathing fire.
It\u2019s learning to\u00a0think.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For non-members, you can read the full story\u00a0<\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The smartphone was only the rehearsal<\/h3>\n

When China embraced the smartphone, it didn\u2019t just adopt new hardware\u200a\u2014\u200ait rewrote the\u00a0script<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the West, mobile was a convenience<\/em>.
In China, it became infrastructure<\/em>.<\/p>\n

WeChat<\/strong> turned into a digital city-state. It\u2019s part messenger, part wallet, part citizen\u00a0ID.<\/p>\n

TikTok<\/strong> wasn\u2019t just a viral app. It was a cultural missile, launched at speed and\u00a0scale.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t isolated brilliance.
It was systemic convergence <\/strong>of policy, platforms, and population.<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t the last time the dragon moved\u00a0fast.<\/p>\n

Solar, EVs, and DeepSeek: Speed is the\u00a0strategy<\/h3>\n

While other nations debated climate, China blanketed rooftops with solar.
While Detroit hesitated, China scaled EVs.
Today, BYD<\/strong> outsells Tesla in China and it\u2019s building factories across Southeast Asia and\u00a0Europe.<\/p>\n

Then came DeepSeek, <\/strong>an open-source LLM that quietly shocked the world.
Its performance was on par with leading models.
Its release? Fully transparent.<\/em><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t shout.
It simply arrived trained, tuned, and\u00a0ready.<\/p>\n

The dragon moves as\u00a0one<\/h3>\n

China\u2019s strength isn\u2019t just its size.
It\u2019s its singularity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One government.
A vertically integrated economy.
A tech stack that runs from silicon to software to\u00a0citizen.<\/p>\n

Where others fragment, China fuses<\/strong>.
Where others argue, China\u00a0deploys<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t improvisation.
It\u2019s orchestration.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The dragon doesn\u2019t sprint.
It\u00a0sweeps.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cold War will be\u00a0coded<\/h3>\n

Tariffs and trade wars may dominate headlines
but the next Cold War will unfold in\u00a0code<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The battlefield is AI.
The prize is influence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

China knows this.
And it\u2019s acting accordingly with tighter ecosystems, state-linked models, and long-term funding.<\/p>\n

It has banned crypto<\/strong>.
But it\u2019s building AI into everything else, from city-wide surveillance networks to state-backed cloud infrastructure like Alibaba Cloud<\/strong>, anchoring its AI ambitions at\u00a0scale.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the U.S., fragmented, decentralised, slower to coordinate faces a different choice.
It can\u2019t out-centralise China.<\/p>\n

But it might out-open<\/strong>\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

Can Web3 match the dragon\u2019s\u00a0pace?<\/h3>\n

Ironically, the closest the West has to China\u2019s rapid iteration model\u2026
might be\u00a0Web3<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Like China\u2019s tech economy, Web3 is loose, fast, and unforgiving<\/em>.
There are no business hours. No permits. No committees.<\/p>\n

Launch. Break. Iterate.
Fail in public. Ship in\u00a0days.<\/p>\n

In 2024 alone<\/strong>, Web3 poured over $2 billion into AI startups<\/strong>\u00a0, fuelling a wave of decentralised experiments.
Think Golem<\/strong>, offering permissionless compute.
Think SingularityNET<\/strong>, building decentralised AI marketplaces.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the paradox:
The dragon bans crypto, yet embraces Web3 <\/strong>weaving blockchain into healthcare systems and state-guided metaverse dreams.
With $14 million in annual support<\/strong> across Beijing and Hong Kong\u2019s crypto hubs, China\u2019s Web3 isn\u2019t a wildfire.
It\u2019s a controlled blaze.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western Web3, chaotic, permissionless must now outrun this orchestrated ascent<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If China builds AI through order<\/em>,
Web3 builds it through emergence<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One is a dragon<\/strong>.
The other a wildfire<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A note on the global\u00a0lens<\/h3>\n

This story frames the West through Web3 as China\u2019s primary counterweight.
But that\u2019s only part of the\u00a0picture.<\/p>\n

Across the world, others are shaping AI in quieter, more deliberate ways.
The EU<\/strong>, with its AI Act<\/strong>, isn\u2019t chasing speed. It\u2019s building frameworks.
India\u2019s AI Mission<\/strong> is weaving intelligence into its digital public goods.
Singapore<\/strong> is aligning innovation with long-range state strategy and sovereign data policies.<\/p>\n

These aren\u2019t dragons.
And they aren\u2019t wildfires.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re something else:
Gardens.<\/strong>
Growing under different suns, with different rules but growing all the\u00a0same.<\/p>\n

The race is not just binary.
It\u2019s ecological.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Final thought<\/h3>\n

We once looked to China for factories<\/em>.
Then for phones<\/em>.
Now perhaps for\u00a0minds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Because the dragon is no longer sleeping.
And this time, it doesn\u2019t just move.
It\u00a0learns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And in doing so,
it may change the code of global power, line by\u00a0line.<\/strong><\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

ByBit: https:\/\/learn.bybit.com\/web3-experts\/web3-ai-projects\/<\/a><\/p>\n

CNBC: https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/02\/11\/deepseek-ai-chip-export-ban-trade-war-us-wont-win.html<\/a><\/p>\n

EY: https:\/\/www.ey.com\/en_gl\/innovation-realized\/how-the-combination-of-ai-and-web3-could-reinvent-business<\/a><\/p>\n

SCMP: https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/policy\/article\/3245895\/beijing-draft-national-web3-development-plan-authorities-maintain-draconian-cryptocurrency-ban<\/a><\/p>\n

When the dragon learns to think<\/a> was originally published in Coinmonks<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why China may lead the next AI revolution and how the West might\u00a0answer Image generated with\u00a0GenAI. For centuries, the dragon slept. It\u2019s vast, scaled, and still.It watched the world from behind the mountains.But now, something stirs beneath the\u00a0smoke. This time, the dragon isn\u2019t just breathing fire.It\u2019s learning to\u00a0think. For non-members, you can read the full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}